The Guardian notes that the book will also include notes from King on the craft of writing. Of course, King hasn't taken on the subject of writing since his classic book, On Writing.
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, due to be published on 3 November, will bring together 20 short stories by King, a mix of new writing and work already collected in magazines. But it will also include an introduction to each story by the writer, in which he will provide “autobiographical comments on when, why and how he came to write it”, as well as “the origins and motivation of each story. His editor at Hodder & Stoughton, Philippa Pride, predicted the inclusion would “delight all his readers including those who love his insight into the craft of writing”.
This article is by Jeff McArthur, author of Pro Bono. I enjoyed it quite a bit! He discusses the Starkweather case -- a crime that fascinated a young Stephen King.
STARKWEATHER, CARIL ANN FUGATE and STEPHEN KING
by Jeff McArthur
In 1958, 19-year-old Charles Raymond Starkweather went on
a murder spree that left 11 people dead, and shocked the nation. He took with him his 14-year-old
ex-girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, and it soon because a mystery as to whether she
had been his accomplice or his hostage.
The
murder spree was something the country had not expected, and was ill-prepared
for. Most people left their doors
unlocked, especially in less violent parts of the country like Nebraska, where
Charlie and Caril lived, a fact that Starkweather took advantage of. He had killed Caril’s family in their home, a
farmer outside his house, and two teenagers after they picked him up as a
hitchhiker; but it was when he killed one of the most wealthy men in town, his
wife and their maid, all in bright daylight and inside their own home, that the
state, and indeed the country, panicked.
The National Guard marched down the middle of the street in Lincoln,
reports claimed that he had made it to several states, gun shops were emptied,
posses were formed, and the news reached countries around the world in multiple
languages. People across the globe were
horrified.
One
of these people was ten-year-old Stephen King, who kept a scrap-book of the
newspaper clippings he found that reported on the murder spree. He has said in multiple interviews, including
a recent one with Stephen Colbert, that the fear he felt from these events
influenced his decision to become a writer.
He has backed up this claim in his book On Writing, where he said that
he found a certain fascination in the pure evil of Starkweather.
He
evidently was driven to share that fear with the world, as he, of course, went
on to write horror that reflected that pure evil Starkweather embodied. The murder spree and the characters have appeared
both figuratively and literally in his books.
The character Randall Flagg was said to be a schoolmate of Charles
Starkweather. The character The Kid from
the same book was modeled after the 19-year-old killer. Also, George Stark, the primary antagonist of
The Dark Half was named after Starkweather.
Though
clearly inspired by the killer, he has said little about one of the elements
that makes this story so fascinating and chilling, that of the 14-year-old girl
who was with Starkweather during the murder spree. Caril Fugate came home from school one day to
find Charlie alone in her house. Her
family was missing. No one knows exactly
what happened over the next couple weeks.
All that is known for certain is that seven more bodies were found in their
wake, and that Charlie later admitted to another murder the year before.
Charlie
claimed at first that Caril had nothing to do with the murders. He and Caril both told the exact same story,
that he had told her that her family was being held by some friends of his, and
if she didn’t do exactly as he said, he would call up his friends and have her
family killed. Caril said she did
everything to keep them alive, but when she saw a police car along a Wyoming
highway just after Charlie had killed a salesman in his car, she couldn’t take
it anymore. She ran to the sheriff and
jumped in his car. The officer had not
yet seen Charlie, but when Caril pointed him out, the officer was able to call
ahead to other officers who chased Charlie down.
Both
parties told this exact same story multiple times until word got to Charlie
that Caril was saying he was insane.
Suddenly, his story changed. In
fact, it changed every single time he told it.
Even in court, when he would answer one attorney, then the other attorney
asked what happened, his story changed.
My
grandfather, John McArthur, was Caril Fugate’s attorney. He had no opinion of the case, and had taken
it only out of a sense of constitutional duty.
But when he started interviewing Caril, he was shocked to learn that,
first, no one had told her she was being charged with murder. The police had questioned her without an
attorney for days, gathering a case against her without telling her what was
going on, and she had complied simply as a way to tell them what Charlie had
done. Second, my grandfather was
surprised to learn that the case was far more complicated than anyone had let
on.
Caril
had left multiple clues for the police, including a note to turn everyone away
from the house which read, “Everyone is sick with the flu, Miss Bartlett”. She had underlined “Miss Bartlett” three
times because the only Miss Bartlett in the house was her two-year-old
half-sister. When relatives went to the
police saying something was wrong at the house, the police ignored them. It had been Charlie’s brother and Caril’s
brother-in-law who had finally broken into the chicken shed behind the house to
find Caril’s slain family.
