I only really started
reading King’s fiction in earnest about three or four years ago (I had read 1987’s
The Eyes of the Dragon as a
fantasy-reading teenager and a few short stories in my 20s). After
sampling a few novels, novellas, and short stories from his early, mid, and
‘late’ career (the dude churns out so many books that his ‘late’ phase is ever
becoming his ‘mid’), I decided I wanted to try to read his output
chronologically. I’m not super strict about it, but it’s fun and somewhat
enlightening. I’ve now finished his 1970s publications (not every one of
the Bachmans, but all the Kings).
King is a fascinating phenomenon to writers and publishers who don’t
quite know what to make of his practically unparalleled success as a
bestselling author. Is it a fluke? Sheer luck? Some
sociological phenomenon? I suspect it’s real talent mixed with a certain
uniqueness and, yeah, probably some sociologically driven moment-in-history
‘luck’ too. And also due to the fact that the guy is maybe the hardest
working writer ever – or the most prolific hard working writer anyway.
And, still further, that he felt personally challenged and driven,
despite his success, always desiring to be better as an artist, and actually getting
better through endless practice and growth.
Anyway, at the very least I think I’ve discovered that King did come out
of the gate really, really strong in the 1970s, his debut decade. Most of
those novels became almost instantly iconic and have probably only become more
so – not just due to cinematic adaptations of varying success and quality, but
due to King’s own original narrative and imagination behind whatever form of
cultural production the stories take (not at all unlike Mary Shelley’s first
novel and the endless mutations of Frankenstein monsters it yielded – her
genius is ultimately behind them all). Here’s my brief report on each one.
(I don’t think there’s anything
massively spoiler-ish in what follows, but this discussion is mostly for those
who have also read the books already.)
Carrie (1974)
In a weird, twisted
way this somewhat threadbare little first novel seems like an ‘All-American’
classic. Or the kind of twisted classic America really needs in its
canon. It’s the Prom Gone Wrong teen novel full of sincerely believed-in
telekinetic powers, graphic language, and claustrophobic social and sexual
mania. It luridly describes a horrifically repressive, isolationist, and
mentally ill version of religious fundamentalism brutally crashing into a
cynical secular high-school hedonism and hate – the resultant copiously bloody
mess of fire and broken steel is very much the car wreck you can’t tear your
eyes away from. In a world now tragically and terrifyingly overfull of
school shootings and bullying (and it’s sadly easy to play that scenario out to
the international level), this somewhat pulpy (but always promising more than
that, as King ever does in his fiction) little book is one of the central
narratives for our times. In terms of the writing, it’s definitely King
still finding his feet, but it’s pretty smartly done for all that and an
uncharacteristically short number anyway.
‘Salem’s Lot (1975)
I wish I could have
read all of these novels as they came out in the 70s. I think the impact
must have been like a fetid roar and a raking of claws to the face. I
suspect it was all so fresh and ferocious back when it first appeared,
especially to the general audience it so immediately reached. I wish I
could’ve read King’s vampire novel when it came out more than any of these
other early works. It must have been exquisitely thrilling to encounter
vampires in a contemporary, small town setting for (one of) the first time(s).
King really hits his stride here in terms of his trademark gregarious
tone, his plentiful ‘porch-swing’ sort of storytelling. The autumnal New
England setting is gorgeous in its Bradbury-esque bitter-sweetness. The
prose is occasionally marred by a slightly lazy Lovecraftian floridity when
describing Gothic elements of the story, moments which made me cringe and laugh
simultaneously. But overall I think King has more or less matured as a
writer at this point. The characterisation takes solid hold and the
monsters are lean and mean and nasty, either killing off or taking over some
already nasty characters as well as more tragically offing or enslaving
characters you root for. But I have to admit that reading the novel in
the midst of our oversaturated day and age of Mod Vamps, King’s stab at the
genre didn’t feel especially vivacious. It was, of course, refreshing
that the vampires were simply inhuman blood-drinking overlords from some
darkness in the Old World come to roost in the New World – instead of (poorly
written) tormented teens or detectives or whatever. And King’s vampire book
can still be very profitably mined for themes in my pet area of ‘theology of
monsters’ since a priest’s earnest soul-searching about ‘traditional’ vs.
