Notes from the K-Hole

I'm in a K-Hole. I'm not talking Ketamine here, though, I'm talking Stephen King. The Stephen K-Hole is a special place that happens during an obsessive phase of imbibing the works of Mr. King where you start seeing ridiculous self-references in everything of his that you're reading. At least it is for me.

I see self-references in many things, so this isn't an uncommon occurrence in my life. But entering the K-Hole is a little weirder, and I feel like that's when things start to get strange elsewhere, too. Let's back up.

I've been dipping in and out of this K-Hole for the last few years, starting with The Dark Half and incorporating The Shining, Cujo, The Dead Zone, The Long Walk, Skeleton Crew, The Regulators and the audiobook of On Writing. I'm actually just finishing up The Regulators now and starting the On Writing audiobook for the second time (the first was almost a year ago). Desperation has been staked out at the library for the next step.

Movie-wise it includes The Shining in two different settings (at home and at the theater), The Dark Half, a little bit of Misery, The Running Man, Stand By Me, Maximum Overdrive, half of Sleepwalkers and most satisfyingly It the miniseries.

I won't go into too much detail, as that's already working itself out in Myopic Biopic, but let me try to sum up my obsession with Stephen King and also the recent revelations I've had into a suitable(ish) length for web content.

First off, let's get it out of the way and go ahead and discuss King's flaws, because I can imagine there are a great many snobs out there (although maybe not on this site in particular) saying, "Hey John, what are you, 12? Why are you obsessively reading Stephen King at the age of 29?"

Years ago I would have agreed with you, having left King to my adolescence without a backwards glance at the age of 14 or 15. Then when I was about 24 I picked up a copy of The Tommyknockers that had been given to me when I was nearing the end of my childhood King phase. That got me curious again and I started going through other works that I liked as a kid such as It, The Stand and Different Seasons (well at least The Body and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption).

This was before the K-Hole started, though. And although I was starting to see what I enjoyed about King again, along with why I stopped reading him, the obsession hadn't really started. That didn't come until I hit The Dark Half.

Sorry for the diversion. We need to get his flaws out there. He can't end a book for his life. This may have changed in his later work, I still have a lot of it to go through, but I can confidently say that of the books I just listed, none of them has a satisfactory ending, and some of them just devolve into pure gibberish in the final pages, possibly even starting to go seriously downhill halfway through. So far The Regulators has had the best ending, but still it's just kind of eh.

Sometimes I feel like if I read one more first and last name introduction come out of a character's mouth I'll just start screaming and never stop. People don't talk like that. Maybe they did one day (I have my doubts), but they don't today. And the ridiculously unrealistic sex scenes that come out of nowhere need to stop. Leave that for Miller and Bukowski, they were much better at it. And for the last time Mr. King, I cannot dig it, so please please please stop asking if I can.

But in response to the question that runs like a thread through the short stories in Skeleton Crew, "Do you love?" I say yes, Mr. King, I do love. Deep in my heart I have too much affection for your work to be truly mad.

I don't think that most people give him the credit that he's due, either. True fans like myself and a few other devotees that I know give him his proper props, and obviously he's sold millions of books so he's widely read, but I don't feel like people really understand what part he's played in general American fiction.

For example, most people don't associate him with Stand By Me readily, although at least for my age group that's a highly remembered and regarded movie. Same thing with The Running Man, although it's not as highly regarded. Probably more people associate him with The Shawshank Redemption but even there I feel like not everyone sees that as a King movie. And the sheer volume of what he's created and what's been further distilled, for better or worse, into movies and television series is completely astounding. I mean, he's been actively writing to certain degrees for the last forty years or so, being consistently published since 1974. That's crazy.

But then again, he also wrote and directed Maximum Overdrive. I'm sorry if that's a low blow (although I know people who truly do love that movie (unfortunately I'm not one of them)), but it amplifies everything that I dislike about King's writing while not getting at the essence of what I like about his work.

That essence is the point in the story where he reveals why he's there personally. There's always one passage (I feel like it's usually about two thirds or three fourths of the way through, but the later the better because the rest of the story is usually him trying to figure his way out of it) that openly states what he's trying to get at in his head, whatever reason he feels that story is important.

And I guess I just got there. That's why I'm here, to encourage people to celebrate Stephen King for whatever reason they can find (even though he clearly doesn't need any advertising). That's just my personal reason for delving into the K-Hole. You can make your own K-Hole anytime you like.

Let me leave off by addressing the glory of the It miniseries. It was a particular revelation to me that that series was released in 1990, which is the magical year I've already addressed a few times as the same year two of my other obsessions were released, 90210 and Twin Peaks, although It was the only one of the three that I actually became obsessed with during its airing. Twin Peaks I didn't get into until around 1997 and 90210 in 2000, during its syndication directly following its leaving the air.

Even though the adult sections are lackluster and the giant spider at the end is laughable (at least they cut out the turtle in space), the scenes of childhood were supremely satisfying, with full acknowledgement that the reminiscent triggers were also firing.

There are some rumors that Warner Bros. is moving on a remake of It, an R-rated feature-length. If that's so, I would like to put in my one suggestion right now, which is to include the song "Hold on 2 Happiness" by Mugison (www.last.fm/music/Mugison/_/Hold+on+2+Happiness" as a main piece in the soundtrack.