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.
The Tommyknockers are at the door …
My copy is the one I originally read. It came from a used bookstore, but had a public library stamp on page 51. The covers did their best to try to rip up as I was rereading this one, but they held on for one more reading. A little sticker says it was four dollars. Inside is a red stamp inking out the bookstore’s address. The margins in my printing are oddly inconsistent. A few pages slipped in the process, it seems.
Inside was a card I had once used as a bookmark. The card was for 33% off a collector’s Atlanta Falcon’s football jersey from J.C. Penny’s. It expired December 27, 1992. It marked pages 606 and 607. I had a weird moment after seeing that where I wondered, “Did I finish reading this book?!”
In the dedication, King mentions he lost a beloved beta reader and friend George Everett McCutheon. He thanks many other people, too.
“For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost —” King begins his novel with a character stumbling over her destiny. Stumbling over your destiny in a King novel isn’t always a good thing, but you should always trust a dog’s instincts about where there is danger. If she hadn’t looked back, she might have let it all go.
King brings up everyone going crazy at the same time in Blessing, Utah in 1884. There is a minor obsession online with this mention in King’s books which has never seemed to materialize in any of his later books I can find. If I find out otherwise, I’ll let you know. Would love to see a supernatural splatter western from King addressing this mass insanity.
The novelist character in the story felt like her characters were always quick-witted and never had to deliberate over comebacks. She found this to rarely be the case for herself in real life.
Immaculate excretion is one of the terms I remember most clearly from this novel and used the phrase once in college and impressed a college theater professor.
“No idea he’d meet this man again under less cherry circumstances.” King is the master of these sort of one-line foreshadowing moments. “He would never see ____ ____ again,” is another we get in this novel.
The pages of the book within a book for Buffalo Solider stuck in my memory from the last reading. I still kind of want to read that book.
Flying saucers are described as being out of style. No self-respecting author would write about them and no self-respecting editor would take a story about them.
What happened to Peter?!
A reference to the giants in Genesis plays well in this story.
“Did you drive or was you driven.” Great line in and out of context.
“squatting on his huncks” is used more than once in this book.
King often has characters point out “this is real life” as they describe how things would work out differently if this were “some novel.” It’s an interesting cheat to add realism to your book.
Stephen King will indulge in long descriptions of people and places including those secondary to the plot. I like the way he does it most of the time. I don’t think I could pull it off. In this book we get a lot of detail about the extra townspeople and the town’s history itself. He uses news stories again to dump some information.
King heaps praise on the writing of Robertson Davies.
I remember the description of the alien minds of the bats really clearly. I remember the doctor pilot scene really well, too.
The shift to Gard speaking to the collective memory of the Tommyknockers themselves is fascinating sci fi.
The relationship between two brothers becomes an important redemption thread through the novel.
King says at one point that Gardner goes out to ship by himself for the first time, but he had been out there alone with the pumps earlier. A character spreads her lips away from her teeth that have supposedly fallen out, but then her grin is toothless again later.
The woman in charge of the poetry tour lived in Derry from It along with many of the secondary characters and secondary action in the novel taking place this town or two over from Haven. Derry is the closest hospital to get help. Grandpa hears chuckling from the drains in Derry. A clown with silver dollar eyes stares out from the drain, too. In this version of King’s many worlds, I’m not sure that “It” has died. Just another threat from space, I suppose.
Gardner talks about Ka like in The Dark Tower books. Kreig locks move from Annie’s door in Misery to Bobbi’s shed here in The Tommyknockers. There’s mention of The Shop in this book from Firestarter and they become important in the aftermath. Talk of burying someone in the garden under the crops may have inspired a story in Four Past Midnight. A reporter who believed in the main character from the Dead Zone reappears in this one. King references himself in the story. Jack Nicholson in The Shining is brought up.
There is an Opus for President tee shirt along with several others. Very, very 1980s. Tee shirt slogans are starting to pop up for a few books in a row in King’s catalog. Watchers by Dead Koontz is mentioned along with Floating Dragon by Peter Straub. We talk of Magnum P.I. and Miami Vice. We discuss Luke and Laura on General Hospital and someone watches Hill Street Blues. Sylvester Stallone’s appearance in COBRA comes up, too. Jimmy Swaggart is mentioned in this book as well as earlier in Drawing of the Three. Jack Imp is discussed in here as well. Super unleaded gasoline is 99 cents. Israel is bombing Lebanon and Russia is fighting in Afghanistan. Gorilla Monsoon is mention. A coke machine with glass bottles bearing the slogan “The Real Thing!” gets to do a little killing, too. A Merlin toy makes an appearance. I remember those.
King spent five years working on The Tommyknockers from start to finish. As a reader, the time spent was well worth it for my experience reading it and then rereading it.
My next post will be Before The Dark Half which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
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