‘progressive’ Christian faith are a central conceit and concern of the novel.
It’s quite powerful in that regard actually. At any rate, it’s good
classical monster fodder if not as remarkable and original as the rest from
this era.
The Shining (1977)
Uh oh. Now it
really hits. By his second novel, King had more or less matured into a
young prose craftsman. In his third novel he intentionally ups the ante
for himself. He wrote in a 2001 introduction to The Shining that
it was a crossing-the-line sort of novel for him and he felt that was the case
as he wrote it. He decided to go deeper and darker with his central
character, creating a hybrid protagonist-antagonist. I think I’d say this
is one of King’s best books that I’ve read so far. It is one of his most
internal. If Kubrick’s visually brilliant film version is an exercise in
atmospheric and rather inexplicable horror, King’s novel is nearly the opposite.
It’s one of the most inwardly labyrinthine tales I’ve read. The
characters are trapped inside the endless interlocking and haunted rooms of the
infamous hotel and we are trapped inside the endless interlocking and haunted
rooms of the characters themselves. It feels almost like the entire novel
is a series of counterpoised internal monologues. It also features King’s
ability to nest story within story, reaching back and back into characters’
lives to round them out and make you care about the horrific tragedy they
endure in the chilling preternatural circumstances at hand. Of course,
it’s not really just the craftsman’s ‘rounding out’ to make his characters
effective – you feel like King wants to know why they are the way they are as
much as you do and he’s just digging up the dirt on them and publishing his
finds. Indeed, King tends to have a very ‘juicy’ or ‘gossipy’ tone that
makes you turn the pages to know why So-and-So has become so warped. He
even ends up getting you just as invested in the antecedent warping of the
mothers and fathers or whoever that have warped the character all this
backstory began with. It’s a feat to make fellow writers feel very, very
jealous. (Philip Roth’s The Human Stain is the main other example
I’ve run into of this endlessly stacked and breathlessly related backstory
characterisation.) I’m often surprised we don’t all just wish King ill in
our jealousy and insecurity in the face of his obvious God-given talent.
He’s nothing if he’s not a hard worker. He has clearly sweated,
bled, and cried to achieve what he has achieved. But he started with the
Gift, there’s no doubt. And some of us can’t help being a rather sick
shade of green with envy. But he wins you over. Ultimately, you
just go: ‘You lucky dog. Good for you. And thanks.’ (It
helps a lot that he’s so disarmingly humble, honest, and charming when he comes
out from behind the authorial curtain and talks frankly to his Constant Readers
in introductions and notes.) There are enough differences with Kubrick’s
film to keep you going even though you essentially know the novel’s story
already if you’ve seen that film. It’s good.
Night Shift (1978)
Ah, now this is just
a delightful collection of short stories. I admit it has a bit of
personal history with me that adds to its glow. I was very ill with the
flu and trying to meet an essay deadline and take care of five children (also
ill) while my wife was out of town when I read most of the stories in here.
They enthralled and appalled me deliciously and soothed my overwrought
brain through a tough time. They’re all early stories, most of them first
published in ‘gentleman’s magazines’ (what the hell is so gentlemanly about
viewing pornographic photos of women will always be a mystery to me). The earliness of the material shows.
