King's Highway pt. 58: Pet Sematary

THE NOVEL

Although it was nominated the year after it first appeared for a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel (1984), neither Pet Sematary nor its author was reviewed particularly-favorably at the time. The New York Times expressed disappointment that "the horror, which, when the last drop of blood finally spills, (is no) worse than the experience of reading a 373-page version of W. W. Jacobs's famous short story, 'The Monkey's Paw.'" 

The reviewer also observes: "What has always made Mr. King so effective as a storyteller is his instinct for subtly exploiting the unconscious hostility and consequent guilt that men and women feel in the routine of living with each other and raising their children." True. This is as accurate as the previous comment re: the-experience-of-reading PS is off-the-mark.  

Kirkus also mentioned "Monkey's Paw" in its review, adding that "King's 400-page version reads like a monstrously padded short story, moving so slowly that every plot-turn becomes lumberingly predictable."

Its reputation has improved considerably over time - thankfully, as it's a funereally-good read, steeped in moral relativism and American Gothic Horror. I don't think it's perfect, but it works because it doesn't cheat: it ticks off each box of said genre with no apology and doesn't let you skip over any of the nitty-gritty. No, you have to dig the graves, climb the deadfalls, walk through the woods, and stay up grieving with no commercial break. 

I was unaware of the above reviews back in 1988 when I read it. At the time, it enjoyed the reputation of King's best novel among everyone I knew that had read it. Which was basically my buddy Chris and his older brother, my dentist, and my optometrist, all with whom I discussed a lot of King in those days. 

Reading this in 2012 "brought me back," no pun intended, and I had a strong associative-memory of being driven back and forth to those appointments and listening to Metallica's And Justice for All. At the time, the arrangement with my mother was that I could play my cassette on the way home after an appointment; on the way to, it was always Oldies 103.

Cover to the UK edition I read this time around. A side-note: it was cheaper to purchase this from a used-bookstore in UK, including the price of shipping, than it was to buy it locally. Always bizarre when that happens.

The story is like some negative print of A Christmas Carol. Where Ebeneezer Scrooge learns what he needs from his supernatural visitations to realize his salvation, Louis Creed, from the moment we meet him, is doomed. As is his family: of the four Creeds we meet (five, if you count Church the Cat, which I think we certainly should, so, five) all but one are dead by novel's end. (And the lone survivor is in the hospital, traumatized, under heavy sedation.) And where Scrooge's ghostly visitors are benevolent, Louis's are increasingly malevolent. Both works propose an epistemological system where supernatural forces from beyond the grave offer warnings and opportunities to the living; how they are heeded (or unheeded) determines everything else.

...Unaware of these other happenings, like slow-moving projectiles aimed not at where (Louis) was, but rather in the best ballistics tradition at the place where he would be...

It's a story that, from the dedication page to its last few sentences, is concerned with buried things, most particularly buried things that rest uneasily in the ground or in the unconscious. It's divided into three parts and an Epilogue. Part One, "The Pet Sematary," contains all that will resurface in parts two and three. The Creeds arrive at their new home in Ludlow, Maine. It lies between The Road, which is really an ominously-established highway where huge trucks barrel down the freeway, leaving a trail of dead animals on either side of it, and The Woods, through which a trail leads to the Pet Cemetery of the title. (The variant spelling comes from the crude, childlike scrawl on the weather-stained arch at its entrance) Beyond a deadfall-barrier at its edge lies a trail to the title for Part Two, "The Micmac Burial Ground," an otherworldly stony plain atop an ominous hill that lies under unrecognizable constellations. It is a supernatural place, where one hears horrifying lunatic laughter on approach and where time bends around itself. 

"It may sound like voices, but it's just the loons," Jud Crandall tells Louis. Although Jud is providing false assurance, here, loons are crazy-sounding, to be sure, and their mad cries reverberate through the North Woods.

Burial ground from the movie. Actually pretty much exactly how I pictured it from the book, so well done, movie.

And the Sematary itself. (I'll just stay with that spelling.)

What is buried there returns... though not like it was before. From a mixture of the burial ground and the buried-trauma of Rachel Creed comes the title for Part Three, "Oz The Gweat and Tewwible."

