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.

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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:

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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)
67. Holly: A Novel (2023)

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.

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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. Holly (2023) - Bridgton, Ohio - cannibalism / detection

    This is another grim tale, with a hugely loathsome pair of well-heeled cannibal killers. Holly Gibney is indeed a great character, and any power the story has certainly stems from her involvement. It's possible that she may have reached her limits as a plot catalyst now, however. The jury will have to remain out on that one.

56. [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.

57. 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.

58. [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.

59. [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.

60. 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.

61. 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.

62. [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.

63. 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.

64. 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 ...

65. 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.

66. [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.

67. [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.

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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.

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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.

as Richard Bachman:


40. Rage (1977)
41. The Long Walk (1979)
42. Roadwork (1981)
43. 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.
44. Thinner (1984)
    • Thinner. 1984. London: New English Library, 1986.
45. The Regulators (1996)
    • The Regulators. 1996. London: New English Library, 1997.
46. Blaze (2007)
    • Blaze. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007.

The Dark Tower:


47. 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.
48. 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.
49. The Waste Lands. The Dark Tower 3 (1991)
    • The Waste Lands. The Dark Tower, 3. Illustrated by Ned Dameron. London: Sphere Books, 1991.
50. Wizard and Glass. The Dark Tower 4 (1997)
    • Wizard and Glass. The Dark Tower, 4. Illustrated by Dave McKean. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997.
51. 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.
52. Song of Susannah. The Dark Tower 6 (2004)
    • Song of Susannah. The Dark Tower, 6. Illustrated by Darrel Anderson. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004.
53. The Dark Tower. The Dark Tower 7 (2004)
    • The Dark Tower. The Dark Tower, 7. Illustrated by Michael Whelan. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004.
54. 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.

Hard Case Crime:


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

Bill Hodges / Holly Gibney books:


58. Mr Mercedes: A Novel (2014)
    • Mr Mercedes: A Novel. Bill Hodges Trilogy, 1. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014.
59. Finders Keepers: A Novel (2015)
    • Finders Keepers: A Novel. Bill Hodges Trilogy, 2. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2015.
60. End of Watch: A Novel (2016)
    • End of Watch: A Novel. Bill Hodges Trilogy, 3. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2016.
61. The Outsider: A Novel (2018)
    • The Outsider: A Novel. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2018.
62. Holly (2023)
    • Holly: A Novel. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2023.

Collaborations:


63. [with Peter Straub] The Talisman (1984)
    • The Talisman. Talisman, 1. Viking. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
    • The Talisman. Talisman, 1. 1984. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
64. [with Peter Straub] Black House (2001)
    • Black House. Talisman, 2. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001.
65. [with Richard Chizmar] Gwendy's Button Box (2017)
    • Gwendy's Button Box. Gwendy's Button Box Trilogy, 1. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2017.
[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.
66. [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.
67. 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: Book Club Associates, 1983.
   • 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. You Like it Darker (2024)
    • You Like it Darker. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2024.

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.

Edited:


21. [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 [cf. my post on the comics adaptations of this work scripted by Robin Furth, author of The Dark Tower Concordance (2003-12)].

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)

•

Time Travel and Beyond

Bryan Walpert: Entanglement (2021)

Time Travel and Beyond

Is time travel possible? Why write another novel about it?

Jack Ross chats with Bryan Walpert, Devonport resident and author of the 2022 Ockham short-listed novel Entanglement, about time travel, the challenge of putting science into a novel, crossing the border from poetry to fiction, science fiction vs. science-in-fiction, and more.

Books will be available for purchase.

•

As a researcher [at the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney] was settling me into my cubicle, he gave me some advice: Don’t think about it too hard and you’ll know what time it is; think about it too much and you’ll confuse yourself. As it turns out, this more or less describes our relationship with time as expressed by St Augustine some 1800 years ago. He wrote, “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.”

Luckily for me, Bryan has already given us some pretty strong clues about how to interpret his novel Entanglement. In particular, the notion of whether or not the past and future are 'really' there is canvassed quite extensively:

Somewhat stranger than this, to me at least, is the question of how real the past and future are. Most of us have an intuitive sense that events in the past (e.g. the French Revolution) are no longer happening and that the future doesn’t exist until we, well, get there ... This corresponds with what has been called the “tensed” theory of time or “presentism.” But there are also proponents of what’s called the “block universe” or sometimes “eternalism.” By that way of thinking, the past, present and future all exist.

