“That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French” (1998)

I think this story by Stephen King may represent an interesting point in his career: the moment he went from being underrated to being overrated. From about this point on he started winning more and more serious literary awards and recognition. That’s no reflection on the story. It’s a good one. But it is some reflection on its publication in the New Yorker. I’m not sure it’s his first for that magazine and at this point it’s probably not his only. The premise is not particularly original—the French term in question is “déjà vu” and you might be able to imagine the rest—but it does show King’s deep knowledge of horror literature, resorting to a very nicely modulated stream of consciousness sort of attack. Start with the title, an actual line of dialogue which sets the whole dreamy tone. King has tried and failed with dreams before, but this is one that works. It saws away on familiar fears of flying but skillfully applies misdirection by making it a private rented jet, raising class resentments. The occasion is a middle-aged couple and their 25th wedding anniversary. The husband has made them comfortably wealthy. Perhaps they can be forgiven a little for splurging. These are details that emerge. The main arc of the story takes place on the road from the airport to the resort where they are staying. The woman is consumed by an extended experience of déjà vu. But she’s mostly wrong. She sees what is about to happen, or thinks she does, little things like the look of a mailbox around the next bend. Sometimes parts of it come true but usually not. It’s hard to know what to make of it. The story runs its route a few times: she wakes from a nap on the plane, and then the road to the resort. There is a gnawing dissatisfaction between them that is sad and sadder. The ending is something of a genuine surprise. It does not feel strained. We realize what has happened at almost exactly the same time as the woman. King plays perfectly fair, distributing clues but distracting us from them. It’s nicely done, with no gore and a minimum of mayhem. King has never stopped being prolific, and at my most recent check-in point, 2011’s 11/22/63, he was still in fine form. I follow booktubers reading him systematically with great interest because I’d like to narrow down his catalog after about 1990. I know I don’t like King enough to read all of it. But I like finding a little gem of his like this, because it gives me strength to contemplate taking on, say, the Dark Tower series.

The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Listen to story online.

“The Man in the Black Suit” (1994)

I was excited to see a story by Stephen King in The Weird. I didn’t think editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer could leave him out but I guess I forgot about him by the time the chronologically ordered anthology got to Clive Barker in the ‘80s. This story is an interesting choice—a self-conscious reimagining by King of the kind of 19th-century American Puritan horror practiced by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving. The story takes place in the deep woods of New England where a boy has gone fishing. He encounters the figure in the title, who is there to steal his soul or some such. It’s all pretty traditional business in many ways. Not much is particularly original but some of the details are good. The man’s eyes are described as red and orange, for example, windows into his burning soul. The story was published originally in the New Yorker, which speaks to the status of King’s career in 1994. He would win some kind of lifetime honor from some reputable literary group circa 2002 or 2003, which I always think of as the moment when he was accepted and embraced by the literary mainstream. With this story from the New Yorker he was on his way to that fuller, wider recognition. It does feel like King might be trying a little too hard here. He comes by his New England bona fides honestly enough—born and raised there—but he has never felt remotely part of Puritan traditions. Well, maybe remotely. But his style is all 20th-century contemporary and his horror is catholic, my feeble pun indicating his stuff is all over the place in terms of its sources. The woods and soul-stealing do as well for King as sacred Indian burial grounds, cosmic horror, vampires, werewolves, and/or zombies. And more. The guy is so prolific he almost couldn’t help having tried everything by the mid-‘90s. I used to find him insanely readable and wish now I’d read more of him then. Or maybe I reached my point of exhaustion after a few thousand pages (still only a fraction, I know). At any rate, I respect what I understand he’s doing here—getting the Puritan phobias about woods and the devil into the mix. Hey, that’s horror pure as much as anything else, up to and including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
Read story online.
Listen to story online.