King says of this one:

"That book was pretty personal. Everything in it—up to the point where the little boy is killed in the road—everything is true. We moved into that house by the road. It was Orrington instead of Ludlow, but the big trucks did go by, and the old guy across the street did say, You just want to watch ’em around the road. We did go out in the field. We flew kites. We did go up and look at the pet cemetery. I did find my daughter’s cat, Smucky, dead in the road, run over. We buried him up in the pet cemetery, and I did hear Naomi out in the garage the night after we buried him. I heard all these popping noises—she was jumping up and down on packing material. She was crying and saying, Give me my cat back! Let God have his own cat! I just dumped that right into the book. And Owen really did go charging for the road. He was this little guy, probably two years old. I’m yelling, Don’t do that! And of course he runs faster and laughs, because that’s what they do at that age. I ran after him and gave him a flying tackle and pulled him down on the shoulder of the road, and a truck just thundered by him. So all of that went into the book. 

And then you say to yourself, You have to go a little bit further. If you’re going to take on this grieving process—what happens when you lose a kid—you ought to go all the way through it. And I did. I’m proud of that because I followed it all the way through, but it was so gruesome by the end of it, and so awful. I mean, there’s no hope for anybody at the end of that book."

Indeed. I suppose the last line is ambiguous enough where you don't know if Louis really lives or dies. (Though he is most certainly going to prison, if he does.)

The movie ends on a more definitive - but equally tragic - note.

There are many viewpoints on the phenomenon of sublimation, but the reader needn't concern his or her self too particularly with them. All that you need is spelled out or hinted-at-strongly-enough in the text itself.

"Louis thought [Rachel] might eventually get rid of this awful, rancid memory that had haunted her for so long... he knew that there are half-buried things in the terrain of any human life, and that human beings seem compelled to go back to these things and pull at them, even though they are cut. Tonight, Rachel had pulled almost all of it out, its nerve infected..."

Trauma that is not successfully excavated tends to come back with extreme prejudice, which is exactly what happens when Louis exhumes and re-buries their son Gage - run down in the road - in the burial ground beyond the Sematary.

I sympathize with the filmmakers, here; it's more or less impossible to convey on screen the Killer Gage of the novel.

Still, it leads to some unintentional comedy, as this clip demonstrates. His "signature giggle," in particular, is grating.

Gage Creed may be gone, but his sneaker will return in Insomnia.

The passages of the novel that describe the journeys to and from the burial ground are my favorite bits. King shines when he's walking in the woods. The grave-digging scenes are fine examples of suspense-writing. It's difficult to see how this tale could be told without them, though my thought while reading them was that they took up perhaps too much space. Speaking of, Louis got everything he needed to dig up his son's grave for $58.50. It'd be interesting to price the same items now; I bet it would be twice that.

The Micmacs themselves serve the story's themes of uneasy-burial and landscape-ghosts, as well. Jud describes them:

"They (were here) for a thousand years, or maybe it was two thousand - it's hard to tell, because they did not leave their mark deep on the land. And now they are gone again... same way we'll be gone, someday, although I guess our mark will go deeper, for better or worse. But (this place) will stay no matter who's here, Louis."

The Wendigo, that terrifying spirit of the North Woods, is the Trauma That Endures. Jud refers to Timmy Baterman - one of the "three ghosts" that visit Louis (in some form) - as "something that has been touched by the Wendigo. We "see" it in the shadows through Louis's eyes on his way to the burial ground with Gage. The Wendigo as a concept has always fascinated me, as has the tale of Jack Fiddler, who claimed to kill several of them; I've always wondered if he was just a serial killer who exploited the myth or if he was the Cree's real-life Van Helsing. (Cree/ Creed?) It is used to great effect, here, by King.

An illustration by Matt Fox for the Algernon Blackwood story, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, 1944.

SOME OTHER THOUGHTS

- The book is dedicated to Kirby McCauley. Whatever happened to that guy?

- Interesting fan theory on Norma Crandall can be found here on the SK Forum. If that doesn't open, the gist of it is that Norma died and returned to life via the burial ground and that this is Jud's secret (and ultimate doom). I don't think it's what King intended, myself, but it's a fun idea.

- At one point, Ellie mentions Little Black Sambo and Louis thinks "I'd have thought that would have become an un-book by now," i.e. something removed from schools in our thankfully-more-aware-of-offensive-racial-iconography era.

I don't think it's brought up here to deliberately evoke that idea of past-trauma buried in consciousness returning to bite you, though it's certainly worth noting how often this book "re-surfaces" (ahem - I've got digging things up on the mind) in King's work. It may even be mentioned as many times as Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." I don't have a running count or anything, or even a list of examples. That it's an incidental detail that resonates so well with the theme is probably just coincidence or luck, but we all know what Obi-Wan Kenobi has to say on that subject.

