Seven Reasons We Read Stephen King

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1. He's Fearless


2. He's Mean


3. He Writes Uphill


4. He's A Woman


5. He's A Scaredy Rat


6. He's Disgusting


7. He's Everywhere
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 17, 2012 at 2:09 AM

    Nice summation Reverend.

    While this comment might seem off topic, I'd like it filed under the scaredy rat heading because it has to do with fear...and 11/22/63.

    Sigh...I'll wait....

    What's more interesting is it's easy to hear that line refrain in your head as Jake makes his way through the blasted wasteland that is the novel unstable alternate world (I think timeline should no longer be used to describe that whole sequence).

    Got all the groans out of the system? Good, in that case all I wanted to say was I found an interesting line from the novel, "The boy blamed everyone else for problems he made himself." That it's the historical James Hosty who says it is interesting.

    In a way, I think the character Hosty is describing Jake as much as Oswald in that line. I’ll also go out on a limb and say it’s King’s own judgment on himself as he used to be back in the late Eighties early Nineties as described in On Writing. He strikes me as a fellow who’s willing to learn from his mistakes (in that book, he says the Tommyknockers was his muse’s way of signaling for help if you remember).

    By the way, I found out some info about Doris and Dick Goodwin’s ideas for that sequence, or at least what made them suggest the events of that part of the book. I was going over a Kennedy book when who should pop up except Dick Goodwin. It turns out Goodwin once acted as JFK’s go between with Che Guevara if you can believe it, and that both Kennedy and Guevara remained in dialogue between each other until JFK’s death about a possible peaceful negotiations about Cuba.

    Unfortunately, Goodwin went on to say that he felt JFK too idealistic, that he wouldn’t stand a chance against Washington bureaucracy. He also voiced the conviction of conspiracy in JFK’s death. What that’s got to do with anything, even the ending of 11/22/63 is I think Goodwin’s let his disappointment and suspicions with that decade get to him so much as to blossom into Dem Ol’ Cosmic Sixties Paranoia Blues. Probably the same kind that created Dickie Bachman and got King hooked on drink etc. ,the same kind of Paranoia King talks about meeting face to face in Danse Macabre when he attend a speaking engagement featuring the Black Panthers. Just a thought. Personally, I think King knows about that better than Goodwin, and that his thought about it are best summed up in the 78 version of the Stand where he posits both types of paranoia of right and left as two sides of one coin, both equally going nowhere (remember, one of the themes of that novel is the fallout from the Sixties and Randall Flagg draws both left and right wing extremists to him. Both seemed equally shallow and shortsighted in that book).

    In the audio commentary for the DVD of Garris’s The Stand King stated that believed, this is an exact quote, “Evil is a snake that eats its own tail.” There goes a fellow who remembers his Dante, or Augustine, or maybe both. And like I said before, I think the ending of 11/22/63 was a way for him to get rid of all of these fears, a way for King’s muse to help him “Put away Childish Things” in the words of C.S. Lewis.

    Here’s a question though, knowing what you do now, would you have written your last journal on 11/22/63 different Reverend?

    ChrisC.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousFebruary 17, 2012 at 2:17 AM

    The following is a re-edit of my earlier post because of a glaring error in the paragraph sequence, any and all who were puzzled or confused by the above post please read this corrected version, thank you.

    Nice summation Reverend.

    While this comment might seem off topic, I'd like it filed under the scaredy rat heading because it has to do with fear...and 11/22/63.

    Sigh...I'll wait....

    Got all the groans out of the system? Good, in that case all I wanted to say was I found an interesting line from the novel, "The boy blamed everyone else for problems he made himself." That it's the historical James Hosty who says it is interesting.

    What's more interesting is it's easy to hear that line refrain in your head as Jake makes his way through the blasted wasteland that is the novel unstable alternate world (I think timeline should no longer be used to describe that whole sequence).

    In a way, I think the character Hosty is describing Jake as much as Oswald in that line. I’ll also go out on a limb and say it’s King’s own judgment on himself as he used to be back in the late Eighties early Nineties as described in On Writing. He strikes me as a fellow who’s willing to learn from his mistakes (in that book, he says the Tommyknockers was his muse’s way of signaling for help if you remember).