His Newsroom article on the subject even gives us the moment of inception of the book:

When I’m asked what led me to write Entanglement, I recall the moment some years ago that inspired it. It was a summer’s day. I was standing just outside my house, my family waiting for me inside, and felt, suddenly, as though I’d come back from the future, some darker time — though what the future was I didn’t know. My kids are so young again, I remember thinking. My wife and I are amazingly young, too.
I felt like I had been given another chance. I thought, There are so many mistakes I hadn’t yet made. It was a strange and powerful feeling, though it didn’t last — the moment passed. Or maybe the moment is still and eternally there in its little corner of the block universe ...

– Bryan Walpert, ‘Is time travel possible? Yes-ish’ Newsroom (3/3/22)

If you'd like to hear more about these weighty matters, please come along to the Devonport Library this coming Tuesday to listen to me and Bryan discussing his fascinating novel and the myriad questions it poses.

Once again, this event has been made possible by the Devonport Library Associates: chair Jan Mason, events organiser Paul Beachman, and publicity courtesy of Linda Hopkins.

•
Bryan Walpert

Bryan Walpert is the author of four books of poems, most recently Brass Band to Follow (Otago UP), named among the top 10 poetry collections of 2021 by the NZ Listener. He is also the author of three books of fiction, including the novel Entanglement, short-listed for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. A Devonport resident, he is a Professor of Creative Writing at Massey University-Albany.

•

Te Pātaka Kōrero o Te Hau Kapua / Devonport Library

•

Breaking the Maya Code

William Carlsen: Jungle of Stone (2016)

William Carlsen. Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens & Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilisation of the Maya. 2016. William Morrow. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2017.

The other day I was in a Hospice shop where I ran across a copy of the book above, priced at the princely sum of $4. I promptly bought it, of course, mainly because the blurb proclaimed it to be in the 'tradition of Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice'.

David Grann: The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (2009)

The first of those two I'm only too familiar with, having both read the book and watched the weirdly entertaining movie, starring Charlie Hunnam as the intrepid (if somewhat misguided) Colonel Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in the Amazon jungle in 1925 and has never been seen since.

James Gray, dir.: The Lost City of Z (2016)

I'd never heard of the second one, but it sounds very much like my kind of thing, and I'll certainly be on the lookout for a second-hand copy of it next time I'm out on the prowl:

Hampton Sides: In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette (2014)

The superior attractions of Jungle of Stone, however, come both from its setting and its subject matter.

I'm rather a fan of books about the mysterious Mayan civilisation, as anyone motivated enough to have looked through my 2019 collection Ghost Stories will attest. The story 'Leaves from a Diary of the End of the World' begins with the following - lightly fictionalised - account of a not dissimilar windfall almost exactly ten years ago now:

Michael Coe: Breaking the Maya Code (1992)

Tuesday, 21 February, 2012:

Today I found an old book in the library, in the de-accessioned pile. It cost me two dollars to buy it (Hardback Non-fiction – if it had been Fiction, it would only have been a dollar). The title was Breaking the Maya Code, by Michael Coe.
But why on earth were they throwing it out?
It’s true that this was a copy of the first, 1992, edition, and since then – I checked – Coe has gone on to publish a number of revisions of his book (just as he did with his 1966 text The Maya, now in its eighth edition). So perhaps they thought it was too out of date to be useful.
What I suspect, though, is that they read those words ‘the Maya Code’ as something analogous to the Da Vinci Code – as a reference to the (alleged) Mayan Prediction of the end of days in December 2012.
If so, they were sorely mistaken. Far from an Occultist text full of babble about the Apocalypse, Coe’s is a profoundly scholarly work, which tells the tale of one of the greatest decipherments of all time.
The name of Yuri Valentinovich Knorosov, the Russian genius whose phonological and comparative methodology finally led to success in this two-hundred-year-old quest, should undoubtedly go down in history along with Jean-François Champollion, Michael Ventris, and other heroes of the intellect.
The fact that we can now actually read these texts from a far-off civilisation, mute for centuries, thanks solely to such feats of ingenuity is one of the few proofs I know that the cosmos is not entirely arbitrary.
Just as the patterns of Nature become clear over time when examined by the dispassionate intellect, so advances can be made in our knowledge, the stones can be made to speak.

David Lebrun, dir.: Breaking the Maya Code (2008)

In fact, I subsequently went to the extra trouble of ordering a copy of a two-hour documentary on the subject, which I greatly recommend to anyone curious about just how precisely one goes about decoding an unknown script in an archaic version of an admittedly still living (though very complex) language.