(Sambo's creator, by the by, is Helen Bannerman. Whether or not she's related to the late Castle Rock Sheriff is unknown.)

- Poor Church!

As far as abused-Creed-family-members go, Church wins hands-down. He's neutered, run over, covered in stank, kicked repeatedly, and then killed again. In the film, Church comes across as more malevolent; in the book, he's more a victim of circumstance. (I guess he does trip Louis when he tries to rescue Gage, but at that point, Louis has already abused him enough; I was cheering him on.)

- Poor Ellie, too; that kid's going to have quite a time getting over all this crap. Maybe she'll show up in Doctor Sleep.

- I didn't get a chance to listen to the radio serialization of the story, but it's out there.

THE MOVIE

Miko Hughes, then

Miko Hughes in Tropic Thunder (2008)

I somehow never saw this movie when it first came out (though I did have the Ramones tape that had the title-track; not one of their best. I loved it at the time) or any of the thousands of times it's been on cable since. A good overview of the recently-released Blu-Ray can be found here. "With a $57 million domestic gross, (it) became the most successful King film (up to that time), and it has only been eclipsed by three such efforts since (Misery, The Green Mile, and 1408)."

Successful at the box office, sure, but as an adaptation of the book, it's not-very. Dawn and I watched it last night. It has its moments. Judged against some of its contemporaries, it's probably more-than-acceptable. The burial ground/ cemetery/ real-Maine setting is cool, and the menace of The Road is conveyed well:

And Fred Gwynne gives an eccentric performance which is a little off-in-spots but still easily the best part of the movie.

The "Dead is Bett-uh" thing has definitely lived on in pop-cultural memory, for better or worse.

Mainly, the problems are these:

1) King's script makes some weird changes to the story: No Norma, but a maid-character named "Missy" is added (actually, the Creeds may have a laundry-lady, I can't recall offhand), and her death takes the place of Jud's wife's; what purpose does this change serve? Victor Pascow gets the "The soil of a man's heart is stonier, Louis" line; why? It makes little sense in its new context and is not reflected-back-upon by Louis at any point. Other puzzling changes: It is Jud and his friends who murder Bill Baterman and son and burn their home to the ground. (With no devilish smack talk from Tim before they do) Victor Pascow shows up, again, to warn Louis at the graveyard (And this daytime visit to the grave is a little odd... he ends up going back at night to exhume Gage's body, but we clearly see him throw a pick and shovel over the fence during the day. Huh? It seems needlessly confusing. I guess it's done to convey he struggled with the decision, or something, but it's not handled all that well.) Also, Steve Masterson is introduced only obliquely (he just sort of shows up at the funeral to restrain Louis) and his just-barely resisting the call of the Wendigo at novel's end is excised completely.

2) The casting. The girl playing Ellie is painful to watch in spots (or at least just annoying) but okay, maybe that's a judgment call. Doesn't dilute anything, really, for her character or place in the story. Rachel Creed, on the other hand,

is de-sexualized completely. If you recall from the book, she and Louis get it on a lot, which, I feel, adds good counterpoint; it helps sketch the humanity they slowly lose. But okay, maybe they were trying to keep it PG-13... except wait, it's rated R. Okay, well, maybe no one wanted to see Tasha Yar getting busy on fifty-foot screens. (Maybe Data. Maybe.) More importantly, her problem with death/ buried-trauma with Zelda is handled too breezily; it makes the scene where she recounts her sister's death seem like window-dressing rather than essential-characterization/establishment-of-theme. 

Speaking of Zelda, most everyone I've talked to about the movie mentions how scary the sequences with Zelda seemed to them back in the day. I can see how these scenes would have seemed creepy at the time, definitely, but they haven't aged well. 

Part of it is Perry Farrell's never-quite-disbelief-suspending performance as a little girl...

Okay, so it's not Perry Farrell, but Andrew Hubatsek. The "twisted sister" aspect is indeed gruesome in spots, but... I mean, it's far too obvious this is a guy in drag. Even for 1989 standards. Apparently, he was chosen because they couldn't find a girl "that skinny." This seems ridiculous to me

Zelda comes across as a pop-out scare (spinal-meningitis-'sploitation?) rather than a vehicle for Oz the Gweat and Tewwible.

