They took a real shine to ya…
“Your daddy… Sometimes he does things he’s sorry for later. Sometimes he doesn’t think the way he should. That doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes it does.”
Stephen King, The Shining
This was one of the first King books I bought with my own money, and one of even fewer I still have my original copy of. I’m not sure why – the cover is appallingly bad. And besides a few books with particular emotional resonance or have been signed, I’m not really attached to keeping books. Happy to upgrade or give them away where possible! And yet this was the copy I remember reading on holiday in 2005 when I was 13 years old.
And what a memory! It was sitting by a swimming pool, not necessarily hot but warm enough to be sat by a pool, nose deep in a book (my default state – lounging relaxing holidays are sort of lost in me), and I was reading the scene where Danny finally enters Room Room 217. Knowing that there had to be something in the tub waiting for Danny, and for the payoff to be as absolutely dreadful as I suspected and then got worse? Despite the warm weather and the sunny locale, I felt gooseflesh rise on my arms, like I was trapped in that room with Danny, lost in swirling winter snow. The Shining is one of very few books to have genuinely scared me.
Returning to it now doesn’t have quite the same effect. The scares of ghosts and ghouls and topiaries aren’t the same to a near-30 year old as they were to a 13 year old. But in The Shining there is a depth and texture that, whilst lost on young me, elevates this book and makes it King’s first masterpiece. This is the one that people will study on literature courses in years to come.
Part of the reason it works so well is how King has structured his novel. Though King would later get into habits of writing a story and seeing how it would turn out on instinct, we’re still early enough that King’s structure is paramount in his writing. It’s deliberately structured in five acts, just like a Shakespearean tragedy, a trick King is so proud of and intent we notice that Jack’s play-within-the-book has the same structure. Further evidence: the recently unearthed prologue is titled ‘Before the Play,’ and with its small location and limited cast, it could even be put on the stage, though admittedly a stage big enough to house a hotel. With that structure, we have the sense of inching towards tragedy that, coupled with Danny’s foreshadowing visions of REDRUM, drag us towards terror. It shares some of its DNA with Macbeth in that sense of inevitable doom, and our central tragic familial unit is beaten further and further down until they are forced to fight or else turn to madness.
But being older now, and being familiar enough with the text, it’s the little touches and images that King returns to throughout the book that make revisiting this book a delight. For example, something that never really made an impact until this reading was the story of Mr Stenger (who I imagine unless you’ve read it recently, have a brilliant memory or are in fact Stephen King (hi, by the way), you don’t remember either) left a particularly grisly impact on me this time round. Maybe because compared to evil hedge bunnies and snake-like hoses, the story of a man having a nervous breakdown and nearly blowing away his family echoes far more true to life. As a bit of colour, it is excellent in filling out the world, and as foreshadowing it casts an ominous shadow over what is to come.
That’s what really makes the novel sing: its grounding in real world horror, rather than the abstract evil of vampires or psychics. For the first time, King is talking about addiction and alcoholism and really engaging with it. He had given it some lip service in ‘Salem’s Lot with Father Callahan and some of his short stories, but here is our first time he not only gets into the weeds, but starts excavating the fossils. He has been quite open in talking about his own journey through addiction to sobriety. He started drinking at 18, and by this point in his life would start the day sober and finish drunk. By the 80s, when he was arguably at the height of his fame, he was doing cocaine to the point where he can’t remember writing Cujo. It wasn’t until the late 80s (around ’87/88) that his wife, Tabitha, and family staged an intervention. That The Shining was written in the middle of this journey is all the more remarkable, as though it does pull its punches a little, it really isn’t too kind to our alcoholics.
With Jack Torrence, we see and understand his journey, and it’s a journey that turns into Shakespearean tragedy. It’s like King has taken the lessons for why Carrie and Carrie White worked and dug deeper into their psyches. There is also to an extent the same light turned toward understanding why Wendy would even stay with Jack which, not to get too armchair psychologist about it, could be read as King trying to understand why Tabitha is still with him at this point.
