Showing posts with label Stephen King. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen King. Show all posts

Friday, June 23, 2023

Gore Vidal: Narratives of Empire


David Shankbone: Gore Vidal (2009)


Ralph came over to Stu and knelt down. 'Can we get you anything, Stu?'
Stu smiled. 'Yeah. Everything Gore Vidal ever wrote - those books about Lincoln and Aaron Burr and those guys. I always meant to read the suckers. Now it looks like I got the chance.'
- Stephen King, The Stand (1990): 923.

Towards the end of Stephen King's apocalyptic masterpiece The Stand, one of his main characters, Stu Redman, is left behind by his companions in a washed-out gully because he's sprained his ankle and they're unable to lift him out.

Stu's last, rather plaintive request is for a set of Gore Vidal's American history novels. We already know that he's a big reader. Earlier in the story he was enthralled by the adventures of Fiver and the other rabbits in Watership Down, but the Vidal novels seem like quite a departure from the quest narratives Stu loves - and which he and the others are far-from-coincidentally reenacting at this very moment in the story.


Stephen King: The Stand (1978 / 1990)


Curiously enough, if we go back in time to 1978, when The Stand originally appeared - in a form severely truncated by the demands of his publisher's accounting department, much to King's chagrin - we find a rather different version of this scene:
Ralph came over to Stu and knelt down. 'Can we get you anything, Stu?'
Stu smiled. 'Yeah. All those books about that Kent family. I always meant to read em. Now it looks like I got the chance.'
Ralph grinned crookedly. 'Sorry, Stu. Looks like I'm tapped.'
- Stephen King, The Stand (1978): 661.
Ralph's crooked grin is the same on both occasions, but the books Stu longs to read have changed somewhat in the twelve years between the two texts of King's novel.


John Jakes: The Kent Family Chronicles (1974-79)


For those of you who (like me) didn't happen to know, the "Kent Family Chronicles" are, according to Wikipedia:
a series of eight novels by John Jakes written for Lyle Engel of Book Creations, Inc. to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.
They were published between 1974 and 1979, which positions them nicely to be read by the 1978 version of Stu. All of the books were "best sellers, with no novel in the series selling fewer than 3.5 million copies."


Gore Vidal: Narratives of Empire (1967-2000)


Could the same be said of Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire" series? That was the author's final choice for an overall title, though his publisher apparently preferred "the politically neutral series-title 'American Chronicles'."

Although written at various times, over a period of thirty-odd years, out of historical sequence, these seven novels do have interlocking stories and characters - some, admittedly, rather crudely soldered onto the earlier books in order to fit them into Vidal's later vision for the series.

Here they are in order of appearance:
  1. Washington, D.C. (1967)
  2. Burr (1973)
  3. 1876 (1976)
  4. Lincoln (1984)
  5. Empire (1987)
  6. Hollywood (1990)
  7. The Golden Age (2000)
And here they are in chronological sequence:
  1. Burr (1775-1840)
  2. Lincoln (1861-1865)
  3. 1876 (1875-1877)
  4. Empire (1898-1906)
  5. Hollywood (1917-1923)
  6. Washington, D.C. (1937-1952)
  7. The Golden Age (1939-2000)
They were, at various times, referred to as "American Chronicles", "Narratives of a Golden Age" and "Narratives of Empire". Does this apparent indecision on their author's part explain some of the difficulties we find when trying to discuss them as a whole? What are they actually about? Certainly they don't aim to emulate the bicentennial boosterism of John Jakes's Kent Family Chronicles, but do they present a clear alternative to that?




Gore Vidal: Burr (1973)


The series began very promisingly with Burr, a multi-faceted romp through the Revolutionary War and the early years of the Republic, seen through the quizzical eyes of that pantomime villain Aaron Burr (or, rather, a young journalist's attempts to turn Burr's fragments of memoir into a coherent account of a long-lost age).

Of course, all this was long before the musical Hamilton made that particular founding father a household name. I have to confess to not having heard of Aaron Burr before reading Vidal's novel, let alone about his notorious duel with Alexander Hamilton. It was all news to me, in other words.


Lin-Manuel Miranda: Hamilton (2015)


Burr is clearly a kind of alter-ego for Gore Vidal: a kind of internal émigré, despised by his contemporaries for largely spurious reasons, but brighter and better-informed than any of them. Vidal makes no secret of Burr's flaws - just as he is open about his own in Palimpsest, his 1995 memoir - but the unspoken offence constituted by Vidal's unashamed homosexuality in repressed late-twentieth century America makes a good parallel with Burr's alleged "treason" - another name for the same political opportunism practised more successfully by the Empire-building Thomas Jefferson.

Stylistically, the book had much in common with other post-modern novels of the era such as John Barth's Sot-Weed Factor (1960) or John Berger's Little Big Man (1964). There was, however, a sophistication and depth to Vidal's knowledge of American history which gave it an extra edge. And I suspect that that's why it's still so readable today, when so many of the other dazzling fictions of the era have faded into obscurity.






Gore Vidal: Lincoln (1984)


With the next volume in the series - in chronological, though not in publication order - Vidal went into another gear. Lincoln is a brilliantly empathetic and subtle portrait of America's most famous president. Even Vidal's detractors were forced to admit that he'd managed to transform some of the most hackneyed material imaginable into a kind of secret history of the Civil War.

This was, admittedly, a few years before Ken Burn's classic PBS Documentary series woke up even non-history buffs to the sheer horror and momentousness of this "nineteenth-century catastrophe". Lincoln stands up very well to the comparison, though.

I've read many books about the era - Bruce Catton's and Shelby Foote's Civil War trilogies, Carl Sandburg's six-volume life of Lincoln, Freeman's seven-volume series about Robert E. Lee and his lieutenants, even Allan Nevin's 8-volume Ordeal of the Union - but I haven't spotted any obvious solecisms in Gore Vidal's knowledge, let alone his sophisticated treatment of the characters involved.


Honoré Morrow: Great Captain (1930)


The same could certainly not be said for the above trilogy of Lincoln novels, by Theodore Dreiser-protégée Honoré Morrow, which I also happen to have on my shelves. It dates roughly from the era of movies such as Young Mister Lincoln (1939) and Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), and is rather like them in spirit.

Morrow has concocted a spirited yarn, with heavily fictionalised elements such as the Confederate spy Miss Ford who dominates the Lincoln household in the first novel, Forever Free (1927). Despite the fact that she's been detected separately by each member of the household (with the possible exception of the obnoxious Tad) she's allowed to run loose, concocting abduction and assassination plots with monotonous regularity, until she's finally stabbed by a kitchen hand - whilst disguised as a black slave - in a last desperate attempt to prevent the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation!

The second novel, With Malice Toward None (1928), centres upon a particularly saccharine love affair conducted by Senator Sumner with a Washington socialite, under the watchful eyes of his intimate friends, the Lincolns. Given the unrelenting, abundantly-documented hostility between the real Lincoln and Sumner, this is perhaps the weakest of the three books. (Or, as I'm tempted to add: "What's on the board, Miss Ford?")

Morrow's third and culminating volume, The Last Full Measure (1930), is largely concerned with the ins and outs of John Wilkes Booth's assassination plot. Like Vidal, Morrow doubles the President's wise and wholesome activities with the nefarious treachery of Booth and his low-life accomplices. Like Vidal - and yet so unlike. Once again, she fictionalises freely, and shifts speeches and events as it suits her. It is, nevertheless, probably the best written and constructed of her three novels.

Honoré Morrow's Lincoln is a devoted admirer of the poetry of Walt Whitman; his wife Mary Todd Lincoln is a constant help to him, despite occasional passing fits of temper; Seward, in her version, is a laughing buffoon and Chase a non-entity - it is Sumner who dominates the politics of the time. Above all, her Lincoln is sentimental and teary-eyed to an appalling degree. His obsession with deporting American negroes to Africa, and his refusal to see them as equal with whites are glossed over with facile phrases.

Given the way in which Vidal deconstructs all the convenient myths about Lincoln, it's hard to explain why 'the ancient' (as Nicolay and Hay, his two private secretaries, call him) remains so compelling and - let's face it - loveable as the central figure of his novel. Perhaps it's because he's constantly seen through the eyes of others: particularly John Hay (shown in a far more frivolous light in Morrow's version).

Reading the two novels in such swift succession doesn't really do justice to Morrow, who did a pretty good job under the constraints of her era - and who lacked the splendid Civil War histories now so readily available. The fact that one can still read Gore Vidal's book with admiration forty years after it was published, however, is a tribute not only to his consummate skill as a writer, but also to the profundity of his grasp of American history. He makes up almost nothing, and his book is the stronger for it.






Gore Vidal: 1876 (1976)


If Lincoln is the high point of Gore Vidal's whole series of fictional histories, perhaps it's because his fascination with a figure of the past whom he is unable, finally, to fathom, let alone patronise, drives him to new heights as a writer. 1876, by contrast, albeit another fascinating historical tapestry, was written more in the cynical spirit of Burr.

This is hardly surprising, as it has the same narrator: Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, Aaron Burr's illegitimate son, a reasonably well-known (though unfortunately almost penniless) writer who's been living in Europe since 1839. His return to the bustling republic of the gilded age is the subject of the book, which consists of 'notes' for the series of articles he hopes to write on the experience.

If all this sounds like a foreshadowing of Henry James's year-long return to America in 1904, which inspired his late masterpiece The American Scene (1907) - with its memorable pictures of the devastation of "the great lonely land", and the triumph of greed over the simpler country of his youth - that's presumably quite intentional. The young James only appears in passing in this novel, but will play a far more important part in the next one in line.


James A. Michener: Centennial (1974)


1976, the bicentennial year, was, of course, a time when any number of backward looks over the United States' two centuries of history were to be expected. Besides the Kent Chronicles, one of the best known and most successful was James A. Michener's huge, episodic, chronicle novel Centennial.

Centennial is by no means a casual or optimistic celebration of the journey from there to here. It is, in fact, a long saga of deceit and bloodshed, culminating in the acquittal of a local entrepreneur who has devised a way for rich men to shoot (protected) bald eagles out of helicopters - they almost always miss, so he's devised a way of exploding a small plastic bag of offal outside the cockpit as he surreptitiously shoots the bird himself!

Beyond its rather sombre tone, it has little in common with Vidal's chronicle of political chicanery and intrigue, culminating in the first unequivocally stolen presidential election in American history - until the Bush / Gore débâcle of 2000, that is. Michener, by contrast, tries to take solace in the rich pageant of life on the plains.

The fact that both authors end up in so downbeat a mood may have something to do with the nadir of trust in the American system caused by the Watergate scandal of 1972-74 - Michener's narrator actually watches the hearings in his hotel room whilst charting the fortunes of his representative Colorado middletown of Centennial.