Finally, Dale Midkiff is not a good choice for Louis Creed. Not only does he not seem like the character from the novel, he just isn't convincing as a doctor or a grieving father. The novel spends time making Louis's actions and his motivations, ambivalent as they are, believable; the film doesn't. He just mumbles and squints a lot.

3) The editing is erratic in key spots. Two scenes stand out: the sudden-switch to Victor Pascow being brought into the clinic at the University, and the sudden-switch from home-to-Gage's-funeral. They are too jarring, not in a gasp-inducing jump-cut way but in a deprive-the-scene-of-impact way. Establishment shots that could have gone a long way to better set the mood are missing, most particularly for Louis's ordeal at the graveyard and his journey back to the burial ground. The atmosphere from the book is lost, as a result, or at least much-watered-down. Not sure if this is a problem of the screenplay...

Another argument against a writer adapting his own material? GRRM seems to do ok. (shrugs)

or the director, Mary Lambert, whose other work is mainly in music video, though she did recently give the world Mega-Python vs. Gatoroid, memorable mainly for starring former 80s-"rivals" Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. There seems to be some historical revision going on whenever this comes up nowadays. The story becomes about what women directors in Hollywood have to overcome, and the work becomes brilliant/ visionary, no matter the content. Gosh, it's almost like that's a major, relentless problem these days, this sort of narrative framing/ conditioning. I realize there'll be those who just can't see that ever happening, and so it goes. Nothing I say or write can convince them, and the mere fact that I do is all they need to hear, yadda yadda. But, I'm sorry everyone: one's gender does not make one's filmmaking bad or good, the same way it doesn't make one's ideas any less/more brilliant (or awful.) People have just lost their minds. Not, again, like any of the so-afflicted would ever even consider the idea.

Whomever's fault it was, it definitely should have been fixed. As it stands, the film reads like a story with pages missing.

And 4) although this is admittedly very, very minor, during Rachel's flashback, she runs down the stairs screaming "Zelda's dead! Zelda's dead!" just like in the book, only she passes several "neighborhood kids" gathered around the door... what? Why are these kids here? Who are they? How did they get there? What's the point of adding them and introducing them this way?

So, final verdict, the power of the novel awaits effective realization onscreen. Not the worst thing I've ever seen and far from the worst-King-adaptation there is. Acceptable lazy-afternoon-fare. But with a little tightening up and some more thoughtful casting, it could have been so much better.

NEXT: Zeroing in on finishing/ ranking all the novellas and all the Bachmans. Or the "with Stewart O'Nan"s. Which will be complete first? Tune in to see, true believers!

King's Highway pt. 57: "Black Ribbons" with Shooter Jennings

From the inside-packaging of the album Black Ribbons by Shooter Jennings/ Hierophant. For a song-by-song breakdown and for all of the packaging, see here, and for some more good reviewin', see here and here.

This was on my radar well before I started the King's Highway project. A friend with whom I share an affection for crazy conspiracy theories gave me a copy back when it came out. I listened to it once or twice, enjoyed it, and put it away. At that time, I only had ears for The Teaching Company lectures and Bill Cooper's wildly-erratic-and-misanthropic "Mystery Babylon" series. (Link does not represent endorsement. RIP, Bill, just the same.)

Dusted it off and listened to it a couple of times over the past few days, though, for inclusion here.

Some celebs-info-context, for those who don't know, and I was among them - the last time I was something remotely near musically hip" was circa 2004 - Shooter Jennings is a) the son of country-legend Waylon Jennings, b) as Ron Burgundy might say, "kind of a big deal,"

 c) engaged to Drea "Adrianna from The Sopranos" De Matteo, with whom he has a couple of kids,

and d) author of this spot-on evaluation of John Mayer.

Black Ribbons is a concept album, sharing conceptual space with Queensryche's Operation: Mindcrime and musical space (as described pretty well here) with artists as diverse as Roger Waters, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Faint (particularly on "Fuck You I'm Famous"), And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Nine Inch Nails, and The Doves (particularly on "The Illuminated.") That it accomplishes this without sounding derivative of any of them is no small feat. Stephen King enters into things by way of providing the voice (and adding to the text originally written by Shooter) for "Will o'the Wisp," a DJ who has barricaded himself in the studio. We hear his last rants in-between songs he plays by the band Hierophant that bemoan the fate-of-the-world , and then the feds break down the door and gun him down.

