by George Beahm
If the unthinkable happens—King, for whatever reasons, retires—it’ll be a sad day for his readers, but he has created a large body of work, and there’s always pleasure in rereading old favorites. It’s taken a lifetime for King to write the stories; and it’d take a good part of one’s lifetime to read, reread, and appreciate them.
For King it means shutting out the outside world to go into his world of imagination to explore its many dimensions.
He’s told Cosmopolitan that he’d like to be remembered as a “good storyteller” and that he prefers to deflect attention from him and onto his work. As he said in a Playboy interview about “The Breathing Method” (Different Seasons):
I created a mysterious private club in an old brownstone on East 35th Street in Manhattan, in which an oddly matched group of men gathers periodically to trade tales of the uncanny. And there are many rooms upstairs, and when a new guest asks the exact number, the strange old butler tells him, “I don’t know, sir, but you could get lost up there.” That men’s club really is a metaphor for the entire storytelling process. There are as many stories in me as there are rooms in that house, and I can easily lose myself in them. And at the club, whenever a tale is about to be told, a toast is raised first, echoing the words engraved on the keystone of the massive fireplace in the library: IT IS THE TALE, NOT HE WHO TELLS IT.
That’s been a good guide to me in life, and I think it would make a good epitaph for my tombstone. Just that and no name.
114
FINDERS KEEPERS
2015
“I love mysteries and suspense most of all … The most difficult by far (at least for me [to write]) is the novel of mystery. Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and the forthcoming The Suicide Prince1—the Hodges trilogy—were extremely difficult. I just can’t fathom how people like Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Peter Robinson, and Ruth Rendell are able to do this in book after book.”
—STEPHEN KING, “STEPHEN KING: BY THE BOOK,” INTERVIEW, NEW YORK TIMES, JUNE 4, 2015
When the publication of Joyland (2013) was announced by Hard Case Crime, King chimed in: “I love crime. I love mysteries, and I love ghosts. That combo made Hard Case Crime the perfect venue for this book, which is one of my favorites. I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid.…”
Joyland, as it turned out, was a tad lighter on all three counts than some readers, including myself, had wished for—it was mostly a coming-of-age novel about a high school graduate who had loved and lost, and spent a summer working at an amusement park named Joyland—but the Hodges trilogy that followed would have fit perfectly at Titan Books’ imprint, Hard Case Crime.
Mr. Mercedes, the first book in the trilogy, published in 2014, introduced us to an engaging trio: a retired cop named Bill Hodges, aided by Holly Gibney and Jerome Robinson.
The linkage between Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers is Tom Saubers, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time—in line at a job fair—and as a result was crippled by a man dubbed Mr. Mercedes, who drove a stolen car into a line of job-seekers. (The incident recalls King’s own encounter with a wayward minivan in June 1999.)
The novel literally begins with a bang. As other reviewers have pointed out—spoiler alert!—novelist John Rothstein, lauded by Time magazine in a cover story as “America’s Reclusive Genius,” is shot and killed during a robbery at his home five miles from the nearest town. Rothstein, modeled after J. D. Salinger, had published a series of books (The Runner, The Runner Sees Action, and The Runner Slows Down) that firmly cemented his literary reputation, and allowed him the luxury of writing without the need to publish to make money.2
Though the heist yields envelopes of cash with $400 in each, the real find are holographic manuscripts by Rothstein, including sequels to The Runner series. The thief/murderer Morris Bellamy is an outraged, and unbalanced, reader who practically foams at the mouth when confronting Rothstein:
”I’m not saying you should have stopped with The Runner,” Morrie said. “The Runner Sees Action was just as good, maybe even better. They were true. It was the last one. Man, what a crap carnival. Advertising? I mean, advertising?”
