Stephen King – Page 2

Time travel travel speed

Guys, I am writing to you from space!

I mean, not actually. I’m actually writing to you from a plane, where apparently you can buy Wi-Fi access now (it seems “Internet isn’t safe on planes” only meant free Internet.) I’m on my way to Chicago, during which time I will hopefully be able to catch up on some book reviews that are long overdue. I’m a reading machine lately, and my writing machine (read: combination of brain, hands and laptop) is struggling to keep up.

It’s kind of appropriate to be writing this review from THE SKY (sorry, I’m still excited about it.) I fly very infrequently, and every time I do find myself on a plane I’m somewhat amazed at how jaded people are by the whole process. My fellow flyers are casually reading newspapers while a giant metal machine lifts off of the ground; they’re closing their little window shades and flipping through celebrity magazines instead of appreciating how crazy the earth looks from even 10,000 feet up. I’m not saying I expect everyone to still be drooling all over themselves a zillion years after the advent of commercial flying (I didn’t feel like looking it up) but a little reverence would be acceptable, no?

Tower of terror

I’ve been putting off writing this post because I’m not exactly sure how to go about it—reviewing the fifth book in an eight-volume Stephen King series is like trying to explain the intricacies of the third Harry Potter novel to an alien from a planet with no concept of wizards.

If you haven’t heard of, let alone read, the Dark Tower books, then…I’ll admit, I’m not sure what to tell you. What’s your general feeling on 6,000 pages of mutant lobsters, decaying robots, time travel and gunfights? In fact, let me ask you a few questions. Do you like Westerns? Do you like fantasy Westerns? Did you enjoy the movie Cowboys & Aliens? No but really, did you kind of? Like a little bit? Okay well do you like Stephen King? What’s your favorite Stephen King novel? Did you really read that or just see the movie? No it’s okay, it’s a great movie. How would you feel about seeing a Stephen King movie about a Stephen King movie? I know, it’s a little meta. Do you need to sit down?

They should paste that list of questions up in bookstores.

King for a week

Rarely in writing this blog do I stop to consider the intellectual implications of my book choices. Do I come across as well read? And not in the sense of saying “Yup, read that shit” to 75% of the books in Barnes & Noble’s “Buy 2, Get 1 Free!” pile (which I can, and do, say) but in the sense of actually using books to improve upon my understanding of the world, or to expand my horizons or whatever.

The short answer is: probably not. I do, on occasion, read books tied to current events, or on subjects about which I hope to learn more. But for the most part my choices are made in the interest of sheer entertainment. In all media really, I’m more MTV than PBS.

So it’s with that enormous disclaimer that I admit how much I fucking love Stephen King. Which isn’t to say that King isn’t smart, or that his books don’t stretch the mind—they certainly stretch the imagination—but only that I feel a certain guilt whenever I start out the week with a fat King paperback, sort of like sitting down to a dinner comprised entirely of chocolate.

I started Bag of Bones, a 1998 King novel, a few weeks ago because I was heading home for the holidays, and love nothing more than to scare the shit out of myself in my mom’s amazingly silent suburban house. Scary stories that struggle to make an impact through the unceasing din of Brooklyn street traffic have an entirely different effect on me out there, which is to say I spent each night over the Christmas weekend convincing myself that various unfamiliar shadows weren’t intruders/ghosts/mystical beings from another dimension.

A dome of one’s own

I’m not even slightly embarrassed to admit that, after finishing Under the Dome on Saturday afternoon, I set it down on my nightstand, took off my glasses and had myself a little cry. No, not because I’m on some experimental medication, pregnant or going through the changes. This is an emotional book! It’s a scary one, sure, but also gripping, tragic and overwhelmingly bleak.

So, context: Although I’ve known of Under the Dome for years (and of the somewhat hilarious similarities between its plot and that of The Simpsons Movie), I neglected to actually buy the thing until last week. Currently4/7ths of the way through Stephen King’s seven-volume (soon to be eight) Dark Tower series, I’ve basically been King-ed out. It was only after dinner with a friend—I’m a huge sucker for glowing recommendations—that I decided to bite the bullet.

It’s worth noting that, Dark Tower commitment issues aside, I’ve always loved Stephen King. Along with Dean Koontz, one might say he transitioned me from the 200-page Christopher Pike novels of my childhood into sprawling stories with dozens of characters and themes that sailed right over my 10-year-old head. And while King’s writing is often concerned with the supernatural, it’s just as often—if not more frequently—concerned with human nature, with what people do and who they become when pitted against something terrifying, or life-threatening, or world-ending. Some of King’s books—The Green Mile, Carrie, Gerald’s Game—wear this theme on their sleeve, while others couch it in vampires or monsters or ancient spiritual forces. Either way, the man’s got a worldview: As a species, it doesn’t (or wouldn’t) take us long to hit rock bottom.

What Would Dickens Do?

It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s read this blog that I have a bit of a …problem with bookstores. Once (stupidly), I even tallied up the money I’d spent in such stores over the course of a year. Let’s just say it came frighteningly close to an entire month’s rent.

And yet, despite the fact that I buy books far more frequently than a non-robot could finish them, I’ve never come down hard on myself for this particular vice. After all, I’m not compulsively buying cheeseburgers, or Beanie Babies, or bank stocks. Even when e-readers take over and everyone converts their paperbacks into coffee tables, books don’t expire. Forty-year-old me can still curl up with a hardcover and a disproportionately large glass of wine.

For me, books are an investment. Not only in my intellectual fulfillment, and not only in guaranteed commute fodder for literally decades to come. I love reading, and so I invest in the people who make it possible. I want Jonathan Franzen to sit at home all day, ruminating on his next 600-page analysis of the 21st century marriage. I want David Sedaris to lackadaisically roam France for months on end, penning diatribes on everything from the language barrier to the mating habits of local spiders. To me, there would be nothing sadder than Don DeLillo working a day job at Starbucks. Continue reading “What Would Dickens Do?”