So what is this thing? A vanity project? Paranoid rants around which some tunes were thrown together? Or is it a collection of songs given a false "through-thread" with the paranoid rants?

I'm happy to report that no, neither of these is the case; it's a kick-ass album. The rants are great, the songs are great, and it holds together as a solid effort as well as any other concept album you could mention, from The Who's Tommy to Kiss's The Elder. 

One of the above endorsements might be a bit tongue-in-cheek.

When I first heard this a few years back, I concentrated mainly on te rants, not because King was doing them - like I say, this was out of context for the King's Highway project - but because they're well-written and not entirely unreasonable. Taken to an extreme, no doubt, but I love this kind of stuff. This time around, I tried to evaluate how well they integrated with the rest of the album, as well as giving the songs a few listens apiece. And focused a lot more on the fact that this is Stephen King delivering this performance. I love radio, radio programs, audiobooks, you name it, so add all this together and each spin was a focused beam of acoustic appreciation. 

I won't break it down song-by-song, but here are my observations:

 - Well, first, here's the wiki, if you want a garden-variety breakdown / some quotes on Shooter's approach and inspiration.

- I know at least one reader of this blog will enjoy the shout-out on track ten to Carol Pearson. I've never read Pearson's book The Hero Within, but, as has been mentioned elsewhere and many times, I'm familiar enough with the concept of the archetype and as sympathetic to it as I am to eff-the-NWO rants.

- King's role in the album's origination was minimal. It is my understanding he simply altered a few of the lines he was given to read (and, according to Shooter, improved them) and suggested the feds-bust-into-studio-and-shoot-him-down ending, which Shooter was happy to use. I'm actually surprised to hear it was planned a different way. I assumed it  was a nod to Vonnegut's story "Harrison Bergeron" or something comparable. Isn't it the natural / archetypal ending for The Martyr, to tie it in with Pearson's stuff? But King's line delivery is so good. I love listening to him in interviews or on audiobooks. And here, his flat and world-weary tone of voice, with the ominous computer-sounding background accompaniment, is perfect.

- I had a great mix tape "back in the day" full of stuff like Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys, and his collaborations for NoMeansNo and Lard) and this:

which I mention for no real reason except Black Ribbons would have fit quite-well in that mix. (I still don't know why this tune ("Goofy's Concern") never became a classic, cult or otherwise.)

- It would be interesting to do a back-to-back of this and then Pump Up the Volume.

which is a movie that was dated about five minutes after it came out. But, man, when I was 14...! A comparison of the two might demonstrate the many ways the paranoia/defiant-last-stand of Black Ribbons succeeds (or at least comes across more compellingly) where Volume fails. Sort of the difference between the indictment of the suburbs in All That Heaven Allows vs. American Beauty. 

With Black Ribbons being the All That Heaven Allows of that scenario, which is kind of funny, when you consider that's a Rock Hudson/ Jane Wyman movie. You'd figure nothing subversive could arise from such casting. But there it is.

- The NES-chiptune accompaniment that swirls in the background of several tracks (most notably in "Everything Else is Illusion" and "When the Radio Goes Dead") is pretty cool.

FINAL VERDICT:  Pretty damn great. Great tunes, great audio experience, great concept. Listen to it before mentioning things like "Bohemian Grove" gets you on a 21st century blacklist. (If it doesn't already.) (JULY 2013 EDIT: Redacted.)

NEXT: Probably Pet Sematary. If I could show you the behind-the-scenes at-this-given-time of the King's Highway, you'd see me with four or five different books open, the Kindle glowing, and Under the Dome humming away on the stereo, and flipping between them all like Spock from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home... How do I feel? How do I feel? HOW DO I FEEL???

King's Highway pt. 54: The Dark Half

This one has quite a few "variant covers:"

Probably my favorite - simple and effective. Nice colors.

Also good.

Actually, I like them all except for the generic one I bought. Which I won't even reproduce here. But here are some others.

There's even more, but I'll stop there.

Some fun fan art.

Before we get into the book and then the movie, ask Mama if she believes this... did you know there was a videogame? I sure didn't.

I'm on record as wanting an It NES game. But, really, most everything King's done could and should be available to play as a game, NES or otherwise.

