Night Shift (1978) - Review

There's a reason why Night Shift has led to so many film and television adaptations.  It's good.  Damn good.

I've read that King himself sees a very cocky, self-confident, top of the world writer when he reads The Shining.  And that's definitely true, but it's incredibly evident in some of the short stories presented in Night Shift.

After my bad experience with Rage, which was an early novel that he decided to publish quietly as Richard Bachman, I was afraid that I might have a similar experience with Night shift, knowing that a good deal of these stories had been written in the decade prior to publication in Night Shift.

Boy was I wrong.

King shows off how versatile of a writer he is as well, following an epistolary story in the vein of Lovecraft in Jerusalem's Lot, with Graveyard Shift, which feels like it's yanked out of some 1950's era pre-Comics Code Authority EC comic, The mental image of gigantic mutant rats that had begin to take on some traits of both ant colonies and bats, is an image that I'll carry with me for a while.

Night Surf, the third story in Night Shift, was essentially a companion story to The Stand.  However, since Night Shift was published before The Stand (and Night Surf was originally published all the way back in 1969), readers at the time would have no way of knowing of the cross over.

I'm not sure if Night Surf is considered "canon" now or if it's just supposed to be viewed as a work in progress of the ideas that eventually led to The Stand.  The Captain Trips virus seems to be a little bit different than what was described in The Stand.  But I really appreciated, as the story unfolded, how the main characters attachment to any kind of morality or higher authorities seemed to vanish as societal structure collapsed.

I am the Doorway didn't feel like a Stephen King story at all.  It reminded me most of an episode of the 1950's old radio drama X Minus One or an episode of The Twilight Zone.  It's the first stab at straight up science fiction that I've seen King try and I really liked it, even if the end was a bit predictable.

Another thing I really appreciated in this collection was King's willingness to be flat out silly.  Battleground and Trucks demonstrated this fully.  I already commented on my adoration of Battleground.  While I don't feel as strongly about Trucks, its hard not to admire a serious horror story based on the idea that one day all the trucks in the world became sentient and just decided to enslave and/or kill humanity.

Sometimes They Come Back and The Man Who Loved Flowers both felt like they could have been written by a slightly darker O. Henry.

Quitters, Inc. was a particularly strong as well.  If you've ever seen The Game, you have an idea of the nature of this story.  Very cool idea.  The two concepts are so similar, I wonder if the Game stole some of the ideas from King.

 Children of the Corn was creepy but not really one of my favorites.  It was good, not great.

The only story in Night Shift I actively disliked was The Lawnmower Man, which was just so bizarre that I just rolled my eyes, said "Whatever, dude," and moved on.

I wonder if all of King's short story collections are this good, because he definitely brought his A-game to this one.

Next up: The Stand.

Rage (1977) - Review

Well, as I said in my previous post, it was bound to happen.

I didn't like Rage.  I didn't hate it, ultimately, as there were some interesting ideas, but for the most part, it seems like the work of an angry kid who scrawled his thoughts down on a bloody napkin after getting beat up on the playground...again.

It lacks the purposeful focus and confident voice that I first noticed in 'Salem's Lot and really noticed in The Shining.  A novel written from this angry perspective could have been cool if that anger had been focused, but it isn't.

Then again, maybe that was the point.  Perhaps King was well aware that a novel like this could never be published by Stephen King: best selling novelist, but would fly under the radar if written by an unknown paperback novelist, such as Richard Bachman.  The fatalistic ending also seems to be something that King (at least from the sample size I've seen so far) might not have attempted.  Maybe.

Lending credence to that theory is the fact that, while this novel has been "connected" with various real world school shootings, it should be noted that none of those events happened until 1988.  Stephen King was very publicly revealed to be writing under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1985 and The Bachman Books was published under King's name later that year.

I'm not particularly squeamish, so the idea of a novel centering around the perpetrator of a school shooting that left two teachers dead of gunshot wounds didn't deter me.  I just didn't particularly care for the main character.  And reading page after page about somebody you don't care about can become an exercise in tedium.

I do have a thought however, even if it isn't terribly clever or original.  King was apparently invested in Richard Bachman for the long haul.  He had intended to continue to use the moniker indefinitely, possibly for the rest of his career and was quite upset when he was discovered.  Add that to the fact that he wasn't particularly happy when Thinner, which was out when the King/Bachman connection was made, went from selling 40,000 copies to 400,000.  He took pleasure in his little secret side project.  And it was likely an outlet for him.

