Repost: Stephen King Slapped My Face

(REPOSTED from my 11.22.63 journal, December 8, 2011.)

Stephen King slapped my face a few days ago.  It hurt a lot.

There I was, happily bopping through the late 1950's with Mr. King narrating away at about 80 miles an hour.  I'm loving 11.22.63, and the blast from the past is a joy.  Root beer, short hair, ties -- we'd all want to go back, right?  Even the cars are something to long for.  And about the time King has you totally off guard, thinking sentimentally about a by-gone era. . . WHAM!  King gives a big, open handed slap to the face.  Not a girly slap; a hard, "WAKE UP, FOOL!" slap.

I grew up in the 80's -- in California.  I was a white in a mostly black high school.  Race relations could be tense at times.  My senior year was the Rodney King riots, and it seemed like everything erupted in the Los Angeles area.  But my best friend was black, and somehow we navigated through some rough waters.  There was bad stuff going on around us, but for the most part we came out untouched.  My mom has said she was glad for my friend, because it protected me from bitterness.

Any tension in 1980's California cannot compare to what was happening in 1959.

As we bop happily along through the novel, King describes a stop at a gas station.  There's a men's and women's restroom, and then a sign for blacks with an arrow.  Follow the arrow around the corner, and you'll discover there are no indoor restrooms for blacks.  I'll not share the exact nature of the indignity, King does it better than I can -- but it made me angry.  Partly because it's not the world I come from.  And partly because it IS the world I come from!  Our entire nation has been touched by generations of racism.  When King describes the bathroom situation at the gas station, it evokes a righteous rage.  "That is SO WRONG!"

We exist in boxes; our eyes covered.  Racism is a thing of the past, it doesn't affect us -- right?  But when I felt that sudden anger at someone being forced to go to the bathroom outside, some things started to make sense.  The anger in the students around me as I grew up.  It didn't make sense at the time.  Why were they angry -- things were better for them than they had been for the last generation, right?  But the arm of injustice has a long reach.

Injustice, racism, hate can't be cut off in just one generation.  We live with the scars.

Out culture and teachers have tried to slap us, but usually it didn't sting as bad as it needed to.  Movies like "Driving Miss. Daisy" are painful, but sweet.  King doesn't give any sweet to his open handed smack.  I remember reading Native Son in high school about a black man who accidentally killed a white girl, burned her body, and went to the electric chair.  That novel provoked the desired uncomfortable discussions in English class, but it did not deliver the sudden, unexpected, slap that 11/22/63 gave me. Even movies that drive the point home, like The Help, don't really slap you.  Because you see it coming!  But King doesn't announce he's gong to slap your face.  Of course, everyone should know at some point he's going to edge up on racism -- but when he catches you off guard and causes emotions to rush, it's both painful and a joy.

Baptist:

King sometimes shows us things from our own culture we don't like so much.  The angry, cussing, racist Baptist landlord we encounter in Dallas disgusted me.  That's outside my experience with Baptist (for the most part.  Anyone who has done ministry for long has encountered some pretty angry people).  I go to a racially mixed church (whites, blacks, Hispanics Asians).  Baptist would be quick to point out that Dr. King was a Baptist, as were many civil rights leaders.  Billy Graham, who publicly took a stand against racism by personally removing the ropes that separated whites and blacks  in his meetings was a Baptist.  But that's not the whole story, is it?

I don't like the cussing, angry, nasty racist landlord being a Baptist. I would rather focus on the positives!  The MLK's, the Graham's and so on.  For a moment I found myself frustrated with King's writing.  It seems he often chooses the Baptist to be the racist (Reverend Rose in Needful things is an example -- only he hated Catholics).  And at least with rose, the character is not well developed.  He just hates.  But in 11.22.63, things feel a little more real.  These feel like people you might actually meet somewhere.  Not just a caricature -- but a true step back in history.  And if I could go back in time, I'd like to take a swing at that landlord!

