The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Pseudo-review/discursive Ramble on Prequels, Midquels, and Sequels

So I just finished Stephen King’s new novel. How was it, you ask?

First off, let me remind my three Turkish readers that I’ve never read a bad King book. Some are better than others, some are a lot better than others. Some are pulpier, some are closer to “high art” (whatever that means). Some, I think, will stand the test of time better than others. But no matter what, King entertains, and that’s the heart of the matter.

Second off, let me assure readers that there are spoilers here, so beware.

 As such, the book is a fun, easy, interesting read set in the universe of his Dark Tower series. And what a depressing thing that is.

 Allow me to explain.

 The book right from the beginning had me really pondering the nature of prequels and midquels throughout the realms of entertainment media. This alone makes The Wind Through the Keyhole an interesting example, because it is set at what is, in my opinion, the tipping point of The Dark Tower as a whole. That is, it is set right before the series starts truly sucking.

 Now as always, there are varying opinions on this matter. Some don’t like The Dark Tower at all. Some think everything from the first sentence to the last is the greatest thing ever put to paper. Some think the series began to go downhill as early as book 2, some think it was great until the end. But like the Star Wars prequels, which demonstrate another example of this phenomenon, the general consensus is that The Dark Tower took a severe decline in quality somewhere during book four. Where this point lies is yet another point of contention among fans; though in my opinion, the trouble really starts after Roland finishes his tale and the group stumbles upon nothing less than a complete working facsimile of the Emerald Castle from the Wizard of Oz.

Oh boy.

See, this was really about this time that King was formulating the idea that all of his books are part of one big multiverse, which fits with the idea that the Dark Tower upholds and centers all levels of reality. That’s fine, but it turns out that the conceit really drags the last three books down—in conjunction with two other main hindrances to The Dark Towers’ final three novels: 1. King being hit by a van in 1999, and 2. His desperation to finish the series thereafter.

Before the final three books, The Dark Tower series seemed to be something that King did because he wanted to. Like he was having fun writing the books. You can sort of tell this by his publishing schedule: the man was averaging about five years between books, even among growing demands from an increasing audience to know the end of the story. It’s pretty much the equivalent of the wait A Song of Ice and Fire fans had between the fourth and fifth books—except repeated ad nauseam.

 But the reason for it is rather straightforward: King writes when he’s inspired. It’s one of the things I admire about him. He writes what he wants to write, when he wants to write, and for the most part it seems like he just wants to have a blast while telling a good story. The publication schedule of The Dark Tower, if anything, indicates King was writing the books when he felt he had the story straight, and when he was really dedicated to putting out the best book possible; but around the publication of Wizard and Glass he starts really delving into this idea of the multiverse; fine, cool, clumsily handled at the end a bit, but the stuff where the ka-tet walk through the world of The Stand was really interesting and it could have definitely gone somewhere.

 Then the accident happened.

 Now, let me be the first to say that I am in no way blaming Sai King for anything that happened in his writing after this traumatic, horrific event. I have little doubt that it was one of the worst things that ever happened to him, and I cannot imagine the physical pain and anguish that he went through upon his recovery. What I am about to say is in no way a criticism of his style, a denigration of what he was able to accomplish, or a diminution of the agony of his recovery. Frankly, I find it amazing that the first thing he did upon being able to actually, you know, do stuff again was to sit down at the computer and start banging out stuff on paper. It’s a dedication and a love of writing that I could only aspire to. This critique is only meant to focus on the series of books itself, and why they ended up they way they did.

With all that said, let me, as respectfully and understandingly as possible, go ahead and postulate that this accident almost undoubtedly negatively affected The Dark Tower’s last three entries, which all came out after King’s accident. It did so in two ways: the first, the emphasis on the number 19.

 Again, this issue begs me to reiterate that I understand. I do. King was hit by the van on June 19, 1999, it was obviously a traumatic, life-changing event—an honest to god brush with death. I don’t know the man (and probably never will) but I can imagine that something of that import would severely change your outlook on life. But the fact is that the emphasis put in the number 19 in the last three Dark Tower novels came out of nowhere, introduced in the weirdest, most clumsy way possible…it really just makes no sense.



PICTURED: The Accused



Basically the book starts and suddenly the ka-tet is noticing and pondering the fact that they are seeing “19” everywhere, when nothing like this had ever been hinted at in the previous four novels (excluding the re-release of The Gunslinger, where it’s given a passing mention to at least, I guess, try and give the sudden emphasis on “19” in books 5-7 some connection to the previous books). And again and again, I understand. It takes the most basic form of human sympathy to see why King included this new theme of “19,” especially in light of the revelation in book 7 that the characters in the novel are constructs of King and that their existence depends upon him finishing the series...so that the introduction of 19 in book five is supposed to coincide with the sudden interest in the number 19 that the characters’ “creator” has…but that doesn’t negate or mitigate the fact that “19’s” introduction to the novels is rather poor. The reveal about King’s status within the universe of the novels doesn’t even come into play until book 7 anyway, so we have two straight books with the characters acting and focusing on something completely outside the parameters of what we’ve come to understand about them in the previous four books with no explanation whatsoever, and that hurt the books.

But even that might have been okay if King had not rushed the damn things, and that’s problem number two.

Again with the disclaimers: this following section is purely conjecture on my part. Certainly it’s presumptuous to assume that I can know the mind and thoughts of a man whom I’ve never even seen in person, much less talked to. Yet I think from the evidence at hand that it can safely be inferred that King felt the weight of his own mortality after 1999, and suddenly a book series that was averaging a new addition once every five to six years suddenly has its last three entries cranked out in 2003 and 2004 (Note: Mind you, these are six and seven hundred page books, with number 7 topping out at almost 1000 pages, and the last two, two mind you, were published in 2004. –Mr. E), along with a new kind of desperation that had hitherto not been seen within the tone of then novels. Books 1-4 seemed to be written by a man that was inspired to write an epic tale. Books 5-7 appear to be written by a man who’s worried about his own demise. Which I totally, totally, totally understand…but remember, we’re looking at the novels intratextually.

