First Image from The Cell

I gotta say, The Cell ranks in my top 5 of Stephen King books. Depending on the day, I might even tell you that it is my all time favorite. Zombie, terrorism, society collapses and rebuilds in an interesting way. I wont say more.

It will be a long time before I get around to reading this a second time, but that does not stop me from enjoying information about the movie release, set for 2015. It stars John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. Not exactly who I would have picked for those roles, but I think that I can deal.

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4 Past Midnight & The Langoliers

This book is a collection of 4 short stories. His previous collection, Different Seasons, included short stories that were not horror novels and King says that this is his return to horror. 

The only thing that I remember about this book is the first story, The Langoliers. It is not unreasonable to think that this story sticks in my head because I am reminded of it every time that I get on a plane. It just kind of floats around in the back of my head. There was a TV movie made out of this story. All I remember about the movie is that it sucked. There are many things that creep you out at a very deep level when you read it in a book and see it in your imagination. Then someone makes a movie out of it and you wonder why you were so afraid of the dopey monster. 

My other example of this is Twilight. I devoured the books [I am a girl, what can I say? The fact that I am admitting that I read the series more than once and enjoyed it while simultaneously loathing myself for being drawn into such nonsense should demonstrate my integrity]. Then I went to see the movie with my girlfriend. I was so embarrassed at the dialogue and when the movie finally ended I leaned over and said, "Did that sound as STUPID out loud to you as it did to me?" Her answer was yes. All of this is to say, that somethings make sense in your imagination, but are terrible when they take life outside of the imagination.

So, the movie of The Langoliers was terrible. Don't watch it. But the story was interesting. A plane flies through a rip in time to yesterday where everything is dead except what is on the plane. Then come the things that eat up yesterday and threaten to eat you along with it. 

Also in this collection:

• Secret Window, Secret Garden (also made into a movie, starring Johnny Depp, who does a great job)
• The Library Policeman (of which I have no memory, but I am strangely reminded of the Library Cop from "Seinfeld")
• The Sun Dog (I also have no memory of this story)

Inspiration for The Langoliers from www.stephenking.com

"Stories come at different times and places for me--in the car, in the shower, while walking, even while standing around at parties. On a couple of occasions, stories have come to me in dreams. But it's very rare for me to write one as soon as the idea comes, and I don't keep an "idea notebook." Not writing ideas down is an exercise in self-preservation. I get a lot of them, but only a small percentage are any good, so I tuck them all into a kind of mental file. The bad ones eventually self-destruct in there, like the tape from Control at the beginning of every Mission Impossible episode. The good ones don't do that. Every now and then, when I open the file drawer to peek at what's left inside, this small handful of ideas looks up at me, each with its own bright central image.

With "The Langoliers," that image was of a woman pressing her hand over a crack in the wall of a commercial jetliner.

It did no good to tell myself I knew very little about commercial aircraft; I did exactly that, but the image was there every time I opened the file cabinet to dump in another idea, nevertheless. It got so I could even smell that woman's perfume (it was L'Envoi), see her green eyes, and hear her rapid, frightened breathing.

One night, while I was lying in bed, on the edge of sleep, I realized this woman was a ghost.

I remember sitting up, swinging my feet out onto the floor, and turning on the light. I sat that way for a little while, not thinking about much of anything . . . at least on top. Underneath, however, the guy who really runs this job for me was busy clearing his workspace and getting ready to start up all his machines again. The next day, I--or he--began writing this story."

To blog or not to blog...

I have not forgotten my duties. In fact I am still reading, perhaps more voraciously than ever before. I just made it through the unabridged version of The Stand, all 1,152 pages in a little less than 3 weeks. Although 5 hours on a plane affords one a lot of reading time. So now I am left with the question of whether or not to go back in time and blog about the books that I have read. I may do that for some, like The Tommyknockers, or Misery, or Skeleton Crew. While others will fall away, like The Talisman - a great story, but one that grows foggy in my memory almost immediately. In fact, the one thing that stuck out so strongly in my mind about The Talisman was something from the last 10 pages of the book. In my mind "Run Through the Jungle" (from CCR) played an important role in the book - but not so much.

The Stand

Beloved and well-read

Including the abridged version, I have read this story 5 times. [Given my capacity for rereading books that I love, it is a bit of a wonder that I have read anything other than Stephen King and Tolkein]. In the process of reading, I lost the front cover and the back cover, taped them both on and lost the back cover again because I got sand in the tape, I got chocolate on a couple of the pages and a grease stain in the middle of the book. Poor thing has been through the wringer. 

I would love to give you impressions, but I feel that they would be fairly similar to my other posts on the abridged version: post 1, post 2, and post 3. The big question that I posed to myself was whether or not I would be able to notice the discrepancies. The answer is yes, all 500 pages of them. Characters were left out, intense scenes were left out, there are many more allusions to Lord of the Rings (many of them outright references to Mordor and the Eye of Sauron), but the thing that sticks out the most is how much more cohesive the story is. I cannot imagine that his publishers thought the edited version was better. Sometimes there is just no accounting for taste.

If you read Danse Macabre, King's thesis is that the works of fiction published represent the collective fears of the country/world. You can look to current works of fiction to know what it is that we are all terrified of. Generalizing of course: in the 1950's it was big bugs and nuclear war; in the 80's we were faced with rape (vampires) and aliens; in the 90's it was technology taking over (Terminator) and society breaking down (The Stand). Right now, we are faced with fears of viruses that will turn us into zombies and cause our society to break down. The Stand is a great study of society breaking down and rebuilding itself - as well as the classic struggle between good and evil.

Part of me is a little sad that I will not be reading this book again during the project. But, not to worry, the Dark Man comes back in The Dark Tower series. But 763 pages of 4 Past Midnight stand between me and Randall Flagg.

For those keeping track, I have now read 12,370 pages!