Thank You

So I'd thank King for the slap in the face.  Thank him for making it hurt.  For stirring emotions I've actually never felt; not very deeply.  Because I don't live in a culture where racism is so openly practiced, but we do live with the scars.  But people respond to one another based on their scars, and we don't always understand why they act the way they do.

IKEA Loves THE SHINING

Top 5 Horror Anthology Films of All Time

Top 5 Horror Anthology Films of All Time

by  Brandon Engel 

If it wasn’t for fifties horror comics (especially EC titles like Tales From The Crypt and Haunt of Fear) it’s probably safe to say that horror movies and literature simply wouldn’t exist as we know them today. Stephen King is himself a huge fan of the comic format, and he has borrowed liberally from the influence of such works throughout the course of his career.

There have been many great horror anthology films over the decades, typically comprised of three to five short stories with wrap-around segments to stitch the disparate stories into one self-contained narrative. Many follow in the footsteps of the EC, while one title from the list below predates such comics, and might have, itself, influenced the format of the comic books.

Here is a look at the top five horror anthology films of all time.

5. Trilogy of Terror (1975)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RAxCWU4of0]

Originally made for ABC, the film is comprised of three short stories all written by Richard Matheson (author of I Am Legend and frequent contributor to The Twilight Zone). Actress Karen Black appeared as a different character in each segment. The most memorable sequence is the film’s closer, “Amelia,” about an upscale New Yorker who brings home a Zuni warrior fetish doll (which resembles a piranha with fearsome fangs and stringy black hair). There’s a golden band across the doll’s waist, and it’s said that if the band is removed, the dormant spirit which inhabits the doll will be unleashed. The segment is significant in the annals of movies with killer dolls, and was even once parodied in a Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror segment.

4. Dead of Night (1945)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86v2N-GffQM]

This was one of the only horror films made by the English Ealing Studios, and it’s often regarded as  one of the most inventive horror films of all time. A group meet for a weekend vacation, and one member of the group is plagued by a sense of the uncanny. This provides the narrative container, as each guest then relates a story about an eerie occurrence or dream they’ve had. The most famous sequence features Michael Redgrave as a psychotic ventriloquist who can’t seem to discern where his identity ends, and the identity of his doll “Hugo” begins.

3. Tales From The Darkside: The Movie (1990)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9lVoUKk-8Y]

The film was of course a spin-off of George Romero’s cult TV show, Tales From the Darkside (which is itself enjoying its own resurgence in popularity now that it can be streamed directly from DTV - see their website) and the feature film also features a story contribution from King himself, The Cat From Hell. The most memorable sequence features a woman who plots to cook her newspaper delivery boy. Even more memorable is the device used for the wrap arounds: a young man is telling these stories to distract a witch who intends to eat him. A technically well-executed and enjoyable horror omnibus in the Romero tradition.

2. Tales From the Crypt (1972)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3FpZEkaIS4]

Released by the British film studio Amicus, this take on the classic fifties horror comics offers wonderful performances from Hammer Horror icon Peter Cushing as an ostracised but nevertheless benevolent eccentric who is driven to suicide by the taunts of his community (only to come back as a vengeful zombie on Valentine’s Day) and the great Patrick Magee, who stars in a segment as blind man who exacts his revenge on a cruel administrator of an asylum for the blind. The film also features a segment about a monkey’s paw which gives its owner five wishes, as well as a story about the homicidal Santa Claus (the very same story which would serve as the basis for the Robert Zemeckis directed pilot of the HBO Tales From the Crypt series).

1. Creepshow (1982)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bO3gyT3Imc]

Written by Stephen King and directed George A. Romero, Creepshow is a highly-stylized tribute to EC comics, which even integrates comic book frames. The film opens with a father reprimanding his son (Joe King, Stephen’s actual son) for reading a gruesome comic book entitled Creepshow. This provides the container for the five vignettes, and among the most memorable are: “Father’s Day,” about a murdered father who returns from the grave to collect his father’s day “cake”, “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,” which features a performance from King himself as an east coast bumpkin whose life is turned upside down when a meteor crashes in his backyard, and “The Crate”, a story about a blood-thirsty primate discovered in a crate under the stairs in a university which evokes Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue.