Not to Bring George R.R. Martin back into this again, but for those who would want the man to hurry up and finish off A Song of Ice and Fire as quickly as possible, I would suggest you look at the last three books of The Dark Tower and really ask yourself what you truly desire. Fact is, this desperate feel to the last three books explains a lot of things, especially regarding book seven, The Dark Tower (the actual name of the book), including the weird metafictional element-- something so out of place and derided that King’s almost been convinced to take it out of the next edition entirely(1)--the introduction of a deus ex machina character from another book who can conveniently “erase” things out of existence, the clumsy introduction of the series “true” second-in-command villain Mordred, who dispatches previous (and well-loved) big bad Randall Flagg with almost dismissive ease and then basically doesn’t do anything else but die of dysentery or food poisoning, the causal deaths of almost all the main ka-tet, including Eddie, Jake, and even Oy, the abandonment of Roland by Susannah, the anti-climactic final battle with the Crimson King, which was built up to be some super-colossal thing but eventually turned out to be a Santa Claus on a balcony throwing grenades and cackling like the witch in wizard of Oz, the weird passive-aggressive “letter” to the fans after the faux-ending of the novel (on the heels of a dedication thanking them for all the times they read him, no less), and finally the brow-furrowing fate of Roland upon entering the actual Dark Tower…all of that can really be explained away by the fact that the man, upon recovering from a traumatic, life-threatening, and in some ways permanently crippling accident sat down and wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand pages in less than three years, in a series that was average a five hundred page book every five or six years.

PICTURED: What the Crimson King was built up to be.

PICTURED: What the Crimson King turned out to be.

To bring this long diatribe back to my original point, this has always been the problem with midquels and prequels, and even flashbacks, of all works of this sort. You can’t read The Wind through the Keyhole without at some point thinking: “Yep, crack that joke Eddy. You’re gonna be dead in three books.” Or look and Roland and think, “Yeah, you don’t know this yet but for the most part this is going to be ultimately meaningless.” Or read about Oy and think of the hideous way that he eventually was killed off. It gives the book this odd feeling I can’t quite explain…like traveling back in time and watching someone go about their life the day before they’re brutally murdered.

To compound the problem, for the most part adding more information to any story is just going to convolute it until it collapses. This is one of the biggest issues in comic books, whose continuity is almost untenably intricate already without additions to the backstory of characters. This, of course, doesn’t stop authors from adding them anyway. Sometimes, it’s okay. Other times, it’s stupid, as in something like Batman: Fortunate Son. Linkara gives the review more masterfully than I can, but in the end, this is the kind of thing that really is the denigration of prequels and midquels and even flashbacks: so we suddenly learn the Bruce parents are tight-assed blowhards who won’t let Bruce listen to rock music, and this is why rock music angers him so much as Batman. Um…okay. Unfortunately, since Fortunate Son is canon, we now are stuck with the canonical fact that a) Bruce’s parents, tragically killed, were also assholes, and b) Batman has something so idiotically minute as rock and roll added to his list of things to fight against, along with, you know, the gangs and the criminal psychopaths.

The problematic nature of prequels midquels is easily matched, however, with the spectrum of fandom reaction to them. Now this reaction is true of any addition, period, included planned sequel works. But it’s fascinating the hoops fans jump through to blatantly ignore less quality portions of their passions, up to arguing with and dismissing the author himself.

The most famous example of this is inarguably Star Wars, in which a wide swath of the fandom, including yours truly, is adamant that the series consists of the original three movies only, and that those “other” films were made by some deranged fanficcer high on peyote. Funnily enough, Star Wars actually lends itself to this type of self-denial much better than many other examples. It’s easy to separate two series, one made in the late 70s/early 80s and one in the late 90s/00s featuring different styles of acting, story and special effects, not to mention tone, theme, and overall value. The disjunction between the two trilogies and the large time span between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace makes it pretty easy to forget that those “other” films exist or have any bearing on the story as we see it.

Basically, the Star Wars series, since each trilogy is its own self-contained story, separated by over a decade, with dissonance in practically every stratum of style a movie can but judged on, is easily truncated, denied, or forgotten depending on how much or little the individual fan likes each set of movies. This act of self-elision is much more difficult with, say, a book series that pops out one right after the other, a la Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire, especially when each book is part of the same overarching story. The two sets of stories in the Star Wars trilogy are indelibly related, of course, but each one has its own arc, and the similarities between the two are purely distinguished by the prequels “effect” (i.e., the existence of the Empire, Vader and the Emperor’s characters) that they had on the original (Note: although, in the case of the Star Wars universe, it might be a unique case of the after trilogy informing the prequel trilogy, which involves such philosophical conundrums of history and its ripple effect that I don’t even want to get into here. --E). Even so, dismissing an entire half of the canon film universe requires a particularly skillful form of mental gymnastics, and that’s with one of the easiest cases of willful self-memory-denial in the history of fandom. When you have a series of books that just falls off the cliff it’s much more difficult, because you’re dealing with the exact same story and characters, with (relatively) little time between, within the same arc and whatnot, leading to Olympic-levels of mental gymnastics to deny the existence of direct sequels within the same story (i.e., The Matrix sequels, every “Ender’s Game” novel after Speaker for the Dead [and sometimes including Speaker for the Dead], the last chapter of Harry Potter book 7 [and sometimes all of Harry Potter book 7], hell, even the last book in the Twilight series).

 This in turn brings up a lot of questions about who really “owns” writing and how much power a writer actually has and whom writing is actually for, etcetera, but that’s another post. To this end, this entire long, rambling, badly-structured post has been a prelude to a pseudo-review of The Wind through the Keyhole, and why it works and yet still feels like putting a left boot on your right foot, and the preceding paragraphs are the entire reason for it: I’ve already brain-bleached and hypnotized myself into believing what I want about The Dark Tower’s continuity. That is, the first four books are the good ones, and the last three can be pretty well-oh, I don’t know, bleached, let’s say. There’s nothing definably wrong with The Wind Through the Keyhole as is—there’s just this niggling feeling in the back of your mind, especially if you didn’t much care for the final three installments. You know where these guys are headed and it makes the whole think seem, well, pointless.

 The framing sections (the first ones anyway) are definitely the weakest parts of the novel, and I think this is, in part, why. King’s trying to slip back into the skins and feel of characters he hasn’t written about in eight years. This causes an odd jarring sensation—probably not unique among authors who attempt this sort of midquel thing years after the fact—where the characters presented are almost like fan fiction caricatures of the actual characters in the original novels. King’s trying to remind us that these are in fact Eddie, Susannah, Jake, Roland, and Oy, and so of course we have to have Eddie cracking rather lame, out of place jokes and Susannah speaking in a rather discomforting ebonic slang when she gets riled up. These things in themselves aren’t bad, it’s simply that there’s very little depth to flesh them out. The jokes Eddie cracks are bad, and they simply seem to be there to fill some sort of character quota. It’s as if someone who isn’t King is writing in the style of him with his characters and saying to himself, all right, I have to make sure I have Eddie Dean espouse some hideous comedy because that’s a defining mark of his character riiiight?