C. W. Ceram: Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology (1949 / 1951)

When it comes to Stephens and Catherwood, I did already know the rough outline of their story from early reading and rereading of the wonderfully exciting - to a nerdy teenager, at any rate - Gods, Graves and Scholars, by German journalist Kurt Wilhelm Marek (who published under the pseudonym 'C. W. Ceram').

John L. Stephens (1805–1852)

I've written elsewhere about my interest in 19th-century American Historians such as Washington Irving, Francis Parkman and William H. Prescott, who were among the very first authors from the Western hemisphere to attract a substantial Old World audience. John Lloyd Stephens certainly has to be counted among their number.

John L. Stephens: Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, & Yucatán (1841 / 1949)

1. John L. Stephens. Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and The Holy Land. 1837. Ed. Victor Wolfgang von Hagen. Illustrated by Frederick Catherwood. 1970. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1991.
2. John L. Stephens. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, & Yucatán. Illustrated by F. Catherwood. 1841. Ed. Richard L. Prodmore. 2 vols. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1949.
3. John L. Stephens. Incidents of Travel in Yucatán. Illustrated by F. Catherwood. 2 vols. 1843. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1963.

John L. Stephens: Incidents of Travel in Yucatán (1843 / 1963)

It's fair to say, though, that Stephens' two classic books about his rediscovery of the lost Mayan cities - both of which I own (and, more to the point, have read from cover to cover) - would never have known such immediate success it weren't for the work of his collaborator and illustrator, itinerant Englishman Frederick Catherwood.

Frederick Catherwood (1799-1854)

It was Catherwood whose immensely detailed and accurate sketches of Mayan inscriptions, ruins, and sculptures established beyond dispute the artistic merits of this long-vanished civilisation. Even now it's hard to imagine how they could be surpassed:

Frederick Catherwood: Stela at Copan, from Views of Ancient Monuments (1844)

Stephens was an exceptionally able journalist, who told a rattling good yarn. When he wasn't being threatened with instant death by murderous soldiers, he was being laid low by tropical diseases. Somehow he managed to keep going, though, despite the lawlessness of much of Central America at the time.

Victor von Hagen: Search for the Maya: The Story of Stephens and Catherwood (1973)

It's really Catherwood one sympathises with most, however. He was often left behind at some inaccessible site to complete his sketches of the ruins while Stephens went off on some more glamorous (albeit even more dangerous) errand. Working, at times, up his ankles in mud, with jungle undergrowth obscuring his view, Catherwood used his camera lucida apparatus to trace each inscription and statue as carefully as he could.

Despite not knowing the meanings of any of the symbols he recorded, he drew them so carefully that many of his drawings are still used by Mayan scholars in preference to the original walls and statues, now further perished by time.

William Robertson (1721-1793)

Stephens and Catherwood were by no means the first to see these immense ruins, but they were certainly the most assiduous in recording and disseminating the wonders they'd found.

Thanks to the influence of sceptical British historians such as William Robertson, whose History of America (1777) threw considerable doubt on the existence of the architectural and artistic marvels described by the original Conquistadors, most people at the time still assumed that there had never been a civilisation in the Americas to rival those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The dogmatic Scots clergyman stated it baldly:

The inhabitants of the New World were in a state of society so extremely rude as to be unacquainted with those arts which are the first essays of human ingenuity on its advance toward improvement.

Their temples, he went on to stress, could have been little more than 'a mound of earth' and their houses 'mere huts, built with turf, or mud, or the branches of trees, like those of the rudest Indians.' 'There is not', he concluded:

in all the extent of that vast empire, a single monument or vestige of any building more ancient than the conquest.

Robertson based this blanket dismissal of all the innumerable detailed chronicles of the Spanish conquest - by Cortés, Pizarro, and their many contemporaries - on the account of one informant who had (allegedly) 'travelled in every part of New Spain.'

Both Stephens and Catherwood had, however, travelled widely in the Middle East as well as the Americas, and it was apparent to them that the creators of cities such as Copán, Tikal, and Chichen Itza, were in no way inferior to Ancient Greeks and Romans when it came to urban planning. They had been, in fact, in many ways more culturally advanced than their classical contemporaries.

As Stephens himself put it, in the conclusion to Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, & Yucatán, 'The monuments and pyramids of Central America and Mexico are':

different from the works of any other known people, of a new order, and entirely and absolutely anomalous: they stand alone. ...
Unless I am wrong, we have a conclusion far more interesting and wonderful than that of connecting the builders of these cities with the Egyptians or any other people. It is the spectacle of a people skilled in architecture, sculpture and drawing, and, beyond doubt, other more perishable arts, and possessing the culture and refinement attendant upon these, not derived from the Old World, but originating and growing up here, without models or masters, having a distinct, separate, independent existence; like the plants and fruits of the soil, indigenous.