(There is, incidentally, a book for someone to write about all the great women who kept the male creatives actually producing good stuff – Alma Hitchcock, Marcia Lucas and Tabitha King for example – and their untold stories. I am not the person to write it, but free idea for you out there! Mallory O’Meara would rock it.)
Addiction runs throughout The Shining like a bleeding artery. Though I have known alcoholics in my life, and even known one to die as a result, I can’t say I know too much about the history of sobriety. Judging from the book, though AA existed it was not something that Jack or Al Shockley did. The characters in the book recognise alcoholism and the effect it has on their character, but there doesn’t seem to be much understanding of how one gets and stays sober. Jack just stops drinking, and though Wendy and Danny are there to support him as best they can, there is much in Jack’s past with his own alcoholic father that remains unresolved. I don’t know how familiar King was with AA by this point (Doctor Sleep shows a deep understanding of its systems over 35 years later), but that they are not a presence in the novel suggests that Jack decided to just go it alone. Without any support in place, without even a phone call from Al Shockley being possible, Jack’s dark past haunts him, crumbles those defences and ultimately destroy him.
But Jack isn’t the only addict in the book. Just like Jack’s alcoholism, the Overlook’s addiction is what ultimately leads to its destruction too. All throughout its long, storied history that Jack uncovers in the basement scrapbook, and unlike the movie which pins the blame for everything on being built on an Indian burial ground, the Overlook has shown an addiction to loss, grief, violence, depression and feasted upon it. With Danny’s shine, it senses a new drug it can feed on, and the obsession with obtaining it is what ultimately ends with its own destruction. Jack and the Overlook mirror each other in how their addictions destroy each themselves. Jack at least gets a Darth Vader-like last minute redemption, whereas the Overlook dies, essentially, from an overdose (of steam, resonant considering Doctor Sleep later). But King is very clear here – addiction will lead to your destruction. Considering King’s own addictions at the time, it paints a very bleak view of how King saw his own addiction playing out. Thankfully, it was averted, but Jack’s rumination on suicide throughout the novel perhaps give a darker view into the private life of King at this time.
Like I’ve discussed previously, King is a great believer in hope and love. Though he shows the depths alcoholism can drag you to (though for my money, Doctor Sleep‘s depiction is far more harrowing), King can’t help but express a sliver of sympathy for Jack. So much of what Jack is reflects King’s own upbringing and then-current circumstances, that King can’t but help sympathise with Jack. Jack is not bad per se, but he is weak. Even when Jack is consumed utterly by the Overlook, the love he has for Danny still compels him, and that love is what drives him to sacrifice himself and buy his family the time to escape the Overlook. Yes there is hope for his family – they survive after all – but at the end of it all King asks us: is there hope of redemption for this poor drunken writer too?
Observations and Connections
Neil Gaiman once observed that to get an idea of time and sense of place, people could do a lot worse than read Stephen King. The story of The Shining is one that could only really take place pre-internet, pre-phone. Thank goodness the Overlook never had to contend with Twitter.
Another thing that dates it is a brief mention of Danny catching/developing autism. As a a dated reference to outdated thinking, it’s cute and vaguely reassuring to see how far King has come when taking his recent creation Holly Gibney of Mr. Mercedes into account.
King often mentions and uses songs in his books. Here Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival gets a mention and its lyrics do a good job of summing up the book.
This is the point where King’s shared universe really gets going. The Overlook Hotel, or at least its ruins, and the nearby town of Sidewinder will crop up again in cameos, as does erstwhile cook Dick Halloran in his younger form. We’ll get there.
Without spoiling anything though, this book is one of his few that leads to a direct sequel, Doctor Sleep. It’s a long time until we get there, but if you like I would recommend it. I remember it being a good read.
I do wonder what happened to the rest of Jack Torrence’s family, particularly the surviving brother and sister. Fertile ground for further exploration if Danny’s shine came from Jack’s side of the family.
If you got this far, treat yourself to a short fun bonus post.
UP NEXT: Our first look at King’s mean alter-ego, Richard Bachmann, in his self-banned book Rage.
Deeper Thoughts for the Horror Inclined 