The
second clue she left was when she threw from the car the school books of one of
the teenage victims to show the police which direction they were headed. Though the books were found on the road
heading east, the police inexplicably determined that they were headed west.
Caril
had also written a note begging for help, which was in her jacket pocket when
she ran to the police officer. This note
disappeared when it was sent to the County Attorney’s office. The big question now was, why did this
happen?
It
was very simple. After the murder spree,
a national investigation was held to determine why the Lincoln police
department and the Nebraska sheriff’s department took so long to catch
Starkweather. They were under extra
scrutiny because Charlie had killed someone two months earlier, and multiple
witnesses had come forward pointing at Charlie, including some of his friends
and family. The police never so much as
investigated him. Now, under national
scrutiny, they needed a scapegoat, and Caril Fugate was the perfect target for
this.
John and Ruby McArthur in their home in 1952
McArthur archives
My
grandfather was so angry at the unfair treatment Caril received that he
continued to defend her pro bono, meaning without pay, for eighteen years. He was offered pay by the State after the
original trial, but the amount was less than half of what each of Charlie’s
attorneys had been paid, and the State had allowed him to be represented by two
attorneys, while it did not allow John’s partner to help with Caril’s trial; a
move which far exceeded the judge’s authority, yet he did it anyway, as there
was no one at the time to stop him.
After
eighteen years, my grandfather, along with my father, who had become an
attorney by that time, got Caril released on parole, though they all would have
rather had a new trial. Caril, in fact,
could have gone for parole five years earlier, but had chosen to remain in
prison in hopes to prove her innocence.
To
this day, there are many misconceptions and rumors spread about the case. It has spawned many movies, books, and
songs. Bruce Springsteen’s album
Nebraska is based on it. Peter Jackson’s
first Hollywood movie The Frighteners is taken from the story, and Terrence
Mallick’s Badlands was inspired by it.
Terrence and Martin Sheen, in fact, both became friends of Caril’s
during the making of it.
The
true story, however, is far more complex and interesting. I have placed it all in a book I’ve written
called “Pro Bono - The 18-Year Defense of Caril Ann Fugate”, which can be found
on any e-reader, and on paperback on Amazon.
You can also find it on the website, along with a lot more information,
including photographs, and the entire trial transcripts, at my website: probonobook.com
I am about half way through the Stephen King novel Misery. Originally slated to be a Bachman novel, Misery was ultimately published under King’s own name. This is because the big secret was uncovered. . . Stephen King was indeed Richard Bachman. Misery is an unrelentingly painful book, with very few spots of sunshine. I like the book very much.
Some observations as I’ve been reading:
1. The writing.
The book itself revolves almost completely, thus far at least, around the two central characters of Paul and Annie. Further, King never switches view points. The reader receives all information from Paul Sheldon’s point of view. This means that the reader is immersed in Paul’s internal thought processes and perspective. When he blacks out, the narrative blacks out with him. When Paul suffers, believe me, King is a skilled enough writer to carry the reader right into his suffering.
In one scene, as Paul explores the house, King brilliantly breaks up the intensity of the Paul’s thoughts and the action sequence by bringing in the voice of a sports caster. Of course, that voice is in Paul’s head! In another scene, the typewriter itself becomes a character and talks to Mr. Sheldon!
I thought you were supposed to be good, the typewriter said— his mind had invested it with a sneering and yet callow voice: the voice of a teen-age gunslinger in a Hollywood western, a kid intent on making a fast reputation here in Deadwood. You’re not so good. Hell, you can’t even please one crazy overweight ex-nurse. Maybe you broke your writing bone in that crash, too ... only that bone isn’t healing.
At another point he hears the Red Queen lecturing Alice.
To the reader, these scenes (the sportscaster, the typewriter, the Red Queen) help break up the long sections of monologue running through Paul’s head.
The movie opened Misery up quite a bit by adding the character of the Sherif and his wife. This broke up the long scenes between Annie and Paul.
2. Annie's many tortures
Annie has many ways of torturing Paul. This is mostly because she herself is a tortured soul. (Hurt people. . . hurt people.) Here are a few ways thus far that Annie has tortured Paul:
She left him without food or care for several days.
She messes with his meds. In particular, she gets him addicted and then refuses access to medication.
She beats him at times.
She forced him to burn his book, Fast Cars. This was probably one of the most painful things!
She reminds him often of his hopeless situation. She encourages him to scream, because no one is coming.
. . . and don’t I know, there is so much more to come!
