...or, Palimpsest Gets Popular. And writers don't come much more popular than Stephen King. Why, he's had more books adapted for the stage and screen than William Shakespeare. I've never been tempted to try him before, mainly because of his reputation as a horror hack, but also from his occasional snippy public proclamations, like when he argued that more critical attention should be paid to popular writers ... just because they're popular. Go tell it to your accountant, Stephen. And he's oddly defensive in the midst of self-satisfaction when he writes about being warned by his agent early in his career that he would get 'typed' as a horror writer:
Stephen King said:
And I decided ... that I could be in worse company. I could, for example, be an 'important' writer like Joseph Heller and publish a novel every seven years or so, or a 'brilliant' writer like John Gardner and write obscure books for bright academics who eat macrobiotic foods and drive old Saabs with faded but still legible GENE McCARTHY FOR PRESIDENT stickers on the rear bumpers.
Chill, Stevie! So Heller is 'worse company' because he takes so long to write his books? Or bright academics aren't supposed to be catered for? These comments by him, it's worth noting, aren't in response to criticism from these writers, or others, but unsolicited salvos from King that show more how he feels about his own writing than how others feel about it.
Anyway. At the same time one shouldn't ignore a writer just because they're popular, of course, so I asked about and was told that a good place to start with King was his collection of stories (novellas, really, ranging from 70 to 200 pages) Different Seasons (1982). It's mostly non-horror, none of the stories is as long as one of his usual behemoth novels, and there is a high adaptation rate, with three of the stories becoming films, the first the frequently poll-top-tenning The Shawshank Redemption.
And I have just finished reading the story it's based on, entitled Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. This is a good time to swipe at King's cloth ear for a title. You what? His book titles aren't much better, ranging from the merely pedestrian (Misery, The Shining, or the hilarious names-beginning-with-C series of Christine, Carrie and Cujo) to the downright abominable (Gerald's Game, The Tommyknockers, Everything's Eventual, From a Buick 8). This does not bode well for a reader who thinks a good title is not necessarily essential, but certainly heavily important to the overall satisfaction of a good book. And it reflects on the author's ear for words generally.
I suspect King's greatest fans would not claim he has a good way with prose. Indeed, King himself in more conciliatory mode accepts it:
Stephen King said:
[M]y stuff ... is fairly plain, not very literary, and sometimes (though it hurts like hell to admit it) downright clumsy. To some degree or other, I would guess that those very qualities - unadmirable though they may be - have been responsible for the success of my novels. Most of them have been plain fiction for plain folks, the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and large fries from McDonald's. I am able to recognise elegant prose and to respond to it, but have found it difficult or impossible to write it myself.
This quote, and that above, by the way, are both from the Afterword to Different Seasons, which may well be the most interesting thing in the book. Certainly Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is not very interesting. I haven't seen the film, which I know a lot of people rate highly, so don't be offended: it's probably entirely different. The best I can say about the story though (and the publishers can have this for the back of the next edition if they like, crediting it to A Literary Fusspot), is that it wasn't painful, and I can think of worse ways to spend your time (like watching Big Brother).
Needless to say, the prose never rises above pedestrian. Although it's written in a first person narrative, there's little character to it, and no style at all. Occasionally King strains for effect - "time drew out like a blade" (no it didn't) - but mainly the problem with 'bad prose' like this isn't a lack of clever metaphors or poetic words, but just too much slush. King can't shut up. "Let me tell you a little about solitary confinement" he says - OK then, a little, not two solid pages. The story itself should be half the length it is, if you get rid of all the extraneous detail and water-treading blah. Under the prose, then, is there a good story trying to get out? Well, not really: the main spring of the story was completely obvious to me as soon as Red mentioned the large Rita Hayworth poster than Andy Dufresne wanted him to get for his cell wall. And sure enough, it happens, presented baldly in a separated-out paragraph as if we're meant to be surprised. But King, or Red, doesn't end there, and drags the thing beyond all consciousness, to a couple further ending-ettes, which clear away any possible ambiguity - I was willing him, when he went to look for the black stone, to find it undisturbed, to give us a little bleakness - and leave the story festering in sickly sentimental Hollywood optimism (no wonder it was optioned for the screen).
This doesn't take account of the other problems with the story: Red tries to persuade us on page 2 that he killed his wife because of all the hatred that had built up from his being under the thumb of her bullying father - but on page 1 he has already told us that he did it for the insurance policy he took out in her name. If a more careful writer did this, I would presume it was an indicator that our narrator was not to be trusted: but I don't think King meant it that way, so it's just carelessness, in which case we're meant to believe everything Red tells us, with nothing to put in for ourselves.
So that's the first hundred-pager. Crimecat said this book was reputed to contain two of the finest American short stories of the 20th century - though I don't know if that was cc's own view or just passing on that of others. Was Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption one of the two, crimecat? And - everyone now - should I bother reading on, to Apt Pupil, The Body (filmed as Stand By Me) and The Breathing Method? Do we have any King fans in the house?