Whatever inspired this gloom in each case, though, it's as well for us as readers to be reminded from time to time that bad as things undoubtedly are now with the 'the land of the free and the home of the brave', they weren't all that great in 1976 - or 1876 - or virtually any other date in history one can name, for that matter - either.


Francis Scott Key: The Star-Spangled Banner (1814)





Gore Vidal: Empire (1987)


Empire tries to do a great deal in a short space of time. This could be seen as admirable or unfortunate, depending on your prior expectations of a novel of this type - or in this series.

On the one hand, it provides us with a kind of updated version of Henry James's Portrait of a Lady in its account of the fascinating rise of Caroline Sanford from cheated heiress to self-assured newspaper publisher (there's something there, too, of Katharine Graham's successful tenure at the Washington Post, I suspect).

However, it's mostly a political history of the McKinley / Roosevelt era of imperial expansion on the part of America: it was, afer all, during this period that Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, and a number of other Caribbean and Pacific dependencies were added to the "protection" of the United States.

The rise of yellow journalism and the growing dominance of William Randolph Hearst is also explored in some depth, largely through the former's relations with Caroline's scheming brother Blaise Sanford.

What else? There's a brief history of "the hearts": a group of wealthy Washingtonians including Henry Adams, his dead wife Clover, Secretary of State John Hay, and various others, who seem - in context - to embody some alternate philosophy of life superior to the merciless materialism of the fin de siècle.

All these ingredients would seem to promise a major novel. And it's certainly this which Vidal has laboured to compose. They fail, somehow, to cohere - perhaps because they lack a single central focus, unlike the earlier novels in the sequence.

If it ends up being a fascinating might-have-been in purely fictional terms, so much talent and skill has gone into it that it can still serve as a storehouse of contemporary attitudes and events. Where else, for instance, could I have found out about John Hay's early dialect poems "Little Breeches" and "Jim Bludso", which Henry James persists in quoting at him, embarrassingly, every time they meet?


John Hay: Pike County Ballads (1912)





Gore Vidal: Hollywood (1990)


The problem with Hollywood, which picks up pretty much where Empire left off - albeit with a decade or so in between - is that there's a bit too much scheming and politicking, and not nearly enough Hollywood.

The sordid saga of Warren Gamaliel Harding's rise to power and influence despite (or because of) his legion of crooked, small-town friends is expounded in great - though at times confusing - detail. Interesting though this undoubtedly is, it's hard to see precisely how it meshes with the continuing saga of Caroline Sanford, her brother Blaise, and their various lovers and friends.

Once again, this is an immensely informative novel for those of us who are bit shaky in our knowledge of early twentieth century American politics. For every reader who feels this to be a deficiency, however, I'll bet there are a dozen others who would rather hear more about the silent movies Caroline finds herself first starring in, then producing!

One glimpses, at times, in the livelier chapters of Vidal's book, the possibility of some modern rival to such classic Hollywood novels as Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941) or even Nathanael West's Day of the Locust (1939).

Alas, for the first time one begins to feel that the constraints of Vidal's series are beginning to outweigh the benefits. The book as a whole remains a fascinatingly panoramic view of many aspects of contemporary American life. It just lacks focus. But then, that no longer seems to be a vital part of Vidal's overall scheme.


Nathanael West: The Day of the Locust (1939)





Gore Vidal: Washington, D. C. (1967 / 1994)


The same could not be said of the next in the series - which was also, confusingly, the first to be written. The reason for this, of course, is that even if Vidal dreamed of such a roman fleuve in 1967, when he first published this book, he can have had little idea what precise form it would take.

Washington, D.C. is a very focussed novel indeed. Unfortunately, the main burden of the plot is the evil and underhanded way in which Enid Sanford, daughter of the nefarious Blaise (already familiar to readers of the previous two books), and sister to the protagonist, Peter Sanford, is sacrificed to the political ambitions of her husband, a JFK-clone called Clay Overbury.

The absence of Caroline Sanford from the narrative is due to the fact that she had not yet been invented when Vidal wrote it. In his introduction to the 1994 reissue of 1876, however, he reassures us that:
Now I have rewritten Washington, D.C., the summing-up novel, in order to bring together all the strands of the story.
- Gore Vidal, "Narratives of a Golden Age." 1876: A Novel. 1977. London: Abacus, 1994. vii-xii.
I was interested to check just how substantive this "rewriting" of the earlier novel was. Comparing my 1976 paperback to one published in 2000, I could find only two substantive new passages. The first, in chapter one, involved a more detailed account of Peter's genealogy, based on the events of the earlier books. The second, in chapter seven, involves a two-page exposition of just how their family is related to Aaron Burr, another subject intensively canvassed in Burr and 1876.

Beyond this, it's hard to see any really significant difference between the two texts. Washington, D.C. is largely a morality tale: a denunciation of the inevitable compromises involved in political advancement. Enid, however, is so poisonously mendacious and self-destructive a drunk, and Peter so pompous a prig, that it's hard to see them as constituting much of a moral centre to the narrative. As a whole, it lacks the more nuanced and complex picture of human relationships familiar to us from the earlier (or should I say later?) books in the series.

Perhaps it's just a question of what one expects from it, though. In his own online essay "Gore Vidal's American Chronicles: 1967-2000" (2005), Harry Kloman explains that:
With the appearance of The Golden Age in 2000, Washington, D.C. no longer stands as the closing volume in the Chronicles. Nonetheless, it remains unique among the seven books, arguably the best, and surely - with its introspective look at Washington politics, revealed through the experiences of Vidal's provocative fictional creations - the most intimate and original.
I can't really agree, but it's certainly interesting to read an alternate view on the subject. The trouble is, the more vindictive and self-righteous Peter and his band of buddies became, the more I found myself sympathising with the undeniably dynamic, if a little too morally pliable, Clay Overbury.


Gore Vidal: Washington, D. C. (1967)





Gore Vidal: The Golden Age (2000)


Which brings us to The Golden Age. I wish I could see this as the triumphant culmination of Vidal's immense fictional design it was clearly meant to be.

And, yes, it begins well, with Caroline Sanford's return to America after twenty-odd years in France, and her gradual reintroduction to the new realities of the Franklin - rather than Theodore - Roosevelt era.

Unfortunately she dies halfway through, which leaves us with her self-satisfied nephew Peter as cicerone to the distinct lack of action which distinguishes the rest of the book.

There's a great deal of noise about the old canard that Roosevelt deliberately provoked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbour. There are a lot of cheap shots at his successor, Truman. There are even some perfunctory attempts at metafiction when Vidal introduces himself (both young and old) as a character in the narrative.

But there's none of the old zest, the sense of being in the hands of an immensely knowing and well-informed fictional prestidigitator. Tiresome factual glitches and even downright errors disfigure the pages: Churchill is described as a major player at the post-war Potsdam conference whereas he was actually replaced by his successor Clement Attlee early in the discussions; Clay Overbury has to share the stage with his presumed original, the real JFK (Vidal gets out of this one by having Clay die in a plane crash, which it's hinted may have been arranged by Peter!) ...


Ford Madox Ford: Last Post (1928)


Vidal ends up sounding more and more like a tiresome old conspiracy theorist, and so tendentious are some of his readings of the Second World War and its aftermath that it has the effect of casting doubt on many of his earlier interpretations of "received" history. Was he just a blustering fantasist all the time? It would be a shame to have to think so.

No, like Last Post, that thoroughly dispensable final part of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End sequence, one would probably be better off not reading this one at all. Or certainly not rereading it. For all its chronological and thematic difficulties, it's best to continue to regard Washington D.C. as the last link in his fictional tapestry.

At least, that's what I would have advised Stu Redman, as he lay in his bivouac under the ruined interstate highway. Of course, given it was his version of 1990 at the time, he had little choice in the matter - but he was certainly fortunate that Hollywood would have just appeared to distract him from his seemingly desperate plight!


Gore Vidal: Palimpsest: A Memoir (1995)





Gore Vidal (1948)

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
(1925-2012)


    Novels:

  1. Williwaw (1946)
  2. In a Yellow Wood (1947)
  3. The City and the Pillar (1948)
  4. The Season of Comfort (1949)
  5. A Search for the King (1950)
  6. Dark Green, Bright Red (1950)
  7. [as Katherine Everard] A Star's Progress [aka Cry Shame!] (1950)
  8. The Judgment of Paris (1952)
  9. [as Edgar Box] Death in the Fifth Position (1952)
  10. [as Cameron Kay] Thieves Fall Out (1953)
  11. [as Edgar Box] Death Before Bedtime (1953)
  12. [as Edgar Box] Death Likes It Hot (1954)
  13. Messiah (1954)
  14. Julian (1964)
    • Julian. 1962. Panther Books Ltd. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1972.
  15. Washington, D.C. [Narratives of Empire, 6] (1967)
    • Washington, D.C. 1967. Panther Books Ltd. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1976.
    • Washington, D.C. 1967. Narratives of Empire. Vintage. New York: Random House, Inc., 2000.
  16. Myra Breckinridge (1968)
  17. Two Sisters (1970)
  18. Burr [Narratives of Empire, 1] (1973)
    • Burr. 1973. Panther Books Ltd. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1974.
  19. Myron (1974)
  20. 1876 [Narratives of Empire, 3] (1976)
    • 1876. 1976. Narratives of a Golden Age. An Abacus Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK) Limited, 1994.
  21. Kalki (1978)
  22. Three by Box: The Complete Mysteries of Edgar Box (1978)
  23. Creation (1981)
    • Creation: A Novel. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1981.
  24. Duluth (1983)
  25. Lincoln [Narratives of Empire, 2] (1984)
    • Lincoln. 1984. Panther Books. London: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1985.
  26. Empire [Narratives of Empire, 4] (1987)
    • Empire. 1987. Grafton Books. London: Collins Publishing Group, 1989.
  27. Hollywood [Narratives of Empire, 5] (1990)
    • Hollywood: A Novel of America in the 1920s. 1990. Narratives of Empire. Vintage. New York: Random House, Inc., 2000.
  28. Live From Golgotha (1992)
  29. The Smithsonian Institution (1998)
  30. The Golden Age [Narratives of Empire, 7] (2000)
    • The Golden Age. 2000. Narratives of Empire. An Abacus Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 2001.