*******

Brandon Engel is a blogger in Chicago who writes about a variety of topics - everything from vintage exploitation films to energy legislation. Brandon has a penchant for horror literature, and his favorite authors within the genre include: H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Clive Barker, and, of course, Stephen King. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2

Compare and Contrast: Stephen King and Arthur C. Clarke

by Brandon Engel

Meet Arthur Charles Clarke and Stephen Edwin King, Jupiter and Venus of the science fiction solar system. In 2005, the government of Sri Lanka designated Clarke Sri Lanka Abhimanyu, meaning “The Pride of Sri Lanka,” the highest civil honor in the country. The year before, the World Fantasy Convention bestowed upon King the Award for Life Achievement. No satellite explored further than the reaches of blackness that Clarke and King dived into with science fiction and fantasy literature.

But, the two had different notions of where the future of humankind led.

Stephen King: Scribe of Horror

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes famously claimed that the state of nature of man was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Stephen King took Hobbes at his word. In King’s 2009 book, Under the Dome, an invisible dome barrier envelopes the small Maine town of Chester’s Mill. Thus isolated, the townsfolk pull a page from Lord of the Flies, with the climax of the story ending in asphyxiation and incineration. “I saw it as a chance to write about the serious ecological problems that we face in the world today,” said King. “The fact is we all live under the dome.”

Like many contemporary authors, King worried that short-term politics would upset the teeter-totter of technological equality. He extrapolated that concept in his 1982 work, The Running Man, the story of a desperate man, living in a state-sanctioned media-saturated dystopia, who wages his life in hopes of a $1 billion grand prize. Yet just as in Orwell’s 1984, the omniscience of technology thwarts Richards’ plans. What can Richards do against the Hunters, who draw from endless resources?

Or what if, suggested King in his 1986 horror film, Maximum Overdrive, machines were themselves malicious? In the movie, King’s only directorial effort and winner of a 1987 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director, machines come to life and launch a lethal vendetta against homo sapiens. King described his film as a “moron movie,” but nowhere else does he so blatantly suggest that one day, for reasons inexplicable, mankind may regret its first electrical transistor.

Arthur Clarke: Science Fiction Storyteller

Statistically speaking, King is in the minority. According to a Pew and Smithsonian research poll, some 59 percent of Americans believe coming technological changes will improve the future, while 30 percent hold the glass half empty. Those within the 59 percent are in good company with Arthur Clarke. A lifelong proponent and enthusiast of space travel, terraforming and computer networking, Clarke believed in a fundamental goodness of technology that would improve the human condition. “It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive,” he believed, “when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.”

Clarke was a pop prophet extraordinaire. He predicted satellite internet coverage that could be accessed from virtually anywhere, cloud computing, and in his seminal film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, he even predicted the iPad – or “newspad.” Most famously, Clarke popularized the concept of geostationary satellites for telecommunication purposes. Some of his more fantastic notions have yet to manifest, though, such as slave chimpanzees, bioengineered whales, suspended animation, and an earth-to-moon space elevator.

But some of Clarke’s most important words, which hint at the same fears King discussed, are rarely quoted. “As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals.” In his 1972 essay, for example, “Profiles of the Future,” he was quick to give wasteful transportation a thorough tongue-lashing. “In one lifetime they [automobiles] have consumed more irreplaceable fuel than has been used in the whole previous history of mankind. The roads to support them … cost as much as a small war; the analogy is a good one, for the casualties are on the same scale.”

Perhaps the truth lies between the two authors. The future is without form and void, and it is humans who will author its genesis, for where humans lead, technology follows.