 The book picks up the further into the narrative you go. And then after the inner-frame stories end, the book ends with barely any more focus on the original characters before they continue on their quest into three unfortunate sequels. At the same time, for me the—by far—most enjoyable section of the novel is the story of Tom Stoutheart, whose tale creates the eponymous “Wind Through the Keyhole” bedtime story that Roland’s heard since childhood. It’s a really well structured adventure story, and deals with the North Central Positronics Corporation and all the aspects of the Great Old Ones much better than 5, 6 and 7. I honestly always liked the idea that Gilead and those great medieval aspects of Mid-World came after the fall of a much more technologically advanced civilization, and likewise I’ve always been a fan of stories where such mysterious attributes of the world are kept, you know, mysterious. The Wind through the Keyhole pulls this off as well as in any portion of The Dark Tower series, and the character of Tom is well constructed and fleshed out—you cheer for him when he suceeds, and you sense his wonder when he comes in contact with technology far beyond his control or understanding.

 The framing story used to tell The Wind through the Keyhole is also good, though not really that compelling. It’s mainly a way to get Roland and the kid in the story alone so that Roland can espouse to him “The Wind through the Keyhole” like the grizzled old raconteur he is. That being said, I think if it hadn’t mostly been a means to get to “The Wind Through the Keyhole,” which is inarguably the emotional and stylistic heart of the book, I believe it had the makings for a very good standalone tale. As it is, there’s something superficial about it, something a little dry and, well, dull. Not bad, exactly—but the more I dwell on it, the more I think King simply wanted to write “The Wind Through the Keyhole,” and for some reason thought he had to tie it in to The Dark Tower’s main continuity and hide it in not one, but two layers of framing devices—

PICTURED: ...within a framing device within a framing device within a framing device.

 Which begs the question of why “The Wind Through the Keyhole” and the story of Roland and the Skin-man weren’t standalone tales? King has referred to this novel as “Dark Tower 4.5,” but I really don’t think I agree with that, mainly because the characters from the original series are entirely inconsequential to the novel. Really, the only things they’re there for is to introduce the concept of the “starkblast” (Note: A cold front with stark in the title/Winter is Coming/Game of Thrones reference? Must remember to investigate further. –E) and hole up in a building so that the other two stories can be told. That’s it. Really, there is no good reason for them to be there. Which makes me wonder why King didn’t go all Different Seasons on this mug? Make it an anthology of works pertaining to Mid-World and The Dark Tower mythos. Have Roland and the skin man be one (more fleshed out) story, have “The Wind Through the Keyhole” be another, then add in a couple more. They could be about anything, anything at all in The Dark Tower’s rich and complex history. Anything. Roland, his father, the Crimson King, Arthur Eld, Gan, the tower itself, the Great Old Ones, All-World, End-World, Gilead, Alain, Cuthbert, Cort, the founding of the gunslingers, whatever—there is so much in this world of The Dark Tower that can be extrapolated, it just seems a little narrow to me for King to be using the same characters over and over again; especially framing it in a story that’s already done, where we know the fates of everyone already (and don’t want to think about them very much, either). It’s a strange thing to say, but of all the things that King would limit himself on, The Dark Tower, which is by far his most vested, expansive work, is probably the strangest.

 So after all that bellyaching, would I recommend The Wind Through the Keyhole? Of course. Repeat after me, my friends: I have never read a bad King book. The Wind Through the Keyhole is nowhere near his best, but like every single part of its canon it’s a fun read; the eponymous story is definitely the best part of it, and fortunately it takes up a majority of the book’s length. Is it going to win anybody over to King’s work, or does it make up for the weaknesses in the final three books? No…but taken on its own, it’s a worthwhile purchase for any King fan.

Until next time,

Mr. E

(1)   http://www.discordia19.com/main/2012/4/9/neil-gaiman-interviews-stephen-king.html



Reminder: Girls Need Characters Too

In case you had forgotten over the past five years of increasingly focused coverage, the female populace in entertainment is still not only inordinately small, but more often than not skewed towards the spectrum of the vapid, pointless love interest or the sexy, pointless femme fatale, with little room in between. I think it's pretty common knowledge by now that it's an issue, and I'm not really saying anything too shocking or unique.

I did, however, want to bring up an example of why girls need good characters too, and how it's actually something that matters.

So I'm leaving The Avengers a couple of weeks ago, and it was awesome, but that's beside the point. Point is, I'm walking behind this family. A mother, a son, and a young girl about eight or nine. The family is chatting about the movie, and at one point the girl turns to her mother with a big smile on her face and goes:

"Do you know who the best Avenger is?"

"Who?" says the mom.

Now recall this is a movie with a technological genius flying around in superweapon, a super-soldier with an indestructible shield, a green behemoth that cannot be killed, and Samuel L. Jackson.

"Black Widow," says the girl. "She's awesome."

Bingo.

I thought I'd share this because it speaks to the methods of idenitifiability, of connection between people and characters. Black Widow is not, objectively, the most "awesome" of the Avengers. Not in the typical way. She has no powers other than a quick wit and martial arts. But this girl identified with her above all the others in the movie. Why? Because Black Widow is a woman, and more importantly, a strong, independent, competent and confident woman.

This is a pseudo-follow up to my previous post about the importance of good YA lit, but like I said in the post, we forget how a world looks to a child, how hard it is to handle the complexity of the world they're thrust into. An adult saying a character was her favorite just because she's a woman might come under some criticism in the adult world of political correctness and fairness above all else, even common sense. But to a child? A child is going to see someone like them. Who looks like them, talks like them acts like them. And they are going to identify with them. It's why people who don't understand why young black children need from black role models miss the point entirely. It's not that young black kids can't see a white person as a role model. It's just that, from the viewpoint of a child, an older black person is simply going to have more in common with them. Remember: children have not yet grown the ability to interpret complexity that you and I have. Such a facet of their lives must be nourished--and the only way to nourish it is the have a foundation to build upon. A young girl identifying with Black Widow can learn about bravery, courage, intelligence, wit, and even that it's okay to be afraid.

But that fear can't hold you back.

 And from that foundation can a deeper understanding of the complexity and intricacies of the world be built. We all have to start somewhere, and children are more apt to start off with someone with which they can readily identify.

So in case everyone's forgotten over the past couple of days: this push to get more female main characters and minority main characters is not just a bunch of PC bellyaching. It matters. Because kids are in a wild world of insanity, and they need something to grasp onto. And the easiest thing to grasp onto is someone like them.

Until next time,

Mr. E

Oh, and:

Shawarma!

The Legend of Korra, and the Most Important Element of YA Entertainment

So let’s talk about kids for a minute.

Kids are a bit of a conundrum for me. While I cannot say I don’t out-and-out like kids, fact of the matter is that many kids bring with them a certain level of, oh, chaos and volume, and those are two things that I can’t stand. I’m a quiet person. Kids are loud, especially in groups, and in that regard, I’m not the hugest fan of the stress kids bring along.

