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Stephen! You go home now!

Most of this entry is likely to be about Stephen King, so brace yourself or skip to the end. But first…

Obligatory Film Critique:

After first making sure that we had delicious food to eat while we watched it (Todd made veggie chili and jalapeno chili corn bread from scratch) we watched a little over half of Eat Drink Man Woman (at the library when I told the librarian which movie I wanted I was thinking, “Sage, do NOT say ‘Eat Man Drink Woman’ “), which is made by the same people who created The Wedding Banquet. I can’t recommend either movie strongly enough. The movie is set in Taiwan, and at one point one of the characters locks her office door, goes to her bookshelf, and takes what looks like a box with manuals in it apart to reveal a bottle of scotch. I said, “Geez, in America they’d think you were creepy and unprofessional if you didn’t have a bottle of scotch in your office. Your boss would walk in and be like, ‘Ralph! Where the hell’s your scotch, you fool? Do you want to make me look bad in front of my supervisor? Quick, take my flask — drink up!’ “

I’m basing everything I have to say in this journal entry about Stephen King, writing, art, and money, on one assumption which could well be incorrect. Recently he came out with two books: The Regulators and Desperation. The Regulators was “written” by Richard Bachman, Desperation by Stephen King. Years ago I bought The Bachman books, this was after it’d been revealed that Bachman was King’s pen name, and was extremely impressed. To this day the stories “Rage” and “The Long Walk” rank in my mind on my top fifty list of excellent writing, and I can’t tell you how unsurprised I was when some kid tried to copy the events in “Rage” at his own high school — in fact, the first thing Kitey said after reading it was that some kid would try to recreate the events in the story. The Regulators begins with a note to the effect that Richard Bachman “died” in 1985, but that this book was found among his effects and updated. My assumption is that Stephen King, at a loss for new ideas, went back into his old boxes/disks (am I nuts, or is that a TRS-80 in the author photo at the back to Desperation?) and found The Regulators. It could well be that he wrote it last year and the whole 1985 bit is fabricated, but I doubt it.

As I said before, I read Desperation against my better judgment and regretted the time I’d wasted on it. It was, strangely enough, a Stephen King-ism that kept me reading: the Gotta, as in “I gotta know what happens at the end”. I mentally kicked myself for not sticking to my resolution to never read another King book, and swore that I wouldn’t touch The Regulators, which Todd had decided to borrow from the library and read. But I couldn’t resist the lure of a book written by the same person about the same characters in an alternate universe, so within an hour of bringing it back from the library I was deeply ensconced. It was wonderful. I don’t mean the horror aspect; I’ve never liked that about his writing, it’s boring and predictable and who-cares. I mean the characterization, the way people interacted, I mean the cleverness of the plot. Within three chapters of Desperation I’d correctly predicted the ending, and it wasn’t until I had ten pages left in The Regulators that I realized what was going to happen. Desperation is empty, with characters I found it impossible to like, relate to, or maintain any interest in. What’s so bizarre is the fact that they’re the same characters — sometimes younger, or older, but in essence the same characters as they are in The Regulators, which had me sniffling by the end, sorry that I wasn’t able to spend more time with the same damn people.

I’m mystified. Am I the only one who sees the vast difference in writing quality between the two books? Didn’t anyone in King’s immediate vicinity take him aside and go, “Listen, I know you wanted to put both books out, but let me read a passage from each and show you what a bad idea it is. Let’s not give the critics their own personal yardstick to measure exactly how your abilities have declined over the years, okay Steve?” Is he blind to his disappearing ability to write, obsessed with making money no matter how bad his books are, or does he have a running bet with his editor about just how bad a book with his name on it has to be before the American public stops buying and buying and buying and…

© 1996 QN Podcast (formerly Quirky Nomads).