    By the way, I found out some info about Doris and Dick Goodwin’s ideas for that sequence, or at least what made them suggest the events of that part of the book. I was going over a Kennedy book when who should pop up except Dick Goodwin. It turns out Goodwin once acted as JFK’s go between with Che Guevara if you can believe it, and that both Kennedy and Guevara remained in dialogue between each other until JFK’s death about a possible peaceful negotiations about Cuba.

    Unfortunately, Goodwin went on to say that he felt JFK too idealistic, that he wouldn’t stand a chance against Washington bureaucracy. He also voiced the conviction of conspiracy in JFK’s death. What that’s got to do with anything, even the ending of 11/22/63 is I think Goodwin’s let his disappointment and suspicions with that decade get to him so much as to blossom into Dem Ol’ Cosmic Sixties Paranoia Blues. Probably the same kind that created Dickie Bachman and got King hooked on drink etc. ,the same kind of Paranoia King talks about meeting face to face in Danse Macabre when he attend a speaking engagement featuring the Black Panthers. Just a thought. Personally, I think King knows about that better than Goodwin, and that his thought about it are best summed up in the 78 version of the Stand where he posits both types of paranoia of right and left as two sides of one coin, both equally going nowhere (remember, one of the themes of that novel is the fallout from the Sixties and Randall Flagg draws both left and right wing extremists to him. Both seemed equally shallow and shortsighted in that book).

    In the audio commentary for the DVD of Garris’s The Stand King stated that believed, this is an exact quote, “Evil is a snake that eats its own tail.” There goes a fellow who remembers his Dante, or Augustine, or maybe both. And like I said before, I think the ending of 11/22/63 was a way for him to get rid of all of these fears, a way for King’s muse to help him “Put away Childish Things” in the words of C.S. Lewis.

    Here’s a question though, knowing what you do now, would you have written your last journal on 11/22/63 different Reverend?

    ChrisC.

    ReplyDelete
  3. David SquyresFebruary 17, 2012 at 9:05 AM

    Interesting thoughts.

    YES! The book does reflect the fears of the 60's.

    I was unaware that Hosty was a historical character, though I'm not surprised.

    JFK actually does not strike me as overly idealistic. He is a model politician. What I find frustrating in the novel is how weak King considered the civil rights movement and other non-MLK black leaders. As if without Johnson's political savvy there would be no civil rights. ?! I don't know if that's Goodwin at work or King, but I think it is a major blunder, and borders on an insult to the other leaders in the Civil Rights movement.

    Put away childish things is a quote from Paul.

    "Evil is a snake that eats its own tail" . . . I missed that, but it is right on! Seems evil so often simply self destructs.

    No, would not change journal entry, since the point of the journals was to write thoughts as I went. They reflect a first read, where as reviews reflect deeper study and often exposition.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousFebruary 17, 2012 at 12:29 PM

    Thanks for the comments, Reverend.

    As for Civil Rights, that doesn't strike me as King's thinking. He's strikes me as neurotic but not stupid, at least not about people like MLK, Rosa Parks et al. When it comes to Civil Rights his heart and more importantly his head has always been demonstrably in the right place, and in some cases smarter than many of the participants in his judgment regarding the wrong paths it can take. For more on that see the character of Detta Walker.

    I think that's more of Rich Goodwin's thinking. If so, then Goodwin is a good example of the downside the sixties took for many people. Goodwin was one of JFK's bright young Turks, when the real 11/22/63 rolled around they all took it pretty hard. They say his death shattered the dreams of many Americans, for them it meant just that in a very literal sense and I'm guessing a lot of them, Sorenson, O'Donnell, Will Manchester never quite got over it and in Goodwin's case he must have got it the worst. Coupled with his belief that there was a conspiracy, I think it soured him on the whole democratic process, if not America, and ever since he's been more than a little paranoid.

    In Hearts in Atlantis, King posits the idea of the Sixties as a crucible that tested the soul of everyone who participated in it, a concept reflected in the action of that book. I think that might be true of the real historical events of those decades as well. I guess Goodwin...well, judge not.

    Incidentally, I didn't know that "Childish Things" was a phrase of St. Paul's?

    ChrisC

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