A Brief Guide to Stephen King

by Paul Simpson

  Unlike the previous two collections of short stories, where there seems to have been more care taken over the placement of the tales, the running order in Nightmares & Dreamscapes seems a little haphazard, with two of the pastiches (‘Umney’s Last Case’ and ‘The Doctor’s Case’) together, but not printed alongside ‘Crouch End’, which similarly owes a debt to an earlier writer. While a couple of the stories feel as if they were written more by Richard Bachman than Stephen King, only one had appeared pseudonymously before – ‘The Fifth Quarter’ marked King’s single use of the pen-name John Swithen for its publication in Cavalier.

  Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King was an eight-part TV series that was first broadcast in July and August 2006 on the cable network TNT, although only five of the stories came from the collection after which it was named. ‘Crouch End’ starred Claire Forlani and Eoin Bailey; ‘Umney’s Last Case’ featured William H. Macy; ‘The End of the Whole Mess’ starred Henry Thomas (E. T.); ‘The Fifth Quarter’ centred around Jeremy Sisto; and King perennial Steven Weber (The Shining/Desperation) joined Kim Delaney in ‘You Know They Got A Hell of a Band’. (The other stories are referenced under their respective collections.)

  In addition to the dollar babies based on the stories, Dolan’s Cadillac became a movie in 2010, starring Christian Slater as the mobster in one of the better Stephen King adaptations. (An earlier version with Sylvester Stallone and Kevin Bacon didn’t get beyond preproduction.) The Night Flier was filmed in 1997 with NCIS: LA’s Miguel Ferrer excellent as Richard Dees – the movie was an antidote to the ‘rehabilitation’ of vampires prevalent at the time. A sequel was proposed in 2005 (simply known as The Night Flier 2), in which King was interested enough to do a rewrite of Mark Pavia’s script; the project has not moved forward subsequently. ‘Chattery Teeth’ became one of the instalments in the portmanteau TV movie Quicksilver Highway, which otherwise featured a story by Clive Barker.

  ‘The Moving Finger’ formed the series finale for the syndicated horror anthology show Monsters in 1991. ‘The Ten O’Clock People’ was optioned by Tom Holland, who was hoping that Captain America’s Chris Evans would take the lead; the film was expected to enter production in autumn 2013.

  ‘Home Delivery’ and ‘Rainy Season’ were adapted for comics by Glenn Chadbourne and published in The Secretary of Dreams in 2006.

  Hearts in Atlantis (Scribner, September 1999)

  The Low Men in Yellow Coats are encountered in Harwich, Connecticut in 1960 by eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield, after he becomes friends with an older man, Ted Brautigan. Ted is linked to the Dark Tower, and is hiding from the ‘low men’ – the can-toi, servants of the Crimson King. After Bobby’s friend Carol Gerber is beaten up by bullies, Ted helps to look after her, but ends up in a confrontation with Bobby’s mother, Liz, who has always been suspicious of Ted. Liz betrays Ted to the low men, and Bobby is nearly captured by them too, although Ted offers to work for them if they let Bobby go. Bobby deals with the bullies, and in 1965 learns from Carol that Ted is now free of his captors.

  Hearts in Atlantis follows student Peter Riley in 1966. At the University of Maine, a game of Hearts starts to become addictive for the students, who are sheltered from the realities of the draft for the Vietnam War. Peter falls in love with Carol Gerber, who tells him about Bobby carrying her after she was attacked by the bullies; wanting to prevent injustices, she is becoming addicted to activism. After Carol leaves, Peter manages to cure his own addiction, and later in life bemoans how he and his fellow students failed to live up to their own ideals.

  ‘Blind Willie’ is set in 1983, and focuses on one of the bullies who two decades earlier beat up Carol Gerber and also stole Bobby’s baseball glove. Each afternoon he goes blind for a time at the exact moment he was temporarily blinded during a fire fight in the Vietnam War. He has kept a scrapbook about Carol’s involvement in terrorism and her death in a house fire.

  ‘Why We’re in Vietnam’ jumps forward to 1999, where John Sullivan, Bobby Garfield’s other main childhood friend, attends the funeral of a fellow vet, and recalls an incident involving one of the Hearts players, Ronnie Malenfant. Sullivan is haunted by an old Vietnamese woman and dies on the way home as objects apparently fall from the sky – and clutched in his hand is Bobby’s glove.