* * * * * * * * * *

"Brandon Engel is a Chicago-based blogger whose favorite Stephen King book is either Hearts in Atlantis or The Shining. Follow him on Twitter: @BrandonEngel2"

CHRISTINE among MSN's 20 best movie cars

MSN has an article titled, "Movie cars: 20 best of all time." (msn.com)

OF COURSE -- Christine has to make that list!

Along with the leading man or woman, sometimes a car becomes a co-star in a certain movie — or even eclipses a film's animate characters. After all, can anyone name an actor from the cult horror classic "Christine"?

Christine comes in at #12 with this note:

Based on Stephen King's novel about an evil hunk of automotive metal, the 1983 horror classic "Christine" featured a red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury as its title character. A sentient but possessed car that could mysteriously repair herself, Christine could also communicate her murderous intentions. Although there were some human actors in the movie, they've long been forgotten. Who could upstage an evil 1950s land yacht with huge tail fins?

The list includes:
 1962 Volkswagen Beetle, ‘The Love Bug’
1981 DeLorean DMC-12, ‘Back to the Future’
1961 Ferrari 250 GT California, ‘Ferris Bueller's Day Off’
1981 Porsche 928, ‘Risky Business’
1983 Wagon Queen Family Truckster, ‘National Lampoon's Vacation’ (haha!)
1977 Pontiac Trans Am Special Edition, ‘Smokey and the Bandit’
1974 Dodge Monaco, ‘The Blues Brothers’
1941 Lincoln Continental, ‘The Godfather’
2008 Audi R8, ‘Iron Man’
1970 Porsche 917K, ‘Le Mans’  (never saw it)
1958 Plymouth Fury, ‘Christine’
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’
1949 Mercury Eight, ‘Rebel Without a Cause’
1959 Cadillac Ecto-1, ‘Ghostbusters’ (that car was great!)
1963 Aston Martin DB5, ‘Goldfinger’
1968 Ford Mustang GT, ‘Bullitt’
1932 Ford Coupe, ‘American Graffiti’
1973 Ford XB Falcon GT351, ‘Mad Max’
1980 Lamborghini Countach LP 400S, ‘The Cannonball Run’
1970 Dodge Charger, ‘The Fast and the Furious’

what about 
1948 Fruehauf Tank Trailer, DUEL.  (Steven Spielberg)

Capacity:  7000 Gallons
Length:  33 Feet Overall Length
Number of Product Compartments:  5
Construction:  Steel
Suspension:  Page & Page 60/40 spring suspension

(You can buy it at www.stlouisdumptrucks.com0

is IT in California?

Rebecca Jacobson at pbs.org/newshour has posted an article titled, "Police arrest one of 20 clowns terrorizing county in California."  Jaconson's first lines include references to Stephen King.  

If the movies “It” and “Killer Clowns from Outer Space” gave you the heebie-jeebies, there’s another reason to be scared of clowns: An outbreak of clowns in the San Joaquin Valley are terrifying residents.

Great.  Evil killer Clown in California.   Jacobson reports on the arrest of what amounts to pranksters terorizing neighborhood children.

The recent creepy clown trend started on social media on October 1. Photos of an eerie clown posed carrying balloons in poorly lit streets of Wasco, California appeared online. The “Wasco clown” photos were taken by a husband and wife team and posted to an Instagram account as part of a year-long art project.

And now, Jacobson says, there are "armed-clown copycats."  This reminds me of something King's fiction often makes clear -- often the real monster is the people.  

Will Errickson: Danse Macabre by Stephen King (1981): Oh, Baby, Do Ya Wanna Dance?

This is from Will Errickson's blog, toomuchhorrorfiction. Of course, there can never REALLY be too much horror fiction, right Will?  Reposted with permission. Check out his blog!

Danse Macabre by Stephen King (1981): Oh, Baby, Do Ya Wanna Dance?