But I cannot say I don’t like kids—and by kids, I mean ages 7-12 (arbitrary I know, but go with me here), because for every moment they are loud and obnoxious, there are other moments where they are downright profound, and you catch glimpses of their intrinsic humanity, uncorrupted by the cynical influence of adulthood.

Likewise, I’m a fan of teenagers, age 13-17 or thereabouts. Now, teenagers can be just as obnoxious, and oftentimes even more self-centered and arrogant than their younger counterparts. But I’m a fan anyway, because I understand. I remember high school and middle school. It’s a rough road, for pretty much every kid. Maybe not rough in a physical way, or a poverty-stricken fight-to-survive way, but in a psychological way. And make no mistake, the psychological burdens on our children and teenagers are immense, and in some ways more complex than any in the world. And we ignore them to our detriment. Meaning that there’s a lot of detriment going around. Because honestly, few people take children and young adults very seriously.

At best, from a broader cultural standpoint, they’re regarded as “mature for their age” or “outstanding academically” or a “great athlete” or any number of superficial things that disregard their deeper self worth. This is, of course, preferable to the worst position on this spectrum, that is, they’re just a loud, obnoxious burden and the sooner we get them out of the house the better.

But on the whole, on the whole, mind you, children and young adults are really sort of forgotten. Let me rephrase that: their souls are mostly forgotten.

We forget the complexities we experienced in our own childhoods and young adulthoods, the thoughts and feelings we had, how everything is bright and strange and how we clung to certain truths just to make some modicum of sense out of everything. We forget that, and so we look upon kids obsessions with entertainment—novels, books, sports—as something “cute” or “neat” or maybe “annoying,” and ignore the higher implications of such focus. How many parents scoffed at their children’s near-maniacal love of Dragonball Z in the late nineties?

As such, the nature of children’s and YA entertainment is in itself put by the wayside. Its’ certainly not taken as seriously as ADULT literature, and reading YA focused entertainment after the age of, oh, 20, is not looked upon as any sort of worth pursuit, Harry Potter and Twilight notwithstanding.

 How easy we disregard.

Because fact of the matter is, YA and children’s lit are some of the most important parts of any culture ever, period.

Really. Books have been around for four hundred years, writing for quite a while longer than that, but basically since the beginning of human consciousness old storytellers have told children stories through picture, or by the campfire in the caves of Lascaux. Stories for children, and for adults, with a purpose to structure the wild, insane world about them in ways that would have it make sense—to unveil an actuality, as it were.

Nowadays, the world is just as wild and complex, albeit in different ways; and we still need structuring and actualities to be unveiled in stories, or risk crippling damage to our children.

I mean, think about it for a minute: one day, child is going to become acquainted with the specter of Death. Total, overriding cessation of existence; can the child fully grasp these implications? Perhaps not (but then again, neither can most adults). One day, however, someone’s going to die: a father, a mother, an aunt, a grandparent. And the uninitiated child is going to react in one of two ways:

A total lack of comprehension resulting in psychological damage.
A complete understanding resulting in psychological damage.

See, children’s literature serves as more than just cutesy stories: it’s how we are introduced to the complexities of the world in a manner by which we can internalize them, understand them, come to terms with them before we are shown the stark realities of what the story in portraying. Which is the better way to introduce our kids to something like, say, genocide? Pictures of Dachau and Aushwitz, which they cannot truly comprehend or understand, or something like Avatar: The Last Airbender, which also deals with genocide, but in a more subtle, less harsh, more digestible way?


I think its words like that which make people belittle YA lit. “Easy.” “Simple.” “Digestible.” They see these words and think they are indicative of the soul of YA—oh, that’s just kid’s stuff. But that’s not really the heart of it. Far from it, actually. The difference between simplicity and complexity is a really fine one: kids can understand more than we give them credit for, and far more than we expect of them; but the essence of YA is a simplicity born from complexity. A simplicity that gives some insight to these crazy harsh lives we must lead.

Now allow me to plug for a moment Avatar: The Legend of Korra.

And yes, it is Avatar:  The Legend of Korra. I understand why the precursor was omitted. But work with me here.

Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante Dimartino really have a grasp of the YA/children’s market—the need for complexity, yet subtlety; the focus on relatable characters, good storylines, and a dash of spectacle to keep us begging for more. It’s been said plenty of times before, but let me enumerate it once again: Avatar: The Last Airbender is the perfect example of an apotheosis of YA/children’s entertainment. I didn’t say it was perfect, but everything YA/children’s entertainment needs to be, A:TLA is. Smart, funny, good characterization, good plot, complexity leading to simple truth, all that stuff. It could be heavy handed at times—The Painted Lady and the Great Divide are usually singled out as badly anvilicious episodes, but it was rare and even then, it had more of a point. (Note: Well, The Great Divide sort of supported lying as a justifiable form of mediation, but anyway. –E) 
Meaning The Legend of Korra had some pretty big shoes to fill upon its airdate.

How’s it doing so far? In my opinion, pretty damn well.

Bryke is not in an easy position here, by any means. To follow up something as beloved as A:TLA with something that even approaches the same level of quality is a tall order—and that’s not even including satisfying the inevitable nerd-fan rage when this attribute is perceived as lacking or that attribute isn’t “as good” as it was in A:TLA.

So I’ll go ahead and put my one possible criticism right out there: you can tell that Nick only ordered 12 episodes at the front. Now they bumped that up to 26 when they got over their obvious concussion and realized that “Doy! A follow-up to our landmark franchise might be really popular!” But in the beginning there was twelve, and thus were Bryke and the guys positioning themselves to make a 12 episode mini-series. As such, things are a bit rushed—relationships are shipped in a very quick manner, scenes can be a little forced—the ending to episode four (a really great episode, as it happens) was a little underwhelming to me personally, and you can tell that the writer’s were crunched for time and didn’t have space to “linger” or anything after Tenzin said his aphorism. Is this a true complaint? I don’t think so—it doesn’t affect the overall mood, tone, character or story of the series. What it does do, however, is fiddle with the narrative flow of things. Human brains have a certain instinct for patterns and beats, and when a show has to cram as much as possible into 22 minutes, most people will notice simply because there’s a certain dissonance in the “meter” of the narrative.

But that’s really a superficial issue, and a minor one at that, rest be assured at its core Korra (so far) has been everything I hoped for. Smart, funny, insightful, all those highfalutin words we use to make sure we impart that something is worth our while. And as such, it’s a prime example of the zenith YA entertainment can reach—it does the one thing that truly good YA entertainment must do. This is, it does not talk down to its audience.

