The Talisman, by Stephen King and Peter Straub

The Talisman, by Stephen King and Peter Straub. 646 pages. Viking.

You know how when you’ve been constipated for three days and you finally slay the dragon? How good it feels? And yet, there are still residual cramps that torture you? Well, that’s exactly how I felt when I finally finished reading The Talisman. I worked on it for over two months, occasionally speed reading a section or two while at other times getting caught up in the prose and absorbing it. I started it December 24 of one year and finished March 2 of another. Not since Moby Dick have I labored so hard on a single book.

Here are the positives: 1). The prose is generally delightful. I like Straub’s prose a lot and generally find King’s prose to be perfectly adequate to the story by rather “meh” aesthetically, but King seems to have risen to the challenge of Straub here and the book is finely written. 2). The fantasy setting of the “territories,” which is contiguous with the world we know, was excellent. I particularly liked how everything was experienced so intensely in the territories. 3). The climactic scenes were powerful, both the final battle with the evil and the denouement with the character’s mother.

However, there are a number of things I didn’t care much for and I think they all revolve around one particular issue. The book is way, way too long. I’d say at least 200 pages too long. Every scene is embellished and packed with verbiage. There is nothing here that can be considered lean or stripped down. Instead of a juggernaut, it moves like one of those giant armored buses often depicted in zombie movies. The story rolls slowly along through the horrors and mysteries, powerful but ponderous.  

Because of the length of the book, the middle sags like a mattress supported by broken springs, the characters repeat themselves and repeat themselves in thought and dialogue, points get hammered (the book often uses an apropos metaphor of a nail being pounded) flush to the board and then the board gets hammered into mush. I frequently uttered the words, “Get on with it” as I worked my way through. It also struck me as apropos that the main villain is often called “bloat.”

Please note, this is a fantasy novel, not in any way a horror novel. There are a few horrific images in it but the monsters and characters are fantasy based, including the werewolves and the radiation twisted monsters. I like both fantasy and horror, but they do different things to my moods and mindsets.

Also note, the book makes no secret of being—in part—a fantasy retelling of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Even the main character’s name is Jack Sawyer, although the journey across the US smacks a bit of Huck Finn’s journey down the Mississippi.

I didn’t dislike the book. Some things I quite enjoyed. But the sheer length and padding of it made it a tough row to plow. You might find your experience very different, as I might have if I’d read it when I was much younger.

I also want to make clear, I do not dislike Stephen King or Peter Straub’s work. Ghost Story by Straub is in my top 3 favorite horror novels. Some of his short stories in Houses Without Windows still scald me years after reading them. King’s Misery and The Mist were absolutely riveting page turners, and Pet Semetary made me weep with emotion. These are very fine writers but—to me—The Talisman is far from their best work.

 

Narrative Drive

I’ve been thinking a lot this last week about narrative drive. What it is. How it works. And why it works. Every story I’ve read has been fodder for my thoughts on the topic.

First, what is narrative drive? It’s different from characters and setting. Many people say it means a tale is “plot driven,” but I don’t think so. I believe it means: “that element of a story that keeps you turning pages and wanting to know what happens next.” This is most often tied to plot but is not identical with it and also includes aspects of character and setting.

Narrative drive is about information, specifically, the release of information to the reader. The biggest tool writers have is that they know what’s going to happen in a story ahead of readers. Information is the energy that drives a tale, and the writers own all that information. To begin with, at least.

A story with narrative drive releases that hoarded information to the reader in dribs and drabs, giving only that information to the reader that the he or she wants and must have to understand what is happening. Just that much information. And no more.

Recently, for example, I read The Outsider by Stephen King. It begins with a murder and a suspect who just doesn’t seem capable of doing it. Yet, the evidence is against him. As a reader, I want to know how this situation can be explained, and King does a masterful job of releasing the information I want in little bits at a time. You might say, he ‘milks’ the situation for all he can get, and that kept me turning the pages, looking for the next tidbit. That’s narrative drive.

In contrast, I just finished an SF novella that failed the narrative drive test. This story was written by an author I admire, who is gone now, and who I’ve enjoyed plenty of stuff from in the past. The writing itself was excellent, better than King’s prose, but the problem was that halfway through the author telegraphed the ending and for the rest of the way the tale felt like a paint by numbers piece.

With King’s story, I was too absorbed to look ahead and see how many pages were left. With the SF story, I looked ahead just to see how many pages were left. Meaning, how many pages did I need to read before I could move on to something with greater narrative drive.