3. Prequel to On Writing
Since "prequel" talk is in the air. . . I think Misery serves as a prequel to King’s book, “On Writing.” Or it is the novelized version. I know this is not intentional, but in Misery, King takes the reader deep inside the writing process.
When Paul agrees to write a sequel to his latest Misery novel, Annie is not pleased with the first few pages. She calls the new work a “cheat.” She clarifies that she has no problem with a writer using plot lines that might seem unlikely – so long as they are consistent within the confines of the work. What is unfair is to just pretend something didn’t happen!
This is from Paul’s head:
deus ex machina, the god from the machine, first used in Greek amphitheaters. When the playwright got his hero into an impossible jam, this chair decked with flowers came down from overhead. The hero sat down in it and was drawn up and out of harm’s way. Even the stupidest swain could grasp the symbolism-the hero had been saved by God. But the deus ex machina— sometimes known in the technical jargon as “the old parachute-under-the-airplane-seat trick,” finally went out of vogue around the year 1700. Except, of course, for such arcana as the Rocket Man serials and the Nancy Drew books. I guess you missed the news, Annie.
Annie explains the problem with an illustration from the Rocketman short films she used to watch every week as a kid. She was upset one week when the story picked up, but made changes to the previous week. Annie tells Paul, “The car went over the cliff, and all the kids in the theater were cheering because Rocket Man got out, but I wasn’t cheering, Paul. I was mad! I started yelling, ‘That isn’t what happened last week! That isn’t what happened last week!’” and, ““He didn’t get out of the cockadoodie car! It went over the edge and he was still inside it! Do you understand that?”
Paul realizes that he can’t just write a quick book to please Annie, he is going to have to put real thought into this novel – because if he doesn’t bring Misery back to life somehow, Paul knows Annie is going to kill him.
Can a writer write for his life? That was also a theme of The Dark Half. Not just his dinner or his house. . . can he write if his life depends on it? You betcha! But not joyfully. Writing done at gun point is not the result of the overflow of the heart. It’s mechanical and painful.
The typewriter sat there, smirking at him. “I hate you,” Paul said morosely, and looked out the window. (Misery)
And
TRYING TO HAVE AN IDEA wasn’t the same thing as GETTING AN IDEA. GETTING AN IDEA was a more humble way of saying I am inspired, or Eureka! My muse has spoken! (Misery)
4. What Annoys Me
Thus far, I only have one major complaint: I do not enjoy reading Mr. Sheldon’s writing. I enjoy Stephen King very much! But King feels the need to take us inside the novel Sheldon is writing. . . page by page, thus far! I honestly don’t care about Ian, Geoffrey, or the doctor or the rest of them! Very naughty of me, I know.
King doesn’t just give us a taste of Misery’s Return – he gives us full chapters. If I were not listening to the book, I would be tempted to scan at this point.
I like to time travel. Maybe it's just time surfing. Captain Kirk is able to time travel by sling shotting his space ship around the sun. I do not have a space ship. Of course, Marty McFly had a car that could leap through time. Geez that movie was fun! Stephen King's next novel is about time travel, but I'm not real clear yet on the means by which movement through time is actually accomplished.
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Anyway, my means of time travel is old books and magazines. Actually, magazines are the best! A book stays focused on its subject, but a magazine gives you a full flavor of the time.
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So, via my Stephen King / Peter Straub edition of the Twilight Zone Magazine, I'm headed back to 1985. Come on, this is fun. Besides, I know half of you are at work right now anyway, and this has got to be a better trip than what your boss thinks you're doing.
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Advertizing Defines The Times
. Ads really define the times. No one in 1985 was begging you to visit their website, but there are a lot of book clubs to join.
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There is an ad for L. Ron Hubbard's new book, Battlefield Earth.
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Also there is an ad for Robert McCammon's Usher's Passing. Headline, "King, Straub, and now Robert McCammon." The text reads, "Wildly enthusiastic reviews greeted Robert R. McCammon's recent bestseller, Mystery walk. Now, in this new novel, Usher's Passing, McCammon's dazzling imagination tracest he descendants of the infamous family of Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher.". . . it sold hardcover for 14:95
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The back cover sports a full page, color ad for John Carpenters STARMAN. "In 1977 voyager II was launched into space, inviting all life forms int he universe to visit our planet. Get ready. Company's coming." Opens December 14 at a theater near you.
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By the way, there is a lot of hype in this magazine for the movie 2010. Even a full color article.
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Stories include:
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Nostalgia: "OLD DARK HOUSE FOR REND" by Ron Goulart. Did you see the movie of this? Old Dark House is a classic from 1932, directed by none other than James Whale, who also directed Frankenstein.
