Part 1. (Machen, Lovecraft, Ghostbusters)Part 1.5. (More Lovecraft)Part 2. (Lovecraft Country, Jeroboam Henley)Part 3. (Batman)Part 4. (More Machen, Helen's Story)Part 5. (Black Tom, Vellitt Boe, Ring Shout)
Part 6. (Stephen King)
Part 6.5. (More Stephen King)
Here's three more Stephen Kings! And another bonus goodie!
Last batch was his classic era. This is modern era.
On Writing (2000)
From A Buick 8 (2002)
Revival (2014)
"Buick 8" was the last one Ma got me as a Christmas present.
I bought 'em for her, or for myself after that.
I loaned her my copy of "On Writing" to read.
I got her "Revival" as a present, but she never read it, and I inherited it back along with "Doctor Sleep".
On Writing (2000)
I'm rechecking it 4 years later to see how I've come along.
From last time...
So, is my training complete like I thought it would be?
Close enough.
A couple things I gotta work on.
A couple things in the book I'll have to refer back to from time to time.
But yeah, I'm a Jedi.
A C+ Jedi, but it still gets me the saber and cloak.
I was being insecure.
I can't see what I needed to work on; I'm good on all of it.
And although I dunno if I'm A+ I'm definitely no C+.
That was insecurity.
I thought I was being "cautious". Nah, it was insecurity.
A few things that have resonated through all three passes...
-Stephen's brother David has a 150-160 IQ range, and it didn't make him a writer.
-He says "If you write, someone will want to make you feel lousy about it, that's all".
-It took until he was 40 to stop being ashamed of his writing.
Guess I wasn't listening hard enough the first 2 times.
From A Buick 8 (2002)
Short version: it's "Christine" meets "The Mist".
Critics say it's "meh" yet some fellow horror writers say it's their favorite.
Positive critics say it's King coping with his accident, and 9/11.
Eh, I can see that interpretation to it.
Anyway, it's in that "Shawshank Redemption" narration style.
It's set in Pennsylvania, but Maine gets mentioned.
The flashback story is mostly set in 1979. Same year as "Dead Zone".
There's an evil magic car out in shed B of the police impound yard that they think is a thing pretending to be a car.
It's a dark blue 54 Buick 8 cylinder.
Unlike Christine, it doesn't run around killing people. It's content to sit still and passively wait.
It functions as a dimensional transporter that sucks up Earth lifeforms, and spits out Lovecraft monsters.
Why don't they just blow it up or crush it?
It's seemingly indestructible like Christine.
Plus the cops are scared that blowing up a thing like that might cause a blackhole or something.
As you would expect, things slowly escalate to mayhem.
I'm glad I read it now after having done the Lovecraft homework dive.
27 year old me wouldn't have appreciated it as much.
The Upside Down from "Stranger Things" totally rips off the world in the Buick's trunk.
King's overall message as explained in the outro was "sometimes life doesn't fit a nice narrative, and there are no clear answers".
The Buick represents that, and the motto on the book cover that Sandy says is "there are Buicks everywhere".
You can also make it about his car accident, and 9/11, and homeland security, sure.
But for me personally, it's also the rise and fall of the Dawkins movement.
When humans do grab hold of a new secret, they usually turn it into atom bombs and data centers, and you get the Iran War, and TERF-ass Dawkins falling in love with a chatbot that strokes his ego.
Revival (2014)
Basic plot: a musician recounts his friend-turned-enemy that he encounters throughout his life from the 60's to 2014. Said frien-emy becomes a weird hybrid of tent preacher and mad scientist.
Things escalate, and hi-jinks ensue.
It feels very "Stand by Me". It also feels like "Tommyknockers".
Yeah, "Tommyknockers" meets "Stand By Me".
Maybe this is his second crack at "Tommyknockers".
Rather than a rewrite, or a sequel, he did it this way.
King dedicates it to all his horror heroes, especially Arthur Machen.
It's essentially a remake-quel to "The Great God Pan" the way "Tommyknockers" is a remake-quel to "The Colour Out Of Space".
Coincidentally came out one year after "Helen's Story"!!
Better than Helen? Yup. Helen is fun, but this is more meaty.
This is the only one of the three plugged into that whole thing.
"Buick" is in its Pennsylvania cul-de-sac, and "Writing" is nonfiction.
"Revival" makes up for it pretty well! See below.
King-verse stuff:
-Castle Rock.
-Jerusalem's Lot.
Maine stuff:
-Fryeberg.
-Westbrook.
-Lewiston.
-Books-A-Million at the Maine Mall.
-Weatherman Joe Cupo.
-The Portland Press Herald
Poe/Machen/Lovecraft stuff:
-A character has blackouts, and "prismatics" like he was seeing a "world beyond the world".
So!! There's the most obvious link to "Great God Pan".
-The De Vermis Mysteriis, the magic Lovecraft mythos book made up by Robert Bloch which King also put in "Jerusalem's Lot" the prequel to "Salem's Lot".
Mention is made that it inspired Lovecraft, and was the basis for the Necronomicon.
-The big plot reveal of the final endgame is very much like "M. Valdemaar" and "Mesmeric Revelation". Which in turn inspired "Pan".
So, "Revival" integrates even more than "Gramma" ever did!
Okay, I need to stop ranking King against rebuttal-qels, and rank him on a scale of his own stuff.
"Buick" is tied on A tier with "Revival" but for different reasons.
"Buick" resonated for me like "Dead Zone" and "Dolores" but not quite enough to jump up to golden tier.
I get breakthroughs with "On Writing" on every pass, so I guess it's really important to me.
Golden tier it goes.
Golden tier-
"Dead Zone" "Dolores Claiborne" "On Writing"
A Tier-
"Buick 8" "Revival" "Tommyknockers"
B tier-
C tier-
Now, the bonus goodie!
LT's Theory of Pets (2001)
Found this in Ma's CD's. It's a CD audiobook read by Stephen King himself.
Can't help but noting the cat on the cover looks like my 80's kitty, T'ang Chin. 😎👍
Happens in Iowa, so no King-verse-town connections.
King introduces it to a live audience, and says it started out funny, but took a dark turn on him.
If he ended it sooner, it just could have been a cute story, but the horror add-on is...y'know, I won't spoil it
Narrator tells us about LT telling the story to the guys at work of how his wife left him, and how her dog hated him, and and his cat hated her.
Except she bought the dog for him, and he the cat for her, but the pets decided who they liked.
Then the horror thing happens.
I actually don't think the story needed it. I think King felt like he had to fulfill his brand.
He could have cut it off, and had a cute story.
I've got "Everything's Eventual" now which contains this.
When I get to it, I'll probably listen to the CD again, like when I re-did the movies for the corresponding books.
It's not one of his greatest stories of all time.
If it were in "Skeleton Crew" I'd consider it filler.
King reading it is what injects it with extra life, and makes it a treasure.
I dunno if they press audiobooks onto CDs anymore, but keep an eye out for this.
Or, anything read by King, really.
And, that's those!
Next: More William Hope Hodgson!!
2 comments:
"It took him until he was 40 to stop being ashamed of his writing"
He would have been 40 in 1987, and "It" was 1986, didn't "It" have flashbacks of Bill Denbrough in college in the 1960s like King would've been, and how he wrote sci-fi and horror stories for some English class and the teacher labelled them "PULP" and "CRAP" and gave them bad grades because he wanted Vietnam War political commentary instead of some shit like that?
I obviously have to re-read "IT". You remember better than I do. All I have left in my head anymore is the movies. Last time I read it was high school.
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