King's Short Fiction reread, pt. 3: Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993)

(1993)

Is that a great cover or what? I'm not sure if someone planted a scarecrow in the middle of the road or if the damn thing is out for a midnight unicycling run. Either would be freaky to find yourself face-to-face with on some moonlit stretch of road.

Arguably and unfortunately none of the stories within Nightmares and Dreamscapes live up to the awesomeness of the cover. A couple get close or are iconic in their own way. What it is is a pretty good collection of B-sides, and that makes it more fun than it otherwise would be. (Arguably - and only if you get a kick out of B-sides, I guess, which I do.) 

The author mentions in his introductory remarks that this was it as far as his "old stuff" was concerned; if a story he'd published wasn't here or in Night Shift or Skeleton Crew, it wasn't getting collected. With the exception of "The Cat From Hell" in Just After Sunset, I think he's stuck to that. 

My ten favorites are below; the rest I'm kind of indifferent to. There are only two stories I officially dislike: "Dedication" (I'm still struck by the central unreality of the idea, plus how gross it is) and "The Moving Finger" (was this some kind of reaction on the author's part to the rectal exams of one's 40s?) 

"Umney's Last Case" probably deserves a mention as it's a fun little story. That might be my eleventh entry/ honorable mention. And then there's "My Pretty Pony."

This didn't make my top ten, but there's an awful lot round the edges here: (1) According to King in his afternotes, this one broke a spell of writer's block, so he has real affection for it. He also mentions how "some things that had really been working well for me" weren't anymore. This is interesting King bio-stuff, considering the year it was written.  (2) It's (presumably) all that remains of a discarded Bachman novel. (3) Jerry Garcia reads the audiobook for it. And (4) it was originally part of a Whitney Museum of American Art writer-and-artist series as the textual accompaniment to a collaboration with Barbara Kruger, "an oversized fine press slip-cased book with stainless steel cover, digital clock, nine lithographs, eight screenprints, and one lithograph with screenprint." 

That is an awful lot of covering fire for a perfectly harmless but relatively slight bit of prose from America's Schlockmeister. (This would be the contemporaneous 1989 assessment, trust me.) It may even lend the story more mystique than it can live up to. Mostly, though, I just don't think anyone ever counted off seconds with a "pretty pony" between them, as the title alludes to. (i.e. one-pretty-pony, two-pretty-pony, etc.) We all know "Mississippi" and "one-thousand" but I just think he made this one up. Why? What a dumb thing to make up. It's like coming up with an alternate name for "Tuesday" and then pretending there are people out there who use it. Why? Anyone who says "Oh, sure I've heard that before" is a damn liar. If he or she even exists. 

Okay, justice dispensed. Let's dive in. You're on your own for plot recaps. First up is a tie:

10. 

"Dolan's Cadillac" / "End of the whole Mess"

"Dolan's" is a strange one. So's "End of the Whole Mess" too, actually, but let's start with "Dolan's." Is it just a "simple" little revenge tale? Just a "Cask of Amontillado" homage? A metaphor of some kind? (If so, what for?) Or is it a confessional about this guy King got rid of in the desert one time, and all the hardcore highway department research that led up to it? All of the above?

The movie seems to be adapting some other story entirely. I can't see how Dolan is even trapped in this thing, for one. Full confession: I've never been able to finish this one. Is it good? Bad? A reasonable adaptation? An unreasonable piece of turd-dipped baloney? You be the judge. Fair review of the film here.

It's not perfect - the imagined dialogue(s) with his dead wife could've been eliminated, I think. Or perhaps the reader could only "hear" Robinson's side of it. That would have been my advice, as an advance reader. (Cut to headline: "Thanks a lot, jerk" says Famous Author.) It's pretty easy to visualize it all, even the somewhat elaborate arc of descent type stuff.  I like stuff set in the desert, I think; it might be as simple as that. 

