Wednesday reading.... Stephen King?!

[asakiyume]

For once I can make a reading post on a Wednesday, remarkable.

My ESL tutee is a Stephen King fan, and to practice her English, she bought the most recent (or must at least be close to the most recent) Stephen King book, called Billy Summers. I've never read **any** Stephen King--not anything--but of course I know him from reputation and from books and stories of his that have turned into movies. Anyway, I bought the ebook of this so I could read along with her, ask reading comprehension questions, etc.

I was just idly following along until like the middle of ... the first chapter, at which point I desperately wanted to know more and began reading ahead, totally absorbed.

Observation no. 1: I don't think this is what you'd call a typical Stephen King? This is a thriller/suspense novel rather than a horror novel. It's "hitman with a heart of gold takes on One Last Job [he himself aware of how those go awry]" + "hitman discovers his inner novelist"

I'm into competent characters, and Billy Summers is very, very competent, so I liked that right away. A person discovering writing and thinking about what writing means and how to do it? Of course I'm going to like that too.

Observation no. 2: Stephen King has *super* control of voice. Billy Summers adopts a slightly slow persona when dealing with the people who hire him so that they'll underestimate him. So you have Billy being dull and Billy being sharp. Then you have the various voices he adopts in writing his memoir: himself as a child, then himself as an adult during the Iraq war--and at first he has to write these as if it's Dull Billy writing them, rather than Sharp Billy, because his work is being monitored. And Stephen King manages this masterfully--I was enjoying not only Billy's competence but Stephen King's.

I often observe writers slip up on voice. They're writing from the perspective of 19th century explorers, or children of mer-beings, or from the perspective of settlers on the space frontier, and suddenly some lingo from 21st-century writer discourse is there on the page--the writer's own thinking, not the characters'. Stephen King helps himself by writing in our present and by making his character a nascent writer, but he's not making slips like that.

Observation no. 3: It's interesting for me to watch Stephen King establishing moral credentials for his hitman protagonist, and I find myself musing on which moral positions are Billy's and which ones are, if not Stephen King's own, then anyway ones he thinks his reading audience will more or less agree with or at least tolerate. This feeds into thoughts I have about justice systems, how none of them are ever perfect and yet we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good (... but we can't let fatalism about the inability to achieve perfection mean we acquiesce to the dreadful, either).

Observation no. 4: The book is (so far; I'm about two-thirds through it) super well structured: one-third to establish Billy's competence; one-third to have him develop as a writer (which gives us his back story), and now the last third, where he'll either triumph over the antagonist ... or not! I don't know! I've never read a thriller/suspense novel either; I have no idea what the genre expectations are.

Observation no. 5: He must have written this before the pandemic, but then the pandemic happened, so periodically the narration says something along the lines of "Little did they realize that in six months everything would be locked down... little did they realize that six months later the cruise industry would come to a grinding halt." These read like the afterthoughts they are and are hilarious.

I guess I can see why Stephen King is a best-seller, is what I'm saying.

Comments

[cmcmck]

Have to admit that he's never appealed.

[asakiyume]

I have no point of comparison!

[missroserose]

I find King's writing hit-and-miss, but he does some things extremely well (character voice, for instance). His memoir/guide On Writing was one of my formative texts when I was starting to figure out this writing thing for myself.

[mallorys_camera]

Seconding admiration for King's On Writing.

[asakiyume]

Noting this too.

[asakiyume]

Well, based on my sample of one (heh), I can see it!

I can well believe someone as prolific as he is would be hit-and-miss. It would be uncanny if everything was equally good.

Taking note about what you say about On Writing too. I don't tend to look at writing guides (how's that for hubris), but I'm interested in what ones people particularly like.

Actually, the novel itself is kind of like writing advice: the MC thinks about what details to put in and leave out, etc., and why. So that's cool.

[mallorys_camera]

::Waving::

Stephen King fan here!

Not a super fan, but a fan!

To me, King's kind of the 20th/21st century Dickens—with many of Dickens's virtues and all of Dickens's faults.

Of all King's novels, I think you would like The Dead Zone best.

[asakiyume]

The Dead Zone, noted!

I'm finding this one very enjoyable and readable, both in terms of the skill of the storytelling and the writing and also the plot. Amazing.

I can see the comparison with Dickens.

[pameladean]

Long ago, a housemate persuaded me that King's The Dead Zone and, I think, The Shining were science fiction, not horror, and I should really try them. I borrowed The Dead Zone from him. I didn't actually like it -- it is science fiction, very arguably, but it has horrific sensibilities: the ways in which it makes its points about character and motivation are horrific. But I could not stop reading it. Even back then, he could pace and describe things in a way that made an extremely compelling book that I didn't want to read. It was a fascinating experience.

I declined to try The Shining, but my housemate and I had a lovely discussion of The Dead Zone.

P.

[asakiyume]

VERY interesting! I think I've experienced that with books to varying degrees. Books I dislike, but appreciate in some way, or just, as you say, can't put down.

(Actually the can't-put-down-ness can sometimes accrue to pretty awful books; I've been known to follow a thing through to the end just out of horrified fascination--not so much now, though; time's too short.)

When you say it made its points in horrific ways, can you explain a little? I have literally *no* experience reading horror and very little experience watching it, so it's hard for me to imagine.

[pameladean]

I have not read much horror either and very little on purpose, so I may be way off base.