So my thought is...is Stephen King still writing under a secret pseudonym?  A new one?  He's publicly stated that he would never do it again.  But you would expect him to say that, after having been recently "outed", especially if he was planning to do it again.  Can't have people looking too closely.

That said, I find it highly unlikely that,  if he were writing under a different, unknown, name, that he wouldn't have been discovered.  He somehow managed to go undetected as Bachman for nearly eight years before being discovered.  Mainly because the writing styles and settings (Maine, Maine and more Maine) were so similar.  I'm actually surprised it took that long.  While, (as I wrote in my previous post) the voice of this book seems different than King's usual, the actual writing style is so similar it almost screams "HEY EVERYBODY!  I'M STEPHEN KING".

Certain phrases and habits I've noticed King uses frequently.  Such as, at least one character peeing themselves.  Maine.  The repetitive habit that becomes almost a mantra such as Jack Torrance's wiping of the lips in The Shining. Weird metaphors and similes that I've only ever seen King use: "jackstraws in the wind", and comparing people's skin color to "milk".

So maybe in this Twitter world, it would be impossible for King to write under a secret identity again and remain secret.

But hey, a fella can dream.

So, not my favorite.  Didn't like it.  But I wouldn't say I hated it either.  But I could definitely use a really good palate cleanser.  Hopefully, Night Shift won't disappoint.

The Shining (1977) - Review

The Shining is another big one.  Ask any Stephen King fan, be it casual or a hard core constant reader for a top 5 list of King novels and this one is likely up there.

Plus there's the legendary Kubrick film, which is one of my favorites.

I was afraid the novel might not live up to the hype.

I'm happy to say it was wrong.  This book was incredible in its realistic portrayal of a small (very) struggling family's attempt to survive, both metaphorically and literally.

In many ways, it is a very intimate book, focusing mainly on the three members of the Torrance family: Jack, his wife Wendy, and their five year old son, Danny.

The Torrances have their share of family secrets.  Jack is a recovering alcoholic with an enormous temper.  Wendy has serious self esteem issues (whether she's aware of it or not) stemming from her very judgmental (and generally awful) mother.  And Danny just "knows things."  And can read thoughts.  Kind of.

Danny shines.

I won't bore you with a blow by blow of this book, since it's so well known.  Basically, Jack's drinking and self destructive behavior (he got himself fired from a promising teaching job) and abusive behavior (he "accidentally" broke Danny's arm two years earlier) has strained their marriage to the breaking point.

He's given one last shot at redemption: become the winter caretaker for the Overlook hotel, a destination so secluded in the mountains that it's unreachable about 4 months of the year.  The isolation would give him plenty of time to finally finish his play as well as patch things up with Wendy.  All their eggs were in this one final basket.

But the Overlook has plans of it's own.

As I was reading, I found myself trying to "figure out" the Overlook. One thing that really sets this book apart from other haunted house type stories is the Overlook itself has an agenda.  It isn't just a screaming phantasm, or an old spirit that has lost its way.

It seems to be a living entity.  And it's hungry.  Best I can figure, is it feeds off of psychic energy.  Off of those that Shine.  So when Danny, who is described as shining like a spotlight rather than a mere flashlight or candle, is confined to the Overlook for the winter, the hotel begins to awaken...into something terrible.

The hotel works your mind.  Really gets into you and preys on your greatest fears.

The novel was deliberately paced and once the set pieces are established and things begin clicking in the final act...I could barely put the book down.

A couple nitpicks.  First...King's portrayal of the hotel is very scary and menacing...but at time's just bizarre.  There seems to be a gigantic party from the early 20s that keeps replaying within the hotel.  It's never really explained what's so special about this particular party.  Or maybe it's not the party that keeps "replaying" so much as the hotel is permanently "stuck" in a certain time.  Those things aren't fully explored.

And...while it's not fair, I'm going to mention it anyway.  I was disappointed that the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" isn't in the novel.  Not even once.  It was wholly a creation of the movie.  Oh well.  Enough nitpicking.

I know that Stephen King to this day hates the Kubrick film adaptation, but there's plenty enough room in my heart for love of both.  I can see why King, something of a perfectionist, would have issues with the film version: for one thing, the final act is very different.

But also, the character of Jack, despite the legendary Nicholson performance, is a one note caricature performance in the movie. He show's up, kind of eccentric (hey, it is Nicholson only a few years removed from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and then boom, he's crazy and tries to kill everybody.

