Edition: 683 pages, Pocket Books
Printing from Simon and Schuster, September 2001. By far the creepiest stare by
a twelve-year old on the cover of any book ever printed, ever. I can’t have
this facing me when I go to sleep. Seriously.
I. Introduction
The funniest thing about The Shining is that it couldn’t happen
today. Undeniably, people still get snowed in and cut off from civilization,
even in the good ole modern U. S. of A. Undeniably, people go crazy in their
own homes and hack up their families while they sleep. What strains the
imagination, though, in the year of our lord 2012, is the idea of a high-profile
resort getting well and truly cut off from society, even in the most hellish of
winters. The Overlook, after all, is not some backwoods shack with an outhouse
and clothesline, but a five-star, nationally renowned resort, which in 2012
would comprise a state of the art facility with, I’m betting, underground phone
lines, satellite linkups, a cell-tower cleverly concealed as a bush. Got to
keep those money-dropping guests as happy as possible, and who can be happy
these days without free wi-fi and a host of adapters for their latest Iphone?
The advent of inexorable communication
has crippled the horror genre as a whole anyway. Even the schlockiest movies
that take place in the modern epoch have to come up with some excuse as to why
the characters’ cell phones aren’t working or how they forgot them or whatnot;
and if they don’t they’re forced to face that terrible questioning beast of
burden, the audience, who is then going to ask
why they don’t whip out their cell phones and call the cops. Can you imagine The
Shining as directed by Stanley Kubrick if he’d had to face this logical
dilemma? One shudders at the thought.
So in a world of instant access and
communication, where the average Indian family has three cell phones and no
running water, is it a stretch to say that The Shining has been made
impossible by the pitter-patter advance of time? Maybe, maybe not. You could
maybe, today, write a book like this, with the same premise and the same set of
circumstances. But it would take a lot more explanation to justify it.
Audiences can be dumb, sometimes, but there are limits to their myopia.
The Shining is Stephen King’s third novel, and far and away his most
personal up to that point in his career. He describes the genesis of it coming
in three parts: 1) A desire to set his next book away from Maine, prompting a
literal King family move to Boulder, Colorado. 2) A rather-creepy/awesome stay
at a hotel that was closing up for the season the next day in which the King
family was the only guests—highlights include eating alone in a huge ballroom
at the only table prepped for dining. And, finally, 3) King’s own concerns and
frustration at both his burgeoning dependence on alcohol and the sometimes
hateful, violent feelings he felt towards both his young children. What emerged
from these catalysts is one of my favorite books of all time, and in my opinion
King’s best work. That’s an attitude that could possibly change if this blog
continues and I make it through the rest of his novels, but for the moment The
Shining firmly occupies a place in my top five favorite books, rounding out
at number one sometimes depending on my mood and how pretentious I’m feeling.
For the longest time I thought it
comprised a perfect genre novel—and please note by “genre” I mean the specific
intention of the novel, i.e. The Shining is a horror novel because its
primary intent is the induce feelings of fear and helplessness in the audience.
There’s a pattern and methodology to genre novels that doesn’t factor in to
more “literary” novels, if you will. By no means is that to imply that genre
novels are lesser than literary novels or any other such nonsense. We’ve been
arguing for decades upon decades about that crap (Note to self: write post
about genres and what they mean. –E), and no one has come to a
satisfactory answer. I’ m not one to say, however, that there is no difference
between genre and literary. There is. Sometimes the line blurs, sometimes
literary novels have elements of genre, and sometimes they are completely
indistinguishable. But we’re going with generalizations here, and why not? It
helps us compartmentalize, after all, and what a large amount of qualities
genre fiction contains in opposition to its literary counterparts is a certain
kind of pacing.
II. A Few Words about Pacing
There is little more important
in a genre work than pacing. In fact, if you’re writing a genre work of
fiction, pacing comes number three on the scale of most important attributes,
after story and character, and the three facets are so interconnected it might
not even be possible to put them in a sequential order. Pacing could be argued
to be part of story, characters are the whole reason story exists, etc., but
for our purpose we’re going to keep them distinct so I can declare
unequivocally that if your pacing is terrible then most people aren’t going to
care about story or character. They’re just going to want to do something else.
This is that terrible death-knell of boredom.
There’s a semi-internet famous chart
that extrapolates Star Wars and shows how it manages to both engage the audience’s
attention while simultaneously constructing a fascinating world and characters
simultaneously. If only there was some way to…oh wait google search:
This chart is perfect pacing for a
genre novel, a sort of catch-and-release of tension that allows for character
development and story without overburdening the audience with too much
excitement too fast. It’s very easy to mess up pacing in any narrative medium;
in genre, messing up pacing can be catastrophic.