Carole King’s Tapestry (2021)

Loren Glass is an English professor at the University of Iowa. Born approximately in the ‘60s he came to Carole King and Tapestry by way of hippie parents and stepparents. I think his appreciations are sincere but they felt a little too pious for my taste. He does a good job of locating King and the album within their contexts, rock ‘n’ roll close to the moment it became rock and of course the singer-songwriter tradition and feminism. Some things I hadn’t really known before: Carole King was born Carol Klein, and Tapestry is her third solo album, following her flight to the West Coast from New York in the ‘60s. I’ve never known those first two albums. Though Glass has ties to rock critics such as Ann Powers, for better or worse he has little of the spirit. Admittedly the spirit can often be loud-mouthed braying. But I felt Glass was circumspect and respectful to a fault. On the other hand it may be the best way to approach the album. It’s a favorite of mine (and a million others) for various personal reasons. I still consider “It’s Too Late” one of the greatest pop songs ever made. My biggest complaint about this 33-1/3 volume is that it overdoes the footnotes—nearly 200 of them, usually bare citations, and often not useful. This is not the first 33-1/3 I’ve seen with citations, but Glass may have set the record for sheer numbers. I’m just too easily distracted by them in this form, too inured to the chatty kind that has something to add. My favorite section was “Trilogy,” covering King’s first three solo albums, which she later called a trilogy. It’s a nice way of ambling into Tapestry itself and Glass provides a very neat analysis. He also—as one must—addresses her background as one of the great Brill Building songwriters of the early ‘60s. There’s a reason Glass is so solemn—King is genuinely a giant of the music industry, a rock ‘n’ roll and rock icon, and a singer-songwriter iconoclast out of Laurel Canyon. After more than 50 years she is still daunting to consider. I wish more of Glass’s passion came through and less of his inhibitions, but it’s still a useful primer on King and her greatest album. His best geeky rock critic point is about the “Album Era” of rock and the place of Tapestry in it. He dates this Album Era as from 1965 to 1975. I could quibble, but fair enough!

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

“The Monkey” (1980)

Overall I like this longish Stephen King story pretty well. It focuses on a wind-up toy monkey I know from the Close Encounters movie and elsewhere, a 1950s-era toy that had a resurgence in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Maybe even because of this story, although first I would like to know whether King was influenced by the Spielberg movie. King and Spielberg are both very strong on 1970s-era middle-class, young, usually suburban family life. In this story King makes the toy a harbinger or perhaps somehow the agent of doom by insisting on it. It’s true he’s really good at evoking the toy, particularly the sound of it: jang-jang-jang-jang accompanied by gears or springs working. I picked one up myself in the ‘80s at a garage sale or thrift store or something, although it never scared me (and I didn’t know this story anyway until much more recently). The wind-up gyrations even charmed me, which unfortunately makes it an obstacle for me to overcome in this story in terms of believability. Sure, I can see the creepy side of the thing, but it just reminds me again that King often depends on the spaces of novels to work most effectively. The late scenes in this story, with a man rowing to the deepest part of a lake and the sudden storm and all that, reminded me of the furniture-moving pulp styles of Arthur Machen and H.P. Lovecraft. It’s a really big scene, almost ridiculously so, e.g., the cloud formation, the rowboat falling entirely to pieces, etc. I just noticed there’s a movie version coming out next month directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daugher, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House)—might be interesting. I wasn’t particularly moved by the family elements in the story, the father and son business, but that again might speak to King’s greater strengths as a novelist, where family stuff is often prominent and effective, with the space to breathe life into it. Here it is more like reflexive, with the jang-jang-jang-jang as a signal for anxiety and Pop and Junior a signal for pathos. King is going for the epic qualities of “The Great God Pan” and “The Dunwich Horror,” which have little of family feels. So he’s not quite getting it right in the story format, but he’s on the right track in many ways. David Hartwell, editor of The Dark Descent, discusses, in his introduction to “The Monkey,” “... the extent to which [King] is synthesizing and mutating, from his voluminous reading on horror, the entire historical development of the field.” That is absolutely true enough. After my teen exposure to the Alfred Hitchcock-branded anthologies in the ‘60s (including the magazine), King was my next jolt of experience in horror literature, both for his novels and, even more importantly, for Danse Macabre, which was very inspiring even if I could not really connect with Frankenstein, Dracula, or other landmarks he brought to my attention. I think the subtle problem in this story is a matter of overthinking it, or possibly trying too hard. It’s not that I have problems anymore with the ponderous, pulpy furniture-moving style.

Stephen King, Skeleton Crew
The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
Read story online.
Listen to story online.

