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 revisit these great stories … and the other ones, too.
In the introduction, King explains the oldest story was written 18 years prior and the newest in 1983, a 17 year span of writing. He was paid $2000 by Playboy for “Word Processor of the Gods” in the early 80’s. In the end notes, he explains that some time much earlier than that he was paid $250 for the original version of “The Raft.” It was also published by a girlie magazine publisher, but he had no idea where and had to rewrite the story from scratch into the version that appears in this collection. He used the money to pay a fine to keep himself out of jail for a drunken incident involving traffic cone theft. In the intro, he does the math on short stories being losers. $2000 for a short story today would be one hell of a winner.
He discusses short stories coming to him in the form of the thought “wouldn’t it be funny if …” Then, they grow or die from there.
He also confesses that he “writes like fat ladies diet.” He claims he has a problem with bloat.
I wrote an article for Dark Moon Digest about Stephen King’s best and worst collections. I decided to place this one pretty high. I’ll save the conclusion about how high it ranks for now for those who read that article.
“The Mist” is the novella that leads off the collection. A good one by King.
Brandon O’Dell, a friend of mine, played Bobby Eagleton in the movie version of The Mist. Unless I’m remembering wrong, it was Bobby in the movie, but Buddy Eagleton in the book.
“This is what happened” is the first line of the story. In the notes, King said he took the first line from another author and another story. It is a great first line for being everything a first line really shouldn’t be.
“Five year olds have as many questions as Hallmark has cards.” Great line if people are still familiar with Hallmark as a greeting card company and not just a maker of Christmas romance movies. “Haven’t seen my wife since then.” This is such an easily forgotten line later in the novel. So well done. “Old trees want to hurt you” is a great line, too, and powerfully true, if you’ve ever lived in a place surrounded by old trees. “We should have gone back then, but it might have already been too late.” Excellent line. “Kids are in a semi permanent state of shock until they are thirteen” is funny and heartbreaking in a story like this. “Being good is good enough. You know what talent is? The curse of expectation.” Interesting lines.
They had to use payphones and not cellphones. “Anybody got a camera” is a line that only works pre SmartPhone era, too.
The Arrowhead Project is the big bad across the lake in this one and the prototype for the big bad corporation used in Stranger Things, I think. Maybe in tribute to the big bad organizations in King’s work like this one.
“What happened to the flat earth society” is a chapter/section title. It is used as a metaphor here, but they’ve made a comeback in real life recently, I suppose.
The absence of the wife/mother is played beautifully. She’s a character not present. She’s Godot, I guess. In the end notes, there are certain actions that play out that King worried were cheap because the husband was able to do them without facing the wife afterward. As a reader, I think it still works really well.
“Of” was switched for “or” in this copy of the book. I looked it up in another copy of the story. Typos are being added to Stephen King stories in the reprintings by modern editors.
Rereading this story as a father, the expedition to the drug store makes a lot less sense.
I like the ending of the story more than the ending of the movie.
“Here There Be Tygers” is a story difficult to wrap my mind around. The business with the “basement” as a concept for the bathroom conflict between the teacher and students needs more explaining. B-I-T-C-H … not a sin if you spell it. That is good business inside the kid’s head. It’s such an odd, surreal story. When your imagination kills, I suppose, but I’m almost certain my interpretation of the story is off.
“The Monkey” is an interesting horror tale. It is an example of how King writes father-son relationships pretty well, but writes the relationship between young brothers with excellence. That includes both positive and negative versions of those relationships. In the book On Writing, King talks about his brother and himself going through stuff in an attic and finding out about his father, a man who was absent in his life, in that way. He clearly used those experiences in this story.
In this story, the father’s old horror becomes the sons’ new discovery.
There is a Crystal Lake in this one. Maybe before the name was popularized in the Friday the 13th franchise. The kids watch Beverly Hillbillies, a very 1980’s daytime rerun. Culture Club is on the cover of a magazine.
The story ends with a news article. I think he pulled away from this narrative technique later in his writing career.
“Cain Rose Up” is written in the spirit of Rage and Apt Pupil. A decent flash piece or as close to flash fiction as King can get.
“Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” is probably in the top three of what I consider King’s best short stories. About once a year, I catch myself starting to rewrite it.
Crime fiction author Eryk Pruitt did an excellent episode of Castle Rock Radio Podcast on this story.
“If you save enough distance, you’ll save time as well.” That line has stuck with me for years.
There is a Cujo reference in this one.
The gifts and costs of short cuts.
This and a few other of King’s stories have a third party telling someone else’s story in what is a common practice with gothic storytelling in particular.
“The Jaunt” may be a contender for Stephen King’s best short story. It breaks all sorts of storytelling rules in the most Stephen King of ways. The ending has always haunted me.
