AMERICAN LANDSCAPE -- Stephen King Style

For years Stephen King has served us up stories about ourselves. Probably what makes him so popular is that he doesn't write about Count Dracula in a far off land, he brings it all to America. I'm pressed to think of stories that even involve other countries!

The America in Stephen King's fiction is a unique place. Here's a glance at the America of Stephen King's creation:

• Christine is a kind of American Grafitti -- cars, girls and Rock and Roll.


• IT is a trip back to the 1950's. (For, uh, those who were alive in the 50's.) Seems like The Body falls into the same category.


• The Dead Zone shows the nasty side of American politics.


• The Tommyknockers is a 1940's style Scifi.


• In the Stand King boldly destroyed America, and then made his characters our new founding fathers as they established the Free Zone.


• Both Rita Hayworth and The Green Mile explore something of the American prison system.

• Under The Dome shows us America  in miniature.  

• If you haven't seen it -- there is something strangely All American about Silver Bullet, based on Cycle of the Werewolf.

No wonder George Beahm could write a biography called: "Stephen King, America's Best Loved Boogey Man." Americans love King because he writes about places we feel we know. We don't have to go to a haunted castle, the house next door might be something terrible. He brings the horror home to America. There might be monsters headed to the grocery store. What if your cell phone rang and zombies took over? It's what we know, given a slight twist, that makes things scary!

LINK: Everything I Know About America I Learned from Stephen King

Here is a fun essay by Lydia Kiesling titled, "Everything I know about America I learned from Stephen King." (themillions.com)

About King's natural abiulity to write, she notes, " it just feels so easy for this guy."  Isn't that the truth!  King's stories flow so  naturally, it seems like any of us should have be able to sit down and hammer out his next novel before he does!  But that feeling of ease is the real gift, isn't it?  Like a public speaker, who makes it look easy, but the truth  is hours of work and refining have gone into the art.

This is great:

The success of a novelist has to do with the extent to which his work allows the reader to lose herself in the story, but the novels that really resonate are the ones that also invite the reader to apply them to her particular circumstances. In my case, Stephen King books appealed to my lingering sense, even in high school, of America’s fundamental glamour, that feeling impelled both by the act of circumnavigating the globe broadly in the service of America’s aims, and the foreignness imparted by its distance. And they achieved several things besides scaring and entertaining the hell out of me. At some level, Stephen King novels issued a necessary corrective to my wanton teenage materialism and overweening belief in American goodness.  They did their own kind of national myth-making.

. . . and this . . .

 Stephen King’s novels transmit deeper things than hometown nostalgia. As Johathan P. Davis points out in his book, much of King’s work is concerned with the American devotion, in theory at any rate, to individual liberty. When King isn’t being gross, with his bone splinters and clots of blood and patented semantic move of creating an appalling noun just by adding the word “meat” to the back of another one — e.g., “boymeat” or “greymeat” — he spends a lot of time on the freedoms of the individual. Glenn Bateman, the retired sociology professor of The Stand, spends most of the novel talking about the formation of society and the tension between freedom and social cohesion. When, at the end of that novel, spunky Fran and Stu, a laconic badass from East Texas, make the choice to leave the crowding and rules of the Boulder Free Zone for the rugged, dangerous liberty of the Maine coast, this is posited as a sensible choice, one that only a couple of badasses would make.

So the whole essay is really good.  I'm going to stop giving big quotes and just tell you to go read the thing!  (themillions.com)

1978 The Stand Journal 2: Year Of The Stand

1978 was a long time ago in a Galaxy very far away. I was five years old. I distantly remember that strange era that made up the seventies. They were awkward, and tense, and everything was pretty uncool. Our hair, our clothes (my mom made me a polyester suit I wore to school, it was itchy) and even our TV was a little nutty. Come on, a show about the California Highway Patrol. . . every week!

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The Stand has been given several makeovers. First when King updated the work in 1990. Later it was given a nice new look with the mini-series, and most recently it has been updated with the comic books. But I want to go back -- way back to 1978 when the Stand was originally released. Of course, that is not exactly the year King was writing the Stand in. It is the year people began reading.

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On Star Trek if you want to time warp, you have to sling-shot around the sun. Here, you just have to scroll down! So come on, let's go back to 1978.

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1978. . .

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Norman Rockwell died that year and Charlie Chaplain's remains were stolen. Jimmy Carter was president, and inflation was on the rise big time! There was a coal strike that was not helping the situation. Carter did authorize the minting of the Susan B. Anthony dollar. That went over well. The Federal debt was only 776.6 billion. That's all! We almost could have written a check! A stamp cost 0.13 cents. This dreary sense of America is palpable in the Stand.

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Ford was advertising it's new car, stating "Tomorrow's idea from Ford is here!" Ford Fairmont Futura. $4,267. AVON was marketing TEMPO to black women.
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In 1978 there was no Internet, debit cards, kindle, DVD's, mini-van or AIDS. There were also no cellphones. In fact, if you needed to make a call on the run, you dived in to a phone booth. Remember those? Superman's favorite changing room! And most phones still required you spin a dial.