Now this isn’t to say that all
novels or even all genre novels have to conform to the same structure to be
“good,” but most of them, if you chart the ups and downs of their pacing,
probably would look like this, even if the author didn’t intend it. It’s one of
those ingrained things a good writer knows automatically but subconsciously:
how to keep audience engaged, when to put in character traits, how to build tension,
action, excitement; when to pull back on the reins to let the audience breath. The
Shining is an excellent example of pacing, and an improvement over both Salem’s
Lot and Carrie in terms of organically flowing from one piece to the
next. Gone are the awkward transitions that sometimes popped up in Salem’s
Lot. Instead everything flows naturally, nothing feels skimped on.
Motivations and actions and foreshadowing all mesh into something sublime. And
out of it comes a novel that, if you were to track its pacing, would look very
much like the chart posted above. To break it down even further, these are the
“peaks” of the pacing in the novel The
Shining from what I’ve extrapolated (Note:
Everything is a chapter name except notations written in italics. –E):
“Job Interview” Page: 3 – Immediately
establishes the main characters, the main location, and the stakes of the novel
succinctly and skillfully.
“Shadowland” Page: 37—Introduces the
psychic element.
“In Another Bedroom” Page: 81—Establishes
a sinister threat and stakes.
The
family sets foot in the Overlook; Page: 94—Sets the stage for the overarching
conflict of the novel.
“The Shining” Page: 116—Introduces
possible sinister occurrences in the hotel, as well as explaining what the “Shadowland”
element back near the beginning of the novel actually is, and how it can both
help and hurt. In addition, foreshadows ability of Danny to contact Hallorann
telepathically.
Wasp
nest attack; Page:
195—Confirms supernatural elements in hotel.
“In the Playground” to “Inside 217”
Pages: 305-328—Makes the power the hotel holds clear and its threat greater.
“The Verdict” Page: 385—The point where
the dynamic for the rest of the novel becomes fixed.
(Note:
A stumble in the pacing here. –E) : “The Hedges” 429—You can see here why
the hedge scene and Danny explaining a possible supernatural occurrence AGAIN,
and not too long after the 217 incident, is a bit out of place and unnecessary.
“The Verdict” is a foreboding moment, and King obviously knew this because he made
this one moment, taking less than a page, an entire chapter. Having a couple
more instances establishing the “wow this hotel is dangerous” conceit,
especially when that’s already been established,
slows the pacing and lessens the import of “The Verdict.” In my opinion, the
novel would have been perfect if it had gone through the chilling decision made
in “The Verdict” to:
“The Elevator” to “The Ballroom” Pages: 448-465—Not
really a “peak,” but the start of the final climb of tension in the novel. This
is the equivalent of the beginning of the “Trench Run” line in the pacing chart.
“That Which Was Forgotten” Page: 654—King
almost makes a mini-novel in these two hundred pages, culminating in the
ultimate high/climax, the “Use the Force” moment, which is precisely at this
line right here: “The boiler!” Danny
screamed. “It hasn’t been dumped since
this morning! It’s going up! It’s going to explode!” (654, emphasis
King’s).
Many writers instinctively grow into
pacing with practice and experience—read a lot and write a lot. A little gong
will go off in their head that says “this chapter’s taking too long” or
“nothing’s happened over the last fifty pages.” Sometimes this little gong
needs to be ignored. Often, it does not.
 |
| PICTURED: Where it did not, but was. |
As mentioned above, if there is a
weakness in the pacing, it’s the couple of chapters when Danny’s hanging around
the playground with the hedge animals; a frightening scene on its own, but when
factored into the overall tapestry of the novel it doesn’t need to be there. I
get the feeling it’s a scene King really
wanted—it does possess genuinely frightening language and moments—but coming on
the heels right of “The Verdict” and Jack’s denial of supernatural occurrences,
it just seems extraneous, and it drags down the pacing and tension level; we
saw Jack come to this major epiphany a few chapters before. An epiphany that is
going to define his character from here on out. Basic pacing logic suggests
that you amp up the stakes subsequent to Jack’s realization and initial descent
into madness; going back to the “Hotel does creepy stuff” parts of the sections
before only lessens the impact of what happens to Jack in previous chapters.