Bellamy is pissed and blames Rothstein for Jimmy Gold having sold out, which turns out to be ironic because, among those unpublished manuscripts recorded in Moleskin notebooks, Rothstein continues the series and writes of Gold’s redemption. In other words, had Bellamy known of their existence, he perhaps would not have been so vitriolic in his criticism about Rothstein’s depiction of Gold—a moot point, since Rothstein’s anger flares, and his verbal attacks against Bellamy push him over the edge: Bellamy simply kills his literary idol, Rothstein.
That would normally be the end of any story, but in Finders Keepers, it’s just its beginning. And when Bellamy is jailed—again, ironically, not for the murders of his two accomplices in the robbery and Rothstein but for a rape of which he has no recollection—and life goes on outside the prison, Bellamy’s cache of cash and manuscripts are discovered by Peter Saubers, a young reader, who realizes it’s a life-changing find. But when Rothstein finally gets paroled, it could be a life-ending find. Rothstein discovers his ill-gotten gains purloined, but where? And by whom? And how will he recover the goods?
Conceived as a trilogy, the third and final part in the series is titled End of Watch, but that won’t be the last we see of the winsome team of Hodges, Gibney, and Robinson, because the trilogy has been optioned for television as a miniseries.
A meditation on how fiction can exert a malign hold on an unbalanced reader, Finders Keepers is on the beam. It’s a tightly focused crime novel that showcases King’s considerable storytelling powers, recalling Misery, in which another reader also becomes too enamored with the storytelling, at the ultimate expense of the storyteller: The writer is held hostage by Annie Wilkes, a deranged ex-nurse who forces him to bring a beloved character back to life. She considers it quid pro quo: She nurses the writer back to health, and in payment she demands a novel written just for her, his self-proclaimed number-one fan.
Though End of Watch will be the end of this series, I doubt that it will be the end of King’s exploration of the power of fiction, and the hold it has over the writer and the reader as well.
1 Now retitled End of Watch.
2 The titles recall another famous American author—John Updike, with a nod to his Rabbit Angstrom novels. By the way, in numerous interviews, King has talked about some of the publishing myths surrounding Salinger, including one that states he stopped publishing but never stopped writing, because he was known to deposit manuscript-sized boxes at his bank, secured in safe deposit boxes.
115
THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS
2015
“I would suggest you start by reading these stories.… They show how vital short stories can be when they are done with heart, mind, and soul by people who care about them and think they still matter. They do still matter, and here they are, liberated from the bottom shelf.”
—STEPHEN KING, “INTRODUCTION,” THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES (2007), EDITED BY STEPHEN KING
In his introduction to Skeleton Crew, King makes his case for the appeal of the short story, a literary form that, in terms of book sales appeal, runs a distant second to novels.
Readers, as publishers know, prefer long stories over short ones, which is why collections of short fiction are tough sells from writer to agent, from agent to publisher, and from publisher to bookseller. Case in point: When Stephen King pitched Different Seasons (a novella collection) to his then-editor Alan Williams at Viking Press, he got a lukewarm reception. But when King offered a novel about a haunted car, Williams perked up with unrestrained enthusiasm. “My man!” he cried.
Let’s face it: A novel pulls the fiction reading train, and a collection of short fiction is its caboose.
But a good short story—as King knows, and as he’s explained in introductions to his own fiction, in interviews, and in his introduction to The Best American Short Stories—is
not written for money but for love. (Literary magazines often “pay” in contributor’s copies, not folding money, as does Playboy.)
In The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, almost five hundred pages in length, and comparable in length to Everything’s Eventual (2002), there’s something for everyone: Unlike all of King’s other book collections, the twenty pieces in this one sports individual introductions giving the reader behind-the-curtain peeks at the writing process. Consider it, if you will, as codas to King’s On Writing (2000).1
In the introduction to The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, King extols the virtues of the short form. He explains that “there’s something to be said for a shorter, more intense experience. It can be invigorating, sometimes even shocking, like a waltz with a stranger you will never see again, or a kiss in the dark, or a beautiful curio for sale laid out on a cheap blanket at a street bazaar.… Feel free to examine them, but please be careful. The best of them have teeth.”