People have this rampant misconception about children that they can’t grasp or understand certain concepts. This is a fallacy. Children can understand all these things. One only has to look at child soldiers throughout the world to know to what depths children can understand. What people mean when they say children can’t understand things is that they don’t grasp the complexities. Things are very stark for a child, partly due to having to cope with an insanity-inundated world. Being mean is “bad,” being nice is “good,” there’s very little room in between for a man being nice for manipulative selfish reasons, or being mean because his family has just died and he’s having a hard time coping; when a child faces these issues, it is up to the world to explain the nuance—and most children will grasp the nuance of something if told about it. Will they truly be aware of its complexities? Perhaps not. But that’s something that can only come from experience, and experience can only begin with the base understanding of the concept in question.

So arguably the biggest theme in the show so far is that of equality, and what it means. The non-benders of Republic City specifically are being oppressed by the more supernaturally endowed brethren, resulting in gangs of benders treating whole streets like they are Mafia braviosos, being then only people in high office, etc. This has given rise to an Equalist movement, led by mysterious figurehead Amon, who always wears a mask to cover his face. Amon’s (supposed) back story is that his family was killed by a roving firebending gang as a child, and his face was hideously burned—this justifies (in theory) his desire to see all benders removed from power…which he is able to do with a so-far unexplained technique where he takes a benders’ abilities away, akin to what Aang did to Firelord Ozai in the original series, although much less flashy.

Now here we have a lot of things going on: the rectitude of Amon’s mission, the fact that benders are oppressing the local populace and have complete dominance over Republic Cities government, the nature of equality and the means by which good intentions go horribly wrong. It adds a level of depth when you realize that Amon and the nonbenders do have a legitimate grievance against benders—and yet another level when you realize that Amon’s ultimate mission is not necessarily equality, but the rise of his own power.

As adults, we have context for this, and we can compare Amon’s mission in high philosophical discussions regarding its similarities to the French and Communists revolutions, the nature of power and the cyclical essence of all revolutions and governmental coups. But kids, unversed as they are in most of the intricacies of history, are looking at Amon’s mission in a vacuum—and yet they still are able to grasp the delicacies of Amon’s position. They may not be able to articulate what exactly they understand: it takes a more experienced context to do that. But most kids would someone understand that despite Amon’s call for equality, something’s not quite right about his message or his approach. From this, the child must needs work out from himself what, exactly the problem is, whether consciously or otherwise—and once he does, he comes to an understand, perhaps minor, but nevertheless very real—and from this a foundation of context is built, meaning when the child inevitably learns about the French Revolution, or sees the plight of certain African nations, he or she will not be as confused by it, because they have a basis for that worldly behavior having already been introduced in The Legend Of Korra.

Is that a little simplistic and hypothetical? Certainly; and it’s quite possible that some viewers of Korra would never catch the subtleties of what I just described. Yet I think most would: kids are smarter than we give them credit for, after all, and there is literally no doubt that the stories we are told as a child help us structure and connect the world we see as we grow.

Likewise, the worry about going over some child’s head is one that I think worries many creators of children’s/YA fiction, and I think it’s imperative that creators must temper their instinct to talk down or bowdlerize their works just because they are worried their audience won’t “get it.” But the child will understand. Some may have to ask their parents, some may not “get it” until a year later when it “clicks,” but the child will understand. They’re growing up after all, and if they can’t understand things such as subtlety and nuance at all as younger consumers, they’re going to be hard-pressed to grasp it when they get older.

As such, it’s okay for things to go over a child’s head. You know how many jokes in Spongebob Squarepants (and yes, Spongebob used to be a good show for about five years) I understand better now as an adult than I did as a kid? Did not entirely grasping these jokes as a child influence my enjoyment of Spongebob (you know, but when it was good?). No! I laughed anyway, even if I didn’t totally get it.

Plus, let’s not forget the fact that concepts “going over our heads” and our strive to learn and understand them is, of course, a key factor in challenging our intellectual capacity and maturing as connected adults with keen understanding of how language works. Worrying that a child might not get something in a book or show is like worrying a child might not understand long division: they might not, at first, but introducing it to them and then their working to master it is an exercise in building layers of nuance and means of understanding complicated issues. If we are afraid to introduce things that go over a child’s head now, how on Earth are they supposed to ever get the things that go over their head in the future? And when a YA creator is freed from the worry of “getting it,” they will automatically not talk down to their audience, and that, in turn, will create a complexity to bleeds into all facets of the work. Case in point, characterization.

All things must have good characters; it’s what builds empathy, connection and emotional resonance. Often, people doing YA-related entertainment fall prey to the trap of bland characterization, which is related as always to fear of their demographic not “getting it.” But what makes good characterization so important for YA specifically?

Connection, at its heart, and comprehension, at its soul.

Remember those “over-their-head” issues I mentioned above? The best way to limit those as much as possible is to create a common ground with the audience.

For example, in A:TLA there’s a wonderful episode called “The Guru,” where Aang is learning to open all his chakras (spiritual centers in the body, clogged with the gunk of life) and therefore be able to control the Avatar State; this involves a lot of introspection and soul-searching, and it’s quite frankly one of the best episodes of television I have ever seen—and it’s basically a clip show.

There’s a scene when Aang attempts to open the chakra in his heart, which deals with love and can become blocked by grief. Opening his soul up, Aang is sort of—oh, transported-in-mindscape, let’s call it—to a green cloudy vision where, slowly but surely, all the dead people of his annihilated civilization rise from the mist. It is truly heartbreaking television, and its impact is bound up in the audience’s relation to and care for Aang as a character. Like I said, one of the subtle undertones of A:TLA is genocide, probably one of the heaviest topics a child must be introduced to—and while a child may not grasp the horrors of such an action from A;TLA, because of Aang’s depth, and because of the child’s emotional connection with him as a character, they can at least share in some of the understanding of what Aang is experiencing: the powerful loss that he feels in the knowledge of his people’s demise. Thus, the child is introduced to the horror of genocide in the gentlest, most compassionate way possible, and through it, comes to understanding the specter of such an action just a bit more than before, so that when said child reads about the Holocaust and hears transcripts of Jewish survivors, there is a foundation to rest upon and an easier connection to be made.