That’s really the only mark against
it, however. The rest of the novel is paced perfectly, and any aspiring genre
writer would do well to track what, exactly, King does here that makes it so
effective, especially in the first half on the novel. King’s always been a
master of playing with mystery, feeding the reader detail by detail, enough to
satiate their curiosity but never quite giving away enough so that the reader
feels okay setting the book down. The Shining heralds the culmination of
this skill. So whenever you as a writer want to blaze through the beginning of
your work to get to the good stuff, remember: the plot of The Shining revolves around a family that gets trapped in a hotel.
Said family does not even enter the hotel until page 94.
III. Jack Torrance
In my opinion, Jack Torrance is one of
the most affecting and fascinating characters I’ve ever read, and not just in
the King oeuvre.
Arguably the biggest theme in The Shining is addiction and the impact
it has on both the owner of the addiction and the addicted’s immediate
surroundings. King has made it clear the novel is an examination of his own
addiction and his own fears about what he might do if it got too out of hand.
This is more or less common knowledge nowadays, but it puts King in a unique
position to form a character and give him a real honest-to-god addiction
without it appearing hackneyed.
This is a bit of a digression, but I’ve
always wondered what would happen to literature and fiction whenever mankind
reaches its desired utopia and all problems are solved. Who’s going to have
anything to write about? How are they going to make anything affecting? Is it
weird that I think about these things? Because fact is without the strife King
put his family through with alcohol and drugs we wouldn’t have The Shining…
In any case, what I like about how
addiction is portrayed in the novel is the two-faced, almost contradictory way
it affects Jack’s behavior. Jack knows
what he’s doing is wrong, damaging, will have severe consequences, possibly
death. But some deeper part of him, the part where the circuitry’s wired
incorrectly, compels him to do this action anyway. One of the more chilling parts
of the novel is when Jack has the option of letting the boiler blow the
hotel—and himself—to the stratosphere after his family got out:
(It’s my last chance)
The
only thing not cashed in now was the life insurance policy he had taken out
jointly with Wendy…Forty thousand dollar benefit, double indemnity if he or she
died in a train crash, a plane crash, or a fire…
[Wendy
and Danny] would have time to get out…
(Fire will kill anything.)
Jack
suddenly started. He had been dozing off…What in God’s name had he been
thinking of? (498-501, emphasis King’s)
Instead of a bad person doing bad
things, it makes Jack Torrance is a tragic figure, whose selfishness and
addiction end up obliterating all the good within him. Horror is, essentially,
about the specters that lurk beyond human understanding, and what The Shining and all good psychological
horror does is bring to the forefront the things that lurk beyond our
understanding in ourselves. Who knows
why Jack did what he did? What crippled part of his soul made him so that even when
he realizes he’s punching his last ticket, he denies redemption anyway? It’s
why I think someone who was/is an addict had to write this book. Because it
flies in the face of all story logic. The protagonist realizes that he’s in
danger, he works to get out of it. But Jack Torrance realizes he’s in danger,
and even while he gets what it means, he goes forward and down into the spiral
that will lead to his destruction. It makes no sense, but addiction makes no
sense either. You don’t have to look any farther than Lifetime to find myriad stories of people destroying themselves no
matter how often they were warned or how aware they were of the toll they were
taking on their bodies.
Metaphorically, King makes use of the
images of wasps throughout the novel in key instances. It’s an interesting
choice, not in the least because of the bare-bones ferocity of it. We’ve become
accustomed to images of addiction represented in a more seductive or pleasing
fashion; like addiction “tricks” us with allures and promises of better things.
These metaphors aren’t inaccurate, but addiction to King is something much less
misleading. It’s straightforward and destructive. It’s ugly, bloated, and stirs
up with the slightest provocation. Where it traps you is in its seeming
innocence, lacquered with a varnish of normality. The first time Jack encounters
the wasps, after all, is when he lets his mind drift while re-roofing the
Overlook: “The ironic part was that he warned himself each time he climbed onto
the roof to keep an eye out for nests…But this morning the stillness and peace
had been so complete that his watchfulness had lapsed” (155). Fittingly, it is
this moment where we first truly begin to learn about Jack Torrance from the
man himself: his temper, his descent into the throes of addiction, the incident
with George Hatfield. It’s also worth noting that the wasp’s nest is the first
instance of a supernatural occurrence in the novel (Note: not counting “the shining” –E), when the
supposedly-bombed-out husk comes alive again and stings Danny. King makes it
clear that Jack’s addiction and the malevolent hotel are not mutually exclusive
entities; that the one is inextricably linked to the other; that the latter can
not—and as we learn near the end of the novel, will not—be able to function
without the former: “’You had had to make him drink the Bad Stuff,’” says
Daniel Torrance. “’That’s the only way you could get him, you lying false face’”
(652).
