Nightmares and Dreamscapes: 8th Sep 2012

The only thing I know about this collection is that Dolan's Cadillac has been adapted into a film starring Christian Slater of which I've heard good things. I hope it lives up to the praise for two reasons. Bad Stephen King adaptations are painful. There are lots of them and they weigh heavy on the Constant Reader's heart. Perhaps they shouldn't, but they do.

The second reason is that *deep breath* I was/am a Christian Slater fan. Bearing in mind I'm going back to my impressionable teenage years and Gleaming the Cube, Heathers, Pump Up the Volume, Kuffs, True Romance and even Broken Arrow. Then it all went to shit. Maybe apart from the Austin Powers cameo - Sherrrberrrt. For those films alone, dude deserves a break.

Anyway, I've laid out my thoughts on the short story in previous posts. They'll be tagged short story, helpfully enough. I'm going into this collection with an open mind and plenty of hope.

Before I get stuck in, here's a quote from the introduction:

"...I still see stories as a great thing, something which not only enhances lives but actually saves them. Good writing - good stories are the imagination's firing pin, and the purpose of the imagination, I believe, is to offer solace and shelter from situations and life-passages which would otherwise prove unendurable."

You can't say fairer than that.

Dolores Claiborne: 5th - 8th Sep 2012

Of all of his books I've read so far, I think this one has most left me wondering where to start with the . I've heard good things, all spoiler-free, but didn't know what to expect. It wasn't this.

It took a few pages for me to find the rhythm of the monologue format, but once I got locked in, it was great. I was going to mention the Gerald's Game crossovers later, but I might as well do them all here. I wonder how much it was originally intended, but it seems they're, albeit in a satisfyingly understated way, companion pieces. The female protagonists, the circumstantially singular viewpoints (one tied to the plot, the other to the narrative format) and, of course, the eclipses tie them before we get to the actual crossover points, which I won't spoil - for a change. They're both very female centred novels and, considering each is dedicated to the women in his life, it seems borne of a very respectful motivation.

I'm not sure what I expected but, about two-thirds of the way through, I flipped the book over to look at the genre classification. I was hoping to, yet still surprised when I did, see the words "Fiction: Horror" there. Well, there hadn't been much, if any, horror yet, but there was still time. I knew the basics of the plot from the first three pages, but had this idea that there was going to be some huge, devastating twist or something. There wasn't. It sounds as though I'm underplaying and underwhelmed by the book, but I'm not. I really liked it.

The first question I asked myself when I finished and closed the book was, 'if it's not horror, then what is it?'
The first word that came to mind was 'haunted' and by extension, 'haunting.' I think that'll about do it. There is a lot of haunting going on, and the idea that, while some memories can be exorcised, there are some that must be carried and that's just the way it is. The more I think of the power of memories to haunt and grind on a soul, the more I feel the book sliding back along the genre scale toward horror. Just not quite.

I said in the opening post that I'd read King wrote Dolores with Kathy Bates in mind. I think I did a good enough job of keeping her out of mind while reading the book. Mainly, I think, because she's referred to as ugly a few times (admittedly by her antagonistic husband) and Kathy Bates isn't. I'm a shallow swine, ain't I?

I'm looking forward to seeing the film, hoping to appreciate the adaptation (reading a plot synopsis tells me there are major alterations) without being to heavily weighed by comparison and spending a couple of hours with Kathy.

Dolores Claiborne: 5th Sep 2012

 

At this point, the only thing I know about Dolores Claiborne is that it was made into a film starring Kathy Bates (who I love).  I'm sure I've read somewhere that King wrote it with Bates in mind.  The best reference I've found for that is on the IMDb trivia page for the film. If someone could furnish me with a better one than that, I'd be especially grateful.

 

Onward.

Gerald's Game: 29th August - 5th September 2012

After all that, it turns out I'm not so sure about Gerald's Game.  On the one hand, I was really taken by the tightly focused and comparatively compact plot.  On the other, having read it before and knowing what was coming, the second reading made it feel a bit baggy and overwrought.  For a large part of the reading, I wondered whether, to maximise on the compactness, it would have better served as a short story.  As I reached the closing chapters, I decided that he'd packed it out well enough to warrant the novel length; and then I came to the ending and it all turned to shit.

 

I'm quite surprised by the selectivity of my memory of a book I first read almost twenty years ago.  Although hardly any of Jessie's 'hard time' came as a surprise, the last section had departed from my memory banks altogether.  While the mind often suppresses painful memories, it seems mine just blanked out this lump of cack.  Showing us what lay behind the curtain on this particular threat, almost subsidiary to the crux of the narrative, seemed a huge mistake.  While I'm generally behind the grounding of the threats to our protagonists in the real and tangible rather than supernatural, I'm happily compelled by psychological terrors.  The number of times, after reading a novel or watching a film, that I've dashed across the landing when returning from the bathroom in the dead of night or decided that I could live without something I'd left downstairs until the next morning, fairly attests to that.

 

If the book does have anything going for it, I'd say it contains King's most graphically gory scene that I've read so far.  So there's that.

 

I said in my opening entry for Gerald's Game that it was significant to me that it was the last of the books that I'd previously read.  I didn't bother trying to explain why.  Jesus, I'm lazy.  It's because you can't unsee something you've already seen and when it comes to books or films, it's the first time that counts.  Of course, you can go back and appreciate the mastery of the plot's construction and unfolding, but it never casts its spell on you with the same efficacy twice.  It only gets one chance to take your hand and ask you to trust and submit to be led where it dares.  That's part of the beauty and the root of my undying love for storytelling, so with that in mind, my embarking on the second half* of his works is exciting.

 

*at this point anyway. The goal posts will no doubt move slightly as King continues to publish works.