Man oh man, folks, am I in the wrong room with this one.
So, Billy Summers is about a guy (Billy) pretending to be dumber than he actually is while taking assassination contracts from mobsters, only for people he thinks are bad. He suspects he's being double-crossed, and sure enough he is, but he hits the mattresses and bides his time. Until a girl is deposited right outside his hideout, who has been gang-raped by some MAGA-heads from the nearby college. So Billy decides to track them down and avenge her. He puts on a Melania Trump mask, sodomizes them and lectures them, then tracks down the big enchiladas who double-crossed him, all the way to Mar-a-Lago and/or Jeffrey Epstein.
Honestly, I think this is the end of the line with King and me. I've felt increasingly "in the wrong room" for years, but I hoped he'd snap out of it, "it" being this Twitter fear and loathing spiral he's in when it comes to MAGA rape fantasies and the like. But, he is not. Hoo boy is he not; the problem has deepened considerably. And from the reviews I've looked at, no one in the King community is batting much of eye, when they're not openly cheering on for more of it.
Which hey - I mean, I'm the guest, really, here, so maybe I just stayed too long at the party. I've struggled with how to put this because the last thing I want to do is make any of my friends/ King fans feel the way King and many King fans make people like me feel. Or that voting for King (you get me) makes you fair game for rape fantasies and the like.
I mean, that's kind of nuts - not going to lie, here. But it's the kind of nuts inflicting most people right now. I knew it was getting bad, years ago, but Billy Summers is like that episode of Cheers where Cliff has progressed from growing vegetables in his garden to cross-breeding (and dressing) them to resemble political leaders. Cliff had Norm to take him to one side and snap him out of it ("You've gone way off the deep end on this. You've dressed a potato like Richard Nixon, and you actually want people to come and know this." Paraphrasing from memory.) King has only Twitter, egging on his worst instincts, and providing him with desktop notifications to rally his spirits (or plot points) when they flail
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| Hell, that's what Twitter is good for. |
Like I said, it's not going to get better. I knew this, truthfully, before Billy Summers. You can't get a little woke; you're in for a penny, you're in for the whole rape MAGA fantasy pound of it all. Unless you consciously free yourself from it, you are just a hapless passenger on Blaine the Mono. With all that entails. In the Barony coach or no. (From what I can see, actually, the Barony coach is the place to be, but the pressure to partake in this sort of thing is much more intense than in coach.)
So, here we must part. It's not me, it's you; it's not you, it's me.
And really, it's unfair of me to suggest King has gone off the deep end. The King of Billy Summers is really no different than the King of Under the Dome (if you voted for Bush, the idea there was you were a crystal meth warlord energy baron necrophile, or at least adjacent to such) or the King writing Henry Bowers or maybe all the way back to scrapbooking serial killer stories as a kid. Like the oft-told story of the scorpion who will sting because it's his nature, no surprises here. It's just getting old to be stung so monomaniacally, and with such little grace, and with the amount of scolding and violence that's coming with it.
I get it, man! Let's call the whole thing off, as smarter people than me once sang.
So it's been nine years since I decided to catch up with the favorite author of my youth. I regret nothing. But for me, after finishing this one (really quick: Nothing "Billy" writes - because since this is 2021 of course at the end the male's agency has to be busted down to merely co-authoring his own story, to raise the agency of the woman. That's just good manners! (And we see what happens to bad mannered boys. Kick his ass, sea bass; Twitter notifications are definitely not finding their way into your story) - feels authentic except the "I'm a bad man" part. Which didn't even happen. This was after one-hundred-sixty pages of Quarry and central casting cliches. Fuggedaboutit. But I believed it - after everything we'd seen, this was King's confessional, not Billy's) I put all but three of my King books into bags to distribute to the free libraries in my neighborhood. Some kid is going to be very happy.
(What did I keep? Duma Key and The Tommyknockers - those were my "discoveries" from the past nine years, and I've fond memories of that, plus I want to read both of them again and know they're not going to make me feel like the man wants me or my family gang-raped - and The Stephen King Companion, which contains within it all the warm and wonderful Stephen King feelings of my youth, way back before I knew the guy had such strong feelings about raping me and my family and giving aid and comfort to those who do. The joy of these three books, in other words, is safe and unable to be retconned from whatever Twitter rant awaits or has slouched off already, its hour come round at last.)
(Oh, I kept The Outsider, too. I didn't mean to, actually, I just forgot it and noticed it after. I don't feel strongly motivated to read it again but nor do I feel like giving it away, either. For the moment, over on the shelf it sits.)
I had a nice interaction with my neighbor down the block while loading up the books. He grabbed a bunch of them and was so happy for a Misery to give to his daughter. We laughed at the oddness of that phrasing/ idea, which I understood completely and chatted about reading King in the 80s and down to now. (I did not mention any of this other stuff. Didn't want him to run into the kitchen and come out with a cake mixer! Just totally normal stuff.)
He asked me, holding up The Regulators, "why have I never heard of this one?" I told him that was one I almost kept, that it deserves to be rediscovered both by the King community and the world at large. I stopped there. Why tell him I have to leave that fight for someone else? My heart is no longer in it. I think I convinced my neighbor, though, to come at it with fresh eyes.
So there's my last little act of positivity for the King community - spreading joy one book at a time - which, the last few years of rape fantasies and such aside, has been a fun few years. I liked that it began where it did and led where it did and ended on a nice conversation of book-gifting to a neighbor.
Billy Summers itself I gave to a different friend, at his request. This particular friend has no problem that I can see with MAGA rape fantasies or Twitter fear and loathing; like King I suspect that deep down he thinks anyone who voted for Trump - like women in short skirts perhaps, but I'd really like not to think so - is just asking for it. It's getting hard to navigate these sorts of things politely. I guess I can sympathize with King on that front. Writing, he once said, is an act of willed empathy.
Or was, once upon a time. May it be that again, and soon.
I realize some of the pronouncements above may seem unconducive to conversation, but all y'all out there that don't want to rape me, please feel free to let me know your feelings on the book, positive or otherwise.
But: I mean, who are we kidding here? Has a single review mentioned this revenge rape fantasy of King's? Or anyone's over the past few years? Like I say, King's always had this side of his work, it just too much resonant frequent with our present cultural moment. This is a terrible addition to our current cultural moment. And from the guy who pulled Rage, it's baffling. What possible conclusion could possibly be drawn other than King is indeed just fine with certain types of violence against certain types of people? A book is not a confessional; a book timed with this cultural moment that includes all of the above isn't, either, it's just... tasteless. Stupid. Unbelievably irresponsible and banal.
That it's not a good book is more forgivable than being some weird MAGA rape fantasy that seems a-okay in the mainstream reviews of it. That strikes me as not just abnormal but really kind of dangerous and sad.
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So ends the King's Highway! And I wish it was a better part of town.
I'd like to end with three pics of this little Barrens-area (much cleaned up nowadays, as evidenced in the first pic below with a nice fence to keep you from falling in the reservoir, luxuries unheard of back when I was biking down here to read whatever King I checked out of the library) central to the King-reading of my youth and all subsequent nostalgia. If you're ever in Slatersville, RI, stop on by the library, walk on down to the water, and sit for a spell.
There's graffiti of hedgerow animals galore down there. Mostly benevolent. Sometimes it's only visible from the corner of your eye, not when you look at it directly. Other times it sneaks up on you when you're not looking.
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| Cheers. |
