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.
You’ve been here before. Sure you have …
This is supposed to be the last Castle Rock Novel, but we will of course make a few more visits later in King’s career. The “about the author” bit at the end mentions The Tommyknockers as a Castle Rock novel. That book took place in Haven and bled over into Derry, too. Don’t believe I recall Castle Rock being a setting in that novel at all.
There are a ton of characters in Needful Things. We get to know a few of the early characters in the confines of the shop. And we meet old Leland Gaunt. I haven’t thought about him for a while.
Before it is all over, we mention Frank Dodd from The Dead Zone, we discuss Cujo many times, and Pop Merrill from The Sun Dog. Needful Things has a polaroid camera in one of the cases. Maybe a nod to The Sun Dog. A character wakes up at Four Past Midnight, the title of the collection The Sun Dog novella appears in. The tabloid Inside View from The Dead Zone is mentioned. The narrator mentions the boys from the story The Body, when Ace enters the story. “Simple Simon” was mentioned and was important to the story in The Library Policeman. Our final glimpse of the path of the salesman takes us back to Junction City from The Library Policeman. We get to see the happily ever after of our main characters from that story and the site of the real estate office gets an awning and a new name. “The coming of The White” is big in the conclusion in this novel and was important in The Wastelands from The Dark Tower series.
We mention the trouble with Iraq going on under the first Bush administration during the time this novel was written. Some characters are watching Twin Peaks. The Patriots are “bound to win one eventually.” Someone gets tickets to go see Bill Cosby in Portland. Video arcades are a big part of kids’ lives in the time period of the story. Geraldo and Opera are on TV. Young Guns II is in theaters.
Sheriff Pangborn has lost his younger son and his wife. This loss was mentioned in The Sun Dog. It is dealt with in this novel. The writer character in The Dark Half where we first meet Pangborn is discussed. The writer started drinking again. His wife leaves him and takes the twins. The Dark Half narrative was bigger to Pangborn’s backstory in this novel than I remembered. The sparrows are flying again.
Making shadow animals and doing magic tricks is an interesting bit of character work for Pangborn. Of course, it becomes significant at the end of the novel.
One of the women in town has an Adam’s Apple.
People get what they “want.” Then, they hoard it and don’t really enjoy the items for fear that someone will take them. In the end, none of them are what they appear to be.
The human moments of kindness are unraveled under the manipulation of Mr. Gaunt.
Wilma’s and Nettie’s battle came earlier in the novel than I remembered. The bloody violence throughout is well-written.
King writes in one section that “his reaction is probably better imagined than described.” A very interesting way to employ the reader’s imagination without doing any description.
Ace Merrill steps back on the scene in all his chrome and high-octane glory.
From out of Lovecraft lore, we get “Yog-Sothoth rules” graffiti.
“Perfect one part Baptist harmony” is a good line.
A bunch of the teachers at the high school are doing coke.
Brian Rusk’s story bothered me a lot more during this reading than the first time I read the novel.
Polly goes out to the property where Cujo took place to play a little trick on Ace.
“Everything must go” is a great title for the final act of the book.
Leland is apparently centuries old and crosses cultures and lands in his dark form.
The sheriff taking longer to figure out the mystery in this story was good.
“Nothing that makes you feel this way can be good for you.”
My next post will be Before Gerald’s Game which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
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