"The Demon King" (1931)

This story by J.B. Priestley is theatrical, funny, and hugely entertaining. With the setting of a traditional holiday performance in a remote shire of England—I kept thinking of community theater in the US—it is thoroughly steeped in backstage friction and show-must-go-on bravura. Bickering and long-simmering feuds mark relations among the players and crew as well as a spirit of camaraderie. For this Boxing Day evening performance, the man playing the Demon King in the supernatural bits cannot be found. He is a journeyman professional hired for the occasion, with a reputation for "lifting the elbow" and thought to be likely drunk somewhere again. But he cannot be found. An impromptu understudy, woefully unprepared, is pressed into service, but at the last minute the actor shows up, in full costume and makeup. "He looked superb.... The face had a greenish phosphorescent glow, and its eyes flashed between glittering lids." During the show, he struts around scaring everybody and gives a great performance. Other players perform better than they ever have—for one it is a lifetime's dream come true. My favorite detail might be that the village audience, typically taciturn and withdrawn, suspicious of paying money for entertainment, erupts in ovations that go on and on. "The stage manager looked at his watch, 'It's holding up the show, that's certain.... If they're going to behave like this every night, we'll have to cut an hour out of it.'" My other favorite detail might be that this is all a production of the Jack & Jill nursery rhyme, with a Fairy Queen and Demon King and supernatural bits. Apparently it's how they did things. For his part, Priestley is cryptic: "[T]hose people who are puzzled to know what demons have to do with Jack and Jill, those innocent water-fetchers, should pay a visit to the nearest pantomime, which will teach them a lot they did not know about fairy tales." The only explanation for the night is when the troupe gets word that the actor hired to play the Demon King, the one they worried about "lifting the elbow," had been detained "knocked down in Boar Lane by a car, but he'll be all right tomorrow." The rest is for us and those in the story to decide, with the help of clonking details such as a smell of sulfur in the theater. It's all a big show, of course, but it works. I like the humor of it, with this evident demon waylaying the other actor and then showing up to goad a big performance and ovation out of the small village for his own entertainment. I love how it just sticks Jack & Jill into the middle of it. It's a Christmas show—shouldn't there be more holiday theme to it? No explanation. Priestley, more of a mainstream novelist and playwright, didn't do much horror and this one feels like he's just having fun. It's infectious.

Realms of Darkness, ed. Mary Danby (out of print)
Story not available online.

The Crowd (1928)

USA, 98 minutes

Director: King Vidor

Writers: King Vidor, John V.A. Weaver, Joseph Farnham, Harry Behn

Photography: Henry Sharp

Editor: Hugh Wynn

Cast: James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, Bert Roach, Daniel G. Tomlinson, Dell Hnderson, Lucy Beaumont, Estelle Clark

I've always been confused by the title of this silent feature from director and cowriter King Vidor. On one level it's obvious enough, set in the teeming New York City of the 1920s, with thousands of incidental extras thronging the streets in you-are-there shots documentary style. The picture also throws in homilies along the way about peer pressure and keeping up with the crowd and the problems of getting out of step with the crowd, etc. But if "three's a crowd" then The Crowd is more accurately about "company," as it spends most of its time following the domestic trials of a young couple meeting (antiquated) cute, marrying, and starting out. It's obviously inspired in many ways by Sunrise, which came out the year before, and if The Crowd can't match the inspired heights of F.W. Murnau's stone classic (which not many can) it still has a few nifty tricks up its sleeve.

The most famous might be a complicated model shot that sends us sailing through the window of a skyscraper on a high floor and into an industrialized office-worker space with desks set out in columns and rows like regiments in Triumph of the Will. It's famous because it's so well done, like a magic trick, and thus shows up in any number of nostalgic documentary exercises about silent films and/or the 1920s and/or social realism. Billy Wilder shoplifted elements for some of the most memorable scenes in The Apartment. But The Crowd looks forward much more to The Best Years of Our Lives than Billy Wilder or Leni Riefenstahl, each perhaps equally cynical but in polar opposite ways. The Crowd, by contrast, would not know cynicism if it walked up to it and bit it on the nose.