Is it weird that there are two stories (this and "The Doctor's Case") that have this kind of visual-trick/ Coyote-painted-tunnel sort of trick as their twist? Maybe it's not weird but awesome. It's too bad King never fleshed out a Magic Eye murder-at-the-mall mystery to make it a thematic trilogy.

"End of the Whole Mess" is a fun one for me, or as fun as dystopian fatalism masquerading as utopian what-if-ing (a genre for which I am admittedly an apologist) can be, I guess. I love that King asks himself these questions and imagines this whole admirably-constructed set of answers for them, (see "The Jaunt" and so many other places), and then introduces the whole EC/ Twilight Zone twist of it all, with the "Ah, but Alzheimer's!" aspect. (And that this is forecast with the mayor of the Alzheimers town always doing the Rodney Dangerfield bit at the coffee shop is a nice touch.) Does it work? YMMV. Is it too EC-y? Not for me. (Few things are too EC-y to me, truth be told.) 

The episode of the N and D mini-series isn't bad. Actually, it probably is bad; that whole mini-series hasn't aged well. But it's an odd slice of TV, and I like the oddness of it. And the ending is effectively sad. It reminds me of a lost episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater actually, more than anything.

"I didn't need to turn on cable news (what a friend of mine had taken to calling The Organ Grinder of Doom) to know what Bobby was talking about. (...) People had taken to calling the Tijuana crossing point in California Little Berlin on account of the wall."

Prescient as ever, Sai King!

9.  
"The Ten O Clock People"

Previously I felt this story seemed like a good beginning to something more than a good completed something. This time around I guess I still feel that way, but not as acutely. I like it either way. Not much to say, really.

8. 

"Sneakers" 

King has some stories where for my money he chases after something he doesn't quite reach (“Blind Willie” from Hearts in Atlantis) or perhaps it’s that the objective of the chase is simply too oblique (“The Things They Left Behind” from Just After Sunset, or "Blind Willie" again). “Sneakers” probably fits either of those descriptions: I don’t know what he’s getting at here, and his endnotes don’t really help. But it’s got atmosphere. 

Also: another puzzling check for the “Stories Featuring Taking a Dump as Plot Points” column.

7. 

Head Down

I can see why anyone not into baseball might skip it, but it’s a nice slice-of-life story. King returns to his one of his first writing gigs – when he was a sports reporter in high school – for this tale of a 1989 Little League team on its way to becoming Maine State Champions. 

On the team? Future major leaguer Matt Kinney, as well as future author Owen King.

6. 

"Suffer the Little Children"

Here’s an early riff (1972) on a theme King returns to (“Bad Little Kid”, “A Death" "Sometimes They Come Back", The Dead Zone, etc.) more than a few times in his career: the ol' looks-like-the-protagonist-is-doing-a-bad-thing-but-we-the-reader-know-differently business. I like it. 

Described as both an effective chiller and as something “with no redeeming social merit whatsoever” by the author himself, I agree and disagree, respectively. (I see plenty of redeeming social merit and real-world-relevance in this one.)

5. 

"It Grows on You"

King excels in bringing small town Maine to life, replete with rich backstories for all involved, and his Castle Rock collected work is like some reverse-image version of Lake Wobegon. The two fictional townships have more in common than one might think, actually. Someone should do a side by side story. I’d do it, but we’d all be in the grave waiting for me to finish such a thing. I’d like to read it, though. (And I'd especially like to read some Alan Moore LXG mash-up of the two. Damn it! Too late now.) 

All the worlds hinted at in Joe Newell’s origins and musings, here, are compelling. And this story contains some of King’s most memorable prose of Nightmares. To wit:

"In January of 1921 Cora gave birth to a monster with no arms and it was said a tiny clutch of perfect fingers sticking out of one eyesocket. It died less than six hours after mindless contractions had pushed its red and senseless face into the light."

