Different Seasons

One thing that most people do not know about Stephen King is that he is an amazing fiction (non-horror) author. People will say to me, "Oh I can't read King, he is just to scary for me." But when I point out some of his works that they have seen, they are blown away, because they love them. A couple of the stories from this collection were turned into movies that people LOVE.

I know that I read this collection when I was a teenager, because I saw the

"Shawshank Redemption" at 17 and I kept feeling like I knew the story. Sure enough I had read it several years before as Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Even though it takes place in a prison, this story is all about hope. The movie really captures the essence of the story so I do not think that I need to say more.

The Apt Pupil. This one was also made into a movie, but I think it did not get much attention because the subject matter was a bit disturbing. A suburban boy figures out that an old man in his neighborhood is a Nazi war criminal and becomes obsessed with the old man and reenacting his crimes. Yes, it is disturbing and yes, the Nazi gets the upper hand when it comes to the boy's psyche. As for how it ends, well you will just have to discover that on your own.

The Body which we all know as the movie "Stand By Me." According to SK, Rob Reiner, the director, loved the name Castle Rock so much that he used the name for his production company. I believe that this story is the non-horror version of IT. The Body is a coming of age story of 4 boys on a journey to see a dead body in the 50's. It is beautiful, it is poetic and it makes me wish that I was a young boy growing up in the 50's when life was a little more carefree.

Finally, The Breathing Method, a rambling story about men telling stories in which the butler holds the most fascination for me, rather than the story within the story. I like to fancy that the ageless butler is a demon that feeds on the interesting stories of the men that come to the Club to tell them. Or perhaps this demon resurrects characters from the story and they lurk in the large brownstone that houses the Club. In many ways, the butler also seems like he could be Walter from The Gunslinger.

But the main story of The Breathing Method, is about a doctor that works with a woman to teacher a breathing method for labor. 
Here comes the SPOILER...


... 

The woman practices the method so much that when she is decapitated in an accident on her way to the hospital to deliver, her body keeps doing the breathing method. In all of its detail, the doctor tells how he delivered the baby on the steps of the hospital while the corpse continued the method through the wound in the neck. Blech, I LOVE it! What a great visual and what a crazy story. 


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The hardest part

About this whole project has been the blogging. When I am busy, finding the time is crazy! More posts coming very soon.

Late nights

20 pages turned into 75 pages. When SK gets cooking, it is hard to put the book down. Just when things seem like they might be slowing, Donna has a lap full of a rabid dog and bites on her. She has rabies and all I can think of is the episode of The Office where Meredith gets hospitalized with rabies and Michael puts together a 5k to cure rabies.

Whew, good thing I don't have to get up early.

Memory Loss

Stephen King is an alcoholic - I wonder how you could not be with all of his horrors running around in his head all the time. He admits that Jack Torrence (from The Shining) is him. Trapped in an hold hotel with your addiction raging up and down the halls and controlling your life. King says that the creative part of him knew in 1975 that he was an alcoholic, but he did not come to the realization until the early 80s.

"There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don't say that with pride or shame, only a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page."  -- On Writing, p99

Scary dreams

Reading Stephen King at night, before bed always makes me feel like I am on the verge of a nightmare.
Scary thing in the closet with yellow eyes? Yep, says my brain, we cam do that.
Closet door creaking open? Yep, that too.
Rabid dog trying to attack. Oh yes, that sounds like a fantastic dream!
So before I get in bed, I check the closet door. No need to worry about boogie men under the bed. I took care of that years ago by placing my bed on the floor.

Cujo

Everyone remembers this movie. If it was remade today, they would probably use a Pitt Bull - since those are the dogs of the hour. But I like the idea of a Saint Bernard. They are big dogs, but my only experience with them is from some cartoon with a Bernard coming to rescue people with some sort of alcohol in the little barrel at its throat.

I have a tendency to dislike stories in which animals play a heavy role. You just know that they animal is going to get it in the end and that never sits well with me. Even in this case, where Cujo is mad with rabies, there is still a part of me that does not want him to meet his end.

"In the spring of 1977 Stephen took his motorcycle to a mechanic who lived outside of Bridgton, Maine, "in the middle of nowhere". "I took the bike out there, and I just barely made it. And this huge Saint Bernard came out of the barn, growling. Then this guy came out and, I mean, he was Joe Camber-he looked almost like one of those guys out of Deliverance. And I was retreating, and wishing that I was not on my motorcycle, when the guy said, 'Don't worry. He don't bite.' And so I reached out to pet him, and the dog started to go for me. And the guy walked over and said, 'Down Gonzo,' or whatever the dog's name was and gave him this huge whack on the rump, and the dog yelped and sat down. The guy said, 'Gonzo never done that before. I guess he don't like your face.' And that became the central situation of the book, mixed with those old "Movies of the Week," the made-for-television movies that they used to have on ABC. I thought to myself, what if you could have a situation that was an extension of one scene. It would be the ultimate TV movie. There would be one set, there would be one room. You'd never even have to change the camera angle. So there was one very small place, and it became Donna's Pinto--and everything just flowed from that situation--the big dog and the Pinto."
http://www.stephenking.com/library/novel/cujo_inspiration.html

Realization and Danse Macabre

I think it goes without saying, but I enjoy fiction. There is something about getting lost in the story, falling in love with characters, and living in another world where some of the conventions of this world do not apply. I could be living in a world with hobbits, elves, dragons, telekinesis, magic, levitation, zombies, vampires, you name it. Whatever the case, I just get lost. My eyes fly over the page and I have been known to stay awake until 4am without getting tired or even know that it is 4am. 

I love non-fiction. In fact, I spend more time reading non-fiction than fiction. In reading Danse Macabre, I realized that I labor over every word of non-fiction and that it takes forever. The layout of every sentence is important to the ideas presented in a work of non-fiction. Whereas, in a fiction novel, an author could write in comfortable run-ons and fragments and you could still follow the story. 

Danse Macabre, was both wonderful and painstaking at the same time - around 10,000 minutes of reading. This is King's overview of the horror genre, written in 1980, although I read the 2010 revision.

I am also a person that loves to know what makes people tick. Stories are nice, but I prefer to know why a person decides to hack someone to bits, or turn to drugs, or alienate the people around them. In essence, this study is an ode to what makes the horror genre tick. If you are not a person that enjoys horror and you wonder why someone who spends most of their time practicing yoga and helping others to heal, then I think King answers that question. 

"We take refuge in make-believe terrors so the real ones don't overwhelm us, freezing us in place an making it impossible for us to function in our day-to-day lives. We go into the darkness of a movie theater hoping to dream badly, because the world of our normal lives looks ever so much better when the bad dream ends...Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or window willingly because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or not...and not just to look, but to be pushed through. Forever."

And this works as an explanation for me. It is not that my life is horrible but in comparison to Rick from "The Walking Dead" my life is a walk down easy street. 

The horror genre also provides an escape for the over active imagination. The mind that can dream up zombies, haunted houses, or as was the case last night, ghostly beings that take over the bodies of friends at night as we live in a home in the middle of nowhere, can find freedom in the terror on a page or movie screen where the main character lives and the "bad guy" dies. Knowing that Stephen King is an adult who sometimes turns the light on at night and snuggles up to his wife because he has woken up from a nightmare and is still afraid of the dark, makes me feel a certain kinship to him. It also dissolves the shame I once had for doing the same thing. In the overactive imagination wonderful art is produced, but there is always something lurking in the shadows.