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.
He sees the line. When you see the line, you can’t unsee it.
Dreamcatcher was finished in May, but the edits must have finished in late 2000. The book was published in the first half of 2001. I think this book was submitted in its final form in the debacle of the 2000 election but before it was decided. King skirts around that by not mentioning the president by name, but referring to him through angry characters in the book as the Florida President. We place Bush in that role because we know what happened by the time we read this novel. The president is discussing alien invasion instead of 9/11 as he calms the nation.
I didn’t remember that the word hipster was in use in 2000. He mentions people watching the TV show ER a good bit in books that span the 90s into the 2000s. Palm pilots and Blockbuster video cards aplenty.
Stephen King wrote this novel while he was in the depth of his hard recovery from the nearly fatal van vs pedestrian accident. One of his characters mirrors those experiences with recovery and the details of post-recovery difficulties.
The book opens with dozens of headlines from over the span of the 20th Century of UFO sightings from Roswell, New Mexico onward.
Some knockaround friends stick together over drinks while going nowhere. A car dealer knows a name without being told it. At least one of his friends has similar power. A suicidal psychiatrist has a touch of it, too. These hunting buddies who go way back together have secrets in the woods it seems as we leap forward through time in big bursts.
They grew up in Derry in the 70s and early 80s and missed Pennywise, although “Pennywise Lives” is spray-painted somewhere later. Derry looms much larger over the bulk of King’s work through the years than Castle Rock itself, I think. It appears The Losers Club from It left a plaque. This I don’t understand. When? They all lost their memories not long after the storm.
The bleeding and losing teeth seem at first to be similar symptoms to exposure to the aliens in Tommyknockers. There are some frightening key differences that come to light though.
A visceral, splattery-perfect description of a very base monster with deadly violent horror potential may be some of the best work in the novel. The life cycles of the aliens and the problem Earth presents to them is really well constructed. King’s utilization of the idea that aliens aren’t that smart in the traditional sense, but that they are utilizing technology left by older, conquered species is interesting. He’s turned traditional aliens into something rotten and infectious. Outer space thrush is terrifying. The aliens using different voices to communicate was well done, too.
The mysteries in the book were revealed in a way that kept me connected and for a while had me fearing King wasn’t going to explain everything. I should trust him more by now.
We do get back to it, the strangeness of this group of friends, before the alien strangeness of the woods in the present.
There is a lot of flashback in this novel.
“Silence gives consent” is a terrible policy.
Watch out for Mr. Grey. The refuge of the mind and “the mental telephone” idea appears in The Regulators, too. Military A-holes vs humanity vs alien Typhoid Mary possession in a three-way chase for the fate of the world carries us through the last half of the novel.
The news report details were a little on the nose. Henry’s contemplations run a little long.
Can’t change the past, a character muses. Can’t kill Lee Harvey Oswald. King seems to be toying with the premise of 11/22/63 at this point in his writing career.
“The claret began to flow” is King’s new phrase for bleeding in the last few books.
You save the world but get paid off in the traditional manner. Same shit different day, our heroes say often.
At no point was I able to consistently predict where the story was going. Pieces were all introduced and paid off, but I didn’t make the connections ahead of the author this time, so well done.
My next post in this series will be After Black House which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
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