On Writing (2000)

I haven't read that much Stephen King, maybe a half-dozen of his novels, but I have a real fondness for two nonfiction volumes: Danse Macabre, a critical horror overview, and this one, a writing manual and memoir with free-rolling digressions, rudely interrupted by a roadside accident that nearly killed him. King is obviously not entirely comfortable with the memoir side of the project, which he freely admits, but he still has an interesting and great by-the-bootstraps story. He's rich now but he wasn't always and his drive and work ethic are impressive. The writing guide part of this is less interesting, though I generally enjoy the exercise and agree with him on many things. He may be too much of a Strunk & White partisan for my taste. That little book is hugely entertaining but it's full of gaps and I don't always agree with its style judgments. See Bryan Garner's Modern American Usage for the real stuff. In terms of memoir, I like King's loyalty to his roots—all of them, from the horror and science fiction genres to working-class Maine. And I love his dedication to wide-ranging and eclectic reading. My favorite part of this book might be the recent reading list of novels and other books he offers that takes up several pages at the end. It has room for Peter Abrahams, Richard Bausch, Joseph Conrad, Kent Haruf, Annie Proulx, and scores more. I also appreciate his devotion to his wife, especially when he credits her and not writing for bringing him back from the accident. It just feels honest. You surely know where you are on Stephen King—don't we all, at this point (and also J.K. Rowling)? This is an essential stop if you like him and worth a look even if you know you don't. As always, my preconceptions betray me. I'm surprised to see a certified master of horror who appears to be such a model of emotional health. Edgar Allan Poe better fits my own sense of the role—disreputable, in ill health, dead early, like that. In many ways somehow Stephen King is the Bruce Springsteen of horror fiction—vastly talented, vastly generous, and, yes, a certain model of virtuous mental health. I'm actually not sure where I am on King as a writer at the moment. I used to think he was underrated, now I tend to think he's overrated. I stalled completely on his Dark Tower series of eight books after the first, and I notice his stuff rarely improves on second readings. That's the case for me even here. I read this and liked it a lot when it was newer, but reading again for this write-up I wasn't nearly as dazzled. Its best features were the comforts of shared worldviews, which in a way is enough in a memoir.

In case it's not at the library.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

USA, 102 minutes
Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy, Norman Taurog, King Vidor
Writers: Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, L. Frank Baum, Arthur Freed, Irving Brecher, William H. Cannon, Herbert Fields, Jack Haley, E.Y. Harburg, Samuel Hoffenstein, Bert Lahr, John Lee Mahin, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Jack Mintz, Ogden Nash, Robert Pirosh, George Seaton, Sid Silvers
Photography: Harold Rosson
Music: Harold Arlen
Editor: Blanche Sewell
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Margaret Hamilton, Billie Burke, Charley Grapewin, Clara Blandick, Terry (Toto)

(Early cut for the Facebook countdown here.)

In the 79 years since its release, The Wizard of Oz has come to represent virtually all things to all people. Several years ago, for example, you can see I attempted to drop the overlay of horror on it for the Facebook countdown, comparing it to It's a Wonderful Life and Blue Velvet. I was sincere—The Wizard of Oz has scared me nearly as much as any other movie. Things like the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys are pretty serious business, and not necessarily just for kids. The joke TV description is funny because it's true: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again." More recently I've noticed The Wizard of Oz taken by some as a road movie. It's certainly a cartoon, and obviously a musical, and the Munchkins briefly transport it into Freaks territory. Like Casablanca, it speaks to the power of Hollywood collaboration and against the idea of auteurs, with its five directors and 19 writers. Like A Christmas Story (and It's a Wonderful Life) its reputation was cemented only long after its release, facilitated by television. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon got roped into the circus at some point by stoners. By now, we know The Wizard of Oz so well there's a version of it edited to alphabetize every word. I enjoy it and you might too, a few minutes at a time, but before viewing Of Oz the Wizard take heed of the warning: "This film contains extremely fast editing, flashes of light, abrupt changes in image and sound."

I still forget, or really never knew, the popularity of the original series of children's novels by L. Frank Baum. They arrived at the turn of the century, were wildly loved for decades (though somewhat disreputable among librarians, like Nancy Drew mysteries), and are paid respect in a note at the start of this picture. This iconic 1939 Judy Garland breakout vehicle was actually already the seventh attempt to film Oz—seventh time's the charm, right? It reminds me of the Frankenstein story—once Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published two centuries ago, stage and then film productions never stopped coming. But now I'm drifting back to talking about it in terms of horror, so let me be clear. I think the best way to view The Wizard of Oz is by taking it as what it's intended to be: an expensive MGM musical built on the bones of vaudeville and meant to be seen in color.