 

Imagination

I just read Stephen King’s introduction to Nightmares & Dreamscapes and he had something to say about imagination that really resonated with me. He was talking about his childhood, and here are his words:

“I knew even then, you see, that there were people in the world—-too many of them actually—-whose imaginative senses were either numb or completely deadened, and who lived in a mental state akin to color-blindness. I always felt sorry for them, never dreaming (at last then) that many of these unimaginative types either pitied me or held me in contempt…”

I wasn’t quite as observant as King when I was a kid. It never occurred to me then that anyone could lack imagination. My own imagination kept me company 24 hours a day. Every moment was magic. The sky filled itself with battleships and pirate galleons; the woods were populated with living shadows, both human and inhuman. Even at night my imagination never slept. There were nightmares sometimes, but always my dreams were vivid, intense, otherworldly. I couldn’t understand why others laughed at such “fancies.” Didn’t they have the same experiences?

What I did know, though, was that I was laughed at, pitied, and held in contempt by many when I shared the thoughts and ideas that excited me. I was told many times that I read too much, that I needed to get my head out of the clouds, that I needed to pay attention to the ground instead of the sky, that I was wasting my life away daydreaming. When I was little, it hurt. I began to develop an inferiority complex. When everyone is telling you that you’re going about life all wrong, you often begin to believe them. Fortunately, I realized in time that they were the ones who were doing it all wrong.

I can’t imagine what my life would have been like if I’d given in to the criticisms. I may not be a great success by any stretch of the ‘imagination,’ but I never have to suffer from boredom. And I often think that I’ve actually lived many lives instead of just the one. I’ve lived in the Old West, lived on other planets. I’ve known heroes and villains, monstrous aliens and gentle ones. I’ve explored across time. All of that inside a couple of pounds of spongy pinkish matter.

When Josh was little I actively tried to cultivate his imagination. Yes, it meant he had a few bad dreams. But I hope he’ll realize over time what a true gift a good imagination is. I think he does. Whenever a child's imagination is stifled, the human race comes a little closer to extinction.

Now I think I’m going to go daydream. The sky is blue, the woods are dark. And there are worlds within worlds.

Art copywrite (c) The incomparable Lana Gramlich, whose imagination I greatly admire.
-----
-----

Updates and Reviews

Lana is improving steadily but my stepfather is still in the hospital and is struggling. Please continue to send him good thoughts. Our steak dinner with Josh and his girlfriend Heidi went off very well, though, and we had a great day.

I ended up cutting the preface for the anthology down by about 50 words and I think it’s a lot better. I also rearranged the story order in the book a bit because by putting the six Thal Kyrin stories in chronological order I would have had a relatively weaker story up first. I know you don’t want that in an anthology. I’m on the final read through now.

I just finished reading The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. Often, I find King’s endings relatively weak and the rest of his stories pretty compelling. This was the reverse. The ending was quite strong but the path to get there was slow, slow, slow. This was one of King’s shorter books, only 254 pages in paperback, but I felt he really had ideas for a novella at most. I think cutting out a hundred pages toward the front and middle would have made this one sing. I haven’t much enjoyed the last couple of books I’ve read by King, but I so loved works like Misery, The Mist, and The Cell that I keep giving him chances. I know he can do it. That’s the thing.


I also finished Voices from the Dark by Gary William Crawford. This is a poetry collection. Most of the poetry is pretty dark, but I’m not sure I’d call this a “genre” collection. The cover certainly suggests that, but isn’t totally accurate. Crawford’s work really crosses all genres and ventures well into the mainstream. The book is subtitled “Selected Poems: 1979-2009” and is kind of a “best of.” I’ve read a fair number of the poems from the collection before, and have reviewed other collections by Crawford here on the blog; his works are regularly nominated for the Stoker Awards. Gary’s poetry is the kind that demands rereading anyway, though, so I didn’t mind revisiting some old favorites. There’s a lot going on in these pieces. If you haven’t tried any Crawford before, this would be a great introduction to his work. Highly recommended.
----
----

The Elements of Horror: The Gross Out.

There’s a famous quote from Stephen King which says something like: “I consider terror to be the finest emotion, and so I will try to terrify the reader. But if I cannot terrify, I’ll horrify. And if I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross out.”

Mainly today, I want to talk about the gross out and its role in horror fiction. The gross out occurs when the reader makes the “disgust” face. The reader’s head recoils slightly from the page. The mouth curves back and down and the lips purse slightly as if the person has tasted something foul. The nostrils are flared, not to draw in a scent but rather to push air out so no scent can get in. Imagine what your face does when you smell something that really stinks and you’ll have the disgust face.