The Dark Half is a simple enough plot. As a child, Thad Beaumont suffers from a brain tumor. He hears sparrows when the headaches/ seizures come on. The tumor is removed, and he grows to adulthood and becomes a teacher/writer. The novels he publishes under his own name don't sell all that well, but the novels of his pseudonym, George Stark, sell pretty well. A "creepazoid"figures out that Stark is Beaumont and tries to extort Thad and his family. Rather than acquiesce to this, the Beaumonts decide to "kill" Stark and release the story to People magazine, replete with a fake-burial and fake-tombstone (Here lies George Stark - Not a Very Nice Guy.)

Only, Stark doesn't want to stay dead. He materializes in the grave, escapes, kills everyone that was involved in the farce of his death, then terrorizes Thad's family directly. But Stark is coming physically unglued:

"Something seemed to be wrong with the underlying structure of the man (Stark)'s face. It was as if he were not simply decaying, but mutating in some horrible way."

Stark demands Thad help him write a new novel and holds him and his family hostage to accomplish this.

 "It was his eye that Stark wanted - no, demanded. That odd third eye that, being buried in his brain, could only look inward."

Sparrows gather ominously around "the cabin in the woods, Stark is consumed by them and sucked into the sky ("a black hole that bore the unmistakable shape of a man struggling.") Thad and family (and Sheriff Pangborn, who we'll see next in Needful Things) burn down the house and move on. (Tho they do not, as readers of Bag of Bones know, live happily ever after.)

The above set-up is a negative-print-image of King's own experience in interesting ways. His own novels sold quite well, but those of his pseudonym's (Richard Bachman) sold poorly. Until he was approached by one Stephen Brown, who was, by all accounts with which I'm familiar, not a "Creepazoid." Bachman was then said to die of "cancer of the pseudonym." (This didn't stop him from publishing a few more books, though, as we'll get to next time or the time after that.) And - as was mentioned by ChrisC in the comments last time for Tommyknockers - King's own relationship with Bachman and what it meant to his own frame of mind/ inner-psychology is certainly interesting and has some obviously-non-literal parallels with the grisly struggle between Thad and George.

As he mentions in On Writing, "Traditionally, the muses were women, but mine's a guy; I'm afraid we'll just have to live with that."

Does it work as a novel? Yes and no. "Work" might be the wrong word. It's a fun enough read, to be sure; it's a page-turner, the characters are believable, etc. For me, it was an interesting reversal of the traditional-King-book complaint, i.e. that he "loses steam at the end." Here, it is the beginning that has some trouble finding its pace. (In particular, the People piece just doesn't read like a People piece, to me, and the scene at the table reading it, as interspersed with Thad-and-fam joking, never really "clicks." Maybe just for me; so it goes.) Whereas as the last act is where the writing really "hums."

Speaking of the fam, the twins never really seem like more than message-indicators to me. (i.e. when someone said something about the duality of Thad's situation, the twins bump into one another, or cry out suddenly, or cry or laugh, etc. Set dressing.) King doesn't let their subtext work on its own without calling attention to it like that, which is interesting given the novel's other concerns, but a little distracting. When George puts them in danger, I am less emotionally invested in them. Still, the "twin" motifs running through the book are fun, and I didn't think to start noticing them until well-into-it, so that's my bad.

The incidental characters are fun, as per usual. Rawlee (more on him below) and the FBI wiretap guys do more than just fill plot-shoes; each is brought to life with real economy of word.

Where it fails-to-excite-me is on the question of how exactly George Stark came to be, or rather the discussion of this, throughout.

King loves the ECs, and so do I. And had this plot been published therein, I don't even think I - or anyone - would even ask this question. But an EC-tale in novel-form, which this feels like in some spots, and especially one where characters say things like "It's not like this is some EC comic," provokes different concerns and questions of its author.

Actually, given the whole split-self/ psychic-toilet-externalized spirit of the piece, maybe this is a better EC cover.

The novel spends a little too much time having characters ask (understandably, sure) "how can this be?" without getting anywhere, or offering suggestions/ denials as to how George might have materialized in the flesh. There's more fat to trim than usual. (And it's one of his shorter books.) Should we just go with it, like in other King works? I'm not bogged down in why/ how Carrie has telekinesis, for example; I'm happy to accept it as metaphor and let King tell the story he wants to tell. And as George himself says at one point, "How it happened doesn't matter - what matters is that I'm here."

