The Prodigy Child
If they took you Charlie, I don’t know what I’d do.
Stephen King, Firestarter
This was an interesting book to approach. It was not one I was overly familiar with, and much like The Dead Zone feels like one of the King novels that seems, at least from my perspective, generally forgotten even with its film adaptation. However, where I found The Dead Zone a terrific read and well worth a visit, Firestarter was basically fine.
I was having a discussion with a friend before Christmas, when I took a King break and read another book. I described the book to her, and she asked if it was any good. My reply was that it was fine, and we also both agreed that is still an okay thing for a piece of media, any media, to be. Not everything has to blow our minds, be transcendental, or buttock-clenchingly piss poor. Most things can be just fine.
By this point, King had published six books under the King name (five novels, one collection). Among that number are titles that often enter debate for King’s best stories, short or otherwise. At this point, King has built up a fair cachet with his constant readers, so to turn out a book that is basically fine is, well, fine. Nothing wrong with that. But having said that, there is more to say here about this book than some of his other works, and the readings available of the text are arguably more interesting than the book itself.
A couple quick things before we delve into those too much. Firstly, this is another of King’s psychic stories, coming straight off the back of The Dead Zone. As discussed in that essay, it feels like King is trying to do Carrie again, or maybe even erase her. But where that book has a raw power that means it overcomes any shortcomings in the writing. Firestarter lacks that rawness, coming off as quite tame by comparison. Maybe it’s because of its length, but though we get to sit in the story with Charlie and Andy for a while, they aren’t as immediately arresting as Carrie White is as a character. Having said this, this is also written by a King who by this point had a daughter similar to Charlie’s age. I haven’t got any children, so maybe it just hits differently for parents.
Another quick thing. King tends to avoid overt imagery too much, but there is the recurring image of horses in the novel. Andy describes letting loose with his push power as letting the horse out riderless. Extending the metaphor, Charlie learns to control her power, partially through the tests and is rewarded with a tamed horse. Only at the end, when she lets rip with her powers, do the horses – literally and figuratively – break free. Any film adaptation should include that – it’s a nice image.
Anyway, into some of that subtext. King has said previously he doesn’t go out looking for subtext, and though he will recognise and strengthen that which he finds in his work, much of it can be, at least initially, unintentional.
Andy’s struggle with raising Charlie recalls in my mind not only the general struggle any parent would have with raising a child, but a child with special needs. I think in the early part of the book especially, much of Andy’s fears about Charlie’s powers could just as easily be compared to raising a child with specific needs that need to be attended to. It loses the thread once The Shop gets more involved, but those early parenting chapters felt more honest and interesting than the government conspiracy later.
But that government conspiracy is also interesting to discuss. By 1973, Project MK Ultra had been stopped and had been made public in 1975. A rare case of conspiracy being true. The story of Lot 6 could just as easily be about MK Ultra’s use of LSD, even down to the hallucinations. King is tapping again, in a different way to The Dead Zone, into the fear of governmental power run amok. It gives us our scenario with which to play around in, and one King would return to more.
But the drug. The drug. Lot 6/LSD is the drug, but Charlie is the drug too. The timeline of King’s life roughly match up to the point where he was briefly living in the UK by this point, and coupled with his own habit, it is possible that King knew that Charlie is British slang for cocaine. Andy’s life has been destroyed by Charlie in one sense, but it is also all that gives his life meaning, like any addict would perhaps say. When he is separated from her, he gives up and becomes lethargic, gaining weight: when he has Charlie, he can push himself further and harder than he has before. See also how John Rainbird treats Charlie. Death Seeker though he is, he is looking for the ultimate hit (for a hitman no less), and thinks that Charlie will be the one who gives it to him. I don’t know how deep King was into his addictions by this point (though we are not far from the infamous Cujo), but that Charlie gives people power isn’t exactly the stretch to read them in that way.
By Charlie isn’t just drugs. King, like many Americans, is still processing Vietnam, a war against the Viet Cong nicknamed Charlie. It can easily be looked at as a story about a young, talented person being pursued by the government to fight against its enemies, protected by a university teacher. A quick spot of research tells me college students in America could defer their draft if they were going to college. It also made you less likely to be drafted later, but obviously not guaranteed. John Rainbird’s Vietnam backstory helps fill in the gaps a little, but it feels like King is writing a Vietnam story, using psychic children as the catalyst for discussing the trauma of Vietnam. It is also perhaps explains why Charlie goes to Rolling Stone magazine to make her story public, which otherwise is just a really weird way to end a book.
But having mentioned John Rainbird, lets get into it. Firstly, he’s our latest attempt by King to include more POC characters into his work, and for that he should be applauded, especially in that time period. But I’m not sure how successful that is. With Halloran in The Shining, Halloran was a great character but slipped into what Spike Lee called the Magical Negro, and Mother Abigail could be similarly criticised. At least he doesn’t die in the book. Here, Rainbird isn’t magical, and though he denies it, is very much coded as a pedophile. No character could have an obsession with someone who’s age is not yet even in double digits and not be considered a pedophile, even when not factoring in quite how obsessed he is with Charlie. He is explicitly a vile character, but following in the wake of Flagg and Stilson, he doesn’t quite have the same character pull, nor does he seem very consistent. What Rainbird does however, is fit into a longer tradition of having Native American characters depicted as evil. The trope of the Indian Burial Ground had long existed, and Westerns had shown Native Americans as savages who would scalp a man. Look at Disney’s Peter Pan and see the achingly painful ‘What Makes the Red Man Red?’ to demonstrate how mainstream racism was against Native Americans. With Rainbird as part of that tradition, it is perhaps not one of King’s wisest choices he makes in the book. It gives a bit of texture to the novel that a scarred white ‘Nam vet would not have, but then there is not much added to the text by John Rainbird being of Native descent. It’s a detail that neither adds or subtracts to his character except to other him more, isolate him from the machinations of The Shop more than being a scarred veteran may have done. It’s just a bit messy.
It’s a messy novel though. None of the metaphors I mentioned above really hold up terrifically well under closer scrutiny bar King’s deliberate use of horse imagery, and coupled with the unfortunate John Rainbird, makes it more awkward and harder to defend than other King books that have comparable representation. Ultimately, this is a book of King’s that is generally lost in his bibliography, but then again, I don’t think that was necessarily a bad thing or good thing. It’s just fine.
Observations and Connections
After a brief mention in The Stand, we get to see The Shop in full flow. King will have other shady government agencies, but The Shop is the most notable one. I can imagine they may have had something to do with Carrie White, and been very interested in Johnny Smith’s visions as well.
I wonder if Andy’s business of gently pushing people to healthy habits would have been welcomed at Quitters Inc. from Night Shift.
One character in the book is nicknamed OJ. At the time, this was a fun twisting of a well-known sportsman and giving that particular character a hook for the reader to remember. Now, it reads weirdly prescient of everything Orenthal would later be known for.
Another odd name. A minor character is introduced near the end called Patrick Hocksetter. King must have liked the name, as he christens another character with the name in It, but otherwise the two share no connection.
UP NEXT: No diversions for us, we’re going to face Roadwork.
Deeper Thoughts for the Horror Inclined 