“The Wedding Gig” is an interesting crime fiction departure that may be the seeds of storytelling from the most recent era of his writing career. King has a thing for fat people in his stories. This is a wonderfully strange little gangland style story from the 20’s and 30’s
“Paranoid: Chant” is poetry. Interesting mental deterioration explored. The prose version of this plays out in the Flexible Bullet near the end of the book.
“The Raft” is a cool bottle story. Ballet vs. burlesque for undressing is great description. “She looked like someone famous or semi-famous … he wouldn’t place it until later under less pleasant circumstances.” Vintage King foreshadowing. “Fear, directionless but powerful …” is great stuff. A reference to Sandy Duncan on Broadway as Peter Pan. Reference to turning off a record without lifting the needle. Many readers have no point of reference to this today, I bet. The death on Bon Scott from ACDC is mentioned. Romanes and Thin Lizzy as well. A different ending than the Creep Show short that I still had in my head superimposed over this story. More ambiguous.
“Word Processor of the Gods” is another contender for the top few spots of King’s best short stories. I find myself liking this main character far less than I did the first time I read this story. Another “fat” character at 180 pounds. Word processors were still bulky and cost $3000 at the time of the story. The dad was kind of shitty with his “son” about the computer at the end.
“The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands” brings us back to the secret club of The Breathing Method at 249B East 35th. I had to look up a nostrum is. It is ineffective medicine made by an unqualified person. The New York World is mentioned here as it was in the Jaunt. It was important to the history of newspapers and ran from the 1800’s through 1931. This story smacks of the story Thinner with the course the story follows. “How do you like them apples?” is used in this story.
“Beach World” is another story wherein King has characters getting mesmerized as in The Raft and others of his stories. They still know the Beach Boys 8000 years from now. Good for them.
“The Reaper’s Image” is an interesting story of the horror of oblivion. “The only way to talk to a fool is to ignore him” is a good line. The object is moved by hand and insured by Lloyd’s of London. It opens with a mystery to keep you reading. We get an elaborate history of the object and vivid detail of its unusual qualities.
“Nora” should have been easy to guess the twist, but I didn’t and I read it before a long time ago. “Do you love?” is a line used in this, in The Raft, and in the final story of this collection. A minor obsession of King’s. It’s a Castle Rock story. “But who was the spider?” is a great line. Ace Merrill plays an important part in the backstory and a fat woman, too. “Good looks are cheap in a wealthy country” is an interesting line. “You get the wave” was used here and in Beach World earlier. The horror of rats is used here and comes up in some of his later work.
“For Owen” is another poem. There is another fat reference. Comparing the children in the school to fruit. And wearing someone’s face until it stretches out.
“Survivor Type” could be one of King’s best stories, too. I had skipped this story when I first read the book and then read it later on at some point. Can you believe that? I may remember the details of this story the best of any of them. Even my other “favorite” stories surprised me with details I forgot.
“Uncle Otto’s Truck” isn’t necessarily a terrible story, but may be one of the weakest in the collection. I’m a sucker for Stephen King backstory even though I recognize it is a weakness on his part for many readers. I did enjoy the back story in this one, but then the ending fell a little flat for me. If you’re going to give that much back story and build up, the ending probably needs to deliver more.
“It’s a great relief to write this down” is a great opening line, though. He uses “grue,” as in the baseword for gruesome. That threw me a little. A lot of build-up to what was a lackluster reveal in my opinion.
“Morning Deliveries MilkMan #1” The milkman delivers more than milk and he’s going to see Rocky in the follow-up story. This is the stronger of the two milkman stories, but that isn’t saying much. Together with Uncle Otto’s Truck they are the three weakest stories in the collection. I think this pair of stories are weaker together and this one might be stronger, if it had no connection to the other.
“Big Wheels a Tale of the Laundry Game the Milkman #2” A long story about drunk assholes getting an inspection sticker. The two stories are connected which could have been great, but these two do not deliver on the potential.
“Gamma” King uses “wash boards” a lot. Those are boards laid across dirt roads that allow you to drive across washed out, muddy ruts. There’s a party line phone. Gramma is having trouble resting and carries dark family secrets.
“The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet” is writers, editors, agents, and wives telling and listening to a story. Sort of the gothic second and third hand telling. There is an explanation of madness in the story within the story. Involuntary committal is discussed in this story and is a major plot point in Thinner. The narrator announces the inexplicable part of the story coming which actually worked pretty well for foreshadowing. This story probably would have benefitted from being a bit shorter.
“The Reach” brings us back to “Do you love?” an apparent obsession of King’s at the time. The islands remind me of the setting described in “Home Delivery” from a much later collection and I expect to find that setting again in at least a few more stories before I’m done reading all his work. “The reach was longer back then” is a sentiment everyone who lives long enough to recognize their aging or who has to face death on a personal level knows that feeling.
The Notes on the stories at the end were great. Worth reading before closing the book.
My next post will be Before It which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
Jay's Patreon Page | Purchase Signed Books