Let me tell you a story -- a young seven-year-old boy, his hair a sandy blond shag that has not seen a pair of scissors in a few months, was walking through a Salvation Army with his mother on a late summer day. His mother told him to look through the books and pick one out while she perused the lightly worn clothing and furniture. The young boy is digging through the children's books, the heavy covers of Dr. Seuss bent with use, the cover of Sarah Boynton's Hippos Go Berserk! unfortunately torn so much that the boy tosses it aside with disgust. All the Berenstein Bears books he owned already and has read through them more times than he cares to count. Children's books are just becoming too boring for him.
He takes the opportunity to dig through the adult shelf, pulling down books with strange titles like The Mammoth Hunters, The Name of the Rose, . . . and the Ladies of the Club, and an entire shelf devoted to some lady named Danielle Steel. A book with a yellow jacket catches his eye. He pulls the musty smelling hardcover off the shelf and immediately the image on the jacket catches his attention. It's a picture of a dog's snarling muzzle, salvia dripping menacingly from its jowls. The title is a simple single word, which the young boy does not understand. Cujo.
The boy is intrigued. He opens the book up, skims the pages expecting to see pictures. All books have pictures, right? There has to be more pictures of the dog. What kind of dog is it? Why does it look mad on the jacket? What is a cujo?
But there are no pictures. Only black words typed on slightly yellowing pages, the first fifty or so slightly water damaged, as if someone had been reading it too close to the river and dropped it in the water for a split second before scrambling after it. The boy turns to the first page, and is immediately and unequivocally sucked in . . . Once Upon a Time (many of his books started like that -- this must be some sort of fairy tale book about a dog, he thinks). Not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine. He killed a waitress named . . . IT is a fairy tale!!!
The boy slammed the book shut, ran to his mother and announced, "I want this book." His mother gave it a cursory glance and asked, "It looks like a big book. Will you be able to read it?"
"Of course," the boy replied, "It's about a dog. See?" He pointed at the image on the jacket. His mother gave it another quick glance, did not say anything and handed him a couple of dollars. "Here you go. Give this to the lady at the register. Tell her you're buying the book."
That night the boy sat down in bed, and his life was forever changed.
As you've probably figured out, the little boy was me. I don't know what my mother was thinking. I very seriously doubt she had ever heard of Cujo, or Stephen King, which was why she let me buy that book. Although I no longer have a copy of that particular book, I found the image to the right online, and this is exactly what I showed her that day. Whether my hands were somehow covering the image, or she just glanced at it, I don't know. All I know is that Cujo was the first adult novel I ever read and I have been hooked on books ever since. This is the reason I have developed a soft spot in my heart for Stephen King. You never forget you're first. I cannot remember just how many of his books I have read. I am guessing that over the course of the past 24 years (of active adult reading), I think I have read nearly all of them.
When I (re-)started this blog, I began by reading Carrie, his first novel published in 1974. I then moved on to 'salem's Lot (1975) and finished that in short order. I figured what the hell, why not read another one, and since I am reading them in order, I picked up a copy of The Shining (1977). I finished The Shining less than two hours ago, and needless to say I am a little creeped out. It's one book I had never read. I remember watching the Stanley Kubrick movie (Herrrrrrrreee's Johnny!) when I was somewhere around ten or eleven years old. As creepy as Jack Nicholson was in that film, it was the twin girls and the blood pouring out of the elevator that had scared me the most. For those reasons, I was hesitant to ever pick up the book.
I guess I was lucky enough to attend a pretty progressive high school. In the school library, nearly everyone of Stephen King's novels was available to check out. All through high school, instead of reading The Grapes of Wrath or Romeo and Juliet, or whatever great work of literature that I was supposed to read, I was checking out Stephen King books and reading them, as well as historical fiction novels like John Jakes' Kent Family Chronicles. The funny thing is, I earned my Bachelor's of Art in Literature, and a second Bachelor's in History. If you were to look at my high school grades, I consistently earned C's and D's in History and English. I was in my own world, reading what interested me, and ignored what the school felt I needed to learn. I did the bare minium to get by.
The Shining stood on the shelf of the school library, untouched by me because of some fear of creepy kids and bloody elevators and redrum. It was not until I was a 31 year old adult that I was able to tackle the book. As usual, the book is always better than the movie. Without giving too much away to those of you who have not read it, the book does not feature creepy twin girls, it does not have an elevator full of blood, and the novel is centered around a five-year-old boy, not his father as in the movie.
The book did not disappoint in the least. I loved it and regret not reading it earlier in life. For those of you that have watched the Stanley Kubrick movie, and loved it (despite what I believe was the miscasting of Shelley Duvall), I suggest strongly that you read the book. The story in the movie is so different from the story in the book that even if you think you know what is coming, you will more than likely be wrong.
I was thinking that I would change the focus of this blog, call it My Year with Stephen King, and logically the next story in the progression of Stephen King's career is a title he published in 1977 called Rage. Never heard of it, you may say. It would not be a surprise. He published it under his pseudonym Richard Bachmann, and he has since requested that it be taken out of print. It is Stephen King's only piece of written fiction that is out of print.
I will take a break from Stephen King, for now, while I track down this elusive story. I am switching gears, to a non-fiction yarn called A Crack in the Edge of the World. Written by Simon Winchester, at it's center is the devastation of the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, with a good bit of tectonics thrown in for good measure.
So until next time, Thank You, and Good Night
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