Disgust is an emotion, and as such it is capable of being evoked by physical description. Disgust is generally one element of horror, but it is, to my way of thinking, the least important element. Disgust is also easy to evoke, although easier in some readers than in others. I’ve read a lot of horror fiction in my day, for example, and written quite a bit, and it’s pretty hard to gross me out. A scene written purely for the gross out is thus likely to work best on those who read little if any horror. A good horror writer can typically gross out most folks with a snap of the fingers. But all you do then is send those folks away from your work, not draw them in. For the gross out to work it has to be only one element, a minor element, among all the other elements of good storytelling.

To avoid grossing out my blog readers, I’m going to give only vague examples of what I’m talking about below. I recently read Spawn by Shaun Hutson because someone said he was one of the grossest writers out there. The book certainly had a lot of grossness in it. For example, one early scene has hospital workers burning bed linens stained with all manner of bodily fluids. I made the disgust face at the description, so Mr. Hutson achieved his aim there. The problem was, I felt nothing other than disgust. A later description of aborted fetuses worked the same way. Disgust plus disgust does not make horror. It’s more like showing people boogers and watching them recoil.

At the same time, however, I was also reading Beyond the Porch Light and Other Tales by our own Ferrel D. (Rick) Moore. Now, Rick Moore understands what makes horror work, and he applies all the elements in a seamless meld to evoke the full range of human emotions. Yes, there is an occasional element of grossness, but it is only a dash of seasoning to work that mixes fear, loathing, terror, shock, and—-very importantly-—love and affection into the story recipe. Here’s a great line from Moore’s story “Burying the Past,”: “…he would have seen that fear, loathing, and anger slithered behind the old man’s eyes like the pale worms that moved beneath dark porches.”

There! The “pale worms” evoke just a hint of grossness, a hint that doesn’t overwhelm but takes the reader deeper into the place where true horror dwells. That’s when you know you’re in the hands of someone who cares deeply about the craft of writing horror fiction. Moore wants to wring every emotion out of you, not just turn your stomach. That’s the mark of a good writer in general, and of a good horror writer in particular.

I haven’t quite finished Beyond the Porch Light… yet. I have one story to go. So far my favorites have been the title story, and an awesome little tale called “Electrocuting the Clowns.” All the stories are good, however, and I have no reservations about recommending this collection to anyone who likes good storytelling. And if you like to feel a little shiver while you sit and read, while the sun slowly sinks outside your home and the darkness comes creeping, then all the better. Just don’t venture beyond the porch light.

----
----

Implosion, and Other Tales of My Days

I’ve done exactly zero writing in the past three days. That’s not like me but I just have not been able to get going. Each time I sit down at the computer I end up either fiddling with my books or just playing the video game Age of Empires. It’s not the fact that Lana needs the occasional hand. She’s a model patient, and is recovering, although she still feels pretty miserable. The slowdown is inside me.

Of course, I could make excuses. My legs have been bothering me pretty badly and yesterday I spent a fair amount of time on the phone with our internet provider, and with issues dealing with my son trying to get back into school this fall. Turns out his health records were misplaced after Katrina and the school needed evidence of his immunizations. We finally got that straightened out but it took a bit.

The problem is really a lack of focus on my part. The summer is winding down here and within 10 days I’ll be back at work. I’ll have to get started on syllabi sooner than that. Although I like my job, transitions are hard for me. I’m going to try to get going today, though. Wish me luck.

One interesting thing came out of fiddling with my books, though. I was looking through an old book of SF stories called Santana Morning and Other Stories by Mike Dolan. It was published from Powell Sci-Fi in 1970. Interestingly, it contains a story called “The Fog,” which I reread, and I had to arch an eyebrow at the strong similarities with Stephen King’s later novella “The Mist.” King’s story is much better and more detailed, and the two stories certainly aren’t identical, but there are enough similarities to make me wonder whether King read “The Fog” once upon a time and it stayed with him to influence him when he wrote “The Mist.” I'm absolutely not saying that King might have plagiarized this story. It's more the basic idea that is similar. The writing and wording and style are all quite different. It could have been an influence on King, nothing more.

