Monk

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"Duma Key" by Stephen King

I don't think I've seen a book promoted in this big an e-way before, with it's own movie-like trailer. I remember that I was going to try King's "It", but as I read more of an available excerpt, I lost interest. I stay more under Koontz's spell. But my curiosity is piqued, again. The King name seems to command more reading, like we owe it to him. I don't know. Maybe he, himself, is possessed of the supernatural.

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Stephen King is an editor for this year's edition of The Best American Short Stories, and he is hawking the volume at the Times. Here is a flavor of his style and what he looks for in a short story:

Talent can’t help itself; it roars along in fair weather or foul, not sparing the fireworks. It gets emotional. It struts its stuff. If these stories have anything in common, it’s that sense of emotional involvement, of flipped-out amazement. I look for stories that care about my feelings as well as my intellect, and when I find one that is all-out emotionally assaultive — like “Sans Farine,” by Jim Shepard — I grab that baby and hold on tight. Do I want something that appeals to my critical nose? Maybe later (and, I admit it, maybe never). What I want to start with is something that comes at me full-bore, like a big, hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky. I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown clean out of myself for a while, as violently as a fighter pilot who pushes the eject button in his F-111. I certainly don’t want some fraidy-cat’s writing school imitation of Faulkner, or some stream-of-consciousness about what Bob Dylan once called “the true meaning of a pear.”

I was also struck by the point made by one Amazon.com reviewer:

Stephen King starts out well, never once using the word "diversity" in his introduction. This was a welcome relief to me, because for too many years to count the "The Best American Short Stories" series has felt compelled to include every year a black short story, a Hispanic short story, a gay short story, and maybe even an Albanian Jewish short story, all in an effort to produce the most diversified, but not necessarily the best, collection of short stories available. As somebody else once said, "One man's multiculturalist is another man's mediocre poet." The same applies to short story writers. Stephen King, to his credit, never confuses the aims of diversity with the standards of quality.

I'm tempted. If only time and money were not such draconian tyrants over our lives. This book would have to be somewhere lower down on my wish list. Indeed, as far as Stephen King goes, I'm oddly hankering to take on his mammoth "It", which I have never read, and which seems to be haunting me these days and nights, "Come and get me! Read me, read me, bwahahahaha!"

( Stephen King )

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“If I know anything, I know scary, and giving this president and this out-of-control Congress two more years to screw up our future is downright terrifying.”

-- Stephen King

Andrew Sullivan posted this yesterday for Halloween, and I find King interesting. Of course, Senator John Kerry is pretty scary, too, but that perhaps entails more moral complexity than you will find in a Stephen King book.

It seems only fair to also mention that King has a new book out that I am interested in giving a run. It is enjoying some good reviews, as King may have outdone himself and firmed up his writing reputation: Lisey's Story.

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