by Rocky Wood
There are two versions of The Plant. The original was written, published by King’s Philtrum Press as a signed, Limited Edition and provided as a Christmas gift from the Kings in 1982, 1983 and 1985 (in 1984 many received the Limited Edition of Eyes of the Dragon).
During a speech in 1989 King said he stopped work on the tale after seeing the movie, The Little Shop of Horrors, ‘between the second and third instalment and realized what I was writing and decided I’d better stop right away.’85 If, as seems likely, King is referring to the remake, starring Rick Moranis, Vincent Gardenia and Steve Martin (and actually titled Little Shop of Horrors, no ‘the’) that movie was not released until 19 December 1986. This is, of course, after the third instalment was released, and too late to stop even any 1986 segment being written, printed and mailed. In fact, the movie was a remake of Roger Corman’s The Little Shop of Horrors, released in 1960 and which King references in Danse Macabre, as ‘not even notable for what may have been Jack Nicholson’s screen debut.’86Danse Macabre itself was first published in 1981.
Original copies of each part of this version are very difficult to find and run in the thousands of dollars. In fact, a complete set generally runs over $600087. The best sources will be online King booksellers.
In 2000 King updated the story and released it on the Internet via his official website, www.stephenking.com. This followed the phenomenal success of his serial novel The Green Mile (at one point it held six places of the top ten on The New York Times bestseller list) and of Riding the Bullet. After the latter was released on the Internet on 14 March 2000 it was quickly downloaded more than half a million times! Both these successes prompted King to try The Plant as a subscription based offering on the ‘Net.
After six parts The Plant folded its leaves again, with the story still unfinished. The first five parts, issued from July through November 2000, were charged on an ‘honor’ system, where the buyers downloaded the text and were expected to send in their payment. The last part was given away from 4 December by King as a Christmas gift to his readers and, presumably, as a small apology for stopping the story mid-stream, again! King also announced the six instalments had formed the first part of the novel, with that part to be known as Zenith Rising.
Even though all six parts were once available for download for $7.00, they are no longer available from the website. Copies circulate in the King community but readers should note that the material is copyright and copies should not be offered for sale, or purchased.
The Plant is probably best described as a novel in progress, although that progress has been halted twice already, and it is possible the leaves of The Plant are permanently furled. As of mid 2004 the FAQ section of King’s official website gives the answer, ‘Time will tell’ to the question, ‘Are you going to finish The Plant?’ Like many King novels the early parts can be a little unsatisfactory if read in isolation, as King often takes time to set characters, plot and tone in place (this was not the case with The Green Mile, which took off from the very first page). Even after six Parts readers may be a little disappointed with the story and we regard ‘novel-in-progress’ as the demon here.
Both versions are told in epistolary style, using letters, memos, newspaper articles and diary entries to provide the narrative. King also used this style for Jerusalem’s Lot and The End of the Whole Mess, and Carrie delved into a similar style with various quotes from news articles and books. King has used the device of news article quotes throughout his career, as recently as the opening lines of Dreamcatcher and The Dark Tower VI: The Song of Susannah. Interestingly, King wrote the first three instalments in longhand88 and, at one point, projected the complete novel would be some 400 pages in length. King also told Tyson Blue that The Plant was ‘social satire’.
The Original Version
In this America Under Siege story a failing publishing house is sent the gift of an ivy. Carlos Detweiller approached Zenith House in New York to publish his manuscript, True Tales of Demon Infestations. Zenith House editor John Kenton showed interest in the pitch and Detweiller sent the entire manuscript, including pictures of what appeared to be an actual human sacrifice.
Disturbed by the photographs Kenton reported Detweiller to the police. Their investigation revealed that the man ‘sacrificed’ in the photos was apparently alive and well and living in the same apartment building as Detweiller. Detweiller vowed revenge on Kenton. Soon after, the mysterious Roberta Solrac (we instantly understand this is “Carlos” in reverse) sent Kenton an ivy named Zenith. He ordered it destroyed but the janitor and internal mailman, Riddley Walker decided instead to keep the plant.
