Clear the decks
Remember it’s belief we’re talking about here, and belief is the cradle of myth. What about reality you ask? Well, as far as I’m concerned, reality can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
Stephen King, Nightmares & Dreamscapes‘s introduction
With Night Shift, there was a sense of the kind of man King was at the time of the collection and though harder to tease out, the same was true of Skeleton Crew too. This however, his largest collection of stories to date, has stories ranging from the beginning of his writing career pre-Carrie in 1971 to stories published just a few years ago in 1990, and to tease out a similar kind of meta-narrative would be next to impossible. It’s not about trying to create some curated period of time in King’s life, rather, as was true of the novels from The Tommyknockers to Needful Things, this is King clearing the decks, starting fresh, and making room for the new. To be honest, it shows.
Before attempting to seek a meta-narrative, it is interesting to note firstly that many of these stories, though first published elsewhere, have been refined or revised to fit into this collection. As such, the ordering of the story is very deliberate, not that it is ever random in the first place. I noticed too late in my reading to make a note, but each story to the next is bridged by some commonality, whether be a location, a thematic point, a story beat, a tone… Stories are arranged to compliment each other, as well as contrast to highlight what makes them unique. Many a time whilst reading, an insight about a story came about because of reading the one that came after it.
Compared to Night Shift and Skeleton Crew though, this is the weaker of the collections. Both those collections start and end strongly, and though not every story in those collections hit, enough of them do that it makes no odds. The first story of this collection, Dolan’s Cadillac, is a fun enough read, but ultimately doesn’t leave much of a mark in the memory, and the collection officially closes with an essay and a poem about baseball. Many of the stories contained within are great, and though it would be hard to render a new order, the slow start does affect your enjoyment of the book.
One of the interesting elements that really comes forward, especially in light of King’s more recent novels, is how many stories are crime stories: Dolan’s Cadillac, My Pretty Pony (according to King’s notes), The Fifth Quarter, The Doctor’s Last Case and the weird Umney’s Last Case. One really gets the impression that if the horror thing hadn’t worked out, crime fiction was King’s other big passion he would have tried to make work. And though those tend to be fun to read, their shortness leaves little of a lasting trace in the memory and add to the collection’s generally ephemeral feeling.
But when King is back to writing horror, he is on much firmer and more successful ground. In general, King’s best horror work comes from his shorter work when the word count gives him less room for manoeuvre and so he goes straight for the jugular. The Moving Finger, Crouch End, Chattery Teeth and The Night Flier amongst others, revel in the fact that sometimes weird horrible shit happens to people, and we as readers get to enjoy it. Crouch End is as good as horror gets! But to comment more deeply upon them is a difficult ask. Unlike the crime stories, there are at least horrific images that linger in the mind after the story wraps up, but there’s not always enough working underneath the hood to give you that deeper satisfaction of a well told story.
This isn’t true of all stories, and probably not true of all readers. I found much to enjoy in Sneakers and Rainy Season on a more subtextual level as well as the line-by-line story, and doubtless others find meaning in stories that seemed bare to me. By that same token, there are some stories that promise to have lots going on under the surface, much like It Grows On You, that actually don’t have much going on.
An additional problem I think is that King doesn’t seem overly present in his own collection. The aforementioned baseball essay, though very well written, isn’t anything like what we have seen from King outside of Danse Macabre, and there are other stories where King is adopting another tone. There’s a script included, an episode of Tales from the Darkside called Sorry, Right Number, which almost feels lazy in its inclusion and there to pad out the pages. His crime stories, where he briefly becomes Chandler, Doyle and Bachman, and his horror where he pastiches Lovecraft and Poe, mean that that strong authorial voice we’ve grown to love over the past thirty or so books isn’t guiding us in quite the same way.
Aside from Crouch End, the story I found that I enjoyed the most The House on Maple Street. Strange, as it’s not horror or crime, more closely being an example of Bradbury style science fiction or magical realism. I think coupled with the image that inspired the piece, we have the story that’s closest for King to writing for a deliberately child audience. Eyes of the Dragon was for one specific child, and Charlie the Choo-Choo doesn’t count anyway, but this short story is one I could imagine read at bedtimes or taught in schools quite easily. It’s hopeful and touching, and along with Crouch End the story that makes the price of admission worthwhile.
I could sit a list all my favourite stories here, and there are far more I haven’t even mentioned that deserve it (The 10 O’Clock People, Suffer the Little Children, Popsy are all great and fun to read), but its rare to finish an 800 page book and be left wanting more. Not necessarily more content, but more from the stories themselves. There are lots of individually great stories, but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
The final story gives the reader a sense though that everything is as it should be. The Beggar and the Diamond, not actually listed in the table of contents, can be read in such a way as to put the collection itself into context. Though there is a thread here and there linking the stories, it is far better to appreciate what has been given than to feel loss for something we haven’t had. I think King, in clearing the decks, recognises not everything here is a winner. But clearing the decks frees him from his past and, as the books from the period show, gives him fresher place from which he can experiment. In that sense, I suppose we do get a sense of where King is in his life at this point: ready to try something new.
Observations and Connections has been given its own page. Click here to read that and more individual thoughts on each individual story.
UP NEXT: Get yourself a glass of warm milk to combat that Insomnia.
Deeper Thoughts for the Horror Inclined 