  31. Stories:

  32. A Thirsty Evil (1956)
  33. Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories (2006)

  34. Plays:

  35. Visit to a Small Planet (1957)
  36. The Best Man (1960)
  37. On the March to the Sea (1960–61 / 2004)
  38. Romulus [adapted from Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Romulus der Große (1950)] (1962)
  39. Weekend (1968)
  40. Drawing Room Comedy (1970)
  41. An Evening with Richard Nixon (1970)

  42. Screenplays:

  43. Climax!: A Farewell to Arms [TV adaptation] (1955)
  44. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde [TV adaptation] (1955)
  45. The Best of Broadway [TV adaptation of Stage Door] (1955)
  46. The Catered Affair (1956)
  47. I Accuse! (1958)
  48. The Left Handed Gun (1958)
  49. The Scapegoat (1959)
  50. Ben Hur (1959)
  51. Suddenly Last Summer (1959)
  52. The Best Man (1964)
  53. Is Paris Burning? (1966)
  54. Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)
  55. Caligula (1979)
  56. Dress Gray (1986)
  57. The Sicilian (1987)
  58. Billy the Kid (1989)
  59. Dimenticare Palermo (1989)

  60. Non-fiction:

  61. Rocking the Boat (1963)
  62. Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship (1969)
  63. Sex, Death and Money (1969)
  64. Homage to Daniel Shays: Collected Essays, 1952–1972 (1972)
    • On Our Own Now: Collected Essays 1952-1972. 1974. Panther Books Ltd. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1976.
  65. Matters of Fact and of Fiction (1977)
  66. Sex is Politics and Vice Versa [Limited edition] (1979)
  67. [Ed.] Views from a Window (1981)
  68. The Second American Revolution (1983)
  69. Vidal In Venice (1985)
  70. Armageddon? [UK only] (1987)
  71. At Home (1988)
  72. A View From The Diner's Club [UK only] (1991)
  73. Screening History (1992)
  74. Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992)
  75. United States: Essays 1952–1992 (1993)
  76. Palimpsest: A Memoir (1995)
    • Palimpsest: A Memoir. 1995. An Abacus Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 1996.
  77. Virgin Islands [UK only] (1997)
  78. The American Presidency (1998)
  79. Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings (1999)
  80. The Essential Gore Vidal. Ed. Fred Kaplan (1999)
    • The Essential Gore Vidal. Ed. Fred Kaplan. 1999. An Abacus Book. London: Little, Brown and Company (UK), 2000.
  81. The Last Empire: Essays 1992–2000 (2001)
  82. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace or How We Came To Be So Hated (2002)
  83. Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (2002)
  84. Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson (2003)
  85. Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia (2004)
  86. Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir (2006)
  87. The Selected Essays of Gore Vidal (2008)
  88. Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History's Glare (2009)
  89. I Told You So: Gore Vidal Talks Politics: Interviews with Jon Wiener (2013)
  90. History of the National Security State. Introduction by Paul Jay (2014)
  91. Buckley vs. Vidal: The Historic 1968 ABC News Debates (2015)

  92. Secondary:

  93. Parini, Jay. Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal (2015)



Gore Vidal: United States (1993)


Monday, June 05, 2023

SF Luminaries: Ray Bradbury


Ray Bradbury (1920-2012)


As various fans have already pointed out, Stephen King's latest novel Fairy Tale (2022) - despite being overtly dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and H. P. Lovecraft, also contains a number of covert references to another distinguished predecessor in the horror/fantasy genre: Ray Bradbury.

For one thing, it takes place in a small town called Sentry's Rest, Illinois - which seems like a nod to the mythical Green Town, Illinois, setting for Bradbury's classic novel Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). The alternate universe of Empis which King's protagonist, Charlie Reade [get it? "Read"] explores also contains a magic carousel, one of the central features of the travelling carnival in Bradbury's own book.


Ray Bradbury: Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)


Mind you, once you start looking for parallels with other fantasy writers, King's story threatens to fall apart under the sheer weight of allusion. Readers have postulated links with William Goldman's The Princess Bride; Lord Dunsany's realm of Elfland, "beyond the fields we know"; not to mention numerous echoes of King's own Dark Tower saga.

Bradbury is special for him, though. As he himself once put it: "without Ray Bradbury, there is no Stephen King." Or, as he wrote on hearing the news of Bradbury's death in 2012, at the age of 91:
Ray Bradbury wrote three great novels and three hundred great stories. One of the latter was called 'A Sound of Thunder.' The sound I hear today is the thunder of a giant's footsteps fading away. But the novels and stories remain, in all their resonance and strange beauty.
So who exactly was this starry-eyed visonary - this laureate of space and small-town life - and why has he left such a strangely equivocal and contradictory reputation behind him?


Library of America: The Ray Bradbury Collection (2022)
Novels & Story Cycles. Ed. Jonathan R. Eller. The Library of America, 347. [‘The Martian Chronicles’, 1950; ‘Fahrenheit 451’, 1953; ‘Dandelion Wine’, 1957; ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’, 1962]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2021.

The Illustrated Man, The October Country & Other Stories. Ed. Jonathan R. Eller. The Library of America, 360. 1951, 1955. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2022.
You know that you've really arrived when they not only reprint your collected works in the canonical Library of America series, but even provide a specially designed slipcase to put them in!


Ray Bradbury: The Martian Chronicles (1950)


You'll notice, though, that most of the work included in this set is comparatively early - dating roughly from the 1940s to the early 1960s. And even Stephen King claims only three great Bradbury novels among the dozen or so he actually published.


Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)



There's little doubt that two of the three must be Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). The third is more debatable: The Martian Chronicles (1950) would be most people's first choice for the honour, but it is technically a 'story-cycle' rather than a novel. That would leave us with Dandelion Wine (1957) - to me almost unbearably saccharine in its evocation of untroubled boyhood, but certainly a book which has its admirers.


Ray Bradbury: Dandelion Wine (1957)


Are there any other serious candidates? Not really. Ray Bradbury was a writer who peaked comparatively early, with a dazzling series of science fiction and horror short stories published throughout the 1940s and 50s, some of the strongest of which were reprinted in the early collection Dark Carnival, by H. P. Lovecraft's disciple and friend, August Derleth, at his legendary imprint Arkham House.


Ray Bradbury: Dark Carnival (1947)


Only 15 of the 27 stories in this unrelentingly dark and pitiless collection were reprinted, several in revised versions, in The October Country (1955). As Wikipedia tells it:
For many years, Bradbury did not permit Dark Carnival to be reprinted ... However, a limited edition ... with five extra stories and a new introduction by Bradbury, was printed by Gauntlet Press in 2001.
A new paperback edition of this seminal collection is promised for early 2024.

The fact is that it was horror stories such as "The Veldt" (in The Illustrated Man), "The Next in Line" (in Dark Carnival & The October Country), and "Mars is Heaven!" (in The Martian Chronicles) which were responsible for much of Bradbury's early vogue. Cannibalism, live burial, and homicidal children are just a few of his early themes.

So before you go writing him off as an old sentimentalist dreaming of some kind of Tom Sawyer-like childhood paradise in rural Illinois, never forget the dark, Lovecraftian roots behind much of his best work.



A couple of his early Martian stories interested me particularly as I reread all the early collections reprinted in the Library of America boxset.

They're entitled (respectively) "Way in the Middle of the Air" [included in early editons of The Martian Chronicles, 1950] - which concerns a mass exodus of African American people to Mars; and "The Other Foot" [included in The Illustrated Man, 1951] - which tells us what happens when the news of the return to Mars of the last few white people left after their latest suicidal war reaches the now exclusively black population of the red planet.

By today's standards both stories sound rather naive and patronising. There's a lot of Huck Finn-style dialect, use of the "n"-word, and other now unacceptable linguistic usages. Both stories are also intensely well-meaning - it's worth noticing that they long predate such civil rights landmarks as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, let alone the compulsory integration of US schools.

And yet, both now read like museum exhibits: Liberal Northern White Attitudes (c.1950). By contrast, his more complex and haunting stories of the time: "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" (1949), for instance - about the gradual possession of an all-American family by the haunting (and haunted?) landscapes and mores of Mars - have a mysterious resonance as powerful now as it was then.


John Huston, dir. Moby Dick (1956)


Perhaps the true turning point for Bradbury was the year he spent working on John Huston's adaptation of Moby Dick. It's not a terrible screenplay - there's a bit too much poetic language in the voice-overs, maybe, but the two of them did a competent enough job at transferring an almost unfilmable novel to the screen.

But Huston's habit of belitting and insulting his collaborators - allegedly (he claimed) to get the best out of them, but actually (it would appear) to indulge his own petty sadism - had a particularly bad effect on the ebullient Bradbury. He wrote a fictionalised version of their encounter in the novel Green Shadows, White Whale, which made it clear that he'd been brooding on the matter for quite some time.


John Huston, dir. Green Shadows, White Whale (1992)


It's not that there aren't gems among the later stories - "The Parrot Who Met Papa" (1972), about the search for a legendary parrot alleged to have memorised Hemingway's last novel as a result of his endless rambling monologues in its presence, for instance - but they're pretty few and far between.

Some terrible lapse in self-confidence - or, perhaps, reluctance to indulge the dark side of his nature any further than he'd already done (one of the most prominent themes in Something Wicked This Way Comes) - seems to have kept him largely on the sunny side of the street thereafter. There's a relentless verbosity in his work from the 1970s onwards - occasionally, mercifully, spiked by humour, but mostly a turbid stream of two-bit words and phrases.

He leaves behind, then, a divided legacy: the dark mysteries of his early stories and novels, and the wordy bathos of his later work. As the Library of America has already signalled, there's little doubt which will prevail in the eyes of posterity.

It does leave you wondering, though, just what did Huston (and, for that matter, Herman Melville) do to him in that windy old castle in Ireland? The novel he wrote about it - after, he claimed, having read Katharine Hepburn's account of her own mistreatment at Huston's hands during the making of "The African Queen" (1951): How I Went to Africa With Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind (1987) - is just that: a novel. What really happened to him there we'll never know.






Charley Gallay: Ray Bradbury (2007)

Ray Douglas Bradbury
(1920-2012)

Books I own are marked in bold:

    Novels:

  1. The Martian Chronicles [aka The Silver Locusts] (1950)
    • The Silver Locusts. 1950. London: Corgi Books, 1969.
  2. Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
    • Fahrenheit 451. 1953. London: Corgi Books, 1963.
  3. Dandelion Wine (1957)
    • Dandelion Wine. 1957. London: Corgi Books, 1972.
  4. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962)
    • Something Wicked This Way Comes. 1962. London: Corgi Books, 1969.
  5. The Halloween Tree (1972)
    • The Halloween Tree. 1972. Illustrated by Joseph Mugnaini. London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973.
  6. The Novels of Ray Bradbury (1984)
    • The Novels of Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes. 1953, 1957, 1962. London: Book Club Associates, by arrangement with Granada Publishing Limited, 1984.
  7. Death is a Lonely Business (1985)
  8. A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990)
    • A Graveyard for Lunatics: Another Tale of Two Cities. Grafton Books. London: Collins Publishing Group, 1990.
  9. Green Shadows, White Whale (1992)
  10. From the Dust Returned (2001)
  11. Let's All Kill Constance (2002)
  12. Farewell Summer (2006)
  13. Novels & Story Cycles. Library of America (2021)
    • Novels & Story Cycles. Ed. Jonathan R. Eller. The Library of America, 347. [‘The Martian Chronicles’, 1950; ‘Fahrenheit 451’, 1953; ‘Dandelion Wine’, 1957; ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’, 1962]. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2021.