Next, the insane General Hecksler escaped from a mental asylum, killing three people in the process. Reaching the Shady Rest mortuary he killed owner Hubert Leekstodder and his wife, then faked his own suicide, cremating the body of a bum instead. Hecksler had a grudge against a Zenith House employee and was intent on revenge. In the meantime, John Kenton’s fiancee Ruth Tanaka broke off their engagement by letter from her home in Los Angeles.
The timeline of this version runs from 4 January 1981, when Carlos Detweiller wrote to Zenith House, offering True Tales of Demon Infestations, through to 29 March that year, when Hecksler recorded his faked suicide after the successful “Operation Hot Foot.”
The Revised (or “Electronic”) Version
The summary of the story to the end of Part 3 is practically the same for both versions. The storyline continues in the revised version with Hecksler staking out the Zenith House office disguised as a female bum. Detweiller arranged the death of his employer, Tina Barfield, in a plane crash and also began stalking the Zenith office.
The team at the publisher, under pressure from their corporate owners, began to work on new concepts for best-selling books. They found one obvious best-seller sitting unread in the mailroom, and came up with ideas for more. It seems the ivy might have had some positive influence over their creative processes.
Detweiller and Hecksler both broke into the Zenith House offices on the same day, and killed each other. Hecksler’s body was “eaten” by Zenith the ivy and the employees disposed of Detweiller’s body at a local waste disposal site.
The timeline in this version of the story had been extended to the body disposal on 5 April 1981, the day after the two maniacs killed each other.
Among the revisions King made between the versions are certain dates. For instance, in the original, Zenith arrived at Zenith House on 27 February 1981, but in the revision this has changed to 23 February.
Of course, readers are left mid-story by King’s decision to halt the tale at this point. Part 6, the last to date, took the very surprising turn of eliminating two characters that most would have expected to continue to play a threatening role. The only obvious danger now is Zenith, the ivy. In The Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King Zenith is described as:
The plant sent to John Kenton by Roberta Solrac. The name “Zenith” was on a small plastic tag on the plant. It is supposed to be “common ivy” but there is no such plant and it is actually a rare Tibetan Kendath Ivy. It has magical powers, was imported from “another place” and appears to be able to think and recognize people! People who are not part of the Zenith House editorial staff only see it as a small, rather sick plant but the Zenith staff see it as a fast-growing plant that has spread into corridors and other rooms. It has small blue flowers and grows faster if fed blood.
The central character of the story continues to be John Kenton, to whom Detweiller sent the ivy. Aged 26, he was an associate editor at Zenith House, which he joined in October 1979. Ruth Tanaka was his fiancee until she left him for Toby Anderson in March 1981. He was writing a novel, Maymonth, which he later trashed. He rejected Detweiller’s manuscript and contacted the police about the photographs it contained. This set Detweiller against him.
Carlos Detweiller was born on March 24, 1958. A would be writer, he was trying to get his True Tales of Demon Infestations book published and sent the manu
script to Zenith House. Because it contained photos that appeared to be of a human sacrifice he was arrested but was released when the apparent victim was found ‘alive’. He then began to write to Zenith House as Roberta Solrac and sent them a strange plant, Zenith the ivy. Employed at the Central Falls House of Flowers in Rhode Island, he killed his employer, Tina Barfield, her husband and his own mother, and turned Norville Keen, the apparent “sacrifice victim” into a Zombie. He was attacked and killed at Zenith House by Anthony Hecksler on 4 April 1981, while he was waiting to attack the publisher’s employees.
Hecksler, a complete lunatic, was born in 1909. A retired Major General, he served in Europe, leading partisans and commandos across France. The Germans briefly captured him in November 1944 and during interrogation they extracted two of his teeth. President Dwight Eisenhower personally decorated him in 1954. He was in Vietnam in 1970, where he was mostly uninjured by a bomb set off in Haiphong Charlies but as a result was left sensitive to loud noises. He wrote a manuscript titled Twenty Psychic Garden Flowers that Herb Porter of Zenith had rejected. After he stabbed a bus driver he was committed to Oak Cove Asylum in December 1978. He escaped, killing three asylum workers on 3 March 1981 and faked his death at the Shady Rest Mortuary Crematorium. He then stalked Zenith House while dressed as a female bum, entered their offices on 4 April 1981 and killed Carlos Detweiller. Zenith the ivy then killed him and ate the body!