He may not be Harold Bloom, Leslie Fiedler, or Michiko Kakutani, but Stephen King once wrote what I consider one of the most perfectly devastating criticisms of bad writing ever. Comparing a now mostly-forgotten novel by an unknown writer that he felt was "written pretty good" to the then-current rulers of the bestseller lists, King wrote this author was no Saul Bellow, no Bernard Malamud, but at least not down there in the steerage with people like Harold Robbins or Sidney Sheldon, who apparently wouldn't know the difference between a balanced line of prose and a shit-and-anchovy pizza.

Down there in the steerage. A shit-and-anchovy pizza. Holy living fuck, do I love that. Inelegant, crude, and yet right on the money. In fact, I love nearly everything about King's Danse Macabre, which is where you'll find that immortal dismissal. Written after he'd just made a name for himself with the hardcover success of The Shining (1977), it's a very personal and informal rumination on horror entertainment in the latter half of the 20th century, coinciding mostly with King's life specifically and baby boomers in general (he was born in 1947 - which means he was nearly 10 years younger than I am now when he wrote this book. Sigh). I first read it as a young teenager, and it also served well in introducing me to various cultural touchstones I wasn't learning about in high school: the uneasiness Americans felt after Sputnik (a pivotal event in a young King's life), the Charles Whitman and Kent State shootings, Charles Manson, the Vietnam War, Black Panthers, and Erica Jong's charming concept of the "zipless fuck."

Almost effortlessly (the genesis of the book was his college lectures teaching a course on supernatural literature), King relates background info on horror in all media: he fondly recalls the Cold War "bug-eyed monster" horror films of the '50s and '60s but heaps scorns on Plan 9 from Outer Space and Robot Monster. Then there's old-time horror radio star Arch Oboler and his "Lights Out" series, as well as TV shows like "Thriller," "Night Gallery," and "The Outer Limits." He muses about changing tastes and sophistication in audiences as well as root causes for our fascination with the macabre (or "mcbare" as he pronounced the word as a youngster). Tying all this together are autobiographical sketches about his youth as an American kid brought up by a single working mother, moving from one town to another and engaging with some of the odder members of his extended family. And then one day he discovers a box of old pulp fiction paperbacks that had once belonged to his now long-departed father, read his first H.P. Lovecraft tales, and a fate was sealed (Lovecraft; as it ever was, as it ever shall be).

As you can probably guess, this is no academic tome filled with references to "hermeneutics" or "metatextualism" or anything like that; Danse Macabre is digressive, insightful, funny, unpolished, wide-ranging, wrong in some places and oh-so-right in others. King's background as a one-time English teacher and lifelong committed reader with catholic tastes allows him to expound, if only briefly, not simply on the horror fiction we all know and love but also commonly venerated writers like Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Theroux, James M. Cain, Joan Didion, and Jim Thompson. And ever the rock'n'roller, King references late '70s punk rock kings the Ramones and the Sex Pistols - at a time when few music fans in America had any inkling who they were - noting a similarity between their gleeful noise-making and anti-establishment rabble-rousing and the seemingly antisocial aims of many horror movies. He admits he kinda likes The Prophecy, a much-hyped film failure in the late '70s but says his favorite horror movie of that day is the little-seen Tourist Trap. King is one of those guys that just soaks up whatever's out there; it is as if he is quite literally no snob.

As one might expect, he devotes an entire long and thorough chapter on horror fiction in which he covers a handful of modern works that he feels define various aspects of the genre: Peter Straub's Ghost Story, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Anne Rivers Siddons' The House Next Door, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, Harlan Ellison's collection Strange Wine, Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man, and Ramsey Campbell's first novel The Doll Who Ate His Mother. While expressing disdain for the lifeless aridity of grad-school student theorizing King does some of his own, but it's a livelier, chummier, albeit just as informed approach he takes, sometimes graceless and glib, but often apt and unpretentious.