  14. Collections:

  15. Dark Carnival (1947)
    1. The Homecoming
    2. Skeleton
    3. The Jar
    4. The Lake
    5. The Maiden
    6. The Tombstone
    7. The Smiling People
    8. The Emissary
    9. The Traveler
    10. The Small Assassin
    11. The Crowd
    12. Reunion
    13. The Handler
    14. The Coffin
    15. Interim
    16. Jack-in-the-Box
    17. The Scythe
    18. Let's Play 'Poison'
    19. Uncle Einar
    20. The Wind
    21. The Night
    22. There Was An Old Woman
    23. The Dead Man
    24. The Man Upstairs
    25. The Night Sets
    26. Cistern
    27. The Next In Line
  16. The Illustrated Man (1951)
    1. The Veldt
    2. Kaleidoscope
    3. The Other Foot
    4. The Highway
    5. The Man
    6. The Long Rain
    7. The Rocket Man
    8. The Fire Balloons
    9. The Last Night of the World
    10. The Exiles
    11. No Particular Night or Morning
    12. The Fox and the Forest
    13. The Visitor
    14. The Concrete Mixer
    15. Marionettes, Inc.
    16. The City
    17. Zero Hour
    18. The Rocket
    • The Illustrated Man. 1951. Corgi SF Collector’s Library. London: Corgi Books, 1972.
  17. The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
    • The Golden Apples of the Sun. 1953. Corgi SF Collector’s Library. London: Corgi Books, 1973.
  18. The October Country (1955)
    1. The Dwarf
    2. The Next in Line
    3. The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse
    4. Skeleton
    5. The Jar
    6. The Lake
    7. The Emissary
    8. Touched With Fire
    9. The Small Assassin
    10. The Crowd
    11. Jack-in-the-Box
    12. The Scythe
    13. Uncle Einar
    14. The Wind
    15. The Man Upstairs
    16. There Was an Old Woman
    17. The Cistern
    18. Homecoming
    19. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone
    • The October Country. 1955. London: New English Library, 1973.
  19. A Medicine for Melancholy (1959)
  20. The Day It Rained Forever (1959)
    • The Day It Rained Forever. 1959. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
  21. The Small Assassin (1962)
    • The Small Assassin. 1962. London: New English Library, 1970.
  22. R is for Rocket (1962)
    • R is for Rocket. 1962. London: Pan Books, 1972.
  23. The Machineries of Joy (1964)
    • The Machineries of Joy. 1964. London: Panther Books, 1977.
  24. The Autumn People (1965)
  25. The Vintage Bradbury (1965)
  26. Tomorrow Midnight (1966)
  27. S is for Space (1966)
    • S is for Space. 1966. New York: Bantam Books, 1978.
  28. Twice 22 (1966)
  29. I Sing The Body Electric (1969)
    • I Sing The Body Electric! 1969. London: Corgi Books, 1972.
  30. Ray Bradbury (1975)
  31. Long After Midnight (1976)
    • Long After Midnight. 1976. London: Panther Books, 1978.
  32. The Mummies of Guanajuato (1978)
  33. The Fog Horn & Other Stories (1979)
  34. One Timeless Spring (1980)
  35. The Last Circus and the Electrocution (1980)
  36. The Stories of Ray Bradbury (1980)
    1. The Night (1946)
    2. Homecoming (1946)
    3. Uncle Einar (1947)
    4. The Traveler (1946)
    5. The Lake (1944)
    6. The Coffin (1947)
    7. The Crowd (1943)
    8. The Scythe (1943)
    9. There Was an Old Woman (1944)
    10. There Will Come Soft Rains (1950)
    11. Mars Is Heaven! (1948)
    12. The Silent Towns (1949)
    13. The Earth Men (1948)
    14. The Off Season (1948)
    15. The Million-Year Picnic (1946)
    16. The Fox and the Forest (1950)
    17. Kaleidoscope (1949)
    18. The Rocket Man (1951)
    19. Marionettes, Inc. (1949)
    20. No Particular Night or Morning (1951)
    21. The City (1950)
    22. The Fire Balloons (1951)
    23. The Last Night of the World (1951)
    24. The Veldt (1950)
    25. The Long Rain (1950)
    26. The Great Fire (1949)
    27. The Wilderness (1952)
    28. A Sound of Thunder (1952)
    29. The Murderer (1953)
    30. The April Witch (1952)
    31. Invisible Boy (1945)
    32. The Golden Kite, The Silver Wind (1953)
    33. The Fog Horn (1951)
    34. The Big Black and White Game (1945)
    35. Embroidery (1951)
    36. The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
    37. Powerhouse (1948)
    38. Hail and Farewell (1948)
    39. The Great Wide World over There (1952)
    40. The Playground (1953)
    41. Skeleton (1943)
    42. The Man Upstairs (1947)
    43. Touched by Fire (1954)
    44. The Emissary (1947)
    45. The Jar (1944)
    46. The Small Assassin (1946)
    47. The Next in Line (1947)
    48. Jack-in-the-Box (1947)
    49. The Leave-Taking (1957)
    50. Exorcism (1957)
    51. The Happiness Machine (1957)
    52. Calling Mexico (1950)
    53. The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (1958)
    54. Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1949)
    55. The Strawberry Window (1954)
    56. A Scent of Sarsaparilla (1953)
    57. The Picasso Summer (1957)
    58. The Day It Rained Forever (1957)
    59. A Medicine for Melancholy (1959)
    60. The Shoreline at Sunset (1959)
    61. Fever Dream (1959)
    62. The Town Where No One Got Off (1958)
    63. All Summer in a Day (1954)
    64. Frost and Fire (1946)
    65. The Anthem Sprinters (1963)
    66. And So Died Riabouchinska (1953)
    67. Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar! (1962)
    68. The Vacation (1963)
    69. The Illustrated Woman (1961)
    70. Some Live Like Lazarus (1960)
    71. The Best of All Possible Worlds (1960)
    72. The One Who Waits (1949)
    73. Tyrannosaurus Rex (1962)
    74. The Screaming Woman (1951)
    75. The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place (1969)
    76. Night Call, Collect (1949)
    77. The Tombling Day (1952)
    78. The Haunting of the New (1969)
    79. Tomorrow's Child (1948)
    80. I Sing the Body Electric! (1969)
    81. The Women (1948)
    82. The Inspired Chicken Motel (1969)
    83. Yes, We'll Gather at the River (1969)
    84. Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You! (1976)
    85. A Story of Love (1951)
    86. The Parrot Who Met Papa (1972)
    87. The October Game (1948)
    88. Punishment Without Crime (1950)
    89. A Piece of Wood (1952)
    90. The Blue Bottle (1950)
    91. Long After Midnight (1962)
    92. The Utterly Perfect Murder (1971)
    93. The Better Part of Wisdom (1976)
    94. Interval in Sunlight (1954)
    95. The Black Ferris (1948)
    96. Farewell Summer (1980)
    97. McGillahee's Brat (1970)
    98. The Aqueduct (1979)
    99. Gotcha! (1978)
    100. The End of the Beginning (1956)
    • The Stories of Ray Bradbury. London: Granada, 1981.
  37. The Fog Horn and Other Stories (1981)
  38. Dinosaur Tales (1983)
  39. A Memory of Murder (1984)
  40. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone (1985)
  41. The Toynbee Convector (1988)
  42. Classic Stories 1 (1990)
  43. Classic Stories 2 (1990)
  44. The Parrot Who Met Papa (1991)
  45. Selected from Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (1991)
  46. Quicker Than The Eye (1996)
  47. Driving Blind (1997)
  48. Ray Bradbury Collected Short Stories (2001)
  49. The Playground (2001)
  50. Dark Carnival: Limited Edition with Supplemental Materials (2001)
  51. One More for the Road (2002)
  52. Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003)
    1. The Whole Town's Sleeping
    2. The Rocket
    3. Season of Disbelief
    4. And the Rock Cried Out
    5. The Drummer Boy of Shiloh
    6. The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge
    7. The Flying Machine
    8. Heavy-Set
    9. The First Night of Lent
    10. Lafayette, Farewell
    11. Remember Sascha?
    12. Junior
    13. That Woman on the Lawn
    14. February 1999: Ylla
    15. Banshee
    16. One for His Lordship, and One for the Road!
    17. The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair
    18. Unterderseaboat Doktor
    19. Another Fine Mess
    20. The Dwarf
    21. A Wild Night in Galway
    22. The Wind
    23. No News, or What Killed the Dog?
    24. A Little Journey
    25. Any Friend of Nicholas Nickleby's Is a Friend of Mine
    26. The Garbage Collector
    27. The Visitor
    28. The Man
    29. Henry the Ninth
    30. The Messiah
    31. Bang! You're Dead!
    32. Darling Adolf
    33. The Beautiful Shave
    34. Colonel Stonesteel's Genuine Home-made Truly Egyptian Mummy
    35. I See You Never
    36. The Exiles
    37. At Midnight, in the Month of June
    38. The Witch Door
    39. The Watchers
    40. 2004-05: The Naming of Names
    41. Hopscotch
    42. The Illustrated Man
    43. The Dead Man
    44. June 2001: And the Moon Be Still as Bright
    45. The Burning Man
    46. G.B.S.-Mark V
    47. A Blade of Grass
    48. The Sound of Summer Running
    49. And the Sailor, Home from the Sea
    50. The Lonely Ones
    51. The Finnegan
    52. On the Orient, North
    53. The Smiling People
    54. The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl
    55. Bug
    56. Downwind from Gettysburg
    57. Time in Thy Flight
    58. Changeling
    59. The Dragon
    60. Let's Play 'Poison'
    61. The Cold Wind and the Warm
    62. The Meadow
    63. The Kilimanjaro Device
    64. The Man in the Rorschach Shirt
    65. Bless Me, Father, for I Have Sinned
    66. The Pedestrian
    67. Trapdoor
    68. The Swan
    69. The Sea Shell
    70. Once More, Legato
    71. June 2003: Way in the Middle of the Air
    72. The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone
    73. By the Numbers!
    74. April 2005: Usher II
    75. The Square Pegs
    76. The Trolley
    77. The Smile
    78. The Miracles of Jamie
    79. A Far-away Guitar
    80. The Cistern
    81. The Machineries of Joy
    82. Bright Phoenix
    83. The Wish
    84. The Lifework of Juan Díaz
    85. Time Intervening/Interim
    86. Almost the End of the World
    87. The Great Collision of Monday Last
    88. The Poems
    89. April 2026: The Long Years
    90. Icarus Montgolfier Wright
    91. Death and the Maiden
    92. Zero Hour
    93. The Toynbee Convector
    94. Forever and the Earth
    95. The Handler
    96. Getting Through Sunday Somehow
    97. The Pumpernickel
    98. Last Rites
    99. The Watchful Poker Chip of H. Matisse
    100. All on a Summer's day
  53. Is That You, Herb? (2003)
  54. The Cat's Pajamas: Stories (2004)
  55. A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005)
  56. The Dragon Who Ate His Tail (2007)
  57. Now and Forever: Somewhere a Band Is Playing & Leviathan '99 (2007)
  58. Somewhere a Band is Playing: Early Drafts and Final Novella (2007)
  59. Summer Morning, Summer Night (2007)
  60. Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2 (2009)
  61. We'll Always Have Paris: Stories (2009)
  62. A Pleasure To Burn (2010)
  63. The Lost Bradbury: Forgotten Tales of Ray Bradbury (2010)
  64. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition – Volume 1, 1938–1943 (2011)
  65. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition – Volume 2, 1943–1944 (2014)
  66. Killer, Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury (2020)
  67. The Illustrated Man, The October Country & Other Stories. Library of America (2022)
    • The Illustrated Man, The October Country & Other Stories. Ed. Jonathan R. Eller. The Library of America, 360. 1951, 1955. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2022.