Roger Wade, perhaps the least interesting of the major characters, was 45 in 1981. He attended Reading High School and Brown, graduating in 1968. He was Editor in Chief at Zenith House in early 1981. He had been a teacher for six years and married and divorced three times. He was trying to keep Zenith House afloat for as long as possible but was told that, unless they got some best selling books, the corporate owner, Apex Corporation would close them down. He authorized work on The Devil’s General, a sick joke book, Alien Investing and organized the hardcover/paperback release of The Last Survivor.
Riddley Walker seems destined to have a greater role in the story should it ever be revived. Aged 26, he lived in Dobbs Ferry, New York and had attended Cornell. An African American, despite his high level of intelligence, he delivered the mail and worked as a janitor at Zenith House. He was told to incinerate the ivy when it arrived but did not. He was having an affair with one of the female editors, Sandra Jackson and was also writing a book. He originally spoke with an accent but when he returned to Zenith House from his mother’s funeral he dropped it and began to speak normally. On his return he was offered a full editor’s job with Zenith.
Herb Porter’s role is greatly expanded in the revised version. Born in 1933, he grew up in Danbury, Connecticut. An editor at Zenith House, he would sniff fellow editor Sandra Jackson’s chair! Hecksler called him the “Designated Jew.” He married Lisa in 1955 but they divorced in 1957 because of his impotence. He blamed this on having to deliver papers between the ages of 10 and 15 on a bike with a seat that was too narrow. Jackson confronted him about the seat sniffing and had him follow her up to the 6th floor women’s’ toilets where they had sex. It was his idea to co-write a book on Anthony Hecksler (The Devil’s General).
Sandra Georgette Jackson, an editor at Zenith House, was having an affair with Riddley Walker but this did not seem to affect her desire to teach Herb Porter a lesson by seducing him. While the killings were occurring at the office she was at Coney Island with her 11-year-old niece, Dina Andrews.
The last of the editors is Bill Gelb, described as an ‘Ivy League Tie-Wearing devil’ by Hecksler. He lived in Gates Falls, Maine as a child and attended Bates College, where he was known to smoke pot. He thought the ivy smelt like the seats in the Nordic theater in Freeport and came up with the idea of producing the Alien Investing book for Zenith House. If the story is resurrected we might learn more of Gelb’s childhood or of Gates Falls.
There are numerous links from The Plant to King’s other fiction. The following links appear in both versions. The Beam is mentioned in a letter from John Kenton to Ruth Tanaka and appears to be a direct link to The Dark Tower cycle.
In 1981 Carlos Detweiller lived and worked in the real town of Central Falls, Rhode Island. In 1975 Ben Mears and Mark Petrie briefly stayed there after leaving the vampire-infested ‘Salem’s Lot.
Richard Ginelli ran the Four Fathers Bar, where Roger Wade often drank. This establishment also appears in The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet as a bar Henry Wilson visited (there is no reference to Ginelli); and appears in a similar guise as the Four Fathers pizza restaurant, run by a Ginelli (no first name), in The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three. Richard Ginelli himself also appears in Thinner, where he was a silent partner in the Three Brothers (!) restaurant. In Thinner, he was murdered on 30 June 1983 and in both he has organized crime connections, so he could easily be the same Ginelli as in The Plant, which is set in early 1981.
Riddley Walker’s Aunt Olympia lived in the fictional town of Babylon, Alabama. It is also mentioned in the Six Stories / Everything’s Eventual version of Lunch at the Gotham Café (John Ring’s mother lived there); and in Dedication (Martha Rosewall grew up there). There is certainly no coincidence in King’s choosing to have these three women all live in Babylon at some point.