Whether it's breaking down the famous opening paragraph of Jackson's novel, or marveling at the "ominous jocularity" of Ellison's stories, or discussing how the Gothic tradition is twisted around in Straub's early novels, King really just likes kicking back and talking about what he loves and knows. He lets the authors speak for their own works by quoting at length their letters to him, although acknowledging that sometimes authors are not the best critics of their own work.

A few of King's ideas in Danse Macabre have become pretty well-known as part of horror criticism: the horror genre is "as conservative as an Illinois Republican in a three-piece pinstriped suit" because it wants us to reject the maniacal and monstrous outsider, to see the taboo and avoid it and celebrate our healthy selves (this was some years before Clive Barker, remember). He posits that when a horror movie builds up suspense and then shows the audience a 10-foot tall insect, they sigh, "I can handle a 10-foot tall insect; at least it wasn't 100 feet tall, that would've been pretty bad" (I don't think that one holds up well today in the CGI age; modern audiences are more likely to complain "A 10-foot tall insect? Why wasn't it 100 feet tall?"). But most famous of all is this honest admission, which seems to sum up Stephen King and much - but absolutely not all - of his fiction:

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.

Two appendices complete Danse Macabre: one on essential horror film and one on essential horror fiction since the 1950s or so; I've mentioned here before that I've used the latter list as general guide over the years. This is a book I have dipped into over and over again over many years with a deep and abiding pleasure and which inspired in me the desire to look at horror in a larger and more thoughtful way, rather than just taking in the latest movie or novel everybody's talking about. All serious, and burgeoning, horror fans should own a copy. Functioning like a kind of alternative education in art high and low as well as in 20th century Americana, Danse Macabre is an absolutely unmissable and essential piece of horror entertainment itself, from the one and only King.

You might also like: 

Prisoner #1 Skottie Young Variant

Russ Burlingame comicbook.com posted an article "Stephen King Gets Adorable With The Dark Tower: Drawing of the Three - The Prisoner #1 Skottie Young Variant"

Marvel Comics have released the latest in their seemingly never-ending supply of adorable Skottie Young variants -- this time for Stephen King's The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three - The Prisoner #1 from writers Peter David and Robin Furth with art by Piotr Kowalski.

The variant depicts the gunslinger Roland Deschain in Young's inimitable style.

“This is the ‘All-New Marvel NOW’ version of The Dark Tower. We’re now refocusing our spotlight to explore the events that led to the formation of the Ka-Tet that aided the gunslinger Roland Deschain on his quest,” said editor Bill Rosemann. “But instead of encountering Eddie Dean later in his life, as you do in the novel, we zoom back to 1964 and meet him as a toddler, so while we are adapting the second novel, we’re also weaving together events in a new way that will surprise everyone who has already read the book. We’re ‘assembling the Avengers’ of the Dark Tower universe, but Robin Furth, Peter David, and Piotr Kowalski are doing so in a way that you’ve never imagined.”

. . . The Avengers of the Dark Tower universe -- I  LIKE IT! 

The Green Mile At Comic Con

Fans of Stephen King posted this picture  from Comic Con.

THEY ALL FLOAT

Swanson Reflects On King's Impact

How has Stephen King impacted the world of writing?  Like an earthquake. Often when reading King I've thought, "I didn't know you could do that!"  I mean, I always  wanted to -- I just didn't know it was allowed.  And maybe it wasn't, until King did it.

Here is Jeremiah Swanson's article about King's influence on his own writing.  Swanson is author of, And Death Will Seize The Doctor.

I first became aware of King in the mid 80’s, watching his movies when they came on cable back when having cable was a big deal. I remember watching his movies while hunched over greasy pizza boxes and grape sodas, munching away as his newest (to me, anyway) monster or cult or dog or car or kid with psychic powers caused mayhem behind the safety of my television screen.