11/22/63 (2011)

In this day and age it might be true that no one writes more compelling big fat novels than our master of horror, Stephen King. As you probably know (or can tell), 11/22/63 is not exactly horror, but more like straight-up science fiction time travel with a dash of alternate history, plus various moral object lessons. As is my experience with so many King novels, approximately the first third is the best part, busy laying out concepts and embarking on the quest of the plot. After that it's often a lot of attempts to resolve issues large and small, which starts to feel mechanical. For the most part King adheres to the DC Comics precepts of time travel—in short, you can't change history no matter what you do, so don't even try—though it switches up some of the rules and has a few surprises. The core premise is pure baby boomer territory, with our two main heroes traveling back to 1958 in a rift they find in the pantry of a diner. Their mission: thwart the assassination of John Kennedy. Complications ensue, as they will in a novel that runs to over 800 pages. Along the way I was impressed by how much information about that day I have absorbed—no surprise really, as I am a Social Security card-carrying baby boomer myself. This story adheres faithfully to the popular lone-gunman version of events, starring Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin. King hardly ignores the conspiracies, and doesn't exactly rule them out either, but Oswald is the guy they're trying to stop in this book. In an afterword, King discusses the case and how he arrived at the lone-gunman conclusion for himself. (And once again Case Closed is cited, so enough. I will have to get to it one day after all.) To be clear, on the other assumption about Kennedy's death, I do not agree with the idea that Kennedy's assassination was some critical pivot point of American history (beyond the space program), and it turns out King probably has some reservations about that too. There's not much in the way of profound historical insight here, but the great fun of this book is the getting there, always a wonderful point in works of these proportions, when they are working. King obviously relishes the detail of the period under consideration, 1958 to 1963, with the kind of incidentals at which he can be so good, popular culture markers of songs, movies, TV, news events, and even food, along with familiar family emotional dynamics. There's also a very nice love story here. As always, King's knack for making the ordinary feel portentous is well exercised. He is especially good here at anthropomorphizing circumstances—that is, the daily humdrum of good days and bad days—injecting indelible elements of malevolence into things like paper cuts or stumbling on a sidewalk, as if powerful unseen forces are constantly swirling around us and influencing things. This is a fun one for long days and nights of reading.

In case it's not at the library.

The Gunslinger (1982)

In a foreword to the first volume of The Dark Tower series, even Stephen King acknowledges The Gunslinger is a bit of a minor effort. "All too often I heard myself apologizing for it," he writes, "and telling people that if they persevered, they would find the story really found its voice in The Drawing of the Three [the second in the seven-volume series]." It's true enough, as far as I know. Everything in The Gunslinger appears to be elaborate foreshadowing, laying out the concept, and/or banging on symbolic notes of portent, with the familiar feature of a long walk through troubled lands. I will take the word of Stephen King (and a host of Amazon reviewers) that it's worth trying the second novel. And, to be sure, even though it's a slog, The Gunslinger is also mercifully short. I don't often go for these things. I liked Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell when I read it a few years ago, but I was mostly indifferent to The Lord of the Rings when I read it as a teen, and otherwise I've mostly steered clear of fantasy, especially anything specifically involving the word "quest." I will admit a weakness for the Dungeons and Dragons game, at least in electronic versions, but I think that might be beside the point really, a different animal. The only thing encouraging me to stick with the series one more round is because it's Stephen King, mainly, and then because he has claimed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as a primary source. The potential for an epic fiction, by Stephen King, riffing on that movie is just too appealing. I also hope to get a sense for whether it's even necessary to read this first book at all. No Amazon reviewer that I could see even entertained the idea of skipping it, so maybe it's necessary. We are introduced to what I suspect are the main figures in Roland (aka the gunslinger), "the man in black" (who may or may not end up with a name, but doesn't have one yet here), and Jake Chambers, a young boy who becomes Roland's sidekick, Robin to his Batman. They are walking and walking and walking. There's a lot of that. There are some promising monsters in the "Slow Mutants," reminiscent of the zombie style now, tormented homicidal slow-moving creatures. I think we have seen the basic good / evil dynamic from King already in The Stand, and I'm not sure how interested I even am in that. But I'll take the advice, given the benefit of the doubt, and try the second one. See how that goes.