All of this makes Jack Torrance one of
the more tragic characters in anything I’ve ever read—almost Macbethian in its
scope. A man with a sad history and an incurable, haunting affliction whose
honest attempt to rectify his mistakes is halted and then decapitated by circumstances
beyond his control. If anything, his fall is even more gut-wrenching than
someone like Macbeth, whose greed and lust for power (and inability to shrug
off his wife’s advice) led to his downfall. Torrance’s ultimate downfall is
entirely out of his control, the machinations of a being of inestimable cruelty
and unknown origin who devises a scheme to attack the man at his weakest,
frailest point.
Because at his core Jack is a host of
conflicts. And King writes him so well that you can never decide if he’s a decent
man with severe flaws or a selfish jerk hiding behind a layer of fatherliness
and pity. He works hard. He loves his wife. He has moments of supreme
selfishness, an abusive childhood, a bad temper and a brain chemistry that
lends itself to addiction. He tries his best to raise his son and feels almost
self-flagellating levels of pain for breaking his son’s arm in a drunk-fueled
bit of rage when Danny was three—but then again, there is the fact he broke his
son’s arm at all. He tries to redeem himself, gets off the sauce with
monumental effort and will…but then he beats up a student—deservedly?—and not
only that, did it while he was sober, thereby sending his whole family into
chaos and insecurity.
To put it bluntly, Jack Torrance has
issues. Major, major issues. Issues that don’t preclude him being a loving
father and husband, nor even a “good person.” But issues that go unchecked for
the entirety of his life. This was ’77 remember. Only prissy losers who
couldn’t handle themselves went to shrinks. But it’s glaringly obvious that a
Jack Torrance circa 2012 would have spent the duration of the novel cycling out
of AA meetings and psychological evaluations. Instead, a cripplingly flawed man
is forced to confront his two major weaknesses on his own—temper and addiction.
And fails utterly.
A scenario such as this makes the
Overlook resemble an aggregate representation of the world at large, a final
recourse of those with nowhere else to go. This is why the Torrances went to
the Overlook in the first place. There was no other option. Life—through a
confluence of personal mistakes—had given them no choice. And so, trapped and
beleaguered there, Torrance despondently accepts the inevitability of his
destruction. For what? Salvation? A sense of importance? It’s hinted throughout
the novel that Jack is a deeply unhappy man at his core: “Poking at Danny’s
father had been…strange, as if Jack Torrance had something—something—he was hiding. Or something he was holding in so deeply
submerged in himself that it was impossible to get to.” (129; emphasis King’s). Like the wasp’s nest
so cleverly submerged beneath the innocuous flashing, Jack Torrance’s own nest
lies buried underneath a façade so complete that only a psychic gets any real
hint as to what’s underneath, and even then the picture is incomplete.
It’s no wonder then that Jack identifies
so strongly with the hotel—why it’s hard for him to comprehend why it would
want his son instead of he. The hotel and Jack share a common and complex bond;
in a twisted way the hotel understands Jack better than anyone else in Jack’s
life has. It understands his ambitions (conveniently leaving the scrapbook in
the cellar), his instincts (the Colorado Lounge), and his insecurities:
“And
the manager puts no strings on his largess,” Grady went on. “Not at all. Look
at me, a tenth-grade dropout. Think how much further you yourself could go in
the Overlook’s organizational structure. Perhaps…in time…to the very top.”
“Really?”
Jack whispered (535-536).
The hotel understands Jack’s deep-seated
lack of self-worth and his need to prove himself; to constantly reaffirm his existence.
It understands having a wasp’s nest buried almost untouchably deep inside
oneself. After all, when the hotel explodes, whatever had lain inside reminds Halloran
of a flood of hornets rising from a nest.
This leaves us with three main wasp
images: the first time Jack stumbles upon the nest, when the nest “comes back
to life,” signaling the Overlook’s awakening, and finally the Overlook’s dissolution.
There are more mentions of wasps in the novel—a few comparisons to them or
conversations about them—but these are the three where wasps themselves play a
critical part. Of these, two serve as thematic bookends, and are key in
interpreting the link between Jack and the Overlook. Jack sticks his hand
through the flashing and encounters the wasp nest—this signals a retrospection
wherein, for the first time, we see the depths of Jack’s flaws and failings.
The wasp’s nest inside himself. Then the final image of the hotel that we’re
left with—the hotel Jack wanted so much to be a part of—is of a buzzing, angry
flood of hornets.
The caretaker Watson, near the beginning
of the novel, discusses the scandals in the hotel’s history: “Watson shrugged.