I always loved King. Even before I knew what a genre was, I knew I loved the kind of stories he told, horror stories. I understood, long before I could articulate, the truth behind all good horror stories, the truth that is so present in all of King’s works. That truth is simplicity itself: people want to live. No matter how dark or scary it gets, people have a drive for life. That truth is what all good horror is about; awakening and sharpening the instinct, drive and desire for life. In our daily grinds we can sometimes get to where we forget we are alive at all; that we are unique beings here but for a short time and when we’re gone, will be gone forever. But in King’s work-as in life when we have a near miss on the highway or are sitting in the doctor’s office waiting nervously for her to come back with the results- we are shocked into being reminded that we are alive, now, but there is also this thing called death that always seemed somehow far and mythical but now is suddenly very close and very real. We are reminded how we so very much want to keep on living. We are reminded of just how much death will be taking from us, and we are spurred on to fight it.

Even in a world overflowing with the horrible beasties and circumstances his amazing imagination can fill them with, there is something incredibly life affirming about his characters who do not give up, who keep on fighting, who keep on wanting to live even after it seems they’ve lost everything worth living for, and indeed, any chance of living at all.

The story that encapsulated that drive the most was Cujo, the tale (pun?) that did for me with neighborhood dogs what Jaws did for generations of beach goers. I always thought Cujo was scarier than Jaws, actually. With Cujo, you couldn’t just get out of the water. In fact, with Cujo, you couldn’t even get out of your car. Not even if you were broken down in sweltering heat with your son dying beside you, he wouldn’t let you out. You had to hold on and find a way, or succumb and die.

The movie was much kinder than the book. (SPOILER ALERT) In the movie the lead character escapes with her son. In the book, the boy dies. I must say, I always found the book’s ending more…I don’t want to say satisfying, but perhaps edifying than the movie’s. I was always more interested in the consequences of violence and the costs to survivor’s who opt not to be overwhelmed, who try to live with their guilt, than with the violence itself. King always does this better than most other writers, and I credit his portrayal of these circumstances as having a huge influence on my writings, particularly in my book, And Death Will Seize the Doctor, Too.

In my story, Christian Thompson has the power to heal with a touch of his hand, but for every person he cures, he must first kill someone else.

His talents grant him entry into a secret organization with other paranormally gifted people who help him try to use his gift for the greater good. His handlers create a situation for him where he can extract the life from death row inmates after staged executions. He hates the idea of killing, but if taking the life of someone who was going to be executed anyway meant the lives of others can be saved, he’ll do it. While killing never gets easy, over time, it does get easier. Tolerable. Until he discovers one of the men he killed was actually innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. He is so overcome with guilt he quits, vowing to never take another life. For years he sticks by that promise, but when a person he loves becomes deathly ill, he has to come back for one last job. And when he does, he is forced by circumstances to commit a murder so horrible, so ghastly that he knows he can never wash himself clean again. But he also knows he can never stop trying. He doesn’t have that right.

That type of impossible situation and relentless drive in the face of hopelessness is one of the hallmarks of Stephen King’s writing. And while I do not pretend at all to have his talent for portraying it, I am eternally grateful for his being able to do it so well that it made me even want to try.

AND DEATH WILL SEIZE THE DOCTOR, TOO is available now at: 
 AMAZON.COM

Lego Stephen King

I've been obsessed with Lego's lately.  Might have something to do with the awesome Lego movie!  It was total mash-up at its best.

Here's  some Lego Stephen King:

IT:

Here's Carrie:

yeah, I like that one a lot.

Here's The Dark Tower

How cool is that, Roland?  Show up at the Dark Tower  and find that the beams all lead to LEGO LAND!

Here's THE SHINING

Here's THE MIST

Here's CHRISTINE

Here's

Neurotic Friday The 13th

I enjoyed this 1984 article in the New York Times by Stephen King, titled, "A Bad Year if You Fear Friday the 13th."  HERE.

I had to check this, since there is that other Stephen King who posts economic news.  But I'm pretty sure this is our writer friend, since it's hard to imagine the economist being that concerned about Friday the 13th.