While true we don't really need to know from a psychological-reading-standpoint, (i..e George is just a fictional metaphor for property dualism or anything of that nature; the umbrella's kind of large here and I don't mean to pin it down by that name) it does matter if characters keep asking questions that work-against-themselves. The glandular-deterioration thing is a good example. It suggests that George's physical existence is tied to Thad's. Sort of like "The Enemy Within," another exploration of this sort of thing, from Star Trek: TOS (that's "The Original Series" to ye unenlightened out there) but there's no transporter-malfunction in The Dark Half. How George gets into this predicament is never really explained, and it kept putting in mind how he came to be in the first place. Each time it's addressed, its haziness grows a little more urgent.

The Truth Inside The Lie has this to say:

"...Maybe he's a ghost; maybe he's the ghost of Thad's never-born twin; maybe he's a Forbidden Planet-esque projection of Thad's subconscious, a Monster From The Id with a southern accent and decomposing flesh. King never quite manages to spell that out one way or the other, but I'd argue that he gets away with the omission ... barely."

(That's from a review of the film, actually; here's the review of the novel. Both are worth reading, particularly the bits on the connections to King's other work such as Pet Sematary and "The Crate," and the overlap of Wilhelmina Burks and Rawlee.)

The character of Rawlie is turned into "Reggie" in the film and is played with considerable gusto by Julie Harris. She hams it up, sure, but as the "eccentric English professor," she definitely adds to every scene she's in.

Does it need to be addressed? Maybe so, maybe not. I think your answer to that depends on how swept-away you are in the prose. It's a fun read and all, but for this reason, I find "Secret Window" to be a more compelling take on similar subject matter. 

 Here's what the New York Times book review has to say:

"On the whole, Mr. King is tactful in teasing out the implications of his parable... No character in the novel comes right out and says, for example, that writers exist (at least to readers) only in their writing, that each person (at least to himself) is his own fiction, that the writer's imagination can feel alien to him, a possessing and possessive demon, a Dracula arisen to prey on the whole man and his family. Nor does anyone in the novel say outright that reality inevitably leaks fiction, which then floods reality, that reality and fiction feed on and feed each other, that they are at war yet they are twins - so identical that attempts to say which is which only lead to more fictions. Such things are better left unsaid, anyhow. Stephen King is not a post-modernist. "

I'm not sure I agree with this last bit (emphasis mine) at all, though it's important to recognize this review was written around 1990, before King started appearing as an explicit character in his work. Still, it seems odd to me to approach the story this way, almost dismissively, as if the idea that SK might be self-consciously-commenting-on-his-role-as-a-storyteller-in-the-telling-of-this-story can be dismissed so totally. That tells you a lot about how critics were viewing his work in 1990, and how changed the situation is in 2012. (Now critics take aim at his post-modernism.) 

"Thad closed the eyes God had put in his face and opened the one God had put in his mind, the eye which persisted in seeing even the things he didn't want to look at. When people who read his books met him for the first time, they were invariably disappointed. This was something they tried to hide from him and could not. He bore them no grudge, because he understood how they felt... at least a little bit. If they liked his work (and some professed even to love it), they thought of him beforehand as a guy who was first cousin to God. Instead of a God they saw a guy who stood six-foot-one, wore spectacles, was beginning to lose his hair, and had a habit of tripping over things... What they could not see was that third eye inside his head...

"That eye, glowing in the dark half of him, the side which was in constant shade... that was like a God, and he was glad they could not see it. If they could, he thought many of them would try to steal it... even if it meant gouging it right out of his flesh with a dull knife."

(Particularly interesting in that this is precisely what happens to Thad at the novel's beginning. "In addition to the eye, they found... two teeth. One of the teeth had a small cavity in it.")

Now, on the subject of "Writers and Metafiction in King's Texts," here's a good article. (I hope throwing these links at you isn't bad form; if you want more than the meager bits presented here, have at them) It's tempting to speculate where King's head was "at" when he wrote this. A common aspect of recovery-therapy (assuming this was written in that period after The Tommyknockers when he was "drying out," as I think it was) is coming to terms with "flushing the psychic toilet," i.e. externalization of all-negative-traits into a different persona. It's a huge topic, beyond my ability to relay concisely enough for this blog, but if we read George as a literal example of this, it makes a certain amount of sense.

"'But do you kick the guy out?' Thad went on. 'No. For one thing, he's already been in your house for awhile, and as grotesque as it might sound to someone who's not in the situation, it seems like he's got... squatter's rights or something."

