Our cultural memory is built around a series of events that resound in our collective memory. Some of these are good like the date man first walked on the moon, but many are terrible to recall. Yet we recall them when each anniversary comes around and remember where we were when “it” happened. For my Dad, his first “It” date was December 7, 1941. His childhood memories were divided by the day he went fishing and came home to a country at war. For me and a lot of other Baby Boomers, our first “It” day is today. November 22, 1963. President Kennedy’s assassination threw such a big rock in our river of memory that the ripples hit our personal lives. Those ripples are one of the big themes in the King novel titled with that date. In a way, it’s a normal time-travel tale: a man goes back in time to prevent something bad and finds out success can breed a bigger failure. In another way, it’s much more than that; it’s a tour of history and a trip through a human heart. King’s research in story tale showed me I don’t know very much about the…
It’s October, one of my favorite months for stories, even though most October stories have a tie to the supernatural. So it only seems right to start off with a story by one of the writers most associated with scary stories: Stephen King. At its essence, marriage is a closed corporation. It’s a private entity with its own personality and the principals own all the stock. Sure, often children are born to a marriage and spouses share parts of their lives with others but these people are beneficiaries, not stockholders; if children leave and friends fall away, the corporation continues unless death or divorce intervene, keeping secrets known only to the principals. At least that’s the premise of Lisey’s Story. And those untold secrets are what makes a marriage powerful, even when one of the principals dies. Lisey Landon is still learning about the strength of her marriage years after her husband, Scott, died. Scott was a successful novelist and the public face of their marriage. His passing left her with a sizable amount of cash, a barn full of books, and some very insensitive academic types that believe their knowledge of Scott Landon’s work gives them superior rights…
It’s no secret that I love stories: reading, writing, or telling them. Reading stories is easiest for me to do; all I need are the words and my glasses. Once I find the narrator’s voice, we’re off and all I have to look for is when to take a breath. Telling a story is scary and a whole lot of fun, especially if there’s an appreciative audience. When I’m telling stories, the hardest thing for me to know is when to shut up. (I’ll admit it, I’m a natural-born ham.) Writing stories is a different cat altogether; in fact, writing is a cat with claws. As soon as my fingers hit the keys and letters show up on the screen, my inner critic emerges and starts pointing out the obvious flaws. At that point, the tale that was bubbling and aching to get out locks itself behind a gate in my brain. So, what do I do? I’ve learned to take a walk. Taking a walk is something Stephen King mentioned in his wonderful book, On Writing. (Seriously, I’ve read a stack-load of books on the craft of putting down prose and this one makes me believe I can do…
There are stories that pass through your brain and leave, unnoticed and unmissed. Others are like summer romances that hold you until there’s a change in the weather. And there are stories you find by chance that stay with you forever. I’ve been rereading Bag of Bones for fifteen years now and I believe I’ve fallen in love to stay. That’s good because love is a driving force in this book, along with death and in a New England summer. Stephen King turned into a writer sometime while my back was turned. A first, he was a commercial success and a critic’s nightmare come true. I couldn’t stand his early prose, so I ignored him. Then one August day I was combing the shelves, craving a good ghost story. (Ghost stories and haunted houses are DOCs of mine.) This book was on the shelf and I was desperate enough to try anything, even a book by Stephen King. It hit like a tidal wave. Mike and Joanna Noonan have the marriage we lesser mortals crave. They like and understand each other and she knows when to deflate his ego. Not that Mike needs much deflating. He’s one of King’s Everymen,…
Fans are the double-edged sword to creative people, everyone knows that. Actors, artists and poets makes a living (occasionally a good one) because the fans like and purchase their work, which is great. Develop a big enough fan base and an artist will encounter those who want to thank him or her personally. A smaller group than that will mistake their enthusiasm as the basis of a personal relationship. Gain enough popularity and the artist will face fans that expect to control his/her life and work. Take this to the extreme and the artist will certainly die. Stephen King covered this in his novel, Misery but he gave Annie Wilkes a few bits of leavening humor. What other professed lover of words would cut herself off from expressions of anger, so her profanity is limited to words like “cock-a-dooty”? As destructive and strange as Annie is, at times she’s also comical. That endearing shade of grey is missing from King’s newest novel about toxic fans, Finders Keepers. It suggests admiration may be the most dangerous response in the world. At odds are two readers of a twentieth-century novelist. Both readers are young males when they find their author’s most-lauded works, a series of novels reminiscent of John Updike’s “Rabbit” series. The…