PICTURED: Tears

 Same with Korra. It’s too early to judge how Korra will ultimately do in this regard, but it’s already garnering attention simply because it has a female heroine at the forefront of its narrative—which is not an unheard of thing, but still oddly rare for 2012. As it is, at the moment the writer’s have made Korra into a tough, self-assured, and, yes, arrogant young girl—and because of the latter, her character receives a huge leap in depth in episode four, where she is met with an enemy she cannot defeat by force alone, and is rendered powerless.  Now we must remember that Korra has never before met any real opposition. She been a prodigy all her life, she’s been raised isolated from the larger world, she’s used to people telling her how important she is. And so the entire episode is about her feeling, for the first time, true terror at facing Amon and, at the same time, trying to hide that terror behind a false front of nonchalance. It is only after her battle with Amon where she is basically curb-stomped that she finally gives in and admits her fears and confusion accompanied by a few well deserved tears.  So in the first four episodes Korra has grown from a reckless and overly-confident braggadocio to someone who realizes her limitations—quite an important way to engage with the show’s target demographic, especially one as underserved as young females.
So far, TLOK has done everything a YA show needs to, and I’m excited to see where it goes into the future. Anyone looking for a premier example on how high YA can reach, and how high YA should reach, need look no further than what Bryke has created over the past six years as a veritable how-to on quality YA entertainment.

Until next time,

Mr. E

King's Korner: Karrie...er, Carrie





"I'm not saying that Carrie is shit and I'm not repudiating it. She made me a star, but it was a young book by a young writer. In retrospect it reminds me of a cookie baked by a first grader — tasty enough, but kind of lumpy and burned on the bottom."

--Stephen King (1)

Book Edition: Signet, First Printing, April 1975. Cover: Still from the movie: Sissy Spacek drenched in pigs blood with wide, white, trance-like eyes that still freak me out a little.

Let’s do a little meditative thought-experiment... Imagine, if you will, that you are a teacher fresh out of college (as far as teaching is concerned). You have two children and live in a crummy trailer in a poor section of town. Your salary is negligible, your fiduciary situation paycheck to paycheck, and really, not even that: you manage to survive only by supplementing your income with short stories sold to magazines: this gets your car fixed and medicine for your children. One day you’re cleaning some bathrooms with a janitor buddy in your second job when all of the sudden you have an idea about girls torturing an sad sack of existence who has just had her first period, with the added caveat that this sad sack is telekinetic! Awesome, a great magazine yarn. You come home and start to type it up, realize that there’s no way it’s going to fit in a short story, realize that you have no time to work on a novel at the moment, and frustrated, toss the story in the garbage.

Then you spend the next twenty years teaching, getting the odd story published, getting fatter and more disillusioned about writing and your life entirely, grow old and die.

Now more than likely Stephen King would have been talented and motivated enough to make a living as a writer at some point, and that rather depressing picture I just painted would not have come to pass. What cannot be argued, however, is that his wife Tabitha’s sharp eye and instinct pretty much saved King’s career as we know it.

There’s also no denying that King had a (well deserved) string of luck in the years around Carrie’s publication. The first, and not the least of which being Tabitha King digging the start of the first draft of the manuscript from among the beer cans and cigarette ash and encouraging King to finish it. The second stroke of luck came when he sold the paperback rights to Carrie for $400,000 about a year after publication (Of which he got $200,000 due to his horrible book deal), despite his only having one novel published that sold only decently in the hardback market--this allowed him to quit teaching and focus on his writing. The third stroke of luck is that the movie of his first novel was made by wunderkind director Brian Depalma, becoming by popular consensus one of the greatest horror movies of all time and one of the best King adaptations. As I mentioned back in my first post on King and why I love respect him as a writer, the greatness of the movie brought Carrie, and therefore King, to the national forefront, and brought millions of people the bookstore to gobble up the print edition. But it was King himself that kept them there. Why? Well, to understand we have to examine Carrie’s characteristics on both a structural/stylistic level and a meta/thematic level.

I: THE BASICS, A.K.A. WHY IT WAS A BESTSELLER

Revenge, of course. What is Carrie but the ultimate revenge fantasy? Unleashing revenge upon her tormenters at nothing less than the apotheosis of the high school social paradigm: senior prom. At a very core level, the book is Id-soothing wish fulfillment for 99% of people who survived the High School Journey. It’s fantasy for every maligned, abused, picked-on and mistreated outcast in the high school social strata, of course, but fact is, most everybody who has traversed the hallowed halls of secondary education has felt maligned, abused, picked-on and mistreated at some point, no matter how rarely or how severely—these small abuses stick with us in very unconscious ways, and in that manner Carrie is for everyone, because most everyone has been Carrie at some juncture, even if just for a fleeting moment or two.

If anything, Carrie is an expression of the multifaceted considerations of pretty much every high school student. Some might say that the characters in the novel are one-dimensional, and maybe so; but if looked at from another perspective, there’s definitely a sense that the characters aren’t just one dimensional representations, but representations of a particular psyche of a high school student. After all, there’s a Carrie, and a Sue Snell, and a Chris Hargensen, and a Tommy Ross and, yes, even a Billy Nolan, in all of us. It would be hard to say that the characters in Carrie are three dimensional, especially the villains. But as I have stated before, archetypes are not objectively bad. And what King creates here is a cast of arguably one-dimensional characters whose attributes are so relatable that they stick in our memories and understanding. Bound up in these one dimensional characters is a fully three-dimensional character that represents the conflicting boundaries of a teenager’s mind—hell, perhaps the mind of every human being ever: we’ve all been Carrie, and Sue and Chris and Tommy and Billy, and it is recognition of this fact that makes the characters so compelling even though they are fairly one dimensional.

Some of King’s greatest strengths as a writer are unveiled within the novel’s short length: his grittiness, his unflinching expressions of sexuality and vulgarity, the insanity of an obsessed human mind, his grasp of human action and methodology of speech—King’s dialogue is some of the best you’d find anywhere, and his first novel is no exception. Most importantly and singularly, his down to Earth approach to cosmic horror—a girl with destructive telekinetic abilities wrapped up in the day-to-day stresses of a high school senior.

II: WRITERLY CONCEITS

You can pretty well sub-divide King’s work into four major eras. The first era extends from the mid-seventies to the late seventies, upon the publication of The Dead Zone and thereby King’s first hardcover number one bestseller. The second era extends from the early eighties, after The Dead Zone’s publication to the end of the eighties and the publication of The Dark Half. The third era goes from 1990 to around the publication of On Writing and his traumatic car accident in 1999, and his fourth era is from then to today. It’s truly a testament to King’s longevity that we can even talk about his aesthetic evolutions over an almost four-decade period of time; but I divide him into eras because there are definite tonal and constructional shifts in the feel and form of his writing between these points. Inevitably, and if this blog continues, we will reach these other “eras,” but for our purposes, let’s focus on the tonal roar that King puts across in his first published novel.