In case it's not at the library.

Selma (2014)

UK / USA, 128 minutes
Director: Ava DuVernay
Writer: Paul Webb
Photography: Bradford Young
Editor: Spencer Averick
Cast: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, Andre Holland, Omar J. Dorsey, Alessandro Nivola, Giovanni Ribisi, Colman Domingo, Oprah Winfrey, Common, Keith Stanfield, Dylan Baker, Tim Roth, Lorraine Toussaint, Wendell Pierce, Cuba Gooding Jr., Martin Sheen

Late in 2012, days or even hours after the election of Barack Obama to a second term as president of the United States, it became apparent very little was going to be done in the coming four years. Opponents of Obama, never that inclined to accept the legitimacy of his constituency, simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of him. And though they uniformly and indignantly deny it, even as they hit the forward button on the latest email collection of watermelon jokes, their decision to continue criticizing and obstructing Obama at every turn has much less to do with the content of his character (let alone the policies, which all too often originated with them in the first place) and everything to do with the color of his skin.

Just so, the second half of Obama's presidency has morphed inevitably into a long and painful stasis of enforced meditation on race relations in America, focusing on issues such as gun violence, police brutality, drug laws, and the persistent racial inequities of the criminal justice system. Hollywood has chipped in too, churning out an informal trilogy on the subject in the form of Oscar-bait: first there was Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, which focused on the enormous difficulties of putting a legal end to slavery. Then there was 12 Years a Slave, which provided a useful profile of exactly that slavery. To nitpick a little, I think 12 Years should have come first, not just because an honest movie about slavery was so grossly overdue, but because it puts into appalling relief the urgency of ending slavery as an institution, and thus the shame of the politicians in Lincoln who resisted it even for a minute, let alone more than two centuries to that point. Last comes Selma, advancing the timeline of this narrative a full century, for a look at how slowly and insignificantly anything is changing. This little snapshot of progress is exactly what Martin Luther King meant when he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Emphasis on long.

The Stand (1994)

USA, 366 minutes, ABC TV miniseries
Director: Mick Garris
Writer: Stephen King
Photography: Edward J. Pei
Music: W.G. Snuffy Walden
Editor: Patrick McMahon
Cast: Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Jamey Sheridan, Laura San Giacomo, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Rob Lowe, Miguel Ferrer, Ray Walston, Corin Nemec, Matt Frewer, Adam Storke, Kellie Overbey, Bill Fagerbakke, Rick Aviles, Stephen King, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, John Landis, Sam Raimi, Ed Harris

Stephen King's heavy participation in this TV miniseries, which aired on ABC during the sweeps month of May 1994 (and won some Emmy Awards and nominations), complicates any assessment. He makes about three cameos too many, gets a credit as executive producer, and most importantly owns sole credit for the script. It seems safe to assume King had sufficient clout by 1994 to get his way—or maybe not. Not always sure how these things work. But the miniseries bears his imprimatur. He approved this message. Too bad, because it's weak sauce compared to the original novel (which I know only in its first-published shorter form). We're talking about a six-hour production here. If nothing else, for once and for all, this should retire the debate on the natural narrative scope of feature movies, which is much closer to short stories than novels. Let alone a mammoth novel such as The Stand. Let alone any fiction so explicitly grounded in the voice of the author. I don't think I had actually realized until now how important King's distinctive voice is to what he does. Somehow it makes all the disjointed claptrap that occupies these six hours cohere and work. This miniseries is to King's novel as David Lynch's Dune is to Frank Herbert's. The good points: the continuity of King, a lot of goodwill, a decent cast, a reasonable budget. Sure, more money might have helped. It never feels remotely like the end of the world, for one problem (whereas feeling exactly like the end of the world is one of the novel's great strengths). But special effects is not the problem. The relative compression of the miniseries ("compression," recalling that it is six hours) paradoxically just exposes all the flaws of the novel. It's the titanic showdown we know between Good and Evil—a ground that is terribly fraught with pitfalls already, yet managed well in the novel—suddenly reduced to a series of skits and dramatic reenactments of famous scenes from the novel. Sometimes things seem to be here just so we can hear the line, or see the visual. The rock 'n' roll soundtrack is lame too. The dynamic finally is on the order of Bugs Bunny (aka Good) and Daffy Duck (aka Evil). We know who wins that one. And we know who wins this one. Because that's the other thing—I can't see it makes any sense without bringing familiarity with the novel to it. All that said, if it's OK with King, and with at least a plurality of his fans (as judged by comments on IMDb.com, and skipping that nothing should ever be judged by comments on IMDb.com), then who am I? Inevitably, in today's moviemaking climate, another film version of The Stand is in the works—sounds like King will have less involvement, though his status as 800-lb. gorilla has to be more imposing than ever. If it makes any difference. Whatever. I can't help thinking it's bound to look approximately as meager as this. For me, the whole thing is a no-brainer. Read the book.