This is not always King at his best in terms of skill, but it is often
King at his best in terms of sheer imagination and verve. And sometimes
in terms of skill too, to be honest. A few of these stories are some of
the most gripping suspense stories I’ve ever read – even when they were about
themes or scenarios I wouldn’t normally be the least interested in. Most
of the stories stick pretty firmly to more or less familiar horror genre
territory. But there’s an originality and flare here! I nearly tossed
my cookies once or twice at just a few descriptive words of gore. I’m
still haunted by one or two of the monstrous images. I even cried at the
end of one of them it was so tragic and poignant! This is pulp fiction in
the best sense: sensational and
thrilling and chilling and pleasantly garish. There are also a few in
here that push beyond that. ‘Night Surf’ and ‘I Am the Doorway’ are two
of my very favourite atmospheric horror pieces. The former gives a tantalising
slice of dystopian post-apocalypse (it’s apparently a first-run at the material
that will make up The Stand) and the
latter is, for my money, one of the best contemporary translations of
Lovecraftian ‘cosmic horror’ I’ve come across – simple and impossible and
inexplicable and cree-eepy. The collection contains one of King’s New England
small-town elderly ‘voice’ pieces too (it’s one of the things King does best
and I think it might still largely be a secret to the majority of his
readership and the critics). The yarn is
called ‘Gray Matter’ and it too is an exemplary contemporary take on Lovecraft,
but this time his more terrestrial horror. Many of the stories have
King’s infectious emphasis on the potential malice of inanimate objects, which
could be analysed fruitfully by those interested in ‘object-oriented ontology’
and the like. The story ‘Trucks’ (upon which was based the hilarious and
awesomely bad Maximum Overdrive movie) was a great little piece in this
vein. Many like it in the collection are
fanciful exercises in grim imaginative play and some are delightfully absurd,
such as ‘Battleground’. ‘The Lawnmower Man’ (utterly unrelated to
its later film ‘version’) and ‘The Children of the Corn’ are other standouts of
the weird. Lots of good stuff in here.
A great addition to the 70s output.
The Stand (1978)
I actually lucked
upon a first-edition paperback of this book, so I’ve only read the 70s cut
version and not the later 90s expanded version. But even this earlier
shorter version is the longest thing King wrote in the 70s, coming in at around
a thousand pages. It’s a beast. Once again King tops his previous
game. Now he shows he can do thrilling, page-turning characterisation for
a whole sprawling cast of characters, not just a few. This is high-octane
King in the form of plague-decimated and supernaturally haunted
post-apocalypse. The scope is nationwide and the tone is brutal, warm,
chilling, and visionary by pretty quick turns. I don’t think I really took
much of a breath until about halfway through. This is one of a number of
King’s tales that turns the USA’s highways and geography into an epic
painstakingly journeyed quest-scape of darkness and light. King has
mentioned a number of times his desire to emulate Tolkien in various ways, but
specifically in a North American instead of British setting. Though King and Tolkien couldn’t be more
different in so many respects, King does manage to capture that feel of a very
long and costly journey on foot through terrible dangers and against towering odds
that is central to much of The Lord of
the Rings. He succeeds in reminding
me how incredibly large and diverse and scary and beautiful the sheer landscape
and roadways of modern North America are, an ample testing ground for the souls
that travel through it. I think the
middle of the book lags a bit, but it picks up again and I wouldn’t have wanted
to miss anything. I do think most of the
real power and magic are in the first half.
I’m actually looking forward to reading the later revised and expanded
version someday. It’s definitely a long,
strange and dark adventure I want to revisit.
On a different note: I have to
say, it seems to me like it’s some kind of well-guarded secret that this is a
flat-out Christian novel. No,
no, not ‘Christian bookstore’ fiction or the like. It’s got all the copious profanity and
graphic content so characteristic of King, which alone would disqualify it (thank
God) from getting anywhere near the sanitised industry of ‘Christian fiction’. (Whether King goes overboard with graphic content is whole other issue.) Think more along the lines of Flannery O’Connor
and Walker Percy. Regardless, The Stand is decidedly not merely a generic
Good-vs-Evil or Triumph-of-the-Human-Spirit saga. Crucial to its whole plot and theme is the ‘intervention’
of the Christian God himself – yeah, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that deity. I’ve probably never read so much actual prayer in a modern novel (indeed, this spiritual
activity recurs throughout King’s works, even those that are otherwise in no
way blatant about matters of faith). God-given visions and faithful obedience to God’s
call are key characteristics of the story.
