Notes On The Dark Half

I just finisehd The Dark Half. Wonderful! In fact I would suggest that it is King mastering has craft.

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Gore Galore

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This book feels like a mix of Stephen King and Richard Bachman. It is dark -- very dark -- much like a Bachman novel. But it has elements of the supernatural, like a King book. Mix the gore and the spooks, and you have two great minds working together.

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Some have complained about the violence and gore. My suggestion to them: Don't read Stephen King. It's called "pay-off" gang! King takes his time building a story, and when it gets gory, we want to enjoy it.

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In The Dark Half, Thad Beaumont writes under the name George Stark. Unlike Thad, George doesn't use a typewriter or wordprocessor, just lots of very sharp pencils. As a child Thad had terrible headaches and passed out. It is discovered in surgery that he has in his brain . . . well, I'll let King tell you: "the assiting O.R. nurse saw it first. her scream was shrill and shocking in the operation room, where the only sounds for the last fifteen minutes had been Dr. Pritchard's murmured commands, the hiss of the bulky life support machinery, and the brief, high whine of the Negli saw."

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So what did she see? "thad Beaumont's brin was the color of a conch shell's outer edge -- a medim gray with jsut the slightest tinge of rose. Protruding from the smooth surface of dura was a single blind and malformed human eye. the brain was pulsing slightly. The eye pulsed with it. It looked as if it were trying to wink at them. It was this -- the look of the wink -- which had driven the assisting nurse from the O.R." That's wonderful!

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Why is there an eye (and other things) in Thad's brain? Because in the womb, he was a twin. But he was the stronger of the two, and he absorbed his twin. But, little brother still had an eye. . . in Thad's brain! Shivers, that's good.

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When Thad is exposed as the real George Stark, he creates a mock photo shoot and "kills" ole George. But George doesn't stay dead. In fact, he goes on a killing rampage to rival his own character, Machine. It all ends with the sparrows. . .

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A Difficult Book To Write

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That the book was not easy for King to write is noted by Michael R. Colling's, who gives this interesting behind the scenes look at The Dark Half:
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"With The Dark Half, he continues his journey through the darkness of creativity, centering his attention on a writer whose pseudonym has recently been publicly unmasked -- very like King's experiences in 1985 with Richard Bachman, to whom the Dark Half refers in the introductory authors note, an exercise in tongue-in-cheek humor and irony. "I'm indebted to the late Richard bachman for his help and inspiration. this book could not have been written without him."
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"That writing the Dark Half was difficult for King is suggested by Stephanie Leonard's editorial comments in the November 1988 Castle Rock: The Stephen King Newsletter: It is true that Stephen has written a book by this title. But at this time he has no plans to publsih it."
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That looked a lot like the situation that had developed with Pet Sematary. Both novels are intensely personal for King, touching on his darker thoughts. Is he save to show us this "dark half" of himself?
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Not only was this a difficult book for King to write, it has been reported that it was also his wife Tabby's least favorite novel. King said in the Bachman books that The Dark Half is "a book my wife has always hated, perhaps because, for Thad Beaumont, the dream of being a writer overwhelms the reality of being a man; for thad, delusive thinking overtakes rationality completely, with horrible consequences."
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George Beahm in King's biography says, "For King, the Dark Half could be perceived as a fictional form of closure on that matter of the Bachman revelation, putting it to rest."
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Hitchcock Would Be Proud
what if Machine got a crack at the sparrows?
I previously posted a question asking what King book Hitchcock would make into a movie. I think he would have loved The Dark Half! Why? The birds, of course. But King goes further than Hitchcock did. We literally get to see poor Stark torn to bits by the sparrows.
Machine makes Stark look like a nice guy
In many ways this actually makes me think of Rod Serling gone bad!
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Who is George Stark?
he's not a very nice guy
Former Residence:
Mr. George Stark
P.O. Bo 1642
Brewer, Maine 04412
and he doesn't stay dead
Epitaph:
Geore Stark
1975-1988
Not a Very Nice Guy
it's hard to keep a good man down
George Stark is the ghost of Thad's unborn twin. Wrap your head around that plotline, huh! He's also the ghost of Rirchard Bachman. It's pretty obvious that King is having some fun with his own life story. You know, George Stark and Jack Torrance have some strange similarities. They both have trouble writing when the tension builds, and both have a very bad mean streak. Did I say very bad? We're talking, very very naughty. In the Shining, Jack becomes something of "machine" in a George Stark novel. Nothing more than a crazy killing machine.
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Sheriff Alan Pangborn reappears in Needful Things. In the novel, the Sheriff suffers from nightmares and thoughts of George Stark. In Bag Of Bones we learn that Thad Beaumont killed himself.
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The Stephen King universe suggests that "It's quite likely that King named Thad Beaumont in honor of Charles Beaumont, an author who is best remembered or writing some of the most chilling episodes of the television classic The Twilight Zone." (164)
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Adaptations:
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The Dark Half Video Game: Yep! It's out there. However, it did not get good reviews at the time. It appears some collectors now seek it out, but I honestly don't know why -- usually games, audio recordings, video's and DVD's do not have much value to King Collectors. You can get the book and the game here: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/595/Dark+Half,+The.html
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The Dark Half movie, starring Timothy Hutton and directed by George A. Romero (Christine). This is a great movie! Faithful to the book, it manages to hold the novels "flavor." Remember in Firestarter where the complaint was that though it was faithful to the book, something was missing? Well, The Dark Half faithfully captures the story and mood of the novel. And, Stark's end is aptly nasty. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106664/#comment
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The movie, and book for that matter, do not do much with the aftermath. King will clean things up in later books, but with bodies left all over, how does Pangborn get Thad off the hook? does he just explain, kindly, to the FBI that Thad's alter-ego's ghost did it? I may have missed something here.
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Oddly, because of financial issues, the movie was made in 1990, but not released until 1993. One would think that the producers would have wanted to play on the hype of a recently released book.
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There is no audio edition of this book that I'm aware of.
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See: The Complete Stephen King Encylopedia, Stephen J. Spignesi