King wrote:

I always take the last two steps on my back stairs as one, making 13 into 12 (there were, after all, 13 steps on the English gallows - up until 1900 or so - and executions were traditionally carried out on Fridays). When I am reading, I will not stop on page 94, page 193, page 382, et al. - the digits of these numbers add up to 13. Such behavior is, of course, neurotic, but I sometimes think it is neurosis and not love that reallymakes the world go round - think of all those basketball players who cross themselves before taking foul shots, not to mention stockbrokers who carry lucky coins and carpenters who wouldn't think of completing a house without first nailing a branch to the rooftree.

King gives special attention to years with a triple Friday the 13th.  For instance, " In 1956 Bela Lugosi died and was buried in his Dracula cloak."

Finally, the 1984 Stephen King informs us that the year he's reallydreading is 1998. "In that triple- whammy year I'll be 49. Can you add 4 and 9?"  So what did happen in 1998?  He gave us Bag Of Bones.  Not so bad!  However, 1999 would be the year that wasn't so friendly.

Stephen King vs The Walking Dead

Check out this 2012 article by author James A. West on Stephen King vs. The Walking Dead. (HERE)

West writes,

 Lately, I have been re-reading some of my favorites by Stephen King and immersing myself in the zombie apocalypse hit, The Walking Dead. Somehow the two got jumbled together in my mind, and I began to wonder what if, which culminated in the idea of Stephen King moving through the zombie-infested wasteland of the The Walking Dead. What follows are three of dozens of what if scenes.

The Simpsons All Work And No Play

SOURCE: Facebook Fans Of Stephen King

Stephen King Apples To Apples

I play Apples to Apples with my kids.  You draw cards, then a category is put down, and people try to match their card to the category.  A judge decides which card (usually a noun) matches the the category.  Wasn't I surprised last night when Stephen King was laid down as an answer.  Doesn't matter what the category was -- it won.

DUCK Commander MISERY

Hey Jack, this is proof positive everyone has a Stephen King connection.  I'm watching Duck Dynasty (it makes my family happy, happy, happy) when I start catching Stephen King references.
Most recent is a quote from Willie:

"If it were up to me, I'd just Jase's legs and chain him to his desk to him work.  I'd be like tht weird chick off misery and he'd be the dude in the bed.   But since there are regulations against that now.  . ."

There.  I have nothing else to say.

Wait. . . one more thing.  A Robertson would make a good character in a Stephen King novel.  But it's not Misery.

Seriously, which novel would  be cooler if it had happened in redneck country?  EASY!  The Tommyknockers.  Because those guys digging up an alien spaceship is just a wonderful thought.

Rock n King

Corey Deiterman at Houston Press posted an interesting article, "Stephen King's Five Best Rock and Roll References."

Deiterman explains, "With the release of Joyland, I decided to look back at some of King's best rock references and fixations throughout his legendary bibliography, and even his best-forgotten foray into directing films."

5. Pet Sematary (Ramones)

4. Lisey's Story

3. Christine

4. Nightmares and Dreamscapes 

("You Know They Got a Hell of a Band" is a pure rock story about a husband and wife who wander into a perfect town inhabited by the spirits of dead rock stars. On an unfortunate note, the story, first written in 1992, was updated for the 2006 teleplay to include George Harrison and Kurt Cobain, both of whom had died in the intervening years.)

1. Maximum Overdrive (AC/DC)

I especially like the entry for Chrsitine: 

King's Christine is about three things: a haunted car, a love triangle between three all-American teenagers, and 1950s rock and roll. Each chapter of the novel begins with a lyric from a '50s rock song about cars, a ubiquitous lyrical subject of the era, and its plot roughly mirrors a typical "car crash song"; though with a lot more supernatural stuff included. 

Ultimately, Christine can be read as a tribute of sorts to not only the era itself but the music of the era. King grew up in that time and no doubt absorbed a great deal of that early rock into his psyche, which is evident all over the novel.

The full article is at houstonpress.com

A Tribute to Tributes To THE SHINING

Needful Rings

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