If you have to put it down in one word, King’s writing in Carrie is raw. Not rawness of “inexperience”--King, even upon his first novel’s completion, was not an inexperienced writer by any means, having been involved with the craft since his teens and having already published a wealth of short stories that kept the King family above the poverty line—nor is it a rawness in the late 20^th century slang version of cool. King’s writing is rarely cool. I doubt most people would describe graphic details of menstruation as cool.

No, the rawness in Carrie is one of devil-may-care flippancy. This is a King who doesn’t give a crap about accolades, the opinions of Harold Bloom, the travesties being put on film that are ostensibly adaptations of his works, maintaining and dealing with a rabid audience, his place in the annals of American fiction, or the “type” of writer he was and how seriously he was going to be taken by the academic literary elite. Am I saying that these became conscious considerations by King? No, I don’t think so. But did they begin to niggle in the back of his mind after he had become established and had grown a large fan base and wasn’t concerned as much with just making sure he could afford medical care for his children? That I do believe, and it begins to come across however subtly in the later part of era three.

But King’s attitude in Carrie can be summed up by a little anecdote he himself tells. He’s talking to his agent after he’s turned in the MS for The Shining, and the agent warns him that publishing three horror novels in a row is going to get him pegged as a “horror writer.” To which King replies, “Horror writer? I’m just happy to be called any kind of writer.” (Or something along those lines.). And that’s the feeling that comes across in Carrie: a forceful passion for the work and the story in and of itself.

On a more structural level, Carrie introduces two of King’s stylistic tendencies, the first being the use of interrupting parenthetical expressions to symbolize the unstructured and contradictory nature of thought:

Weeping and snuffling, Carrie bowed her head. A runner of snot hung pendulously from her nose and she wiped it away

(if I had a nickel for every time she made me cry here)

with the back of her hand. (55)

            She had fallen on her side, and the fire lit the street with hellish noonday. What happened next happened in slow motion as her mind ran steadily onward

            (dead are they all dead carrie why think carrie)

At its own clip. (176)

These instances showcase King’s understanding of psychological horror and the makeup of the human mind; the thoughts enter in without recourse for plot structure or prose. They themselves are barely structured at all, just clear enough for the Reader to get their meaning, really putting the Reader inside the head of the narrator.

More importantly, the interrupting thoughts demonstrate the “Other” within each individual person: the contradictory one, the argumentative one, the little voice in the ear telling us we can’t do this or they’re laughing at you or even, you have to kill this person. What make these thoughts truly terrifying are their wildness and their identifiability; sharply in contrast to the ordered nature of prose, the parenthetical thoughts are as strange and alien to a novel structure as they are in our own brains. They are unfamiliar—they are representations of the very chaos that lies beneath our pretense of society. And that is horrifying.

We also see, in Carrie, King’s first use of his journalistic bent, making use of not only news articles, but AP Press tickers, book excerpts, and commission records to “fill out” and frame the story and foreshadow certain events. King, having worked for the student paper in college, uses this technique to great effect in many of his novels, including his subsequent two: Salem’s Lot and The Shining.

King’s use of journalistic and “outside” sources to create both mystery and fill out the plot of his stories probably could warrant a post of his own, but Carrie’s use of it is unique simply by the nature of its inclusion. King added the pertinent sections because the novel in its first draft was “too damn short to begin with,” and even with the added sections, Carrie rounds out at barely 200 pages. But King’s ability to weave mystery from the detached viewpoint of investigations after the fact only adds to the sensibilities and horrors that occur in the town. The deftly weaved inclusions of “excerpts” from The Shadow Exploded and the White Commission, etcetera, work both as story points and as tension builders leading up to the final climax, and then act as the denouement for the novel and a way to make the ending much more ominous than it would be otherwise. 

I’ve used the word detachment here, as it’s another indication of King’s inherent understanding of verisimilitude and audience participation. Because the excerpts and news articles are pieces of what the audience members would be reading if the events in Carrie came to pass, it makes the story all the more real and therefore all the more gut-wrenching to the reader. The books and interviews and letters are written by people outside the circle of the event, or long after the event has passed. This gives the excerpts a sort of distance, of detachment, that manages to build the narrative not only by foreshadowing but by pulling us out from the narrative and looking at the proceedings in the macro-level. It’s the equivalent of the security camera conceit in something like Paranormal Activity 2—its quotidian quality and measured, cold perspective is what makes it so hauntingly creepy, and the inclusion of these bits of article and “non-fiction” are key to the sense of familiarity that make Carrie more engrossing to a new audience that had never considered reading a horror tale before.



PICTURED: THOSE EYES ARE IN MY NIGHTMARES.



 III: THE FACTOR OF REPRESSION

King’s rawness is a rawness of bloody meat, stripped bare, peeling back the skin of façade to reveal the vileness lurking underneath, and yet, at the same time, a vileness tempered by confusion, fear, misunderstanding, and the need to be part of a society. The menstruation scene at the beginning of Carrie is famous for its hive-mind asperity, a group of girls whose evident disdain and loathing of Carrie is as much wrapped up in their insecurities about themselves as it is their actual feelings toward the object of their derision:

A tampon suddenly struck her in the chest and fell with a plop at her feet. A red flower stained the absorbent cloth and spread.

Then the laughter, disgusted, contemptuous, horrified, seemed to rise and bloom into something jagged and ugly, and the girls were bombarding her with tampons and sanitary napkins, some from purses, some from the broken dispenser on the wall. They flew like snow and the chant became: “Plug it up, plug it up…”

Sue was throwing them too, throwing and chanting with the rest, not really sure what she was doing—a charm had occurred to her mind and it glowed there like neon. There’s no harm in it really no harm in it really no harm—It was still flashing and glowing, reassuringly, when Carrie suddenly began to howl and back away, flailing her arms and grunting and gobbling. (8, emphasis King’s)

This is the essence of horror, especially psychological horror, and if there’s one thing King inarguably understands, it’s the essence of horror: the unfamiliar, the grotesque, the other, an other that we try to repress for the benefit of society.

Repression plays a big factor in the thematic resonance of Carrie. The eponymous character’s repression of the sexual, social and telekinetic kind form the basis of the novel, and her response to those, “coming into her own,” is what ignites the conflict and brings the novel to the climax.

Carrie’s sexual repression is an important attribute. It is keenly linked to her telekinetic abilities. Her belated arrival to sexual maturity coincides directly with her realization, acceptance and laboring over her telekinetic powers. It is also the most pronounced figment of “evil” that her mother berates her with. Carrie is engrained with the “knowledge” that menstruation and breasts are evil signs indicative of the sin of Eve; and Margaret White’s own sexual repression in a bizarre and terrifying way is the direct cause of Carrie: her rape, and her own feelings about her rape. It is an Id embroiled base level desire seen as wicked and unrighteous, just like Carrie’s own Id embroiled telekinetic abilities. As the latter grows the former grows as well.