What a resounding declaration of American intellectual independence! No wonder the book was an instant success. Even the notoriously picky Edgar Allan Poe hailed it as 'magnificent ... perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published'.

•

A Book of the Book (2000)

Thanks to the work of contemporary scholars and translators such as Michael Coe, Sylvanus Morley, and Denis Tedlock, we can now read the creation epic of the Mayans, the Popol Vuh, in a variety of versions.

As well as the wonders of their advanced mathematical knowledge and wonderfully subtle script, Tedlock's essay 'Towards a Poetics of Polyphony and Translatability' - from the anthology pictured above, A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections about the Book & Writing (2000) - demonstrates the complex nature of Mayan poetics, in particular the habit of Mayan writers of constantly rephrasing and paraphrasing their meanings, rather than treating poems "as if they were Scripture, composed of precisely the right words and no others':

In a poetics that always stands ready, once something has been said, to find other ways to say it, there can be no fetishization of verbatim quotation, which lies at the very heart of the Western commodification of words. In the Mayan case not even writing, whether in the Mayan script or the Roman alphabet, carries with it a need for exact quotation. When Mayan authors cite previous texts, and even when they cite earlier passages in the same text, they unfailingly construct paraphrases. [266-67]

The implications of this tendency are extremely far-reaching, particularly when it comes to translation:

Translation caused anxiety long before the current critique of representations, especially the translation of poetry. Roman Jakobson pointed the way to a new construction of this problem, suggesting that the process of rewording might be called intralingual translation ...
Here we have entered a realm in which the popular notion of an enmity between poetry and translation does not apply. To quote Robert Frost's famous phrasing of this notion ... 'Poetry is what gets lost in translation.' ... [Octavio] Paz countered by saying 'Poetry is what is translated.' ... To take this statement a step further and paraphrase it for the purposes of the present discussion, poetry is translation. [267-68]

The conclusion of Tedlock's essay refuses to draw the conventional distinctions between the poetics and politics of the word, just as the Mayan poets he cites see no need to differentiate between quotation and paraphrase:

we could try to see the complexity of Mayan poetry as the result of a conflict between centripetal forces in language, which are supposed to produce formal and authoritative discourse, and centrifugal forces, which are supposed to open language to its changing contexts and foment new kinds of discourse. But this is a profoundly Western way of stating the problem. Available to speakers of any language are multiple systems for phrasing utterances, including syntax, semantics, intonation, and pausing. Available to writers (even within the limits of a keyboard) is a variety of signs, of which some are highly individual and particulate while others are iconic and may stand for whole words. There is nothing intrinsic to any one of these various spoken and written codes, not even the alphabet itself, that demands the reduction of all or any of the others to its own terms. Bringing multiple codes into agreement with one another is not a matter of poetics as such, but of centralized authority [my emphasis]. It is no accident that Mayans, who never formed a conquest state and have kept their distance from European versions of the state right down to the current morning news, do not bend their poetic energies to making systems stack. [276]

•


Dennis Tedlock (1939- )

Mayan Literature in Translation

1. Coe, Michael D. The Maya. 1966. Eighth edition, fully revised and expanded. Ancient People and Places: Founding Editor Glyn Daniel. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2011.


2. Coe, Michael D. Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs. 1962. Fourth edition, fully revised and expanded. 1994. Ancient People and Places: Founding Editor Glyn Daniel. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1997.


3. Recinos, Adrián, ed. Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiché Maya. 1947. Trans. Delia Goetz & Sylvanus G. Morley. London: William Hodge & Company Limited, 1951.


4. Saravia E., Albertina, ed. Popol Wuj: Antiguas Historias de los Indios Quiches de Guatemala. Illustradas con dibujos de los Codices Mayas. 1965. “Sepan Cuantos …”, 36. Ciudad de México: Editorial Porrúa, S. A., 1986.


5. Sodi M., Demetrio. La literatura de los Mayas. 1964. El Legado de la América Indígena. México: Editorial Joaquín Mortiz, S. A., 1974.


6. Tedlock, Dennis, trans. Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of The Mayan Book of The Dawn of Life and The Glories of Gods and Kings. With Commentary Based on the Ancient Knowledge of the Modern Quiché Maya. 1985. Rev. ed. A Touchstone Book. New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1996.


7. Tedlock, Dennis. 2000 Years of Mayan Literature: With New Translations and Interpretations by the Author. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010.