  ‘Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling’ concludes the book at Sullivan’s funeral, as Bobby returns to Harwich. Carol is there; she took on a fake identity and is now a lecturer. The glove has been returned because Ted somehow wrote Bobby’s 1999 address in it. Bobby and Carol briefly reunite.

  Hearts in Atlantis was simply described as ‘new fiction’ on the cover of its first American edition: the two novellas and three short stories are considerably more interlinked than King’s earlier collections of longer works, Different Seasons or Four Past Midnight. Some readers of King regard the book as a novel subdivided into sections with different narrators (like Christine) rather than a collection.

  The titular novella is set at the University of Maine at the exact times that King himself studied there, and is a wonderful evocation of student (in)activity during the period from someone who experienced it. As he does on many occasions, King took liberties with the geography of the campus. ‘I have tried to remain true to the spirit of the age,’ King commented, and he admitted to Deadline’s Katie Couric, ‘When you look back on it, everything about the 1960s seems kind of plastic fantastic and kind of fake.’ The round of press interviews that had been set up to accompany the release of Hearts in Atlantis was cancelled after King’s near-fatal accident in June 1999, and on the rare occasions that he spoke with the media, the questions were, understandably, focused on his injuries and recovery rather than the current work.

  Some of King’s earlier works – Insomnia and The Eyes of the Dragon in particular – have links to the ‘Dark Tower’ series, but none is as steeped in Roland the gunslinger’s quest as Hearts in Atlantis, although the stories are accessible to readers who don’t have any knowledge of King’s epic. Ted Brautigan becomes key to the final book of the saga, and Low Men In Yellow Coats provides a great deal of information about how the can-toi operate in our world. Readers of the series understand the significance of the rose petals that Ted sends Bobby far more than their recipient does: they come from the rose of creation, a central tenet of those books.

  There are other links to The Eyes of the Dragon and to The Stand. In the latter, we learn that Randall Flagg has appeared in many places previously; in the former, he knows how to be ‘dim’ – a trick that Carol learns from a dangerous and clever person, such as Raymond Fiegler, the leader of her terrorist cell. Note the initials: R.F.

  ‘Blind Willie’ has an interesting history: the version in Hearts in Atlantis is the third version of the story to see print in five years. It originally appeared in Antaeus magazine in 1994, and was then revised for King’s self-published Six Stories in 1997. The final incarnation is by far the strongest.

  A feature film entitled Hearts in Atlantis was released in 2001, with Anthony Hopkins as Ted Brautigan, and Anton Yelchin as Bobby Garfield. It was only based on the first and last stories in the collection, with screenplay writer William Goldman and director Scott Hicks adding a line in to explain the title, which otherwise would be meaningless. Understandably, the links to the ‘Dark Tower’ series were excised from the story – according to Hicks: ‘We shot a scene in which there is a vague clue when Bobby reads in a newspaper about the FBI recruiting psychics . . . and in fact that’s true, that happened. And that’s what originally Stephen King based his Low Men on’ – and with no mention of Carol’s descent into terrorism, the reunion at the funeral is between a grown-up Bobby and Carol’s daughter.

  The Plant

  (Philtrum Press: November 1982/November 1983/November 1985;

  Revised e-book downloads: July–December 2000; now available from www.stephenking.com

  NB: Although The Plant has not been released (yet) by a mainstream publisher,
its easy availability to the public via King’s website warrants its inclusion. Since this will be a new story to many Stephen King fans, spoilers are avoided here.

  Success comes at a price, as Zenith House Publishers learn when their fortunes seem to turn around after they receive a plant. Although they don’t realize it at the time, it has been sent by potential author, Carlos Detweiller, whose book True Tales of Demon Infestations they refused to publish. Detweiller had rather spooked his potential publishers by sending some photos along with his manuscript – in which he appeared to be committing human sacrifice. After they called the cops on him, he decided to get revenge . . .