The shadow of repression is not just found in the White household either. Both Chris Hargensen and Sue Snell have symptoms of it, and both respond to it in divergent ways. Chris’ own “base” desires are repressed by factor of her birth and her need to live up to her father’s reputation and expectations. She finds release for this repression in Billy Nolan and his free-for-all nihilistic lifestyle. Snell, on the other hand, responds to her own repression with a sinner-confessor attitude: when her base, instinctive actions have shown themselves, as during the menstruation scene, she immediately closes it over and attempts to atone for her lashing out, by getting her boyfriend Tommy Ross to go to the prom with Carrie.

And of course, on the meta-thematic level, the novel treats its own readers as a comfort to their own repressed feelings of disillusionment, anger and rage towards their former high school brethren. As I’ve said, Carrie at its core is a revenge fantasy, and revenge fantasies are almost always a function of expressing and massaging repressed feelings. If it weren’t repressed, then it wouldn’t be a fantasy. And in the end, the fantasy of popular social revenge comes crashing down. It’s a portion of the novel I truly appreciate it, because while wish-fulfillment is something that is harmless in fantasy, King’s exploration of the aftermath and circumstances surrounding Carrie’s revenge are more heartbreaking than satisfying. He turns the tale on its head, really: having Carrie’s actions twist from an awesome high to a gut-wrenching rumination on the havoc she causes. He makes the very repression-releasing cathartic revenge that draws people in seem undesirable in the end, and that fact alone is what propels the thematic Id-soothing qualities of the novel into a higher realm of thematic consideration. Carrie no longer is repressed by the novel’s end, and she dies as a result. The “release” of Carrie’s repressed, societally unacceptable feelings of rage, anger, hatred and telekinesis literally cause the downfall of the town: as the epilogue makes clear, the whole area’s just sort of drying up and blowing away. The two extremes of repression are both therefore summarily dismissed and inadequate: Carrie’s lifelong repression of sexual feelings and “bad” behavior has placed her on edge and made her a social pariah. But the release of that repression all at once—fully cutting loose without any restraint or consideration for societal construction or human empathy annihilates the town, a harbinger of chaos and the end of human civilization—or at least the town of Chamberlain, Maine. I think it’s very telling how the novel is bookended by two instances of graffiti drawn on a school bathroom door and the former location of the White’s home:

Graffiti scratched on a desk of the Bark Street Grammar School in Chamberlain:

Carrie White eats shit. (4, emphasis King’s)

Found painted on the lawn of the house lot where the White bungalow had been located:

CARRIE WHITE IS BURNING FOR HER SINS

JESUS NEVER FAILS (242)

Carrie’s becoming a whole person, realizing her potential, and giving her tormenters what they deserve really, in the end, does nothing except make everyone hate her more. In effect, King builds up this revenge fantasy, and then, in the end, undermines it in a surprising fashion of post-modern sensibility. There’s no catharsis or satisfaction from the revenge, because after all is said and done nothing changes. Carrie doesn’t go up in the estimation of her peers, and she isn’t looked on with any more respect or dignity than she was when she was the whipping boy of the high school hierarchy. She doesn’t even get to escape the abuse of her mother’s religious beliefs. Her revenge does nothing for her except put her in a grave.

According to Wikipedia (2) King has remarked that Carrie has a “surprising power to hurt and horrify.” And whether he said it or not, I think the quote speaks to why Carrie maintains a place in cultural history despite its flaws: because in its own small way, it breaks the expectations of the reader. The reader is set up to expect Carrie to get revenge on the “bad guys” of the novel: namely, Chris and Billy. They wanted Carrie to get revenge on them, if I may be assumptive for a moment. They wanted Carrie to unleash the full potential of her awesome powers on those evil kids that tortured her so. What they did not want was the bloodbath they got—even though a bloodbath was the only logical conclusion of the story. In this way, the novel messes with the conventions of the reader’s own base desires, horrifying him about his own callousness towards the students who turned out not to be monsters but merely dumb kids after all—dumb kids like the reader himself was at some point. 

III: CONCLUSION

As I mentioned in my introduction post to my King-love respect, the man has become such a staple of pop culture and American fiction that it’s hard for people to get a grasp on just how much of a revolution Carrie was in the world of mainstream fiction. We’ve become so used to him and his works have had such an effect on the world, especially in the internet age, that we really have to think back to remember the days when people would raise their eyebrows at the sound of his name and talk about how insane the man was and how freaky and how they had no idea where he got his ideas from at the same time they were gobbling down his books with fervor. King was the first mainstream horror writer in—well, history, pretty much—and if you can argue with that, you can’t argue with the fact that his fiction reached a much wider audience than any of his genre had ever done. It ached with blood and sex and nastiness and everyone just loved it. Why? I really can’t say, though I think partially it was bound up in changing social mores in the post Vietnam/Watergate world and King’s own unique brand of psychological understanding.

The man was dangerous. He was exposing things that shouldn’t be exposed. An underage high-school girl having repressed masturbatory and sexual thoughts while coming into her telekinetic abilities upon her first much-belated period while she condemns herself for feeling these said sexual thoughts because it went against what Jesus wants. Only in a King novel.

Beyond the uncanny grasp of teenagerdom and its accompanying social mores, King’s first novel introduced himself as what I would propose to style the HBO of the literary world, going farther and hitting harder than most people (mainstream) would dare or were allowed (and yes, maybe being a little excessive while he was at it), and for a subscription cost of seventy-five cents a paperback. It was new and it was fresh and it made horror something more than a haven for “nerds” and “weirdos,” but something that was about all of us.

Undoubtedly, the movie raised the stakes and brought the audience and rocketed King to pseudo-stardom, but I truly believe it was the book that really made people perk up and notice.

Is Carrie perfect? No, I wouldn’t say so. It’s a bit rushed in places, its characters are sometimes borderline cartoons in their villainous deeds and it is, as King himself admits, rather short. Likewise, King himself thinks the movie is better than the book. Maybe, maybe not, but I don’t think we can ignore the book’s merit and what it started off in the horror genre. It’s not near King’s best, but it does have the honor of being the first. Not just of King’s novels, but of horror novels to truly, deeply be taken into account by a wide, mainstream audience without sacrificing its own character. And in that aspect alone, it deserves its place in history.

Until next time,

Mr. E

(1) This quote came, unsubstantiated, from Wikipedia, which I know is not advisable. The quote sounds real enough, and sounds like something King would say, but there was no citation for it, and therefore contains a small kernel of doubt that he actually said it. That being said, it is way too good a quote to pass up.

(2) Again, without citational substantiation, though I honestly have few qualms about the quotes veracity.