Stephen King, �Everything�s Eventual�
Things have been rough in the House of Carrico as of late. Why? Because I�m a melodramatic son of a bitch, that�s why.
Still, there�s just been a lot on my mind lately, and it�s all bearing down on my shoulders. My mother had a heart attack (mild, but still...). My father had reconstructive surgery on his arm. I have bills up the yin-yang: rent, utility bills, car bills (I got a new car � anybody out there who knows how to remove a car stereo before I donate the old one to charity?), student loan bills � every kind of bill but a bar tab, since no one will give me credit.
And there�s the other things � girl problems, friend problems, lack-of-friend problems, and friendster problems. There�s the fact that I seem to have lost all enthusiasm for trying to get into graduate school, partially because of the GRE requirement, and also because of the aforementioned bills.
Then there�s the notion that pops into my overactive analytical head that every time my boss asks how my applications are doing, I can�t help but think it�s a veiled question to cover for a more pertinent one, being, �When are you gonna move on so I can hire some kid at half your wages?� (Though I should say I have nothing to give credence to this idea.)
Then there are all these fucking books. I�m making progress, and it�s visible progress � my to read bookcase just cleared an entire shelf � But then I think of my hold shelf at work, which is practically stuffed. The Myth of Sisyphus applies to this project, and me.
And come to think of it, I haven�t read The Myth of Sisyphus. There�s another one I need to get.
So all of these factors distract me while I read, which is probably the reason why my monthly totals have dropped in comparison with last year. But occasionally I can relax with a book, more often when it�s fluff, like most Stephen King happens to be.
It couldn�t hurt that these were short stories either. Over the four days I spent with this, I could finish a story in about a half-hour, then go back to stressing out over my own existence. Once I had worked myself into a complete mix of dread, fear and horror, I could go back to the book. Nothing in literature scares me anymore. I can handle zombies and ghosts much easier than debt, idleness and loneliness.
And so I slog through these stories in this collection (which ended up on many reviewers top ten books of 2002, I should mention), taking more interest in what King writes on how the tales came about than the stories themselves.
Stories like these used to fascinate me when I was 13. Now it seems like retreading of subjects he�s already covered. I�ve read too many of his books and I know how he works his story structure, to the point where I can almost guess his next paragraph.
For one story, �The Man in the Black Suit,� King writes, �When The New Yorker asked to publish it, I was shocked. When it won first prize in the O. Henry Best Short Story competition for 1996, I was convinced someone had made a mistake. [...] This is proof writers are sometimes the worst judge of what they have written.�
If it makes you feel any better, Stephen, I didn�t think it was very good either.
And then there was the short story from The Gunslinger saga, which had a scene straight out of the tale of Sir Galahad (the chaste) from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Consider this paragraph where Roland the gunslinger listens to the witches, identifying their voices:
�Such a pretty man it is.� Sister Mary. She spoke in low, meditative tone.
�But such an ugly sigul it wears,� Sister Tamra.
�We�ll have it off him!� Sister Louise.
�And then we shall all have kisses!� Sister Coquina
�Kisses for all!� exclaimed Sister Michela, with such fervent enthusiasm that they all laughed.
I really expected the next line to read, �And then... the oral sex!�
Something weird happened, however, in the story �L.T.�s Theory of Pets,� a decidedly non-horror piece, I was instantly sucked into the narrative, involving an old man talking about how his wife gave him a dog for their first anniversary, and he gave his wife a cat for their second.
The dog hated his recipient, and the cat hated her new owner, but both loved the person who had made the purchase. Fights ensue; both humans are territorial over their gifts and eventually he comes home to a Dear John letter, and she�s taken the dog with her. There are 20 pages of this situation, 20 pages that are funny and charming, like a good stand-up comic observing life�s foibles.
This is not what you expect from a Stephen King story.
And then the story shifts back to something that we should have been aware of, as he mentions it in the first paragraph. It�s a total shock � not a shock of horror or fright, but of suffering. And it�s such a powerful shift I was stunned that it came from a Stephen King book.
Frankly, I think he would write better stories if he kicked the horror genre altogether. God knows everybody would still buy them. Besides, if I want horror, all I need is to look at my bank statements.
Or the mirror.