The title and King’s admonition are reflective of the overall tone of the stories herein.
Here’s the breakdown as to where the stories2 were published: two as e-books only, eight from periodicals (general interest magazines and literary magazines), one in an anthology, one as an audiobook only, two from specialty publishers in book form, one as bonus story to a previously published novel, and three that make their first appearance herein.
It’s an eclectic collection that amply demonstrates King’s range and—at this late date—his mastery of the short story, where his decision toward concision pays dividends. Unlike a typical King novel that weighs in with hefty wordage requiring a substantial time investment to read, these short stories are quick reads.
Not surprisingly, many of the stories are literary in nature, as implied by the publications in which they appear: The New Yorker, Harpers, Esquire, The Atlantic, and literary journals Tin House and Granta. These are clearly the work of a mature, and older, writer who can see his road ahead on life’s path is shorter than the one behind. For that reason, the stories tend to be steeped in realism, with a certain grim tone, and clearly aren’t fairy tales. “Afterlife” finds a man who dies and relives his life time and again; “Morality,” like “A Good Marriage” (Full Dark, No Stars), amply shows how life’s circumstances can force an unraveling of a marriage; and “Summer Thunder” is a story of a man and his dog, set in a post-apocalyptic world, that will riven your heart.
Taken collectively, this set of stories is more nightmare than dreamscape. Life itself, as King shows us in these cautionary tales, is sometimes terrifying enough indeed.
1 The Cleveland Plain Dealer called it “The best book on writing. Ever.”
2 There’s also two poems.
PART SIX
MOVIES: SCREAMPLAYS
I don’t write books with movies in mind, although some reviewers say that I do. If Dickens were around today, he’d probably be faced with the same charge, because some of his books have been made into movies.
—Stephen King, New York Times, September 27, 1981
The film versions never live up to the original vision, because when you sit down to write a book, you don’t need a special effects department to make people catch on fire or levitate, to make people appear and disappear, or even come back from the dead. That all goes on—the special effects factory is built-in. There are no wires, no cords. There’s nothing like that—it just happens.
So in that sense, they never live up to my expectations. And only on rare occasions do they live up to the audience’s expectations.
My idea of the perfect horror film would be one where you’d have to have nurses and doctors on duty with crash wagons because people would have heart attacks. People would crawl out with large wet spots on their trousers. It would be that kind of experience.
—Stephen King on his film adaptations
(source unknown)
Because of the numerous adaptations, film and television, that have been made from King’s work, it’d require a separate, lengthy volume with hundreds of stills to do justice to all of them: the good, the bad, and the fugly.
Stephen Jones’s Creepshows is the best general interest book on King’s visual adaptations to date, but it needs updating because it was published in 2001. A comprehensive critical assessment, though, has yet to be published.
As King will tell you, his movies have been a mixed bag, but the good ones stand out, and those are the ones that bear discussion here. I’ve focused on eleven films that I feel are representative. I’ve also reprinted an illuminating interview by one director who has much to say about King’s films: screenwriter and director Frank Darabont.
116
STEPHEN: A BOX OFFICE KING
The real superheroes of the industry right now? These writers—ranked in order of influence—whose books are source material for more than 300 movie and TV projects, have helped rake in billions in box office and revenue, and prove every day that originality, above all else, still matters.
—“HOLLYWOOD’S 25 MOST POWERFUL AUTHORS,” HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, NOVEMBER 23, 2014 (STEPHEN KING, AT NUMBER 2, IS LISTED AFTER J. K. ROWLING)
A movie poster for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
King at the press conference for at the world premiere of Graveyard Shift in Bangor, at a local theater.
Stephen King was ten years old when he went with his mother to see the Walt Disney animated movie Bambi. He recalled it was “the first time I got scared … when the woods caught on fire.… The Disney pictures are scary as shit!” It was the beginning of King’s loss of innocence, and his initiation experience; sitting in the dark, watching light passing through flickering still frames of a movie, it was the illusion of life on a large screen. For an impressionable young boy, it was dark and scary magic.