  68. Edited:

  69. Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow (1952)
  70. The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories (1956)

  71. Children's Books:

  72. Switch on the Night (1955)
  73. The Other Foot (1982)
  74. The Veldt (1982)
  75. The April Witch (1987)
  76. The Fog Horn (1987)
  77. Fever Dream (1987)
  78. The Smile (1991)
  79. The Toynbee Convector (1992)
  80. With Cat for Comforter (1997)
  81. Dogs Think That Every Day Is Christmas (1997)
  82. Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines: A Fable (1998)
  83. The Homecoming (2006)

  84. Non-fiction:

  85. No Man Is an Island (1952)
  86. The Essence of Creative Writing: Letters to a Young Aspiring Author (1962)
  87. Creative Man Among His Servant Machines (1967)
  88. Mars and the Mind of Man (1971)
  89. Zen in the Art of Writing (1973)
    • Zen in the Art of Writing. 1973. In The Capra Chapbook Anthology. Ed. Noel Young. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1979.
  90. The God in Science Fiction (1978)
  91. About Norman Corwin (1979)
  92. There is Life on Mars (1981)
  93. The Art of Playboy (1985)
  94. Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity (1990)
  95. Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures (1991)
  96. Conversations with Ray Bradbury. Ed. Steven L. Aggelis) (2004)
  97. Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars (2005)
  98. Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451 (2007)

  99. Poetry:

  100. Where Robot Mice & Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (1977)
  101. To Sing Strange Songs (1979)
  102. Beyond 1984: Remembrance of Things Future (1979)
  103. The Ghosts of Forever (1980)
  104. The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury (1982)
  105. The Love Affair (1982)
  106. I Live By the Invisible: New & Selected Poems (2002)

  107. Screenplays:

  108. The Best of The Ray Bradbury Chronicles (2003)
  109. It Came from Outer Space: Screenplay (2003)
  110. The Halloween Tree: Screenplay (2005)

  111. Miscellaneous:

  112. Long After Ecclesiastes: New Biblical Texts (1985)
  113. Christus Apollo: Cantata Celebrating the Eighth Day of Creation and the Promise of the Ninth (1998)
  114. Witness and Celebrate (2000)
  115. A Chapbook for Burnt-Out Priests, Rabbis and Ministers (2001)
  116. The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel (2003)
  117. Futuria Fantasia: SF Fanzine (2007)

  118. Secondary:

  119. Weller, Sam. The Bradbury Chronicles. Harper Perennial. 2005. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.
  120. Eller, Jonathan R. Becoming Ray Bradbury. Vol. 1 of 3. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
  121. Eller, Jonathan R. Ray Bradbury Unbound. Vol. 2 of 3. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2014.
  122. Eller, Jonathan R. Bradbury Beyond Apollo. Vol. 3 of 3. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2020.




Jonathan Eller: The Bradbury Trilogy (2011-2020)

Sam Weller: The Bradbury Chronicles (2005)


Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Stephen King: Fairy Tale (2022)


Stephen King: Fairy Tale (2022)


With the appearance of his latest, Fairy Tale, Stephen King has published no fewer than sixty-six novels - by my reckoning, at least. That's a lot of novels. Mind you, Wikipedia gives the grand total as 64, but then I've counted in the novel-length screenplay Storm of the Century (1999) and the incomplete online novel The Plant (2000), whereas they included those in different sections of their listings.

These novels include seven written under the pseudonym 'Richard Bachman'; five in collaboration (two with Peter Straub, two with Richard Chizmar, and one with his son Owen King); eight in the 'Dark Tower" fantasy series; three 'Hard Case Crime' paperbacks; and three which have been substantially revised and reissued in new forms since their first appearance: The Stand, The Gunslinger, and 'Salem's Lot.

There's also one, The Green Mile, which was originally published in monthly parts, presumably as an hommage to an earlier fictional entertainer, 'Mr Popular Sentiment' himself (in Anthony Trollope's sarcastic phrase), Charles Dickens.

Most (though by no means all) are set in King's native state, Maine - many in the imaginary towns of Castle Rock and Derry. Others, however, are set in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and even the windy city, Chicago.

There are a couple of interesting cross-connected novel experiments in the King canon: Gerald's Game & Dolores Claiborne (1992), both of which centre around dark deeds done during a total eclipse of the sun in 1962; and Desperation & The Regulators (1996), which treat analogous acts performed by two sets of characters with the same names, but composed, respectively, in the manner of King and his alter ego Richard Bachman.




Stephen King (Sept 21, 1947- )


But why provide so much detail here on Stephen King's bibliography? Well, a year or so ago I was talking to a colleague of mine at Massey Uni, Erin Mercer, and she mentioned a plan she'd devised of rereading all of his novels over summer.

All? I asked.

All.

Every single one? Including all the series and one-offs?

All of them.

I have to say that I had my doubts about the feasibility of this feat. I mean, it's taken me quite a long time to collect them, and it was hard to credit that anyone else could be quite so obsessive. It seems that she managed it, though, and that has inspired me to do the same. Hence the need for this post, to record some of my conclusions while they're still fresh in my mind.

First of all, though, a few listings to establish the precise parameters of the project:




Stephen King: Carrie (1974)

Novels:
(Chronological)

  1. Carrie (1974)
  2. Salem's Lot (1975 / 2004)
  3. The Shining (1977)
  4. [as Richard Bachman] Rage (1977)
  5. The Stand (1978 / 1990)
  6. [as Richard Bachman] The Long Walk (1979)
  7. The Dead Zone (1979)
  8. Firestarter (1980)
  9. [as Richard Bachman] Roadwork (1981)
  10. Cujo (1981)
  11. [as Richard Bachman] The Running Man (1982)
  12. The Gunslinger. The Dark Tower 1 (1982 / 2003)
  13. Christine (1983)
  14. Pet Sematary (1983)
  15. Cycle of the Werewolf (1983)
  16. [with Peter Straub] The Talisman (1984)
  17. The Eyes of the Dragon (1984)
  18. [as Richard Bachman] Thinner (1984)
  19. It (1986)
  20. The Drawing of the Three. The Dark Tower 2 (1987)
  21. Misery (1987)
  22. The Tommyknockers (1987)
  23. The Dark Half (1989)
  24. The Waste Lands. The Dark Tower 3 (1991)
  25. Needful Things (1991)
  26. Gerald's Game (1992)
  27. Dolores Claiborne (1992)
  28. Insomnia (1994)
  29. Rose Madder (1995)
  30. The Green Mile: A Novel in Six Parts (1996)
  31. Desperation (1996)
  32. [as Richard Bachman] The Regulators (1996)
  33. Wizard and Glass. The Dark Tower 4 (1997)
  34. Bag of Bones (1998)
  35. Storm of the Century (1999)
  36. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)
  37. The Plant: parts one-to-six of a novel in progress (2000)
  38. Dreamcatcher (2001)
  39. [with Peter Straub] Black House (2001)
  40. From a Buick 8 (2002)
  41. Wolves of the Calla. The Dark Tower 5 (2003)
  42. Song of Susannah. The Dark Tower 6 (2004)
  43. The Dark Tower. The Dark Tower 7 (2004)
  44. The Colorado Kid (2005)
  45. Cell (2006)
  46. Lisey's Story (2006)
  47. [as Richard Bachman] Blaze (2007)
  48. Duma Key (2008)
  49. Under the Dome (2009)
  50. 11/22/63 (2011)
  51. The Wind through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel (2012)
  52. Joyland (2013)
  53. Doctor Sleep: A Novel (2013)
  54. Mr Mercedes: A Novel (2014)
  55. Revival (2014)
  56. Finders Keepers: A Novel (2015)
  57. End of Watch: A Novel (2016)
  58. [with Richard Chizmar] Gwendy's Button Box. Gwendy Trilogy 1 (2017)
  59. [with Owen King] Sleeping Beauties (2017)
  60. The Outsider: A Novel (2018)
  61. Elevation (2018)
  62. The Institute (2019)
  63. Later (2021)
  64. Billy Summers (2021)
  65. [with Richard Chizmar] Gwendy's Final Task. Gwendy Trilogy 3 (2022)
  66. Fairy Tale: A Novel (2022)

So there you have it: the nature of the crime. Just imagine them all lined up in one bookcase, and you have some idea of what's at stake. I haven't counted the exact number of pages they contain, but it must be in the mid-tens of thousands, at least. "How, given little over half a century of work, did one man become the creative equivalent of a people?" as a reviewer once remarked of J. R. R. Tolkien.




