By Jay Wilburn
The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.
You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.
Let’s gently brush our fingers over the pages of Thinner …
I got this book the same time I got The Bachman Books. Both the standalone volume of Thinner and the four Bachmann novels in that one collection were purchased from the same used bookstore in Atlanta at the same time when I was in high school and shortly after I discovered Stephen King. I looked back at my posts on those Bachman books I’ve already revisited to see if I mentioned if I thought I bought the books myself. I mentioned getting them from the used bookstore in the early 1990’s, but not specifically that I bought them. Now that I’m picking up Thinner again, I believe I remember my father buying them for me.
I don’t remember being with him when he purchased them. I’m not sure I was even aware that King had written under a pen name, having just recently discovered an appreciation for his work. I didn’t get along well with my father, and he was volatile. I was sometimes most afraid when he did something nice for me. If I did not show the right level of appreciation or if I showed any apprehension, it could set him off.
I am remembering this now because him giving me these books was one of those moments. The Richard Bachman name was new to me, so I was confused. The “fifth” book, Thinner, being by itself and separate from the four in one volume confused me, too. My father was excited he had found them for me while looking for books for himself. I saw his face cloud when he started to interpret my confusion for lack of gratitude. I tried to compensate by expressing excessive excitement. I don’t remember how well it worked other than I didn’t get hit that day, which is well enough.
Another close shave I remember was around The Hobbit. I loved that book ever since I read it in 4th grade and reread it multiple times while I was still young and later as a teacher to elementary classes I taught early in that career. My dad had a battered copy that I still have on my shelf now and read with my son as part of his schooling. I went up to look for it on my father’s shelf one time and couldn’t find it. I went to ask him for help, but he was busy and told me to find it myself because it was there. I went back and forth more than once and finally, he told me, “if I go to look for it and find it, I’m going to smack you. Is that what you want?” I told him I wanted him to find it even if it meant me getting smacked. He went up and found the spine pretty quickly. I took it from his hand and braced myself. He stood there a moment longer over me and then just walked out without a word or a strike. For some reason, the times I was beaten particularly badly, like hospital visit bad, and the times I got away without a beating I was sure was coming, stick out in my mind most sharply. There were other times I failed to find things my father sent me to get, and then when he found them, he followed through on the backswing.
I also remember him reading to me at night when I was younger than the years of my Hobbit reading. I would sit in his lap on the recliner while he read books like Treasure Island or the Wind through the Willows. I would lay my ear against his chest and listen to his voice rumble as he read. It made me think of what the chest of a great dragon might sound like.
The Running Man and The Long Walk captured my attention from the beginning. I took on Rage and Roadwork later and with less mind-blowing reaction than the first two stories. Thinner came much, much later than that. These books survived to be in my house now which is no small miracle through my journey to a stable home today. I believe I took on Thinner after college started. It was a quick read for me and I want to say it was in junior college during a stretch of finals week when I was acing my tests and had time to kill before I found where I was going to land between terms.
I had done well with studying. I believe I had a starting place to live lined up for the beginning of the holidays that year, but still needed somewhere to stay until I could get back up to school for the back half. I had a job lined up and thought I could find someone to take me in for the stretch once I was back in Atlanta, but I couldn’t do anything about it until I got there. Time to think about that wasn’t productive. The population on campus was growing thin as finals wrapped up. I had even exempted a few finals and classes, so I had stretches of time between my obligations.
I read Thinner in that cold and quiet time of waiting for everything to end, if I’m remembering correctly. I tore through it between a couple Grisham novels among other things. I was filling the time, so I didn’t have to think because I felt that I was getting “thinner.” My life was thinning out on me. My options were drawing thinner.
I wonder how the story might read differently to me now from a much better place in my life. My next post will be After Thinner which you will find linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
— Jay Wilburn, thin and sexy
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