In publishing news, our Writing in Psychology: A Guidebook is out as of yesterday. This is a textbook I wrote with a couple of other faculty members at Xavier: Elliott Hammer, and Y Du Bois Irvin (who is the granddaughter of W. E. B. Du Bois). This is a book specifically designed to help students in writing formal term papers and research reports. We use it in our psychology department writing classes at Xavier and I have hopes some other schools might adopt it. It’s strictly nonfiction, and unless you’re taking a course in psychology or writing papers in a field where APA style is used it’s probably not going to be useful to anyone here. It’s not a general writing guide like Write With Fire. I’m pretty happy with it, though. The cover is here if you want to take a look at the details. The cover is also below:


----
----

A Story about a Story

One book I picked up at garage sale day was The Colorado Kid by Stephen King. I can’t say I’m enjoying it much so far. I’m about 40 pages in, and it’s been very slow.

The main problem is that it’s a story about a story instead of just being a story. Let me explain.

The tale begins with two older newspapermen, both Islanders, and a younger female reporter talking to a mainland reporter. The mainland fellow doesn’t get what he came for, a story about some unsolved mystery, and leaves. The young woman begins to ask whether there are any unsolved mysteries on the island, and the two older men begin to tell her the story of the “Colorado Kid.”

Do you see the problem?

Fiction is already a second hand report. We begin reading with the clear knowledge that we’re being told a story by someone else, the invisible writer. If the writer does his or her job well, we soon forget we’re being told a story and start to live it.

But now, with “Colorado Kid,” I’m being told a story by Stephen King about two guys who are telling a different story to a young woman. It seems like I’m trying to hear the primary story of the “Kid” with a loud conversation going on in the background. So far I’ve not been able to slip inside the story. I’m outside looking in, and I don’t much enjoy it.

Last week I read a tale set in ancient Rome that was told in a “letter” written to someone else. I kept thinking, why not just tell “me” the story, instead of telling someone else and letting me listen in? You could have saved a few hundred words. Now, I can enjoy stories told in letters when the story is “inside” the letters, when it goes back and forth between the letter writers. But this was just “one” letter, explaining everything that happened to one person. Why distance readers further than they already are?

With “Colorado Kid,” at around 35 (its actually 50) pages we read about a couple of young joggers who find a dead body on the beach. Bingo! There’s where the story starts. Show us the joggers, show ‘em seeing the body, approaching the body, realizing it’s a dead man. And I’m with you. I’ve already forgotten the writer. I’m living the tale. Cut out the prelims.

Maybe there are times when the “story about a story” technique is useful, and maybe old Stephen has a plan up his sleeve. I’ll go ahead and read some more, because at least the book is pretty short. But it isn’t a good sign when I pick up the book I’m currently reading, and instead of opening the cover to where I left off, I gaze longingly at my pile of to-be-read books. The “Colorado Kid” cut ahead of a bunch of books on that pile, and so far I’ve regretted that rash decision.

----
----

Opinionated Book Reviews

I thought I might review a few books that have to do with writing. Hope you don’t mind some strong opinions.

Ray Bradbury: Zen in the Art of Writing: RATING = C+: I was disappointed in this book. I’d heard the title mentioned years ago and built up an image of what a fine book it must be from Bradbury. Maybe I expected too much. The essays are almost all ones I’ve seen before, and most are quite slight in content. Bradbury talks much about his technique of writing down a series of evocative nouns, (the fog horn, the attic, etc.) and then using them to trigger a story. I've tried this and it works. But there wasn't much else of help. The book is a "cheerleading" work, meant to keep up the writer's spirits while they languish in the slush pile. There was considerable autobiographical material on Bradbury, which I liked. The title essay is the strongest.

James Sallis: Difficult Lives: Jim Thompson - David Goodis – Chester Himes: RATING = A: I've mentioned Sallis's work before, primarily for his mysteries. Difficult Lives¬ is a non-fiction biography of three 1950's detective novelists, including Himes, who was black. The book was issued by a small company called "Gryphon Press," but deserves a wider audience. I thought it was excellent, poetical in places, and with strong insights into the characters of these writers. The portraits of the first two, Thompson and Goodis, are also filled with their connections to alcohol, which many have noted seems to be a close friend/enemy of some writers. I asked Jim about Himes and alcohol, and he said there probably was a connection but that he didn't have enough information to be sure. Recommended, if you can find a copy.

Tim Underwood & Chuck Miller, Editors: Feast of Fear; Conversations with Stephen King: RATING = C+: This book spans King's career and the interviews are generally well done and ask the right questions. The downside is that all of it has been said before. I didn't learn anything new about King, but I'd say it would be hard to do so considering his saturation point has long since been reached. This is mainly only for hardcore King freaks.