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"Changing Of The Guard" by Anne Serling, adapted from the teleplay by Rod Serling. I saw this episode! Oh yeah. . . I've seen them all. .
"The Time Wife" by Thomas Tolnay. "She looked exactly as his wife had looked twenty years ago. How could any man resist?" Here's a good line from the story, "I couldn't possibly tell my wife that there were two of her in the world." ha! that would be a problem.
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"Twisted Shadow" by Robert F. Funkley. "The garden was a cozy English world of serenity and peace -- all except a certain shadow that pointed the wrong way." This line here is pretty good: "She is being buried -- heaven protect her! Alive!"
. "Laughs! Thrills! Romance!!" by Ron Wolfe. "he had missed his chance for all of them -- and now it was too late."
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"Legacy" by Leigh Essex. "A daughter inherits many things from her mother. . . and love may be the least of them."
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The Quest For The Talisman
The cover article, "Stephen King, Peter Straub & the Quest for The Talisman" was written by Douglas E. Winter. It closely mirrors his chapter in The Art Of Darkness.
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Winter is excited that the work was exchanged "electronically" by "telephone modem communication between their respective word processors." Today, we would go. . . "yah!" But I guess passing information electronically was high tech stuff in 1985. But actually, this information was being sent back and forth in 1982!
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On Thanksgiving of 1982 Kign and Straub met in Boston. Late that night they undertook the "great Thanksgiving putsch" and gave the book its finished structure.
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King notes that he read everything Mark Twain wrote. Everything! Of course, King says that a lot of what he wrote he did to pay for his house, so it wasn't all good. There are a lot of references to "Reagan's America" and the nuclear threat. It was seen, at the time, as a dark period.
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Winters explains that the book has some pretty raw sex in it because the authors wanted to be sure they did not write a juvenile, Walt Disney book.
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SELECTED QUOTES:
Here are some quotes from King and Straub. Quotes make up the meat of the article, which were probably the notes Winter built his chapter from.
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STRAUB: "It was totally at random. When one of us took it, usually he went on until he reached a point at which he was comfortable dropping it. So we pretty much ignored our assignments and went on until a natural break. By and large, we started off writing it rigidly, and ended up doing it instinctively, which was by far the better of the two ways."
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KING: "It was a little bit like playing tennis. He would send what he had done and then I would work for three or four weeks and send the stuff back to him. And I really enjoyed the process -- partly because writers are so lazy. It was wonderful; the book would grow without me doing anything. But it was also a little bit like the old days, when I got the Saturday Evening Post with its serial stories. When Peter said he was going to send me something, and I would get excited because I was going to get to read some more of the story."
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STRAUB: [about editing each others work] "I think we both must have been a little touchy about that. Anyway, we accepted whatever the other guy did until the book was done. Then, in the final editing, we each took a free hand with the other's stuff. and there were times when I wished we could have done the whole book like that, becasue it was a wonderful and profound experience, and something very few writers ever get the chance to have. It's like having an X ray of someones mind when you review his material that way."
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KING: "The problems with The Talisman were always problems of length. The book had been conceived as a 'get it and bring it back' story, as opposed to The Lord of the Rings, which is a 'take it and get rid of it' story. But we began to realize that we had only mapped out half of the book -- that is to say, we had mapped about to the point where Jack gets it, and we had left bringing it back to another planning session. Except that by November of 1982, we already had something like six hundred pages of copy. So, we're sitting and looking at each other saying, 'We've got to do something.' We kicked around a lot of ideas, because there were lots of incidents we had planned for the way out that we hadn't got to yet, and we started realizing that this was going to be long."
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STRAUB: "It would have been a four-thousand page novel, and Steve and I would both be dead, if we were still trying to write that thing."
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KING: "It's a very mythic book. to me, the most wonderful thing about it is how eighteenth and nineteenth century the book is in terms of storytelling, and also in terms of the effort to create large archetypes.
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We were interested in the concept of the hero in literature. we talked about the hero in terms of the quest, the mythicization of the hero, and the return of the hero to a lesser being when the quest is completed. Huckleberry Finn is a picaresque novel that doesn't have a specific object for its quest, so we focused instead on things like the story of Jesus, the story of King Arthur, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We talked about those things, and when we wrote the book, it filtered down like sediment."
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STRAUB: "Twain was on our minds at the start, but the finished book suggests that our efforts were more conscious than they really were. I do know that we had Tom Sawyer in mind when we named Jack; but we really didn't have Twain on our minds during the whole term of the book."