Stephen King: Fairy Tale (2022)

In order of preference:
(... extremely subjective, mind you)

    [Title - date - setting - motifs - comments]:

  1. The Stand (1978 / 1990) - set in Maine, Colorado, Las Vegas, etc. - plague / good vs. evil / Randall Flagg
    A wonderfully compelling book, constructed on an epic scale - King's War and Peace. There's no getting past it, really.
  2. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) - set near Castle Rock, Maine - survival / psychotic bear
    A wonderful return to form for the Maine battler: a good tale well told with a compelling heroine. It's more like an over-length novella than one of his characteristically bloated tomes, but then the novella has always been one of his best modes.
  3. [as Richard Bachman] The Long Walk (1979) - set in Maine - teen angst / endurance / survival
    My favourite of all the Bachman books, and actually - despite the confined and concentrated nature of the action - one of his very best novels (which is interesting, considering it was the first one he wrote, while he was still at High School!)
  4. The Outsider: A Novel (2018) - set in Oklahoma & Texas - Holly Gibney / shapeshifters / detectives
    Excellent in all ways: an elegant combination of his later detective thrillers and his earlier occult masterpieces.
  5. The Shining (1977) - set in Colorado - alcoholism / haunting / telepathy
    A quantum leap in King's work: still one of his best novels, well-constructed and haunting. I've often suspected that his dislike of Kubrick's epoch-making film comes down mostly to the story's immense autobiographical significance for King. There has to be hope for Jack Torrance, or else there's really none for his creator.
  6. [with Peter Straub] The Talisman (1984) - set in New Hampshire, California, & places between - twinners / battle of good against evil / parallel fantasy world
    A grand attempt at a Huckleberry Finn-like Odyssey across America: compulsively readable. It's hard to tell where King stops and Straub begins, but the latter does seem to have a rather more orotund way of putting things.
  7. Desperation (1996) - set in Nevada - possession / demonic creatures
    One of his strangest and most compelling novels: a kind of supernatural Western. Not to everyone's taste, but definitely to mine - very atmospheric. The washed-up, Mailer-like writer is well protrayed, also.
  8. The Institute (2019) - set in Maine & South Carolina - telepathy, sinister Government agencies
    One of his very best novels, I think: a definite improvement on Firestarter, albeit occupying much the same thematic territory. The escape scenes are particularly well managed, but then, so is the picture of the institute itself.
  9. It (1986) - set in Derry, Maine - aliens / killer clowns / childhood faith
    One of his longest and most ambitious works - perhaps not on the level of The Stand of The Shining, but certainly essential reading. Neither of its film treatments have really done it justice, but both have indisputable merits, too.
  10. Under the Dome (2009) - set in Chester's Mill, Maine - megalomania / climate crime / childhood faith
    One of King's very best books: in it he solves the problem of combining fabular with realistic action first adumbrated in Needful Things: as it turns out, in the process he created an essential book for our times.
  11. Lisey's Story (2006) - set in Maine & Boo'ya Moon - author's widow / parallel fantasy world
    A masterclass in the art of blending fantasy landscapes with a basic underlying realism: a very strong novel indeed. I haven't seen the adaptation, but if it has the effect of drawing attention to this largely unsung novel, then that's definitely a good thing.
  12. Joyland (2013) - set in North Carolina - serial killer / carny folk / coming-of-age
    The best of King's 'Hard Case Crime' novels: well-written, well-plotted, and unforgettable. At heart he's always longed to be a pulp writer, and this is the perfect combo of pulp and King's perfect pitch when it comes to creating empathetic characters.
  13. Mr Mercedes: A Novel (2014) - set in Ohio - serial killer / detectives / Bill Hodges / Holly Gibney
    Quite an amazing departure for King: a completely gripping Hitchcockian thriller, but written with heart. It certainly had the effect of bringing his career to life again - with a vengeance!
  14. Insomnia (1994) - set in Derry, Maine - world of auras / abortion issue / the crimson king
    Underrated - the idea of producing hyperreality through insomnia is a fascinating one, as is the inclusion of a version of the three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. He himself has described it as 'over-plotted' but I'd prefer to use the adjective 'rich'.
  15. Misery (1987) - set in Colorado - psychotic fan / power of fiction / resourceful villain
    The first of King's beleaguered author books: and perhaps the most powerful. Some scenes are almost too gruesome for me to read, but the power of the situation drives all before it.
  16. The Green Mile: A Novel in Six Parts (1996) - set in Cold Mountain, Georgia - prison / miracles
    A sentimentalised film treatment has handicapped this book: the original story is far better constructed, with a much harder edge. When you read it all the way through, and not in its monthly instalments, it works very well indeed as a connected novel.
  17. Rose Madder (1995) - set in Chicago - fantasy world / sexual abuse
    Again, I fell this is a severely underrated novel. The transition from Roses's everyday terror to the equally threatening world of the temple and the labyrinth is very well handled. The incidental details about recording talking books are also fascinating.
  18. From a Buick 8 (2002) - set in Western Pennsylvania - aliens / parallel worlds / mysterious artefact
    King channels Stanislaw Lem. It's clear proof of the skill of an author when they can make a compelling narrative with so little to hang it on: a real tour-de-force
  19. The Colorado Kid (2005) - set on Moose-Lookit Island, Maine - detection / mystery / reporters
    Another tour-de-force: a novella-length meditation on the nature of evidence, if not of truth itself. Hard to fault it, really.
  20. The Waste Lands. The Dark Tower 3 (1991) - set in Mid-World & our world - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / western
    One of the best volumes in the Dark Tower saga, I think: Blaine the Mono is a finely drawn character, and it ends on the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers.
  21. The Dark Half (1989) - set in Castle Rock, Maine - author protagonist / twinners / parallel fantasy world
    Continuing the author-in-crisis theme: again, this is almost too guesome to read in parts, but the underlying concept is frighteningly strong.
  22. Fairy Tale: A Novel (2022) - set in Illinois - small town / parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil
    I'm not sure that the fantasy world, Empis, when we finally reach it, is quite magical enough to justify the preamble, but certainly King does a wonderful job of painting the dark world created by his anti-hero.
  23. The Tommyknockers (1987) - set in Ludlow, Maine - flying saucer / alien invasion / telepathy
    This, I think, is a very underrated book: it's good SF and another fine portrait of a weird small town in crisis. The passages about alcoholism are among the most powerful King has ever written on the subject - which is saying something. It was filmed here in New Zealand - pretty well, I think.
  24. Gerald's Game (1992) - set partly in Dark Score Lake, Maine - sexual abuse / imprisonment
    Some parts of this novel are so gruesome that I found myself almost physically unable to reread them. it's thematically as well as stylistically strong, though, and displays his genius for exploring the unthinkably horrible situation in all its gruesome details.
  25. Billy Summers (2021) - set in 'Midwood' & in Colorado - crime / sexual abuse / revenge
    The life of a hitman is well portrayed, and there's a nice tip of the cap to the Overlook Hotel, too. It's not in the very front rank of his work, but there's little to fault in it, either.
  26. Doctor Sleep: A Novel (2013) - set in Florida, Maine & Colorado - alcoholism / haunting / telepathy
    This sequel to The Shining may not be up to its predecessor, but it's still a good novel in its own right. It made a pretty good movie, too.
  27. The Dead Zone (1979) - set in Castle Rock, Maine - haunting / telepathy / carny folk
    The first of the Castle Rock books: well-written and intriguing, even if not up to some of his subsequent works in this genre. The portrait it contains of a kind of proto-Trump has given King a possibly undeserved reputation for prophecy. American fascism was always bound to hit the mainstream sooner or later.
  28. Salem's Lot (1975 / 2004) - set in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine - vampires / writer protagonist
    This is the first of King's microcosm stories: a well-portrayed small town in the grip of supernatural horrors beyond their comprehension. It's only in comparison with his later triumphs in this genre that it looks a bit limited now.
  29. The Drawing of the Three. The Dark Tower 2 (1987) - set in Mid-World & our world - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / western
    The clash of styles is one of the oddest features of the Dark Tower series as a whole: here it begins to switch from the Sergio Leone-style portentousness it began with into the frenetic melodrama it would become. It's a very readable book, though - perhaps the most immediately enjoyable of the whole series.
  30. Dolores Claiborne (1992) - set in Little Tall Island, Maine - sexual abuse / murder
    This is, I think, his first use of a female protagonist speaking throughout in the first person - a device more familiar from his short fiction. To my ear, it's accomplished well - and the moment of the eclipse is captured perfectly.
  31. The Wind through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel (2012) - set in Mid-World - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / western
    A good fantasy novel, shoehorned very satisfactorily (in my view) into the Dark Tower series
  32. Firestarter (1980) - set in New York & Longmont, Virginia - child in peril / telepathy / government agencies
    A pretty powerful novel - not one of his very best, but definitely well worth reading. I'm not quite sure why it's faded from readers' minds - perhaps because the competition is so stiff.
  33. The Gunslinger. The Dark Tower 1 (1982 / 2003) - set in Mid-World - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / western
    This is probably better in its original than in its rewritten form - it has little in common with the later books in the series, but that's in its favour, if anything. It does read more like a collection of linked stories than a bona-fide novel, though.
  34. Carrie (1974) - set in Maine - teen angst / telepathy
    Not one of my favourites, but definitely a well-constructed thriller, strong on characterisation: the little snowball that started an avalanche ...
  35. Dreamcatcher (2001) - set near Derry, Maine - aliens / Downs' Syndrome hero
    There's some great material here, but I'm not sure it succeeds as a whole - it's worth it for some of the incidental scenes, though. King is particularly keen on intellectually challenged characters: Tom Cullen in The Stand, Clayton Blaisdell in Blaze, and 'Duddits' Cavell in this novel
  36. Wolves of the Calla. The Dark Tower 5 (2003) - set in Mid-World & our world - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / western
    One of the best volumes in the series: mad, but interesting. I like his faux-Western flourishes here.
  37. The Dark Tower. The Dark Tower 7 (2004) - set in Mid-World & our world - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / western
    So much was left to the last volume, that the action can't help but feel a bit rushed at times - a very odd conclusion to a very odd series. I defy anyone who's read as far as this to put it down, though.
  38. Later (2021) - set in Maine - telepathy / necromancy / the ritual of Chud
    This may be more of an occult thriller than a hard-boiled crime novel, but it's very well written.
  39. Cujo (1981) - set in Castle Rock, Maine - feral animal / small town paranoia / child in peril
    Here King introduces one of his most powerful themes: what one might call the revolt of the Americana - in this case a beloved pet dog.
  40. Elevation (2018) - set in Castle Rock - small-town paranoia / escape / death fantasies
    This is more of a novella than a novel, really, but it's very readable and quite intriguing. It's hard to know what to make of it, but need one really say more than that it's a good story, well told?
  41. Cell (2006) - set in Maine & Massachusetts - terrorism / human flocks / zombie apocalypse
    I didn't really enjoy it much on first reading, but it has definitely improved on acquaintance: a good action thriller
  42. Christine (1983) - set in Western Pennsylvania - evil car / haunting / Americana
    Another Americana meditation: this time constructed around the revolt of a cherished classic car. It's rather more melodramatic than Cujo, but very much in the same mode.
  43. End of Watch: A Novel (2016) - set in Ohio - serial killer / detectives / Bill Hodges / Holly Gibney
    This is certainly a powerful piece of storytelling: it may not quite up to the first book in the series, but then what is? The omnipotent killer trope perhaps reaches its apotheosis here.
  44. Pet Sematary (1983) - set in Ludlow, Maine - child in peril / necromancy / Americana
    If you could bring your beloved pet back to life, would you? And how far would you go before you stopped? Another grim piece of Americana. Too grim for me, but certainly a powerful concept.
  45. [with Peter Straub] Black House (2001) - set in French Landing, Wisconsin - parallel fantasy world / serial killer / radio days
    This may not on the level of The Talisman (and with far too much about the so-called Sheikh of Shake, Uncle Henry), but it's a good solid thriller nevertheless. There may be a bit too much Dark Tower fallout here for those unacquainted with that series, but then that's true of much of King's mid-career output.
  46. Duma Key (2008) - set in Minnesota & Florida - painting / haunting
    This has virtually the same plot as Bag of Bones, with the same problems as that novel: the Florida setting and the gallery descriptions are perhaps its best features, accordingly.
  47. 11/22/63 (2011) - set in Lisbon Falls & Derry, Maine, as well as Dallas, Texas - time travel / alternate worlds / Americana
    I certainly enjoyed it, but I wouldn't see it in the front rank of his work: a good solid piece of classical SF, though. It makes an interesting - if not particularly novel - point.
  48. [as Richard Bachman] Blaze (2007) - set in New England - kidnapping / abusive children's home / Americana
    Depressing, and not as poignant as perhaps it's meant to be, it seems in retrospect like a kind of trial run for Billy Summers. It's only because the other books are so good that this one can be relegated to the Bush Leagues like this, though.
  49. [as Richard Bachman] Thinner (1984) - Maine Coast - carny folk / gypsy curse / weight loss
    Bachman takes on more of the trappings of King in this late novel, just before the pseudonym was discovered. It's almost as if he wanted to be found out ...
  50. Finders Keepers: A Novel (2015) - set in Ohio - author's manuscripts / detectives / Bill Hodges / Holly Gibney
    I found the eventual destruction of the dead, Salinger-like writer's notebooks depressingly predictable (could not the boy have xeroxed them in his spare time?) Again, King's villains do have a way of seeming unstoppable against all odds. The weakest link in a very strong series.
  51. Needful Things (1991) - set in Castle Rock, Maine - good vs. evil / materialist fable
    It's never been quite clear to me if this was intended as a purely fabular narrative or a piece of Kingian realism: it doesn't quite work for me, but it's certainly very readable.
  52. [as Richard Bachman] The Regulators (1996) - set in Wentworth, Ohio - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / childhood faith
    The Bachman version is more of a curiosity than a real rival to its plot-double, Desperation: it's certainly very readable, though. Hard to know what to make of it, really.
  53. The Eyes of the Dragon (1984) - set in Delain, In-World - good vs. evil / Randall Flagg / fantasy world
    This is more of a pure fantasy novel than anything that preceded it in King's work: it's not especially remarkable beyond that except that it shows his first attempts to find the right tone for his work in that genre.
  54. Bag of Bones (1998) - Derry & Dark Score Lake, Maine - writer's block / haunting
    This is an exceptionally grim tale, with a sting in the tail: I think at this point some readers may have felt that King had shot his bolt as a writer. Little did they know!
  55. [with Richard Chizmar] Gwendy's Final Task (2022) - set in space - averting global catastrophe / dementia
    Here the twin authors try to crank up their 'Gwendy' plot to reach a climax in outer space. the result is definitely impressive, even if not in the front rank of King's other work.
  56. Storm of the Century (1999) - set in Little Tall Island, Maine - vampires / small town paranoia
    I've never read a screenplay-novel before, and I did enjoy it: the mini-series itself (when I finally got to see it) was actually less interesting, I thought.
  57. [as Richard Bachman] Rage (1977) - set in Maine - teen angst / gun violence
    A nicely paced thriller, subsequently repudiated by its author in the wake of claims that it inspired a slew of other school shooters. The raw talent of its youthful author is immediately apparent, though.
  58. [as Richard Bachman] The Running Man (1982) - Co-Op City, Boston, New Hampshire - game shows / Americana / dystopian future
    This is very much in the mode of SF writers such as A. E. Van Vogt and other action-addicted storytellers. It's not really on the level of most of the other 'Bachman' work, though it did make a good vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  59. Song of Susannah. The Dark Tower 6 (2004) - set in Mid-World & our world - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / western
    This is a very strange novel: perhaps the least 'standalone' narrative in the entire Dark Tower series. It's certainly readable, though.
  60. Revival (2014) - set in Maine - necromancy / child in peril / dead wife
    One of my least favourite books by King. The powerful episodes he creates do not really cohere, and the idea of 'fifth business' is a bit too dominant, but his speculations on 'the secret electricity' are certainly interesting.
  61. [with Richard Chizmar] Gwendy's Button Box (2017) - set in Castle Rock, Maine - materialist fable / childhood faith
    This is rather a slight premise, but well carried out by the two authors: a novella rather than a novel, really.
  62. Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) - set in Tarker's Mills, Maine - werewolves / good vs. evil / calendar
    This is a strangely circumscribed work which seems to exist more for the illustrations that the plot: once again, a novella rather than a novel.
  63. The Plant: parts one-to-six of a novel in progress (2000) - set in New York - magical curse / nature's revenge
    This was fun to track down: I can see why King has never been in much of a hurry to finish it, but it is entertaining to read the parts of it he managed to complete. Perhaps one day ...
  64. Wizard and Glass. The Dark Tower 4 (1997) - set in Mid-World & our world - parallel fantasy world / good vs. evil / western
    For me, this is the lowest point of the Dark Tower series. The romance is drawn out to inordinate length, and I found myself actually counting the pages remaining to be read: the direct opposite of my usual experience with King's long books.
  65. [with Owen King] Sleeping Beauties (2017) - set in Dooling, Appalachia - parallel fantasy world / men vs. women
    This is interesting in some ways, extremely problematic in others. Overall, I think that it illustrates the difficulty of maintaining a clear balance between the real and the fantastic. Why Dooling? Who is Eve? Why does she get herself locked up at the beginning of the book and sit behind bars the whole time? The characters lack the usual precision of King people, too.
  66. [as Richard Bachman] Roadwork (1981) - set in the Midwest - governmental interference / marital instability / morbid psychology
    This is probably my least favourite King novel pf all: his protagonist is far too self-indulgent and irrational for me, and the action drags as a result. Something had to come in last, and this one represents a path which I'm very pleased that he didn't pursue further.