Douglas Winter: Stephen King: The Art of Darkness: RATING = B: This is an old book (1986) but if you like King then you’ll probably enjoy it. It was easy reading and gave a good amount of biographical background. I read it because of my interest in writers in general, but didn't find terribly much of use here. It pretty much is what it seems, an ode to Stephen King.

Jack Woodford: Trial and Error: RATING = D-: If you’ve ever thought about writing, then I urge you desperately to never touch this book, and if you are ever given a copy throw it immediately in the garbage. This is the worst type of cynical tripe, utterly useless to anyone who wants to write serious material. If you follow its directions you might find yourself selling a few things here and there. If you have some talent you might even sell quite a bit. But none of it will be memorable, and unless you are totally without soul you will despise yourself for it. Woodford insults readers, writers, editors, and just about everyone else you can name. I have no doubt he is showing the writing world as he saw it, and a bleak and terrible hell it is. He never lies and tells anyone that he’s going to show them how to write, only how to make money from writing. (That’s why he gets a D- instead of an F.) He tells you to throw out your vocabulary. Even a person with a high school education knows 1000s of more words than he needs. He says never to rewrite. He says to steal time from your other job to "knock off" a short story or two. He is the archetype of a hack. In the end I feel sorry for the fellow. His real name was Josiah Pitts Woolfolk, and he died with $56 dollars to his name. He had been in Federal prison for a time for mail fraud, and in the end was typing but not selling from a seedy hotel in Richmond, Virginia. He died at 77, with his one apparently memorable piece of writing being this book. How depressing.

The Consistency of the King

Hemingway always said that he stopped a day’s writing at a point where he was still interested in finding out what happened next. In other words, he didn’t write himself out in one session but held back something for the next day. I always thought this showed a lot of discipline. The closest I’ve come to this is jotting down some notes at the end of a day’s writing to guide me the next day. Usually when I’m rolling I stop only with great reluctance, either out of exhaustion or simply because I have to go to class, or work, or sleep, or something of that nature. Yet, I know the key to completing any long piece of writing is consistency over time, not an explosion of activity over a short period.

Stephen King demonstrates the same thing. Some people have accused him of hiring a ghost writer because he’s so prolific. But, instead, he writes about 2000 words a day, or 7 to 8 pages, but does this day in and day out, rarely missing a day or shorting himself on his quota. At this rate, he can turn out a 180,000 word novel in three months. (The math works; I calculated it myself.)

Reading about the disciplined habits of Hemingway and King tells me how I could be more productive myself. However, I know there are times when my school work keeps me from making any quota I might wish for. And there are times when I let other activities interfere with writing, although relaxation is also essential to life and one can’t work constantly. How about you? Do you already exhibit the kind of discipline that Hemingway showed, or that King shows? Or do you find that real life and the work that pays your bills keeps you from being consistent with your writing? What might you do to improve your writing productivity while still maintaining your home life and your sanity?

Too Much Information

I had to laugh/gag when I read the piece that follows in David Morrell's Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing.

"Stephen King once told me about his vasectomy. The surgical procedure occurred in the morning. His physician advised him to go easy for the rest of the day. Instead, Steve went to work as soon as he got home. Only when he looked down and realized that he was sitting in a pool of blood and that his testicles were swollen did he finally quit."

Morrell was talking about the commitment to writing that successful authors have. I fear I'm not quite that committed. I draw the line at bleeding. Although, when my left shoulder was broken and my arm in a sling I did manage to type with that hand by resting it on the keyboard.

In other news, last night I saw fireflies in the woods behind my house. Took me back to childhood's summer evenings in Arkansas when we'd catch them by the dozens and keep them in a jar for their light.

So That's How It's Done?

David Morrell has a story called "The Typewriter," about an egotistical but untalented writer who buys a "magic" typewriter. No matter what drivel the writer tries to type, the typewriter turns it into commercial bestselling drivel, and the writer gets rich. (Until things go wrong, of course.)

Stephen King later used a somewhat similar idea for his "Word Processor of the Gods," and even moreso in Tommyknockers." But Joe Lansdale reported in "Bestsellers Guaranteed" that you don't need magic to make you a bestseller. You just need the "organization." This group will guarantee their clients to make the bestseller list by controlling all the elements of production, advertising, and distribution, and all the writer has to do is a little favor for them. Talent is not required.

The head of the organization in "Bestsellers Guaranteed" admits that he knows nothing about books. But then, he's not selling books, he's "selling success."

Preposterous. Insane. Absolute nonsense. This couldn't possibly be how it works in the real world of publishing.

Indeed?