  The Plant has one of the longest and most convoluted histories of any Stephen King project. It began when King and Peter Straub were starting work on the first draft of The Talisman in 1982. According to a posting Straub made online in July 1996, at that time he used to write all his first drafts in longhand in large journals; and while Straub was working on the adventures of Jack Sawyer in one corner of the room, King started writing in one of the journals, having ‘a little fun’. Since Straub had given him a journal, King thought it was appropriate to write an epistolary story about a publishing house.

  That Christmas, Straub was one of the lucky recipients of an unusual greetings card from King – the first part of The Plant. Two further instalments followed, at Christmas 1983 and 1985 (King’s gift to his friends in 1984 was a version of The Eyes of the Dragon), but when King came to write the next part, he realized that the plot was veering very close to that of Little Shop of Horrors, which had, until then, been a mostly forgotten Roger Corman B-movie from 1960, but had recently been adapted into a highly successful off-Broadway musical.

  Mentioned in various books about King, The Plant started to gain a reputation of almost mythic proportions, particularly after it was highly praised by Harlan Ellison. Copies of the text could be obtained, albeit illegally, but it did seem as if it would never be made available, nor would it be finished.

  However, in 2000, King published an e-book novella to great acclaim. Riding the Bullet (see Everything’s Eventual, below) was such a success that he decided to release the e-book of The Plant via his website, on an honour system: those who read it could pay one dollar for the privilege if they chose. If sufficient people paid, then King would release further instalments, and even possibly continue with new sections that hadn’t been seen before by anyone. It could, King announced, be ‘Big Publishing’s worst nightmare’.

  In the end, six of these instalments became available: the first four covered the content of the three Christmas letters, the last two were new. The proportion of payers dropped significantly – although King still made a healthy profit on the project – and King pulled the plug after the sixth chapter, which brought various plotlines to a conclusion. ‘The Plant is not finished online. It is only on hiatus,’ he said at the time. ‘I am no more done than the producers of [reality series] Survivor are done. I am simply in the process of fulfilling my other commitments.’ Initially new chapters were promised for summer 2001, with readers needing to pay up front before they downloaded, but they never materialized. Talking in 2006, King noted that ‘the story was just OK, and I ran out of inspiration. It remains unfinished.’

  15

  A NEW HORIZON: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY TALES

  Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales

  (Scribner, March 2002)

  Howard Cottrell is the unfortunate gentleman who is the patient in ‘Autopsy Room Four’; he wouldn’t mind quite so much if he was really dead. ‘The Man in the Black Suit’ who spins a web of deceit haunts young Gary throughout his life, but will he be able to escape him in the end? ‘All That You Love Will Be Carried Away’ deals with a travelling salesman who wants to commit suicide but isn’t sure how it will look to those left behind. ‘The Death of Jack Hamilton’ is dissected in great detail by John Dillinger’s gang member Homer Van Meter, while New York Times reporter Fletcher finds himself in considerable trouble ‘In the Deathroom’. Two stories related to the ‘Dark Tower’ series follow: Roland the gunslinger encounters ‘The Little Sisters of Eluria’, and we met Richard ‘Dinky’ Earnshaw, whose talents are put to questionable use in ‘Everything’s Eventual’.

  ‘L.T.’s Theory of Pets’ is put to the test when L.T. and his wife buy each other animals. Horror writer Richard Kinnell discovers that a painting can change – and when it does, beware, as ‘The Road Virus Heads North’. ‘Lunch at the Gotham Café’ is supposed to be an attempt to patch up a marriage, but turns into a life or death struggle with a homicidal maître d’hotel. ‘That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French’ describes a series of events that seem to repeat themselves, and writer Mike Enslin is very strongly encouraged not to try to debunk the myths that have arisen regarding room ‘1408’ at the Hotel Dolphin in New York. Student Alan Parker must decide who should go ‘Riding the Bullet’ and accompany George Staub on a death ride; and cleaner Darlene Pullen is given a ‘Luckey Quarter’ [sic] which she believes may lead to fame and fortune.

  Everything’s Eventual is markedly different from King’s earlier collections of short stories. For a start, there are no new stories within its pages: everything had appeared in magazines, as an audio story, or as an e-book – ‘The Death of Jack Hamilton’ saw print in the 24/31 December 2001 edition of the New Yorker, a mere three months before the book saw print. The new book’s contents were ordered by chance; according to a note King put on the contents page, he simply used a suit of spades plus a joker from a card deck to create a random selection. This makes the coincidence of the proximity of the two stories connected to the ‘Dark Tower’ even more surprising.

