Blogging from the Edge of the Apocalypse...

Captain Trips, from Stephen King's The Stand

As I write this, my wife is driving though Lot J down at TIAA Bank Stadium (home of the Jacksonville Jaguars) for a drive-through COVID-19 test. We live in strange times, to be sure, and I'm thankful that she has been isolating in a separate part of the house and following CDC guidelines for testing after her symptoms began to emerge. We are praying that it's merely a chest cold, but it's important to take every precaution we can to stay healthy in these uncertain times.

There have been so many great books about pandemics for those that have been bitten by the macabre voyeurism bug. Stephen King's The Stand is an epic tome, of course, and Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron is once again surging in popularity. Justin Cronin's novels are probably selling like hotcakes, and I'm sure Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" is getting a lot of attention as well. Joe R. Lansdale and Robert McCammon (Swan Song) write these types of stories with such style and humanity that they will inspire you to scratch out your own tales on the subject. I've always enjoyed (and often taught) Stephen King's "Night Surf." It's one of his first published short stories, and it perfectly illustrates the frustration and futility that many of us have experienced in the last month as life around the globe has changed so drastically.

Our kids are doing fine. Children are so unbelievably adaptable. We can learn a lot just by watching them navigate huge life changes in these strange times...

Jeanne and I are doing okay as well as we adjust to new work protocols and practices. As I mentioned to my students at FSCJ last week in a video--this, too, shall pass...

I miss my office. I miss running the trails at the Arboretum and the Timucuan Preserve. I miss sports. I miss trivial, banal complaints about morning traffic. I miss not getting the side-eye if I have the temerity to cough in public.

But these are surreal, interesting times and I know we'll come out of them wiser and more prepared as a result of all of this discomfort. I hope you and yours are safe and healthy.

Oh, and for my own take on the subject of the pandemic, you can read Remnants: A Record of Our Survival for free here, or pick up a Kindle copy for a song here...

Take care...

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Stephen King's newest novel checked just about every box for me in terms of including everything I loved about the stories from the early portion of his career into the mid-1990s. 

Convincing and nostalgic representation of small-town Americana? Flint City is that and more, from the communal ball fields to the small-town police force...

Vivid, three-dimensional characters that we quickly grow to care about and relate with? Ralph and Jeannie Anderson, Howie Gold,  Yune Sablo, and Claude Bolton are living, breathing people in this story--complete with the biases and flaws that nicely balance their basic humanity. The text makes it clear--almost to a fault--that some of these folks are good people that did a bad thing. 

None of these characters is as authentic, though, as Terry Maitland. Coach T. deserves his own full-length story, and I couldn't help but picture a close golfing buddy of mine--a local coaching legend in his own right--every time I think about Terry. The thing that happens to Terry is terrifying. It's one of greatest fears, and he keeps it together better than I think I ever could, that's for sure.

Supernatural boogie-woogie based on overt childhood fears and a haunting legend? Oh, yeah. The Outsider is the physical manifestation of an infamous international legend, and he's scary as hell. 

Trusted characters from other realms of the King Universe? Holly Gibney shows up here, and she's a welcome addition. 

I read this last week and it kept me up until midnight two or three times. It's vintage King, and well worth your time...

The Wind Through the Keyhole

I am re-reading The Wind Through the Keyhole, and I am enjoying it just as much the second time through as I did a few years ago. I love the narrative approach here, as Sai King both fills in some backstory on Roland's life as a greenhorn gunslinger while also delivering a truly delightful (if not somber) embedded narrative in the center of the tale. 

King does this often, and to great affect. Whenever writers trot out that old saw about showing versus telling, folks are curious about the actual strategies one might use to reveal character or setting or plot in a way that feels natural and unforced. That is showing, and one of the best strategies is to tell a related story. King wants to illustrate the scope of Bobby Fornoy's genius in "The End of the Whole Mess," so he has his narrator tell a pair of stories about how he built a glider and a radio as a child. His chilling novella 1922 is chock full of great tangential, but wholly engaging and necessary, stories. All of it amounts to depth and complexity in the storytelling. 

I am also reminded of King's depth as a writer when I revisit his stories from this universe. It's easy to overlook his skills in writing magical realism and epic fantasy, but one shouldn't. He's got a lot of Tolkien and Lewis and Bradbury in him, to be sure...