Russell Moore, Dean of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary posted an article about his experience reading King's book On Writing. .
Moore's blog entry, titled "What Stephen King Taught Me About Repentance," discusses King's realization that he was an alchaholic. What grabbed Moore's attention was that King's revelation was brought on by his recycelilng! That is, all the cans piled up showed him something was wrong. Moore writes, "the image of something as mundane as a recycling bin full of cans prompting a life-change prompted me to think about the goodness of God in such things, in my own life."
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Interesting. When I read On Writing I was sturck with much the same thoughts. Moore concludes his blog entry with these two paragraphs:
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Drunkenness isn't my particular point of weakness, but I sure have lots of others. And this anecdote reminded me of how many times God has used something minor to arrest my attention. It usually isn't a cross in the sky or a vision on the road. But I'll hear someone speak and think, "Oh man, that sounds like me, and I don't want to be like that." Or a conversation will prompt me to think about some stupid parenting maneuver I've been attempting. Or my son will pretend to be "Daddy," and I'll think, "Hey, that's not how I want to be remembered by my boys." Or I'll stop in the middle of my self-pity and whining to see a sunset that will remind me how good God is to let me view it. And so on.
. I'd imagine you can think of similar things in your own life, uncanny little moments that turn you around, back toward the goal of Christ. That's discipline, though not what we typically think of when we think of discipline. These moments are moments of gentle kindness. And God's kindness is meant "to lead you to repentance" (Rom. 2:4).
Constant Readers all have favorite Stephen King novels. usually The Stand and IT rank pretty high, along with The Shining and most recently Under The Dome. The Dark Tower series is a "beast" of its own -- some people don't even touch it!
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Beyond the favorite novels is another issue worth consideration -- strength of writing. Some sotries we love because of the story itself, irregardless of the writing style. Put me down for the Tommyknockers on that one. I think it was a great, great story! But, the prose were long and confusing. Sentenses that ran on and on and became painful. I've said before I wish King would rewrite that thing. But not at the expense of time devoted to the next D.T. novel and Dr. Sleep.
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What makes King such a popular writer is at least two fold: Stories and writing. The strange truth is, sometimes the writing is stronger than the story, and stometimes the story is stronger than the writing. A really powerful connection happens when the writing and story come together. I would argue that often King's novella's are driven as much by his writing as it is the story. Thus the strength of The Body. Did anyone really read it to see a body? No! The power of that story is King's writing and his ability to draw us into a world of young teen boys.
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So what novels are well written? Which ones "pop"? Please share your thoughts. Here are some of my own notes:
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Classic King was etremely strong. Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone, Fire Starter and Cujo are all written with a similar energy. Then, with Christine, something starts to drift. You can see that same type of drifting magnified in Insominia, and at times with IT.
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King is aware of his sometimes uneven writing, thus the existance of a reworked Gunslinger.
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So here's my quick list of novels I thought were etremely strong writing:
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1. Under The Dome. I have noticed more than once how short his sentences are in this. It keeps the story flowing.
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2. Dolores Claiborne. I really liked the narration here. The writing was, in my opinion, King at his very best. I feel like I've been inside that old ladies head!
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3. The Green Mile. I think the segmented style forced a level of self-editing that was good, without hacking up the novel. I read someone, now forgotten, who suggested that the Sun Dog was overly edited. I think that might be true. The Green Mile hits the right balance.
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4. Firestarter is actually a very tight book, written almost like an action thriller. Notice all the "ly's" king puts at the end of the dialogue? In On Writing he said not to do that -- but I like it.
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5. The Shining accomplishes what ing wanted to do in Geralds Game -- lock down a situation. One woman in a room got a little dry, but a family locked in together in a haunted hotel was delightful.
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6. UNEVENNESS: Now, about The Stand -- is this really King's writing at his best, or is it driven by story? Come on, it's the all time favorite among King Fans! Obviously the writing is great -- in the revised version. But take a look at the original and notice how dry it feels. It has a hollow feel, almost appropriate for the 1970's! But then notice the writing in the revised version. King didn't just add scenes, he reworked the novel itself. It made a good novel a truly great novel (By the way, Cell gives me that same hollow feeling. I don't know why. I really want to like it!)
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By the way. . . based on the picture above, I think I know where Beaver from Dreamcatcher caught his toothpick habit.
In short, readers both familiar and unfamiliar with Stephen King's novels will find a motherlode of interesting information inside the pages of Brighton David Gardner's insightful and illuminating treatise.
I can't recommend it enough, so be sure to get it either for your Kindle or e-Reader of choice, or buy the print version because it's easily worth twice the cover price.