Tapestry (1971)

(Somewhat addled previous review here. Somewhat more sensible review of the main song here.)

I wrote this piece for a fanzine in the '90s. The topic was something on the order of "first record," which you will see I was at pains to twist to my own ends. For better or worse I still own the album in vinyl, as described, perhaps a bit more aged now (and my turntable still needs replacing too).

The Stand (1978)

I saw some list awhile back that ranked Stephen King's books—he's up to over 60 now. I was only a little surprised to see The Stand top the list, which did not specify an edition: either the ginormous edition originally published or the unexpurgated edition that added some 400 more pages to that, evidently after King had won the authorial clout to add back requested editorial cuts. I've only got the first version; I understand the longer version isn't that much of an improvement. I also happened to be watching Twin Peaks AND The Lord of the Rings at the time, so I had my hands full with fantastical showdowns between good and evil. King's mammoth novel starts with a super-flu virus that wipes out better than 99% of the human population on the planet. All in itself that qualifies as a staggering vision. The survivors sort themselves into Team Good (headed up by a centenarian African American woman known as Mother Abagail, who lives in Nebraska) and Team Evil, headed up by a demon known as Randall Flagg, the Walkin Dude. Team Evil is headquartered in Las Vegas (of course) and Team Good in Boulder, Colorado. The to-do list for the novel is giant, starting with wiping out most human beings. Thus a lot of the action is devoted to setting up the many, many pieces—there are dozens of significant characters—and putting them through their paces. It was a page-turning thrill ride my first time through but has been relatively more sedate since. In fact, I've only managed to get all the way through it again once (hence the real reason for my reluctance to go for the bigger version). As with all of the King I've read it's as compulsively readable as you'd ever want the first time. After that you start to see how he does it more—it's often a matter of repetition, stroking out the main points like brushing an animal. I have no quarrel whatsoever with calling him the master of horror literature for our times—also its best critic. King is good at striking the affable tone that draws you in and stands by all the way as your friend, alternating more secretly with the creep who will say and do anything to get a rise out of you. His imagination truly is fiendish and almost all of his stuff I know, not least The Stand, manages to unnerve me one way or another. The difference in The Stand is that it is on such an epic, colossal scale. If you don't know it yet, as the saying goes, I envy you. Try the big version.

In case it's not at the library.

Son of Danse Macabre (2012)

I appreciated Bryce Wilson's brave and bold idea of updating Stephen King's essential Danse Macabre, the critical history of horror published in 1981. Wilson, who among other things operates the noteworthy Things That Don't Suck blog, set himself to update King's volume for the developments in the genre over the past 30 and more years. It's fair to say those developments have been considerable, and in fact I still have some hope that King himself will get around to it. But Wilson's shot is certainly fine until then. He loves and understands the form, and he knows his stuff. I think he's strongest on film. It's where the passion comes through. On comic books and literature, I trust his judgments, but I sometimes get a feeling that some stones may have been left unturned. No matter. You can't always get to everything, and he's good enough (and probably young enough) that he could well develop the same authority there that he already has with movies (and TV). And I think it's a laudable exercise in itself any time someone takes on a history of any form that draws them. It forces research, and the reward is invaluable perspective, and it's almost always interesting writing. We'll see how that works out for Wilson in the fullness of time—I have my hopes. Meanwhile, though I disagreed with him on some matters, I thoroughly enjoyed his views on things, wide and narrow. When I was familiar with some of his areas of focus—Scream, The Blair Witch Project, and The Ring, most notably—I found him insightful, leading me to deeper appreciations of many elements. He has also become a go-to critical resource just like that. I came away from this with a little list of films to see and things to read, and I am already looking forward to them. If you know Danse Macabre you almost can't go wrong with Son of—even if, like most sequels, it's a few steps back of the original. In this neck of the woods, being a few steps back of Stephen King means you're doing pretty damned good.