This is a fine novel for both engaging with a great story and studying the structure of a pithy fantasy with a keen embedded narrative...

Mr. Mercedes: A Review

I can't imagine that it took Stephen King long to write Mr. Mercedes. Still a gifted and prolific writer, King produces two or three book-length projects each year, in addition to his myriad short stories, columns, and essays. Within that bunch there is usually a true gem or three, but this one is, alas, merely average.

King trots out the old chestnut of the retired cop and his daily face-off with the prospect of eating his old man's service revolver. There's a psycho whose sexist and racist tendencies just seem tired and distracting here. Yes, we understand that he doesn't like women (even his mother, who repulses him even as she relieves him of certain tensions...ick) and anyone that is different than him. By the way, he's a generically handsome young white man who is good with technology and, for some reason, hates the world.

It's like King ordered Brady Hartsfield straight out of the literary characterization catalog (probably filed under 'P' for Patterson). This is a major failing in the book, as King could have offered a glimpse into the nature of evil by going against the grain here and creating a character outside of the homogeneous tradition of sociopathic behavior. But with nothing new to offer, this just reads like another dime-store serial-killer paperback. 

Hodges is similarly one-dimensional. Overweight. Obsessed. Unorthodox. Tough. He's a rhino whose subtle move is to hit perps with a sock filled with ball bearings. Sheesh...

The strangest element of the story is the plot point concerning Olivia's suicide. I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that a person whose Mercedes sedan was stolen to execute such a nefarious task would feel such enormous guilt that she would actually commit suicide.

Tragic and horrifying that someone might take a car for that purpose? Oh, certainly. I wouldn't keep the damned car, as she did--that's for sure. 

But she was the victim of a crime as well. Whatever folks do with her car (and the explanation of leaving the car unlocked and having that leaked to the papers--well, it just strains credulity) after they steal it is on them. She didn't drive that car into the crowd and, as it turns out, she never left the car unlocked in the first place. Just absurd... 

Mr. Mercedes is not without its charms, of course. Much of it is written in the present tense, a device King has proven exceedingly adept at executing. That's no small trick. And I really like Holly's character development, and Janelle's positive spirit. The pathos created in the opening passage, while folks assemble for a job fair in the early hours of the morning, is vintage Stephen King. Too bad the sincerity and heart captured in those opening pages wasn't sustainable throughout the remainder of the novel.

About every fifth King effort is average. This is that fifth book (put it out there with Lisey's Story and From a Buick 8 and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon), and that's okay. 

King is still hitting homers at a rate that makes him a first-ballot HOFer...

Stephen King: The Man's Got Tremendous Heart

Doctor Sleep is further proof that Stephen King is one of this generation's (or any generation's, for that matter) most cherished storytellers. 

The novel is filled with touching insights into the frailty of the flawed--a population of humans that, thankfully, encapsulates all of us. It tells the story of Abra Stone and Danny Torrance, and I'm not writing those names out of order. If it weren't for Abra's tremendous gifts, the True Knot would still be out there on I-4, clogging the left lane and stopping at every rest stop to sniff out some steam snacks.

King's observational gifts are highly tuned here, and he masters the greatest trick of the seasoned surrealist--to render the familiar distant, strange, or menacing. The short passage in which he describes the Knot--they're denizens, characteristics, behaviors, and appearance--is chilling. The idea of ancient evil masked in such benign clothing is well done, and Rose the Hat is one of my all-time favorite villains. 

King knows what it's like to have been, if not derailed by addiction, at least a little bit waylaid by it. His coverage of Danny's recovery, his constant struggles with his illness, and his final redemption are authentic without ever becoming patronizing. There's a lot of realism here, and it just shows how large the author's heart is. 

All writing is deeply personal, but much of it never leans toward revelatory. Doctor Sleep does, even if it's not King's rock-bottom moment that's on display here. This is a book for anyone that's been kicked around a bit (and not necessarily by addiction, but by any number of life's conundrums), but found the strength to stand and do something important.

As Casey K. will no doubt attest, sometimes that "something important" is just getting through another day.

Another fantastic story. Can't wait to see what's coming up next...