This is the most controversial (and subjective) part of my project. I have my strong preferences among King's novels - many of them, it seems, at odds with other readers - but the great thing about his oeuvre is that it seems to be able to accommodate virtually all tastes. I've shuffled and reshuffled quite a lot to achieve this list, and I suspect that it's only in a temporary state of equilibrium even so.



Stephen King: Fairy Tale. Signed Limited UK Edition (2022)

(Very) Partial Motif index:

  • Art as haunting (rather than stressing any aesthetic functions it might have):
    • Examples: the novelist in Bag of Bones (1998) / the painter in Duma Key (2008).
      Query: Is this an actual belief of King's, or simply sleight-of-hand to put us off the trail of his own addiction to his art?

  • Omnipotent killers (particularly effective against unwary policemen):
    • Examples: George Stark in The Dark Half (1989) / Norman Daniels in Rose Madder (1995) / The Mercedes Killer in the Bill Hodges trilogy (2014-16).
      One can see how dramatically effective this is in context, but it's a very striking trope. King's books certainly celebrate the 'divinity that shapes our ends', but he allows rather more than equal play to its adversary.

  • Parallel fantasy worlds (with a symbolic link to your own circumstances):
    • Examples: The temple of the Bull in Rose Madder (1995) / Boo'ya Moon in Lisey's Story (2006) / Eslin in Fairy Tale (2022) / Midworld in the Dark Tower series (1982-2012).
      For the most part, this is one of the richest veins in King's fiction. At times, as in Needful Things (1991), the fabular can intrude too far on his basically realistic vision. Doubling the focus enables him to avoid this.

  • Recovering alcoholics (generally self-deluded but basically sympathetic):
    • Examples: Jack Torrance in The Shining (1977); Gardiner in The Tommyknockers (1987); Danny Torrance in Doctor Sleep (2013).
      This is perhaps the most avowedly autobiographical aspect of King's fiction. What larger significance it has beyond this I leave others to speculate on. I suspect, myself, that it's a bit like his obsession with reenacting his near-fatal automotive accident in his work around the turn of the millennium. 'When will you stop talking about it?" his wife is quoted as asking. 'When I can," he replied.

  • A complex web of recurring characters (from other novels or stories):
    • Examples: the punk girl in Rose Madder (1995) reappears in Desperation (1996) with a quick update on events at the women's shelter devastated in the previous novel / Bag of Bones (1998) perhaps sets a record for the number of allusions to characters and locations from other books: Ralph Roberts and Joe Wyzer from Insomnia (1994), Thad Beaumont from The Dark Half (1989), Bill Denbrough from It (1986), and so on.
      This motif (of course) includes the protagonists of such formal series as the Dark Tower books or the Bill Hodges trilogy, but it goes far beyond them. I imagine it's a nod to such pioneers of the regional novel as Thomas Hardy or William Faulkner. At a certain point, your imaginary world begins to become realer than the real one to your readers as well as yourself.

  • Small Town microcosms (as metaphors of larger vehicles of destruction):
    • Examples: 'Salem's Lot (1975) / Castle Rock in Needful Things (1991) / Derry in It (1986) / Under the Dome (2009).
      This he does beautifully, and with the authority of long experience. Se non è vero, è ben trovato, to (mis)quote Giordano Bruno - if it's not really true in all cases, it certainly sounds true.

  • Telepathy: (definitely King's pyschic ability of choice)
    • Examples: Carrie (1974) / The Dead Zone (1979) / Firestarter (1980) / The Institute (2019).
      I guess when it comes to writing in the field of the occult and fantastic, authors have to concentrate on those aspects of it they're actually able to believe in without too much difficulty. For King, this is clearly telepathy and psychokinesis and the whole battery of Rhine-tested skills from Duke University. He manages to extend it to almost unprecedented lengths, however.

I've tried to be concise rather than comprehensive here. In the course of my reading, certain motifs have leapt out at me as particularly revealing. Another reader would make a quite different list. I'd hate anyone to conclude that I think that any King novel can be reduced to a mere assemblage of familiar motifs, however.