‘Any big hotels have got scandals,’ he said. ‘Just like every hotel has got a
ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go…’” (31-32) Most criticism of The Shining (and by criticism, I mean
stuff I’ve read on the internet or message boards over the past few years) regards
the final hornet’s nest image as proof that an eldritch abomination inhabits
the hotel. If I’m not mistaken, even King himself has confirmed this (the two
people reading this in Myanmar are free to correct me if I’m wrong). And not to
start some “Death of the Author” post-structuralist debate…but I wonder about
that. Or rather, what that means.
Because it’s not like the Overlook was
built on an ancient Indian burial ground, or a place where Yog-Shaggoth fell,
or something like that. It was just a mortar and brick building that had a lot
of terrible things happen inside of it.
In a way I would agree that an eldritch
abomination inhabits the Overlook. But it’s an eldritch abomination formed of
human depravity. It’s nothing otherworldly, it’s just us. And layer by layer it
built up over decades of murders, affairs, and shady dealings until it grew its
own agency.
But it’s a very human agency. I think
that’s important. The monster that is the Overlook works through
manipulations—but it forgets things. One time it forgets a very important thing.
It has feelings. It gets triumphant, and angry: “(No! Mustn’t! Mustn’t! MUSTN’T!)” (662; emphasis King’s). And with
the images of Jack Torrance comparing his addiction to a wasp’s nest, and the
Overlook’s final revelation of something like a cloud of hornets—it’s clear
what the Overlook, in all its wrath, actually is. Which is why Jack is so
fecklessly drawn to it. Because what is the hotel if not Jack Torrance without
a conscience, without any redeeming qualities whatsoever? And the idea that
Jack, or anyone, could be drawn to this thing—this monstrous thing—not only
because they recognize it but that they believe it’s their last hope for
recognition—that, simply, is a terrifying thought.
 |
| PICTURED: So is this. |
IV. Creepiest part of the novel
No, it didn’t
really matter, except that looking at the racked mallets with the single
missing member had a kind fascination. He found himself thinking of the hard
wooden whack! Of the mallet head
striking the round wooden ball. A nice summery sound. Watching it skitter
across the
(bone. blood.)
Gravel. It
conjured up images of
(bone. blood.)
iced tea, porch
swings, ladies in white straw hats, the hum of mosquitoes and
(bad little boys who don’t play by the rules)
all that stuff.
Sure. Nice game. Out of style now, but…nice.
“Dick?” The
voice was thin, frantic, and, he thought, rather unpleasant. “Are you all
right, Dick? come out now. Please!”
V. The Aftermath
Writing novels with success is not only
hard work, but requires a staggering amount of luck. Luck that the audience
doesn’t lose interest, luck that the marketing’s good, luck that a great
director makes a great movie out of your first effort. At any point along the
1-2-3 highway of King’s first three novels, it all could have crumbled to
nothing. It took an extraordinary pair of opening novels, followed by a
ramping-up of the stakes, to secure him.
But secure him it did, and I consider The Shining that moment—from the outside
looking in and with the benefit of time—I consider it that moment where King
could truly do anything he wanted. Next novel could have been his grocery list
and it would have sold a million copies.
The
Shining
continues to be one of his most well-regarded works, helped along by yet
another fantastic adaptation, this one courtesy of Stanley Kubrick himself. The Shining film version remains a
staple of horror films—and is sort of enjoying a bit of a renaissance lately,
with recent documentaries about competing interpretations and a whacked-out
version of the film where it plays forwards and backwards simultaneously. King
famously was—we won’t say disappointed, but not as thrilled with the result,
and remade the book into a miniseries in 1996. The results of that were mixed. I’ve only seen a few
parts of the miniseries—not enough to make a final judgment on it—but it’s kind
of apparent that King’s talents as a novelist aren’t easily translated when he
writes for a visual medium. There’s a lot of jump scares and any sort of
subtlety—something that makes The Shining
both book and film great—is completely lost.
That being said, I still hold The Shining as arguably King’s best book
and my personal favorite, and one that I think is secure in surviving the ebbs
of time. Certainly the fame of the movie version will help with that; but even
without the film, the themes in the novel are so powerful, the characters are
so believable, that there’s no reason to anticipate it won’t continue to affect
people in the same ways for decades to come.
The success and security of The Shining was key in King’s status of
mind. Now able to do new and interesting experiments without worrying about the
light bill, he turned to the past for the next novel, and hid behind the
curtain of pseudonym to publish it. It is the first of this list that I have
not read before. And it might just be his most controversial work, to boot.
Until next time,
No comments:
Post a Comment