The Shining: Assessing Strengths And Weaknesses

picture credit: HERE

The novel The Shining was written by a young writer.  Doctor Sleep was written by a much more mature  author.  About six months ago I went back and read a bit of The Shining.  I was not  surprised to find that there were points that I found dry.  The novel itself is strong, but there are these patches of  difficulty for the reader.

Sean Chumley does a nice job identifying both the strengths and weaknesses of the novel in his short review at examiner.com.

I'll break this down into a simple list form.  These are quotes from Chumley's article.

What king nails:

• The horror is often very effective
• the characters are very well defined.
• They're realistic people with believable problems.

Where King Wanders

• Sometimes King gets a little too detailed with the hotel's upkeep when all we really want is ghosts. (YES!)
• Everything has a purpose in the novel, but sometimes the payoff is delayed a bit too long to really excite.

This reminds me the Van  Hise review of THE SHINING in the Star Trek fanzine, Enterprise Incidents.  This was a special issue dedicated to Stephen King.  The effort expended for this project seems tremendous.  There is special artwork, reviews and articles.  The artwork is exceptional!

This is one of the earliest tributes to King I can think of.  Here’s what’s funny. . . reviewer James Van Hise doesn’t give positive reviews to a lot of King’s work (like The  Shining)– yet he seems to love Stephen King books.  Here’s what’s really fun –Van Hise isn’t afraid to have an opinion!  Oh, he has LOTS and LOTS!  But he shares them without apology.  He doesn’t spend a lot of time working around what he thinks, or building up to it – he just says it. That’s really refreshing!

VAN HISE REVIEW OF: THE SHINING

Mr. Van Hise likes The Shining, but complains that it has "too much characterization." While Salem’s Lot was a big novel with lots of characters, The Shining is a big novel with just a few characters.

In van Hise’s words:

"The complaint I’m making is that when writer has a finely conceived story, there is no reason to detour from it into subplots and extraneous discourses which have nothing to do with that plot. Characterization is fine, but let’s not overdo it, and this book certainly does overdo it, mostly with Jack Torrance. The book is about the Overlook Hotel and what it does to these people one winter. When the story stays here it’s great. What happened to Jack Torrance when he lsot his job is just a big rap which he wasn’t able to roll with. Drumming that fact into our heads time after time isn’t necessary. Certainly it was important to describe Jack Torrance ine nough back ground detail so that we can understand why his mental collapse is believable, but too much of this reached the point hwere it came across to me as just padding. I’m well aware that this is a terrible thing to say about a writer, and I’m not saying that this is what King did, but rather that this is the effect it achieved. Fortunately, the book’s strong points far overshadow its weak ones."

The reason Jack’s firing was so important to the book is that it was one of the catalyst for his drinking. Or return to drinking. I find all the background information does slow the story – but I can press on because I actually enjoy all these asides. If this was my first time reading The Shining, I think I too would be annoyed! "Where’s this going?" I would ask. But I already know where this is going, so I can take time to enjoy the greater depth King gives these characters.

Now, for an early commentary on the Kubrick film! Remember, please, Van Hise hasn’t had years of King and others griping about the film. It was met with generally good reviews, so it takes some perception. 

"The film is also an abortion from the standpoint of the fact that the movie ends before it even reaches the point in the book where the climax really gets rolling. Yes, the movie cuts out the climax of the book, which is the very facet of the story which insured its popularity, because unlike the film, the book is not anti-climactic. The book builds to such a wild, ever pritch that it remains a classic of the genre no matter how many other horror stories you’ve ever rad. Whereas Salem’s Lot is a better book on the whole, The Shining contains his finest climax from every standpoint, and especially for sheer power and imagination.   

Whatever else may be disappointing in the book, the climax is not! It delivers a one-two punch which carries the reader straight through to the conclusion with pile-driver intensity and in an extremely satisfying manner. This book cried out fo a powerful screen translation, rather than the commonplace treatment it received at the hands of Stanley Kubrick. Because of this, there are a lot of people out there who don’t understand why The Shining was a bestseller, or why it was even made into a film at all, and that’s criminal. Kubric has made King seem like an ordinary writer, and all because Kubric took excellent material and made an ordinary film. If there is anything The Shining is not, it’s ordinary."

I can hear the "experts" on Room 237 shouting, screaming, crying at this! "The Shining" a "ordinary" film? I love the way van Hise gives such credit to the book.