The Christian characters are downright attractive too, real people with
real flaws and struggles who nevertheless shine in their integrity and
leadership – as do characters who are not explicitly ‘of the faith’; it’s not
that King portrays the Christian characters better than the rest, but simply as good as some of the other admirable
players in the drama, something many (most?) modern writers seem unwilling to
do, if they acknowledge the existence of people of faith at all. King wisely weaves in doubt and agnosticism
and so on also. He’s not beating anyone
over the head. You can take the side of
rationalist reductionism or conscientious epistemic doubt if you want. But real supernatural faith is right there on
the table too. And this is the early
King we’re talking about here. Not some
later ‘converted’ King. And he’s only
going to go on developing and circling back to this blatant Christian
spirituality in the face of horror again and again in various later novels and
stories (1996’s Desperation is a
shining instance). And The Stand itself remains one of King’s
single most celebrated novels. Why does
no one really talk about the central Christian aspect of it? At any rate, it’s a book for everyone,
regardless of worldview, a classic of contemporary urban fantasy writing and
the kind of rich and engrossing tale you can really live with for a while.
The Dead Zone (1979)
This
seems like it’s probably the least known of the 70s books, but to me it’s
probably the very best – indeed, one of the very best of King’s whole canon out
of what I’ve read so far (and I think I heard somewhere that King himself felt
that way about it). Except for ‘Salem’s Lot, the rest of the novels
from this era I would only call ‘horror’ fiction in a hybrid sense: they are woven as much of ‘realistic’ thriller
or suspense fiction and paranormal fantasy and adventure fiction and just plain
‘homespun’ social drama as they are of actual horror tropes. There’s
certainly enough of a centring emphasis on supernatural fear and grotesque
violence to warrant his label as a horror writer, but anyone who’s read more
than a few books by him will surely have discovered that there’s just so much
more to him than that label implies. If
I’d never heard of King before and the first thing I read by him was The Dead Zone, I seriously doubt I would
have labelled it a horror novel. It is
very dark, very magical and mysterious, at times incredibly menacing or nerve-racking,
and there’s a serial killer subplot in there that is indeed out and out
horrifying. These are all elements that
could be found in, for example, a Neil Gaiman novel and we don’t call Gaiman a
horror writer. We call his work ‘dark
fantasy’ maybe and there’s a significant distinction there. I think a lot of what King writes could be
better described under this rubric than bald ‘horror’. Anyway, The
Dead Zone is primarily a highly poignant character-driven tale of deep loss
and coping with that loss. It describes
a man finding purpose in choosing to do good with what gifts tragedy has left
in his hands whether he wanted those costly gifts or not. It is social and political too, as all of
King is, but whereas The Stand was his
most blatant book in this era on spirituality, The Dead Zone is his most blatant on politics. Indeed, the political baddie in this book is
as terrifying as any supernatural baddie in King’s others. And the novel makes contemporary
socially-torn America seem every bit as dangerous and scary as post-apocalyptic
America. Yet this is such a personal
novel too. It’s rather beautiful, the
paranormal powers and the people both. (It’s
worth noting that King gives a much more gentle and sympathetic portrait of a religious
fundamentalist mother here, almost in counterpoise to the one in Carrie that opened this decade’s
publications – and he also provides an alternative example of a more admirable faith
in the father in this novel.) He really
crowned his first decade with this book I think. It’s slightly less furious than the rest but
no less urgent and searching. It’s like
he’s taking a deep and calming breath before plunging on into the 80s (which
turned out to be a troubled drug- and alcohol-fuelled, if still wildly successful,
decade for him). Good show, Mr. King, good show.