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Politics:

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Dianne Feinstein, now a senator from California, succeeded murdered George Moscone as mayor of San Francisco. Jerry Brown was governor of California -- the first time. The Los Angeles strangler was on the loose (later known as the Hillside Strangler).

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And then there was Jimmy Carter. Sure, I know what you're thinking: He's not in The Stand -- right? Wrong! He is in The Stand. Well, not by name, but it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to spot him. He's playing the role of President, so it sorta makes it easy to find Waldo here.
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Carter was a peanut farmer and governor of the state of Georgia. He was known for his big smile (grin) and Christian virtues. This is from chapter 16, when the president decides to reign in the military.

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"You know who that was on the phone."

"It was really him, then?"

"The old Georgia Giant himself. I've been relieved. The clod-hopper releved me, Len. Of course, I knew it was coming. But it still hurts. Hurts like hell. It hurts coming fromt that grinning sack" p.116, paperback.

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That's chapter 22, page 166 in the revised. And in this version there is no "Georgia Giant" hint offered up, he is simply called "The President." Why? Because Jimmy wasn't in office when the Stand was rewritten. By the way, notice that just between thsoe two scenes, the revised edition gave 40 pages of extra build up.

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Religion:

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Of interest to me, that was the year of three Popes! In august, Pope Paul 6 died and was replaced by 65-year old John Paul 1. But he died on September 28, after only 34 days in office. John Paul 2 became pope on September 28, 1978.

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Religion was actually in a pretty crazy state that year. It was also the year of the Jones Town deaths. Followers of Jim Jones drank the kool-aid, giving their lives to Jones after the murder of a Congressman and reporters. It is interesting that The Stand is released amist such religious chaos. Flagg is a Jim Jones type, who's followers (like Jones') will all meet a tragic end. Nukes -- kool-aid, what's the real difference?

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The Stand is a deeply spiritual novel. From the dreams, to Mother Abigail to the devil himself -- it is the stroy of good verses evil. Of course, the 1978 hardcover sported a drawing of good and evil hacking it out. And what is Flagg in the end? Just another Jim Jones! Or, reverse it; what was Jim Jones? Posessed by Flagg.

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Movies:

At the movies, you could see:

Jaws 2,

Animal House,

the Wiz,

Superman,

Halloween,

Grease,

Invasion of the Body Snatchers,

Heaven Can Wait,

and of course: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Hey, that was a good movie! By the way, there is a remake of Killer Tomatoes coming out this year -- I think.

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Top it off with a viewing of Capicorn One, starring OJ Simpson. Capicorn One played on the nations doubt of government, suggesting even the space program was a hoax. A similar mistrust of government is expressed in The Stand -- but much better executed.

9-11 And The Dark Tower

[repost, 9/11/09]

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In The Song of Susanna, King’s own life becomes intertwined with the novel itself. Roland meets his creator – and, delightfully, doesn’t like him much! It was here that King began to draw all things together – tightly. No more hinting around, he was ready to begin tightening the screws.
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3 things were brought together: King’s own life, current/recent history, and the Dark Tower itself.
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King not only writes himself into the novel, he moves events from his life into the flow of the fictional story. This leaves no room for reality and fiction – King has become a part of his own work. He is a character. I heard Tom Nelson say that at the incarnation (when God became flesh) that God wrote himself into our story. The author became a part of the narrative and moved among the characters. Of course, in Song of Susanna, King becomes incarnate in the novel. The terrible car accident and other actual events of King’s life become part of the book.
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Something else rather striking happens: King moves pieces of American history into the book. Now we all are a part of the Dark Tower – in the since that we were all part of 9/11. Certainly those killed were most directly impacted, but the nation and world as a whole shared in the experience. And so the nation and the world are invited into the Dark Tower to imagine a twist. What if the villains in the Dark Tower played a role in the destruction of the Twin Towers?
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No longer did the Dark Tower simply loom over Roland – it loomed over all of us.
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It is under the World Trade Center that Black Thirteen is hidden. Bev Vincent explains it this way: "The idea is that Black 13 will be buried at the bottom of tons of rubble and will therefore be out of anyone's reach. As Callahan says, "one glass ball under a hundred and ten stories of concrete and steel? Even a glass ball filled with deep magic? That'd be one way to take care of the nasty thing, I guess."
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Steven Wu of Steven Wu’s book reviews, says: "And have I mentioned an extremely tasteless reference to 9/11, where King suggests that the terrorist attacks were just an attempt by his villains to destroy a fictional artifact of great value to them?"
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This is an interesting review, since I remember reading Song of Susannah with a sense of breathless glee. We – all of us – had been drawn into the plot. King, me, you, everyone was now a part of this book. I wasn’t offended that King used fiction to draw us in.