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| EDEL RODRIGUEZ FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE |
Revival has the feeling of returning the constant reader to some home turf. With Castle Rock near by and characters who have a special place in their heart for drugs -- the hard kind -- it has traces of novels offered long ago. But the story is no rehash. It's new, and written by a much more cynical man than penned The Green Mile. Are the dark musings in Revival a phase he is passing through, or a final resting place he's stepped onto? I don't know. King does what most people do; he wrestles with the issues of life. Only, King does it in public while most people work issues through in the privacy of their heart.
It is King's ability to work things through while all eyes are on him that make his stories so engaging. We enjoy the ride because we're taking it with a man who's not quite sure of the road ahead himself. Thought he novel is tight and moves quickly, King has said more than once that he does not write with an outline in hand. That is to say, he doesn't always know where he'll end up when he starts the journey.
After the terrible accident that takes pastor Charles Jacob’s wife and son, and the terrible sermon, the novel follows Jamie Morton as he bounces about as a rock musician and sinks deeper into drugs. I found this portion of the novel difficult to get into, because I was so interested in what would happen with the preacher. As with Christine, the story is not told from the position of someone who would always be in the “know.” This makes some scenes a little awkward, as Jamie drops us in on scenes he had no way of being there for. How does he know? Well, he listens a lot. In Christine, when the narrator broke his leg at a football game, King ran into a problem and switched to third person. No third person in Revival. Instead, we continue to travel life’s road with Jamie.
Revival is as much about Jamie’s coming of age as it is the evil preacher. It seems the older King gets, the better he is at reviving the flavor of first love. His recent novel Joyland had a wonderful story of first love. But unlike Joyland, Revival is about two young people coming of age together. There is no one to guide Jamie in the way of love – he and his girl must explore that path together. And the scenes are rather tender.
It is amazing how King can take us back there. Back to another time and era. More than that, back to young love and young thinking. For instance, Jamie discusses how easy it is to make a promise about life when your fourteen. That's true -- but most of us forgot that.
The rock band Jamie joins was originally called the Gunslingers. They dropped that name, and the new name – I’ll let you find it – combined with the old name is almost a direct nod to Guns n Roses.
It seems obvious that in many ways, King lives through his characters. Of course, he has had a taste of the rock star life; but that was always overshadowed by the fact he's a famous author. That is, the question of could he have made it onto the stage just on his music powers, had he not first been the author of some super-duper novels -- is really in doubt. There is a sense that Jamie is a shadow, an alter ego, of what King might have been. Not what King was, or was ever in danger of actually becoming -- but in some other dark tower world, King mixes bits of his own personality and experience with his fictional characters.
It is funny when people ask him if these characters are based on himself. Of course. That was true of Devon and Stu and even Jamie Mortion. But, it's also true of Pennywise and Mr. Mercedes. GASP! Because they are all coming out of the same guys head.
I’m reading a lot of people who say this is “vintage” King. I disagree with that entire line of thought. Even when it comes from King and his publisher. There is no vintage King. Vintage King is Salems’ Lot. And the author who wrote that has moved on with life. He can’t dull his skills back to that age. In other words, while Revival and Joyland might contain themes and flavors of the old dark novels, these are written by a man who has traveled much further in life and has a better grasp of his artwork. While I don’t enjoy every Stephen King book, I enjoy books from every era.
I'd like to know more about what makes you believe the King who wrote this is more cynical than the one who wrote Mile.
ReplyDeleteFor my own part, I think there's a fair degree of remove from King's real life viewpoints and the a lot of the more darker ideas on display. If we're going for instance by a combination of King's words about organized religion or religious institutions, plus the Terrible Sermon in the book, I can see how that might make some wonder if he's had a change of mind (heart?).
For my part, I see no contradiction in maintaining that while King may have distrust of religious institutions, he's probably still willing to consider himself as a "Mere" Christian, albeit nondenominational.
If I had to give a "possible" proof, I would take the character of Jacobs. For me, the fact that Jacobs remains such an off-screen yet influential presence is itself a pointer to the fact that the character is a much a symbol as a personality. If I had to guess, I'd say Jacobs is King's idea of what is wrong with institutional religion, the idea (influenced in part by Tony Magistrale's Landscape of Darkness) is that Jacobs is part of King's ongoing chronicle and critique of the erosion of values and belief in various American institutions, including family, religion, and government.
From that lens, Jacob becomes more a symbol of King's fears about what happens when genuine belief is left behind.
That's just a thought anyway.
ChrisC