There's one character who is already clearly a bad person, but at some point early on in the book, it was apparently necessary to make this very clear, so King has him xvpx n qbt gb qrngu (rot13). There's no plot-related reason for this; it doesn't have repercussions later. It's just, as far as I could tell at the time, to show that this is a very bad person.

Other than things like that, where the more horrifying extra thing happens, the more bloody or lurid or terrifying choice just generally seemed to be made, whereas a different writer writing the same kind of book would not have made those particular choices but could still, I think, have gotten their point across. King already had gotten his point across in the case of this example but he didn't seem to think that he had.

It's been so long that I can't come up with more than the first example; I'm sorry.

P.

[asakiyume]

Yikes almighty, yeah; I see what you mean.

Related to what you say about Bad People, in this book the protagonist makes a point that he only kills "bad people," which I side-eyed massively. I wondered if King was going to just sail by with this--that's what I mean by being interested in the morals put forward--and I was interested to see that he doesn't: he has the protag realize (a) that people are mixed and (b) that he himself is in the "bad people" category by virtue of his profession. So King goes to the trouble of doing this... but still the story moves along as if he hasn't, really? In other words, the *vibe* of the story is still that if Billy is killing "bad people" this somehow is, if not okay, then at least less bad than killing "good people." So in a sense it's kind of just window dressing? But it's interesting that in his earlier work--the one you're talking about--he didn't (I guess) feel the need for the window dressing.

[mallorys_camera]

The underlying motif here is your basic Armageddon in which the Forces of Goodness rally against the Armies of Darkness.

Interesting that you "side-eye" the decision to kill "bad people." (That sentence reads much snarkier than I intended it! I apologize.)

I mean, essentially it's the same decision that Frodo makes in Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter makes in innumerable instances throughout the novel series that bears his name, no? Except in those works, the decision is viewed as a collective necessity whereas King allows, indeed encourages, his characters to make the decision as individuals.

(I'm not arguing the rightness or wrongness of the decision, by the way. I'm not a big fan of vigilante slaughter whatever its ends are.)

I think it's that focus on the individual that's King's strength as a storyteller. He is really, really good at status details, that odd combination of sensory cues and flash memories that plant a reader very firmly inside a character's head.

[asakiyume]

I mean I side-eye it wherever it happens, and I'm not big on The Lord of the Rings anymore (though I liked it as a kid), but part of the reason I don't like LoTR now is part of what distinguishes it from something like Billy Summers, namely, that Tolkien says with authorial fiat that Sauron and orcs, etc. are irredeemably and 100 percent bad--he just declares it to be fact. Whereas in reality, that's just not so of anything. But the people Billy Summers kills for money aren't orcs or Sauron. They're your garden-variety murderers and rapists and so on. And sure, murdering and raping is bad--but is it worth being murdered for? For the sake of the story I can go along with it, but it's not a viewpoint I'm going to embrace. Thinking over what I said to Pamela, maybe I do think Billy's growing unhappiness with his path in life is more than window dressing, and maybe that's part of what I like in the story.

I know you're not in favor of vigilante justice, so my argument here isn't meant to be me hand-wringing and saying "but don't you see???? Killing is wrong!!!" I'm just trying to say why I don't see it as like LoTR (and actually, I'm saying that insofar as it's not, I think it's better and *more* moral--but I don't think I made that clear). But I'm also saying that under the circumstances that King set up, I don't know that I buy the "I only kill bad people" mentality. ... But also that as I think some more, neither does Billy, and nor does King want us to--which is different from what I said to Pamela.

... Now, the punitive rape in the story (a rapist gets raped), that one I still have problems with. I can accept it with satisfaction as revenge, I guess, because my lizard brain likes revenge (evil as it is), but I don't like it as justice--I don't think it WORKS as justice. But in the book it's heavily implied that it will.

... This is fun, having conversations like this. I should read Stephen King more often ;-)

And yes re: details. I've been highlighting things as I went along. (See below--I think in reply to rachelmanija.)

[mallorys_camera]

I wouldn't classify The Dead Zone as science fiction. I mean—not unless you classify Superman as science fiction.

I think "superhero" fiction stands as a genre classification by itself. Possibly sharing a taxonomic ancestor with science fiction. 😀

[asakiyume]

Taxonomizing is its own special breed of fun!

[amaebi]

Nice comparison.

[sartorias]

I've only made it through one Stephen King novel, though I've tried many. It was FIRESTARTER, which was submitted to the film company I was working for at the time. (I was in my twenties.) I got completely absorbed until I hit the middle, then there was all this torture stuff that was a totally different tone. Once I skimmed over that, the story picked up and raced to the end.

This one sounds potentially good/1 Only if it has a satisfying ending.

I loved his memoir about writing, I should say, but that wasn't fiction.

[asakiyume]

I am enjoying this, but it could change at any moment, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone just because the content is so ... well, for instance there was an offscreen rape, and even offscreen, I wasn't super thrilled with it as a plot element. I'll let you know whether I think the ending is good or not.

[sartorias]

Thanks! (There are never too many spoilers for me, ever.)

[rachelmanija]

Ha! I haven't read this one yet but yeah, Stephen King is incredible at voice and making you want to keep reading.

I think you'd enjoy "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut."

[asakiyume]

Thanks for the rec: I'm building a little list here ;-)

There are great lines, too--I'm actually highlighting stuff!

e.g.: "To Billy it looked like the bastard child of a supermarket and a megachurch" and

"He gave her the mountains and the stars, not to own but at least to look at, and that means a lot."