In case it's not at the library.

"It's Too Late" (1971)

2. Carole King, "It's Too Late" (May 22, 1971, #1, 5 wks.)

Like most people, I tend to prefer Carole King's work as a songwriter in the early '60s when she was a key part of the Brill Building brain trust that ruled the pop airwaves of the time. Usually co-written with her then-husband Gerry Goffin, her songs include "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" by the Shirelles, "The Loco-Motion" by Little Eva (who was a household maid and babysitter for King and Goffin), the infamous "He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss)" by the Crystals (produced by Phil Spector), "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees in 1967—it's actually a long list. The album from which this comes, Tapestry, is entirely different, a creature of its mellow post-hippie times, gauzy and gentle and slightly burnt-out about things. But the truth is I didn't know any of this about her or the album in the summer of 1971, when you couldn’t turn on the radio and avoid hearing for long the strains of “It’s Too Late.” It always caught me up, made me genuinely sad, even tearful on some occasions. Its details were so right, opening with “Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time,” its generalities provocative (“Something inside has died and I can’t hide”), its overwhelming conclusion impossible to refute: “And it’s too late, baby, now it’s too late.” The song captures an essence of giving up, which is likely why it struck so many deep chords at the time with me and, obviously, others. But in another way, “It’s Too Late” runs somewhat against convention. More than anything, it’s a song about giving up on a deeply felt connection, a person you have been living with, for no obvious or good reason other than “Now you look so unhappy, and I feel like a fool.” There is thus a good deal of deceptive complexity to it, which I think has contributed to making it so enduringly significant for me.

"Stand by Me" (1961 / 1986)

66. Ben E. King, "Stand by Me" (May 22, 1961, #4 / Nov. 1, 1986, #9)

One of those freaks of pop music history, a song that managed to chart on two separate occasions, in this case separated by more than 25 years, which might make it the record-holder ("The Twist" was by just two years and "Monster Mash" by 11). The second showing was largely the result of a movie of the same name, based on a Stephen King novel, directed by Rob Reiner, and featuring Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, and Kiefer Sutherland—you can probably imagine how that would make a good platform for launching a hit. And it's not a bad show, worth seeing for any number of reasons, but probably the best thing you can say about it now is that it reminded everybody what a great song this is, spare and supple and swooningly beautiful, seething with understated power. It's one of the finest products to come out of the Brill Building era, in that "Up on the Roof"/"Under the Boardwalk" Drifters mode when the three-minute wizards were particularly fascinated with orchestral accompaniments. Written by the singer himself, Ben E. King, with Leiber and Stoller (oh yeah, them again), it actually was originally intended for those Drifters, but King got the honors when they turned it down. It's been widely covered (see) but surely we can all agree that King's original remains the best, as the 1986 resurgence incidentally argues convincingly as well for. In fact, it's hard to imagine any other voice leading the lovely charge here, just as it's hard to imagine any other arrangement. The simplicity of it is absolutely pristine. I think what I'm trying to say is that this is just about perfect the way it is, and I can't imagine how anyone ever could improve on it in even one single way.

Tapestry (1971)

"It's Too Late" Carole King never married Brian Wilson and Brian Wilson never committed suicide and I don't think anyone like John Turturro or Bruce Davison was ever involved, but in every other way Allison Anders's movie Grace of My Heart is true to the marrows. This is what comes of a lifetime of cheap mythologizing. What people used to forget (or never knew) about Carole King is the first chapter of her career as one of the finest songwriters to come out of midtown's Brill Building. But, that said, Edna Buxton's Grace of My Heart could not possibly match this, if only for "It's Too Late," the saddest song ever to sell by the millions. "Oh, the water Let it run all over me And it stoned me to my soul." That's a Van Morrison song, but it describes perfectly the experience of hearing "It's Too Late" the first thousand or so times.

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