Learning to "re-integrate the negative" is part and parcel of the process. No two recoveries are exactly the same, but certain roadmarks on the road to recovery are. Relapse is avoided by learning what makes the addict tick and what his/her triggers are. Getting to a point where negative emotions don't provoke someone rushing to the psychic bathroom to vomit up their "bad vibes," or place them wholly on someone else, etc. Looked at through this lens, George Stark is like the revenge of the therapy doll, i.e. that pillow/ sock puppet a therapist will have you yell at to come to terms with beating yourself up.

It's possible (not a given, obviously) King simply transposed some aspects of this into fictional form, here. I looked around for specific interviews with the author that might address this but didn't find any, alas.

The idea of "parasitic twin" - overtly - and "doppelganger" - less overtly, but still above-ground - is all over the text, of course. Basically, it could be all of the above in a Cuisinart. Or none of it; it could just be King writing a "Hey, this is a cool idea" tale.

Stark - again, like Kirk's evil twin in "The Enemy Within" - is perfectly happy with himself, while Thad - and Kirk - realizes in order to survive, he has to defeat-but-reintegrate the bad with the good. There's a Germanic (I think) pagan tradition of vomiting up the nemesis that seeks to destroy you. Can you believe in this day and age I'm having trouble finding it for you? Googling those search terms is interesting, though; I'm on the wrong side of the algorithm.

George Romero adapted the novel for the screen in the early nineties.

I only saw this for the first time a few months back but watched it again last night to re-familiarize myself. (Unfortunately, I fell asleep towards the end, which is becoming a real damn problem in my advancing years. But! YouTube to the rescue.) I like it. The same problems that exist in King's novel re: wait-now-how-did-George-come-to-be-in-that-grave exist here, as well, but it's visually-striking and moves the story along well.

It clips off the very end of the book, which may be a bit sudden, but it also seems like it tells everything it sat down to tell. I didn't need to see the Beaumonts walk back to the world; ending on the swirling-psychopomps taking Stark to pieces and swirling away worked for me.

Timothy Hutton in particular really shines. Thad is characterized well, and he imbues Stark with a menace not seen in any of his other roles. Arguably his best performance, but for me, his second-best. (For many years, The Falcon and the Snowman was my Fourth of July-viewing film, though I've skipped it the last few. It's an underrated film, though, as is his performance in it.)

The sparrows of the film deliberately invoke Hitchcock's The Birds

Unfortunately, Romero's film is shot rather darkly - a new release with color correction would probably do wonders for its reputation - and my prntscrs of good-sparrows-examples are too unreadable. But here's a great shot from The Birds.

This may put some strain on the whence-this-menace Stark-metaphors of the book by doing so, but it didn't bother me. Unless the film is hack work - and this isn't - any visual-recall to Hitchcock is always welcome.

A young Thad works on "Here There By Tygers" at his typewriter; again, my prntscrn failed me. But a nice touch.

Michael Rooker as Pangborn is another selling point. Rooker's played a variety of roles over the years, but usually he's the villain (and usually inept) or duplicitous in some way. He brings a humanity and accessibility to Sheriff Pangborn that he doesn't normally get to showcase.

"Slow Cooker" is not among the featured selections of my old band's MySpace page, but as a result of its chorus, I to-this-day mentally rhyme 'Michael Rooker' with 'Slow Cooker' whenever either term crosses my path. MICHAEL ROOK-ERRRR...!

Romero and King don't seem to work much together anymore, do they? Romero's an interesting director. Night of the Living Dead is an acknowledged classic, to be sure, but does his uncompromising "maverick" status seems to prevent him from the kind of widespread appreciation many of his contemporaries enjoy? The Dark Half may not be as daring and iconic as that one, or Martin or The Crazies or Dawn of the Dead, but it's a solid "mainstream" pic. It's a shame it didn't seem to fare too well with the critics or at the box office.

(And then there's Knightriders, which I've tried to watch a few times. What the hell is going on with this movie? King (and Tabitha King) are in it, briefly, as spectators, towards the beginning. I have a feeling somewhere in this movie is at least the suggestion of a masterpiece, but it seems to be mining similar ore as Electra-Glide in Blue, and that "obscure indie American-70s * generational-commentary knights-errant-on-bikes" spot is already taken in my DVD folder. One of these days, though, I have to finish it.)

(* It wasn't released until 1981, but let's not kid ourselves: Knightriders is a 70s movie.)

NEXT:

(King as "Bachman" in Sons of Anarchy)
BLAZE/ THINNER