The Outsider (Stephen King)

I recently spent 22-and-a-half hours in a rental car on a work trip to St. Louis and surrounding counties  - just about the same amount of time as The Outsider audiobook, read by Will Patton, which was my companion for all this time in the car. I hit play just as I was pulling from the curb at 5 am Tuesday morning, and the end credits were rolling just as I got back to Chicago, 2 pm Thursday afternoon. That worked out pretty well.

I wasn't expecting much going into this. I'd heard mixed reviews, and I knew Holly Gibney - one of my least favorite characters from two of my least favorite King books - was a prominent character. I'd heard it was "political," as well, and King's politics these days annoy me muchly. 

And yet, I quite enjoyed it. 

THE EFFECT OF AUDIOBOOKS 

ON THE READING EXPERIENCE

I figured I'd like the first half, where the murder dilemma is established: unshakable forensic evidence ties Terry Maitland, upstanding citizen of Flint City, Oklahoma, to the grisly rape and mutilation of a child; equally unshakable evidence has him at Capital City, many miles away, at the time of the murder. Before the arraignment, Maitland is killed. Detective Ralph Anderson (no relation to Mike Anderson's son from Storm of the Century) and Howie Gold (Maitland's attorney) form a tenuous alliance to work out the discrepancies of the case.

From there the book takes a determined turn into the supernatural and where Holly Gibney is brought in. That's where I expected it to lose me. And it almost did. For the most part, Will Patton's narration is excellent. He brings the characters to life and keeps the momentum flowing about as well as any audiobook reader ever could. Then he. Adopts this. Halting. Rising and Falling Like. Garrison Keillor mixed. With the Thermians from. Galaxy Quest. And not just. For Her Dialogue. But all her POV too. 

It's such an amazingly ill-considered approach that I yelled at the car speakers half a dozen times. Then I shrugged it off. And now that it's all done, maybe I was wrong. Irritating as I found it, didn't I end up liking Holly a lot more here than anywhere in the Hodges trilogy? And I did end up liking her, something I thought impossible. Her "poopy and IMDB schtick" as I've seen it described is indeed played out and never was that interesting to begin with. 

All of which is to say: listening to a book and reading it are quite different experiences and rely on factors other than the voice of the author. The best complement one another; perhaps this is one of them. I wonder how I'd find the Hodges trilogy, also read by Will Patton? Could I overcome the considerable problems I had with it? Given world enough and time, I'd love to find out.

HERE'S MY TAKE ON HOLLY 

SHOWING UP IN THE OUTSIDER

It involves a little second-guessing/ speculating on the author, which is always slippery ground, but hear me out. King's always likened his storytelling to excavating rather than plotting; he digs the story out of the earth and its final shape is as much a surprise to him as it is to anyone else. Sometimes this bugs me, but what can I do about it? That's what the man's telling us, so I take him at his word. Obviously he's struck on a method/ metaphor that works for; look at his body of work by Gan. 

So, I picture him writing the first part of the book - the Colorado Kid / unsolvable crime kind of set-up - like the first part of a dig. Like Bobbie Anderson, he's roped off his area and made his incursions and now he's really into it. Suddenly, he finds Holly Gibney. I imagine a hit to his confidence here, as if he thought he was digging out a new tomb but had inadvertently dug into another one he already excavated. But no, he checks his dig again and sees this is new, and there's Holly. So he digs a little further and a new shape starts to emerge. Suddenly the story needs a bridge to the supernatural; his characters from the first part have to get to the end that's suddenly coming into view. King might've thought, okay, do I invent a ghostbuster of some kind, some paranormal investigator that joins the other characters? Or do I have my characters make that leap all on their own? 

From this angle - and I sincerely hope you don't mind my indulging it - Holly Gibney is an economical choice. A logical enough bridge existed (Howie's investigator Alec worked with Hodges on that one stolen plane case), why not use her? I agree with this take:

"Given how the Bill Hodges trilogy took a turn for the paranormal in the con­cluding volume, it’s fitting that Holly is the person to turn this crime novel on its head. She does so in the most extraordinary fashion, describing El Cuco – the creature that murdered Frank – by referencing a Las Luchadoras film, Mexican Wrestling Women Meet the Monster. * The scene is pure cheese (King has always reveled in “low culture”) and a masterclass in storytelling and beat perfect plotting."

* Is this a real movie? Or some analog of The Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy with Lorena Velazquez? 

It's possible King hadn't intended the story to become supernatural at all. If so, then maybe the above represents the point where he just gives up on the dig and goes on autopilot. If this is the case, then (a) I very much appreciated the lack of sudden onset of telepathy, and (b) it's an autopilot that didn't alienate me. 

She'll be played by Cynthia Erivo in the adaptation. 

WHAT I MEAN BY AUTOPILOT

(1) The Outsider. Both the physical hunger and supernatural abilities are basically Pennywise's. Once the supernatural becomes a reality in the story, it's the same supernatural we've seen in It and Salem's Lot and other places, too. (2) The litanies of Hoskins's deterioration ("The Outsider has a Renfield!" says Holly.) are all very familiar. I mentioned Pennywise; here is Henry Bowers and so many other King antagonists, developing a mantra projection on the protagonist's perceived usurping of the life he was supposed to have, etc. And (3) General story beats: the heroes walking into a trap, goading the killer into making a premature move, the worms from Slither, and then the barbecue at the end where loose ends are tied up. 

But is this really so bad? What can I say - this is autopilot King does enjoyably. King will forever be linked with AC/DC in my head, so I liken it to AC/DC putting out another version of "Heatseeker" or something. You've heard it before, but who cares? In fact, I wish AC/DC did more of that instead of so much of the other crap they've put out. And you can't really say that for King; his "other crap" in this scenario is quite varied. 

Sooo. If the supernatural turn doesn't work for other Constant Readers, that's cool, I can totally understand why. The set-up is airtight, and then something we've seen before slowly takes the novel over. But we've seen the airtight set-up before, too (The Dark Half, The Colorado Kid) and the end of this one is way more satisfying than one of those, mainly because it has one. 

(I mean, "this book actually has an ending!" isn't really a selling point. But sheesh, Colorado Kid. Any chance I get.)

SOME LAST THOUGHTS

- I was curious what the French edition would be called, since L'etranger is pretty well taken. I guess they just call it The Outsider.

- Along the lines of resemblance to It and Salem's Lot, etc., good thing no one in this book ever read any of those or saw the movies. There might have been more immediate go-tos than Mexican Wrestling Women Meet the Monster. FWIW I'm glad they didn't appear, though. I don't need every damn King book to reference another, even if sometimes, versimilitude-wise, the characters in-book sure as hell would.

- Are Harlan Coben and Stephen King friends? I'm always curious about that kind of thing when real-world writers show up in other writers works. 

- Detective Sablo gets the weird "Eees no problem, hombre" dialogue King can't seem to stop himself from. It's so bizarre. But: I liked the character. So what do I know?

_ Similarly, I liked Claude Bolton and his Mom.

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