There's a lot more going on with him in the book.  And there's something of a redemption for Jack, in the novel, in that he doesn't go crazy so much as he's possessed by the spirit of the hotel.  This leads to a very cool, tender moment at the end when Jack regains control of himself for just a moment...long enough to tell Danny he loves him and to RUN!...before his consciousness is gone forever.

This was a great one.  Well worth the hype, even nearly 40 years later.

salem's Lot (1975) Review

Salem's Lot is just your average sleepy, rural small community.  Despite it's funereal name, the 'Lot is so uneventful that it got its name when a mean and nasty pig escaped from its farmer's pen, taking permanent residence in a wooded lot near the farm.  That lot became known as "Jerusalem's Lot", after the pig.

Nothing ever happens here.  Except for that one time in '39 Old Hubie Marsten tortured and murdered his wife before killing himself in his large house overlooking Jerusalem's lot.  Or the time back in '51 when a fire burned down a large section of the 'Lot, threatening to take the entire town.

The Old Marsten House has remained vacant since since Marsten died, leading the town's children to claim it was haunted.  It's this reputation that has drawn novelist Ben Mears back to the town, to help him relive a childhood traumatic experience he had with the house to use as inspiration for a horror novel.  And also to fully rebound from the recent death of his wife.  Along the way he and local single gal Sue Norton become sweethearts and he befriends high school teacher Matt Burke.

The house is never far out of Ben's mind though, nor is the fact that it was recently sold.  Who would possibly want to buy and live in that nasty old house?  Enter Richard Straker.

Straker and his mysteriously absent partner Kurt Barlow have purchased the Marsten house and claim to want to retire in the Lot and open a small furniture shop.  Straker goes about his business, setting up shop and presumably restoring the Marsten house, while Barlow is allegedly on a months long buying trip in New York.

Then little Ralphie Glick disappears.  And a few days later his older brother Danny suddenly grows very ill.  Pernicious anemia, is the diagnosis.  The hospital nearly discharges him when he dies.

When local cemetery custodian (and gravedigger) Mike Ryerson starts displaying similar symptoms that little Danny had, Matt Burke grows suspicious.  He can't bring himself to say it out loud, but he's thinking it nonetheless.  Vampires.

What King does next is inspired.  These characters live in modern society, see?  We have modern medicine, electricity, incandescent lighting.  There is nothing that exists in these modern times that can't be explained away by science.  Vampires simply don't compute in that model of thought.  This theme permeates most of the book, as people who, just a hundred years prior, may have taken up pitchforks and torches become hapless victims to a menace that can't possibly exist.  It is a deliberate subversion of the Dracula formula put forth by Bram Stoker nearly eighty years prior, in which the terrible Count was brought down by forward thinking people of reason and technology.  In King's universe, that same technology (and blind faith in it) would be our undoing.

The rest of the novel mirrors Stoker's earlier novel in many ways, including the forming of a small group of enlightened individuals from various backgrounds who coordinate to destroy the master vampire.  The difference?  In this story, the would-be heroes are an author, a 63 year old teacher, the town doctor, an almost-alcoholic priest, and a small school boy.

They are over matched from the start and don't really have a prayer.

salem's Lot, much like the previously reviewed Carrie, shows it's age in many ways, but still stands out very strongly as a great piece of fiction that could very easily have been written today.  Change a few details and update some of the characters and the themes and tone are very relevant.

It's very refreshing to see what has sadly almost become a relic: a vampire story where the vampires are nasty, unholy, irredeemably evil creatures that must be stopped at all costs.  These vampires don't want to be your boyfriend.  They don't sparkle.  They don't have a soul, nor do they want to be human.  They want to destroy you and/or make you one of them.  And feed.

The plot isn't without a few blemishes, not the least of which is the matter of how religious symbols, such as holy water and crucifixes work unfailingly until a crucial point where Father Callahan allegedly "loses faith" and his crucifix, which had been repelling Barlow just seconds before, stopped working.  This, despite other characters who openly declare their disbelief of God and religion successfully using crucifixes throughout.  I explained my position on this one sticking point in an earlier post and have yet to hear an explanation that is satisfactory, but in the end, it doesn't truly matter.

I thought salem's Lot was an excellent read, and very tense in places, particularly the end.  I just couldn't stop reading until I knew the ultimate fate of all of the main characters.

Can't wait to see what Mr. King has in store for me next.