King’s early exposure to movies helps explain why his writing style is visual. He paints word pictures that lends themselves to visual adaptation.
Authors are concerned about fidelity to their work, but Hollywood has other priorities. Hollywood treats the original source material as clay, to be twisted and shaped as necessary to enhance sales. With costs running into the millions of dollars, a studio’s concern is to recoup the money as quickly as possible and make a big profit by slicing and dicing the “property” to mine multiple revenue streams: foreign film release, multiple DVD / Blu-Ray editions, streaming video, and repeated showings on TV.
Printing up to a million hardbacks is serious business, but it pales in comparison to a major movie release from a big studio that costs tens of millions of dollars, which must reach many millions worldwide to justify its cost; in other words, if just everyone who bought a King book bought a movie ticket, that movie would fail at the box office.
King became a household name not necessarily through his books but through his movies. People who have never picked up a King book will likely have seen at least one of them. It also explains why King’s fiction is so often adapted to the visual medium: Stephen King is a brand name, and that reduces Hollywood’s risk. Name brand recognition is a deciding factor in choosing to see a King flick over one without any branding.
As King told Tony Magistrale in an interview, he’s a “bankable writer” in Hollywood, someone whose movies will almost certainly make a profit, so long as the production and creative talent costs are in line.
Box office is all about filling as many seats as possible, which means keeping films under two hours: It explains why long books like The Stand are best suited for television, which allows for more time to let the story naturally unfold. (The Stand, released in 1994, aired in four installments with a total running time of over six hours [366 minutes]. But plans are under way to reshoot it, again as a four-parter, this time for the big screen.)
Hollywood loves Stephen King. The real horror story is losing money on a grand scale, which means studio heads roll and jobs are lost at the studio. That’s what happened when New Line Cinema’s ambitious adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass tanked. But King’s film au
dience is intensely loyal. They love and support the brand, and a major King movie—when you count all the income streams—almost always adds up to a profit. So King films are a safe bet, which means Stephen’s the king of the box office. His films have raked in over two billion dollars, according to boxofficemojo.com, and that counts just thirty-nine of King’s movies, adjusted for inflation.
IN THE PIPELINE
From the Web site denofgeek.us, we learn that King’s got a lot of films in various stages of completion in the pipeline—twenty-two and counting: 11/22/63 (2011), a novel about a man who goes back in time to 1963 in an attempt to stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, for Hulu; Ayana, from the same-named short story (Just After Sunset, 2008), for NBC TV; a novella, The Breathing Method, from the same-named short story (Different Seasons, 1982); a novel, Cell (2006), based on a screenplay by Stephen King and Adam Alleca; “Children of the Corn” (Night Shift, 1978), from Warner Bros., which makes it the tenth in the series; Creepshow 4, rumored to be a Warner Bros. release; The Dark Tower (1982), a project still in flux; Firestarter (1994) from Universal and Dino De Laurentiis Company; Gerald’s Game (1992), from Intrepid Pictures; Grand Central, based on “The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates” (Just After Sunset, 2008); It (1986), from New Line Cinema; Joyland (2013), Woylah Films; Lisey’s Story (2006); The Long Walk (1979), to be directed by Frank Darabont; Mercy (based on “Gramma,” from Skeleton Crew, 1985), based on a Stephen King screenplay; The Overlook Hotel, inspired by The Shining (1977), a prequel from Warner Bros. and Mythology Entertainment; Pet Sematary (1983), Paramount; Rose Madder (1995), with a screenplay by Naomi Sheridan; The Shop (inspired by Firestarter, 1980) for television’s TNT, written by Robbie Thompson and produced by James Middleton; The Stand as a four-parter (1978 and 1990), written and directed by Josh Boone; The Talisman (1984), with Frank Marshall attached; and The Ten O’Clock People (Nightmares and Dreamscapes, 1993), directed by Tom Holland, based on his screenplay.