And maybe some blue cheese crumbles on that.
So I picked up another Stephen King Book, for the first time in, oh, two years (that's a long time going between books by an author, especially one so prolific and in my preferred genres).
To describe the sensation of it, I must slip into my favorite metaphor, food. I eat hamburgers more than any other kind of food. I eat one at least once, if not twice a week. If I got to any restaurant regularly for any length of time, I will invariably pick up one of their burgers (or burger-derivatives). And I’m not just talking fast food places and Americana joints. I mean I’ve had burgers from steakhouses, seafood restaurants, Mexican food places, taco stands, everywhere.
I’ve had burgers with sautéed mushrooms, with grilled jalapenos, with pico de gallo; on whole wheat buns, on Texas Toast, on garlic butter ciabatta bread; bison burgers, ostrich burgers, burgers with shrimp; A1 Thick-n-Hearty sauce, remolaude sauce, pesto sauce.
And, by far, my favorite is a bacon-cheeseburger. The specifics of this vary through time and space, but I generally have it with at least the following: pickles, onions, and a spicy sauce. The sauce can be something mild like a Dijon mustard or KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce, or something as fired up as a chipotle mayonnaise or habanero ketchup.
But that's what I order.
And reading a Stephen King novel is like that. A bacon cheeseburger is not something spectacular. You do not order a bacon cheese-burger at your dinner with the queen. You do not go to culinary school to perfect the art of putting cheese onto bacon onto meat.
But in an airport layover, during a pit-stop of a cross-country drive, on your lunch break on a truly shitty day at work, nothing melts the world into quiet submission like a bacon cheeseburger. On those aimless Saturdays which feel like more should have been done but wasn’t; on those visits with old friends that seem like more should have been said, but wasn’t; on those days that are so frighteningly mundane, so much so that you begin to wonder if you are actually alive at all, nothing caps off those days with a sense of accomplishment, of “there-ness” as Doc O’Connor might say, as a bacon cheeseburger.
That’s a Stephen King book. He considers himself the Big Mac of Literature, but I think he’s being a bit too modest. Because there are some truly good bacon cheeseburgers out there, and there are some truly good Stephen King books out there. Reading his books, you can drown out the world, or you can say “I read 180 pages today. I did something.” And they are not thick, heavy things like a steak dinner. You don’t need to prepare it, to cut into the meat of it before hand, trying to go with the grain of the meat so that it will be tender to the bite. No, you just take it in your hands and start shoving it down, working through it in bites and chunks. And it’s oh-so-good. It’s nothing fancy, but it works.
His books tell a story, and they tell it well. The characters have voices, voices that live, salted lightly with reality. The books are paced in such a way that you can read blocks at a time, blurring through and yet still getting all the humor and tension of the story. You pick it up to be entertained, and as you read it, you are.
Except for the end.
Yeah, sorry, no metaphor there. Cell’s ending sucked, ’Salem’s Lot’s ending sucked, and It’s ending sucked. His endings suck. Oh there are exceptions… sorta. The Mist had a “Hitchcock ending”; Eyes of the Dragon has an ending that may not leave you wholly fulfilled, but at least fits the genre; and Needful Things wraps up everything if you don’t poke too closely.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I’m going to finish my Bag of Bones. It’s my lunch break, after all.
To describe the sensation of it, I must slip into my favorite metaphor, food. I eat hamburgers more than any other kind of food. I eat one at least once, if not twice a week. If I got to any restaurant regularly for any length of time, I will invariably pick up one of their burgers (or burger-derivatives). And I’m not just talking fast food places and Americana joints. I mean I’ve had burgers from steakhouses, seafood restaurants, Mexican food places, taco stands, everywhere.
I’ve had burgers with sautéed mushrooms, with grilled jalapenos, with pico de gallo; on whole wheat buns, on Texas Toast, on garlic butter ciabatta bread; bison burgers, ostrich burgers, burgers with shrimp; A1 Thick-n-Hearty sauce, remolaude sauce, pesto sauce.
And, by far, my favorite is a bacon-cheeseburger. The specifics of this vary through time and space, but I generally have it with at least the following: pickles, onions, and a spicy sauce. The sauce can be something mild like a Dijon mustard or KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce, or something as fired up as a chipotle mayonnaise or habanero ketchup.
But that's what I order.
And reading a Stephen King novel is like that. A bacon cheeseburger is not something spectacular. You do not order a bacon cheese-burger at your dinner with the queen. You do not go to culinary school to perfect the art of putting cheese onto bacon onto meat.
But in an airport layover, during a pit-stop of a cross-country drive, on your lunch break on a truly shitty day at work, nothing melts the world into quiet submission like a bacon cheeseburger. On those aimless Saturdays which feel like more should have been done but wasn’t; on those visits with old friends that seem like more should have been said, but wasn’t; on those days that are so frighteningly mundane, so much so that you begin to wonder if you are actually alive at all, nothing caps off those days with a sense of accomplishment, of “there-ness” as Doc O’Connor might say, as a bacon cheeseburger.
That’s a Stephen King book. He considers himself the Big Mac of Literature, but I think he’s being a bit too modest. Because there are some truly good bacon cheeseburgers out there, and there are some truly good Stephen King books out there. Reading his books, you can drown out the world, or you can say “I read 180 pages today. I did something.” And they are not thick, heavy things like a steak dinner. You don’t need to prepare it, to cut into the meat of it before hand, trying to go with the grain of the meat so that it will be tender to the bite. No, you just take it in your hands and start shoving it down, working through it in bites and chunks. And it’s oh-so-good. It’s nothing fancy, but it works.
His books tell a story, and they tell it well. The characters have voices, voices that live, salted lightly with reality. The books are paced in such a way that you can read blocks at a time, blurring through and yet still getting all the humor and tension of the story. You pick it up to be entertained, and as you read it, you are.
Except for the end.
Yeah, sorry, no metaphor there. Cell’s ending sucked, ’Salem’s Lot’s ending sucked, and It’s ending sucked. His endings suck. Oh there are exceptions… sorta. The Mist had a “Hitchcock ending”; Eyes of the Dragon has an ending that may not leave you wholly fulfilled, but at least fits the genre; and Needful Things wraps up everything if you don’t poke too closely.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I’m going to finish my Bag of Bones. It’s my lunch break, after all.