Eeesh. Or how about:

"She was a grainbag of a woman, incredibly wide across the hips, incredibly full in the butt, yet almost flatchested as a boy and possessed of an absurd little pipestem neck upon which her oversized head nodded like a strange pale sunflower. Her cheeks hung like dough, her lips like strips of liver, her face was as silent as a full moon on a winter night. She sweated huge dark patches around the armholes of her dresses even in February." *

This description of Cora goes against the role she plays in the protagonists’ reverie, where she’s more of like a Castle Rock Gogonzola figure (from Fellini's 8 1/2 and elsewhere.) A very interesting work and an underrated rate for my money.

* Tell me you can't hear Garrison Keillor reading this. He narrates this whole story for me, and I wish we could arrange for him to read the entire Castle Rock collection as some kind of overpriced audio exclusive. 

4. 

"The Night Flier"

A pretty novel(la) take on the classic vampire story: the vampire as an aviating serial killer, with Dees and by extension the whole bloodsucking tabloid media as Renfield. 

I go back and forth on the movie. When I first saw it, it was a punching-above-its-paygrade resounding success with me. Next time I saw it, it was a decent but amateurish effort. Third time, I was back to wow.

There was a fourth and fifth time but I'll spare you the play-by-play. I think my official take is "Better than it had to be, not as good as it could have been." No shame there. I applaud Mark Pavia's ambition and am basically rooting for everything he does from here on out. 

3. 

"Rainy Season" 

"She threw it as hard as she could. It cartwheeled in the air and then splattered against the wall just opposite the kitchen door. It did not fall but stuck in the glue of its own guts."

Yep.

A great little "time passer," as Grady Hendrix referred to it over at Tor (whose King / Dark Tower re-reads, it must be said, were underwhelming.) Nothing earth-shattering here, but it's a fun, familiar story, well-told. Same for:

2. 

"Home Delivery"

Although this may be a bit less by-the-numbers than "Rainy Season," (if indeed "by the numbers" is even an accurate way to describe "Rainy Season." Whatever the case, they're numbers I like and admire, so no disrespect intended. 

More small town supernatural stuff. Does it relate to Storm of the Century? Obviously not I guess, given the plot and lack of worldwide zombie mayhem in Storm. Although I wonder if there isn't an allusion or two I missed. I'm always looking for an excuse to watch Storm again, so maybe I'll cue it up. 

Similar to "The Reach" a bit, from Skeleton Crew. I like that one quite a bit; I love this one. 

And finally:

1. 

"Chattery Teeth"

When I sat down to re-read Nightmares and Dreamscapes, I thought my favorite would probably be "The Night Flier." I was surprised how positively I responded to "Chattery Teeth." It struck me as one of those "If all other King was gone and this was all that remained, you'd get a good sense of the writer he was" sort of stories. "Home Delivery," too, for sure, perhaps all the stories mentioned above, but this one has that goofy-thing that shouldn't work (sentient-chattery-teeth-doing-their-thing) -

that does, and the reason is just how King writes it: the details he chooses, the people he populates it with, the motivations and thoughts and observations he gives them, all the scenery and context and weather. It's just a perfect little story, and so here it is, atop my personal pile of favorites this time around. 

He doesn't say so in his end of book notes, but I wonder if this one came about from baby boomer rage at too much Bryan Adams and Def Leppard on the radio. Both artists come up organically, just part of the scenery I'm talking about above, but I like to speculate on such things. Did King turn on the radio one day in the 80s and fly into a mental rage at hearing either of them one too many times, or produce a mental image of a man menaced by a pair of chattery teeth? It'd be a fun angle/ origin story. He should pretend it's the case if he's ever asked about either. (Cut to headline: "'I said everything I had to say about Bryan Adams in 'Chattery Teeth'' says Author.")

I do wish he'd come up with a name for the Chattery Teeth, though. It got a bit much to read that over and over. But not so much.

~

See you next time for some Everything's Eventual action.