  Also unusual is the way the author’s notes are provided: in previous volumes, these have been at the end, for the reader to peruse or skip over. Although that option is of course available for the reader of Everything’s Eventual, because each piece concludes with a note by King, they are harder to ignore. These show the wide range of ideas that influenced King during the writing of the pieces, as well as hints about how some of them changed during the editing process.

  ‘Riding the Bullet’ was King’s first foray into the world of e-book publishing; when it was released by Simon & Schuster in 2000, the demand promptly overwhelmed the server, and there were numerous crashes before people were able to get hold of a copy. Many stores offered it free of charge, rather than at $2.50 as intended.

  Four of the stories originally appeared in prestigious magazine the New Yorker, with ‘The Man in the Black Suit’ winning not just a World Fantasy Award in 1995, but also the O. Henry Award for Best Short Fiction that year, much to the consternation of many in the industry who persisted in dismissing King as some form of horror-writing hack.

  Two tales – ‘1408’ and ‘In the Deathroom’ – first came to the public’s attention on the audiobook Blood and Smoke, read by King himself. At the time, the author stated that the latter would remain an audio-only story, but the text appeared in the compilation Secret Windows, released to accompany On Writing. Portions of ‘1408’ appeared in that non-fiction guide, as King demonstrated how a story changed during the drafting process.

  ‘Autopsy Room Four’ was adapted for the TNT series Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Mind of Stephen King, with Richard Thomas as the unfortunate victim; Tom Berenger starred in the same series’ version of ‘The Road Virus Heads North’. Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack starred in Mikael Håfström’s version of ‘1408’ from a script by Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski. An alternative ending was filmed after audiences complained that the original was depressing, and that is the one more commonly available on home video versions. Neither follows King’s original! Mick Garris wrote and directed a film of Riding the Bullet in 2004, with Jonathan Jackson and David Arquette. A number of the stories have also formed the basis for dollar babies.

  ‘The Road Virus Heads North’ was adapted by Glenn Chadbourne for the comic book collection The
Secretary of Dreams in 2006; ‘In the Deathroom’ appeared in the second volume in 2010.

  Just After Sunset (Scribner, November 2008)

  David searches for his missing fiancée ‘Willa’ following a train crash, and has to face some harsh truths. The Gingerbread Girl Emily has to run for her life when she encounters the new inhabitant of a large mansion on the Florida coastline. ‘Harvey’s Dream’ starts to scare his wife Janet when the details in it seem to be coming true. Author John Dykstra has to call on the tougher qualities of his pen name Rick Hardin to deal with trouble at a ‘Rest Stop’. Artist Richard Sifkitz discovers that using his ‘Stationary Bike’ makes him some very powerful enemies. New Yorker Scott Staley begins to acquire ‘The Things They Left Behind’ from the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. High School ‘Graduation Afternoon’ turns horribly sour for Janice and her boyfriend’s rich family when catastrophe strikes. Patient ‘N’ is only the first person to become concerned about a circle of stones near Ackerman’s Field: is it a gateway to another reality? ‘The Cat From Hell’ is the target of a professional hit, but the furry feline is more than a match for his putative murderer. A wife hears from her dead husband in ‘The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates’, and a ‘Mute’ hitchhiker may be able to solve some problems for travelling book salesman Monette. ‘Ayana’ is a little girl with a gift of healing which is passed on in a mysterious way, and a portable toilet becomes ‘A Very Tight Place’ from which Curtis Johnson has to try to escape.

  As King explains in his introduction, his output of short stories had dropped in recent years, partly because of pressure of work, but his interest in the format was revived when he was asked to edit The Best American Short Stories 2007 by Katrina Kenison. Over half the contents of this collection stem from this period, with one previously unpublished story (‘N.’), and one classic, ‘The Cat From Hell’, from 1977, which King believed he had included in one of the earlier collections, and had to be shown tables of contents for the previous books before he accepted he was wrong. King often quotes the story as an example of his use of the ‘gross out’. The book won a Stoker Award for short fiction the same year as Duma Key won for the longer form, something that greatly pleased King.