Addendum: The
Long Walk (1979)
This is the only of the 70s Bachman books that I’ve read so far. By the end of it I was really won over. This is quality disturbing dystopian fiction,
ultimately very effective in its mesmerising and inexorable brutality. I do quite a few miles of walking in getting to
where I need to every day. Doing so during
the days in which I was reading this book invested those long-ish walks with a heightened
sense of perception and urgency (and maybe, to be honest, a hint of
terror!). If the […vague SPOILER…] ‘dark
figure’ at the end of the book is akin to the ‘ragged figure’ that Flannery O’Connor
spoke of in the introduction to her novel Wise Blood, then King’s The
Long Walk may be the darkest and most brutal version of the (otherwise rather
saccharine) ‘Footprints’ poem ever created. Indeed, the whole of King’s output strikes
me, theologically, as something of a long and variegated Dark Theodicy. Don’t get me wrong, King is no C. S.
Lewis. He’s not a Christian
apologist. His method is very different
(though complementary I would maintain).
Theodicy is odyssey for King. He
throws every amount and kind of monstrous evil and suffering at his journeying characters
and then shows faith, hope, and love somehow, in at least some of them,
miraculously surviving the onslaught (again echoing Tolkien’s own sort of Dark
Theodicy). King does not at all deny the
plausibility of Lovecraftian ‘cosmic horror’ or Nietzschean nihilism, that we
are utterly alone in an utterly indifferent universe. These worldviews are given a full and fair
and even rather seductive hearing in all of King’s works, indeed a particularly
compelling one in The Long Walk. And yet, in King’s fiction, ‘these three
remain’ (1 Corinthians 13:13). Just
look at the self-sacrificially communal actions of the protagonist Garraty and
the friends he has made out of his competitors by the end of the horrific Walk,
even in the face of inexorable death and tyranny. That’s just one in a long line of such
examples throughout King’s fiction. We
are all of us on the terrifying and self-revealing Long Walk and it remains to
be seen whether at the end of the line we are awaited by the sinister Major and
his Prize or some other figure harder to see in all this obscuring inhumanity. What will we become during the journey?
That’s what King’s fiction seems to ask.
‘This inhuman place makes human monsters’ is a refrain in The Shining. But not all the characters were turned into
monsters by the hotel’s malevolent influence.
Some made it through, wounded but wiser – and even, miraculously, more
humane, more fully human. This
redemptive motif is often left out of King’s public persona (usually crafted by
others, not himself). For example, his
words toward the end of his 2001 introduction to The Shining are often
quoted and memed: ‘Monsters are real,
and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.’ I’ve even passed this one on myself on social
media. It’s a cool little sound bite. But, inexplicably, what King wrote right
after that cool little sound bite, the conclusion to his introduction, is never
included: ‘That our better angels
sometimes – often! – win instead, in spite of all odds, is another truth of The Shining. And thank God it is.’
So as I say, King comes out of the gates very strong in his first decade
of writing. He’s made his mark and in
some ways has no need to say anything further.
Yet I am so very glad he did. I
think some of his very best stuff is yet to come in each of the subsequent
decades, probably including the one we are currently in. The quality of the writing in the 70s, as
throughout the rest of his career, is mixed – mostly quite good I think, and
doing some things better than anyone else.
The good for me far outweighs the ‘bad’ and the bad is often trying to
get at something good. I don’t, like
others, fault King for being ‘homespun’ or ‘sentimental’. I mean, come on, surely part of his genius
is being something like Lake Wobegon in Hell, or Mark Twain meets H. P.
Lovecraft, or Norman Rockwell meets Hieronymus Bosch. I only fault him for his at times faltering
or out and out unsuccessful execution of that sentimentality or rocking chair
storytelling. But no writer is perfect
and King has hooked me for good. Maybe
in another five years I’ll be able to do a report on the 1980s Stephen
King. (In the meantime, I’ll definitely
review some individual novels from time to time, including some more recent
stuff like Doctor Sleep.)