Stephen King: Billy Summers (2021)

Novels:
(By Category)

    [Editions owned by me are marked in bold]:

    Stand-alone Novels:

  1. Carrie (1974)
    • Carrie. London: New English Library, 1974.
    • Carrie. 1974. New York: Doubleday, 1974.
  2. Salem's Lot (1975 / 2004)
    • Salem's Lot. 1975. London: New English Library, 1976.
    • Salem's Lot: Illustrated Edition. 1975. Photographs by Jerry N. Uelsmann. 2004. Introduction by the Author. 2005. Hodder & Stoughton. London: Hodder Headline, 2008.
  3. The Shining (1977)
    • The Shining. 1977. London: New English Library, 1982.
  4. The Stand (1978 / 1990)
    • The Stand. 1978. London: New English Library, 1979.
    • The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990.
  5. The Dead Zone (1979)
    • The Dead Zone. 1979. London: Futura, 1986.
  6. Firestarter (1980)
    • Firestarter. 1980. London: Futura, 1981.
  7. Cujo (1981)
    • Cujo. 1981. London: Futura, 1982.
  8. Christine (1983)
    • Christine. 1983. London: New English Library, 1984.
  9. Pet Sematary (1983)
    • Pet Sematary. 1983. London: New English Library, 1985.
  10. Cycle of the Werewolf (1983)
    • Cycle of the Werewolf. Illustrated by Berni Wrightson. 1983. London: New English Library, 1985.
  11. The Eyes of the Dragon (1984)
    • The Eyes of the Dragon. Illustrated by David Palladini. 1984. London: Guild Publishing, 1987.
  12. It (1986)
    • It. 1986. London: New English Library, 1987.
  13. Misery (1987)
    • Misery. 1987. London: New English Library, 1988.
  14. The Tommyknockers (1987)
    • The Tommyknockers. 1987. London: Guild Publishing, 1988.
  15. The Dark Half (1989)
    • The Dark Half. 1989. London: New English Library, 1990.
  16. Needful Things (1991)
    • Needful Things. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991.
  17. Gerald's Game (1992)
    • Gerald's Game. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992.
  18. Dolores Claiborne (1992)
    • Dolores Claiborne. London: BCA, 1992.
  19. Insomnia (1994)
    • Insomnia. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1994.
  20. Rose Madder (1995)
    • Rose Madder. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995.
  21. The Green Mile: A Novel in Six Parts (1996)
    • The Green Mile.
      • The Two Dead Girls. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
      • The Mouse on the Mile. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
      • Coffey's Hands. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
      • The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
      • Night Journey. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
      • Coffey on the Mile. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
    • The Green Mile. 6 vols. A Signet Giftpack:
      • The Two Dead Girls. New York: Dutton Signet, 1996.
      • The Mouse on the Mile. New York: Dutton Signet, 1996.
      • Coffey's Hands. New York: Dutton Signet, 1996.
      • The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix. New York: Dutton Signet, 1996.
      • Night Journey. New York: Dutton Signet, 1996.
      • Coffey on the Mile. New York: Dutton Signet, 1996.
    • The Green Mile: A Novel in Six Parts. 1996. A Plume Book. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1997.
  22. Desperation (1996)
    • Desperation. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.
  23. Bag of Bones (1998)
    • Bag of Bones. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1998.
  24. Storm of the Century (1999)
    • Storm of the Century. [Screenplay]. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.
  25. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)
    • The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999.
  26. The Plant: parts one-to-six of a novel in progress (2000)
    • [The Plant: parts one-to-six of a novel in progress. Bangor, Maine: Philtrum Press, 2000.]
  27. Dreamcatcher (2001)
    • Dreamcatcher. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001.
  28. From a Buick 8 (2002)
    • From a Buick 8. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002.
  29. Cell (2006)
    • Cell. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006.
  30. Lisey's Story (2006)
    • Lisey's Story. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006.
  31. Duma Key (2008)
    • Duma Key. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008.
  32. Under the Dome (2009)
    • Under the Dome. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009.
  33. 11/22/63 (2011)
    • 11/22/63. Scribner. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2011.
  34. Doctor Sleep (2013)
    • Doctor Sleep: A Novel. [Sequel to 'The Shining', 1977]. Scribner. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2013.
  35. Revival (2014)
    • Revival. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014.
  36. Elevation (2018)
    • Elevation. Illustrated by Mark Edward Geyer. Scribner. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2018.
  37. The Institute (2019)
    • The Institute. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2019.
  38. Billy Summers (2021)
    • Billy Summers. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2021.
  39. Fairy Tale (2022)
    • Fairy Tale: A Novel. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2022.

  40. as Richard Bachman:

  41. Rage (1977)
  42. The Long Walk (1979)
  43. Roadwork (1981)
  44. The Running Man (1982)
    • The Bachman Books: Rage; The Long Walk; Roadwork; The Running Man. 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985. London: Guild Publishing, 1986.
    • The Bachman Books: Rage; The Long Walk; Roadwork; The Running Man. 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985. London: New English Library, 1987.
  45. Thinner (1984)
    • Thinner. 1984. London: New English Library, 1986.
  46. The Regulators (1996)
    • The Regulators. 1996. London: New English Library, 1997.
  47. Blaze (2007)
    • Blaze. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007.

  48. The Dark Tower:

  49. The Gunslinger. The Dark Tower 1 (1982 / 2003)
    • The Gunslinger. The Dark Tower, 1. 1982. Illustrated by Michael Whelan. London: Sphere Books, 1988.
    • The Gunslinger. The Dark Tower, 1. 1982. Rev. ed. New English Library. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003.
  50. The Drawing of the Three. The Dark Tower 2 (1987)
    • The Drawing of the Three. The Dark Tower, 2. 1987. Illustrated by Phil Hale. London: Sphere Books, 1989.
  51. The Waste Lands. The Dark Tower 3 (1991)
    • The Waste Lands. The Dark Tower, 3. Illustrated by Ned Dameron. London: Sphere Books, 1991.
  52. Wizard and Glass. The Dark Tower 4 (1997)
    • Wizard and Glass. The Dark Tower, 4. Illustrated by Dave McKean. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997.
  53. Wolves of the Calla. The Dark Tower 5 (2003)
    • Wolves of the Calla. The Dark Tower, 5. Illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003.
  54. Song of Susannah. The Dark Tower 6 (2004)
    • Song of Susannah. The Dark Tower, 6. Illustrated by Darrel Anderson. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004.
  55. The Dark Tower. The Dark Tower 7 (2004)
    • The Dark Tower. The Dark Tower, 7. Illustrated by Michael Whelan. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004.
  56. The Wind through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel (2012)
    • The Wind through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel. Illustrated by Jae Lee. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2012.

  57. Hard Case Crime:

  58. The Colorado Kid (2005)
    • The Colorado Kid. A Hard Case Crime Book. New York: Dorchester Publishing Co., 2005.
  59. Joyland (2013)
    • Joyland. A Hard Case Crime Book. London: Titan Books, 2013.
  60. Later (2021)
    • Later. A Hard Case Crime Book. London: Titan Books, 2021.

  61. Bill Hodges / Holly Gibney books:

  62. Mr Mercedes: A Novel (2014)
    • Mr Mercedes: A Novel. Bill Hodges Trilogy, 1. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014.
  63. Finders Keepers: A Novel (2015)
    • Finders Keepers: A Novel. Bill Hodges Trilogy, 2. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015.
  64. End of Watch: A Novel (2016)
    • End of Watch: A Novel. Bill Hodges Trilogy, 3. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2016.
  65. The Outsider: A Novel (2018)
    • The Outsider: A Novel. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2018.

  66. Collaborations:

  67. [with Peter Straub] The Talisman (1984)
    • The Talisman. Talisman, 1. 1984. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
  68. [with Peter Straub] Black House (2001)
    • Black House. Talisman, 2. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001.
  69. [with Richard Chizmar] Gwendy's Button Box (2017)
    • Gwendy's Button Box. Gwendy's Button Box Trilogy, 1. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.
  70. [Richard Chizmar: Gwendy's Magic Feather (2019)]
    • 'Foreword: How Gwendy Escaped Oblivion.' In Richard Chizmar: Gwendy's Magic Feather. 2019. Gwendy's Button Box Trilogy, 2. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2021.
  71. [with Richard Chizmar] Gwendy's Final Task (2022)
    • [with Richard Chizmar] Gwendy's Final Task. Gwendy's Button Box Trilogy, 3. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2022.
  72. Sleeping Beauties (2017)
    • [with Owen King] Sleeping Beauties. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.

I thought it might be useful to provide this third list of King's novels sorted by categories, with details of the actual copies I've read - for fellow King-maniacs, that is, and it's hard to imagine that anyone else would have read this far in my post ...




Stephen King: If It Bleeds: Four Novellas (2020)

Other Works
(By Category)

    [Editions owned by me are marked in bold]:

    Stories & Novellas:

  1. Night Shift (1978)
    • Night Shift. Introduction by John D. MacDonald. 1978. London: New English Library, 1979.
    • Night Shift. Introduction by John D. MacDonald. 1978. London: BCA, 1991.
  2. Different Seasons (1982)
    • Different Seasons. 1982. London: Futura, 1984.
  3. Skeleton Crew (1986)
    • Skeleton Crew. 1985. London: Futura, 1986.
  4. Four Past Midnight (1990)
    • Four Past Midnight. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990.
  5. Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993)
    • Nightmares and Dreamscapes. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993.
  6. Hearts in Atlantis (1999)
    • Hearts in Atlantis. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999.
  7. Everything's Eventual (2002)
    • Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002.
  8. Just After Sunset (2008)
    • Just After Sunset. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008.
  9. Stephen King Goes to the Movies (2009)
    • Stephen King Goes to the Movies. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009.
  10. Full Dark, No Stars (2010)
    • Full Dark, No Stars. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010.
  11. Blockade Billy / Morality (2010)
    • Blockade Billy / Morality. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010.
  12. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015)
    • The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015.
  13. If It Bleeds (2020)
    • If It Bleeds. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2020.

  14. Non-fiction:

  15. Danse Macabre (1981)
    • Danse Macabre. London: Macdonald Futura Publishers, 1981.
    • Danse Macabre. 1981. New York: Berkley Books, 1984.
  16. Nightmares in the Sky (1988)
    • Nightmares in the Sky: Gargoyles and Grotesques. Photographs by F-stop Fitzgerald. Viking Studio Books. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1988.
  17. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000)
    • On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000.
  18. Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing (2000)
    • Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing. Introduction by Peter Straub. New York: Book-of-the-Month Club, 2000.
  19. [with Stewart O'Nan] Faithful (2004)
    • Faithful: Two Die-Hard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season. 2004. Scribner. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.
  20. Hearts in Suspension, ed. Jim Bishop (2016)
    • Hearts in Suspension: Essay and Novella by Stephen King; Personal Narratives by Michael Alpert, Jim Bishop, David Bright, Keith Carreiro, Harold Crosby, Sherry Dec, Bruce Holsapple, Frank Kadi, Daina McPherson, Lary Moscowitz, Jim H. Smith & Philip Thompson. Ed. Jim Bishop. Orono, Maine: University of Maine Press, 2016.

  21. Edited:

  22. [with Bev Vincent] Flight or Fright. London: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd., 2018.

I've concluded with a list of King's other works - those in my possession, that is. There's an immense penumbra of ephemera: chapbooks, web publications, and special limited editions which are not precisely my bag but which constitute the main locus of interest for booktraders and the more or less specialised investors who are their principal audience.

There's also a huge amount of secondary material which I haven't (yet) started seriously collecting - though I do wonder at times if I should invest in some of the secondary works surrounding The Dark Tower, in particular. In any case, this is where I am at present, and I hope that at least some of these thoughts (and listings) may be of use to other readers.




George Beahm: The Stephen King Companion (1989)

Secondary

  • Tim Underwood & Chuck Miller. Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King. 1988. London: New English Library, 1990.
  • George Beahm, ed. The Stephen King Companion. 1989. London: Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd., 1990.
  • Lisa Rogak. Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King. London: JR Books, 2009.

Lisa Rogak: Haunted Heart (2009)