The following links appear only in the revised version. On Page 117 Kenton’s journal refers to the movie Carrie – “... remembering that horror movie where the hand suddenly shoots out the grave and grabs one of the teenagers...”
Carlos Detweiller spoke the “Language of the Dead” to Zenith to get it to attack Anthony Hecksler. The “Language of the Dead” is also mentioned in both Desperation and The Regulators.
As mentioned earlier, Bill Gelb grew up in Gates Falls, Maine. One of King’s earliest fictional towns, Gates Falls is a key location in Graveyard Shift, It Grows on You, The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan, Riding the Bullet and Sword in the Darkness. It is also mentioned in Blaze, The Body, The Dark Half, The Dead Zone, Gramma, Hearts in Atlantis, Movie Show, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, Needful Things, Rage and ‘Salem’s Lot.
There are errors in the two versions of the story. In the original version the address of Zenith House is variously given as 5th Floor, 490 Park Avenue South or 9th Floor, 409 Park Avenue South. In the revised version the address errors from the original are not only left uncorrected but continue into the new Parts. Parts 1 to 3 give the address of Zenith House as 490 Park Avenue South, but Part 4 gives the address as 409 Park Avenue South on both pages 23 and 50. Part 3, page 38 has Zenith House on the 9th floor at 490 Park Avenue South, but page 23 of Part 4 has it on the 5th floor of 409 Park Avenue South.
The Synopsis at the beginning of Part 2 reads, ‘On January 4th of 1981 Kenton receives a query letter from Carlos Detweiller…’ As the letter was written on January 4 (see Part 1, Page 3) in Rhode Island it seems the earliest it would have arrived was January 5. Indeed, also in Part One (Page 4) Kenton describes the letter in his memo summarizing submissions of ‘January 11-15th, 1981’ (this error was not corrected in the revised version).
Herb Porter arranged a 25th Wedding Anniversary party for his parents in 1978, indicating they were married in 1953. The text indicates he was born in 1933 and states he married Lisa in 1955, divorcing in 1957. There is no indication that his parents are anything other than his natural parents, therefore it would appear this is an error. Page 130 states LaShonda’s name is LaShonda McHue, but on page 141 she becomes LaShonda Evans. In Part 5 we read, ‘I remember the narrative intro to that old TV show, The Fugitive. ‘Richard Kimball looks out the window and sees only darkness…’’ That character’s surname was actually spelled Kimble.
In the early 1980s King included The Last Survivor as one of the submissions to Zenith House. The concept involved 24 people being put on an island where they had to survive for six months. One person was voted off each week and the last person got one million dollars! One wonders if the originators of Survivor had read The Plant?
Will King return to this novel-in-progress? The fir
st hiatus was fifteen years and it has already been over a decade since we last heard from Zenith, John Kenton and his colleagues. It appears King had lost direction at the time of the second hiatus and completion of the tale is unlikely. As King’s website says, time will tell.
85 Quoted in The Lost Work of Stephen King, Stephen J. Spignesi, p.151
86 Danse Macabre, Stephen King, Chapter Six, Section 10. Nicholson’s actual movie debut was in The Cry Baby Killer earlier the same year.
87 See Stephen King Collectibles: An Illustrated Price Guide, George Beahm, p.85-87. The first three parts were limited to only 226 copies.
88 The Unseen King, Tyson Blue, p.92
The Poems
Most of King’s published or known poetry was written in his college years or shortly thereafter. Poetry is an art that continues its slow death in the written form but remains vibrant in its oft-unrecognized incarnation as popular music lyrics. Rap artists, for instance, are but modern members of the Poet’s Guild. King has retained an enormous appreciation for modern music throughout his life and one wonders at the lyrics he might write for one of the great solo performers or rock bands.
In total there are fifteen known King poems but only three have been published in his collections. Brooklyn August, a wistful and elegiac homage to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ last season in New York, appears in Nightmares and Dreamscapes. That poem was first published in Io (Number 10) in 1971 and was not republished until Tyson Blue’s The Unseen King in 1989, in which he tells the remarkable story of its rediscovery.