But I'm really just a sensitive artist
So, I did not actually commit seppuku after the Second Great New York Vomit Incident, but it was a near thing. You’ll hear about it soon enough.
I finished reading Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story a while ago, and I’ve wanted to say a lot about it since, but in between all my throwing up and new job crap, I think I’m just going to summarize. Sort-of spoilers for the novel, although it won’t really make much sense to anyone who hasn’t read it.
Here’s my theory: Stephen King loves to remix his own work.
Hear me out on this, seriously. He's put forth a very large body of work. It's inevitable that themes, characters, and plot devices are going to get revisited; this is even more likely considering how he intertwines his book universes. That's not really a crime because the whole writing world already does that, see any romance novel series. And if you manage to tie up nearly everything you write inside one universe, that’s impressive just for the task of keeping track of it. I’d love to see his concordance files.
Sometimes he does his remixing very well; sometimes it bombs spectacularly. Dreamcatcher, which is a remix of It, The Body, and The Tommyknockers, is an example of a bomber. Cell is more of a remix of The Stand, just with more zombies. However, Cell has a distinct storyline of its own, and I think it manages to come out pretty well, even if it is a prime example of "That Stephen King, he sure waffles a lot when it comes to committing to writing an ending! Ha! Ha!"
If I were trying to pick the elements out, plot-wise, character-wise, plot device-wise, and writing structure-wise, Lisey's Story reminded me of Bag of Bones, Rose Madder, and Talisman, all layered into some bizarre mixed drink. Possibly, then it is set on fire and thrown into someone’s face. After all, this is the same man who once said, "There's an audience out there, and the key is to kick it in the ass."
I didn’t hate the story, but I didn’t enjoy it very much for about the first half of the book. Part of it was pacing, part of it was the characters, and part of it was the goddamn diction. The second half of the book moved along much more quickly, had more action, and tied up most of the loose ends and explained most of the mysterious words and references from the first half. Given, the whole point of the loose ends and the inexplicable words are to tweak the interest and draw you into the second half, but it was still… annoying in a way I’m having a hard time articulating. And I’m not used to Stephen King being annoying in that particular way.
The thing about Stephen King’s diction and sentence structures and general language is that they’re pretty damn distinct. He himself has stated that they’re part of what people tend to like about his work. For the most part, his characters talk like real people (even if they’re almost always from Maine) and it works. In almost all his other books, he’s mastered the skill that I wish like hell most Brokeback Mountain writers would figure out-how to infer an accent or a voice without butchering the actual written word all to pieces. He can usually keep the balance between the phonetic spelling/pronunciation or a word and the correct spelling/pronunciation; he can imply an accent without writing it out every single time; he can get his point across without sacrificing the readability of the page.
But this time, it was just a lot harder to wait for the revelations. Everything did get tied up, but I got tired of the time skips back and forward-- a device that I thought he used pretty well in It-- because rather than intrigue me about the characters of Lisey and Scott, I just disliked the both of them. It was clumsy, hiding behind the guise of Lisey’s deliberate memory blocks. And Zack MacCool wasn’t much of a villain. He had a buildup that led nowhere and sort of fizzled out. I wasn’t heavily invested in the characters as I’ve been in the past.
He uses the word “smuck” in place of “fuck” for most of the book, and there’s a reason for that. But by the time the reason was revealed, I was too damn tired of reading that word over. Same deal with waiting to find out what a “bool” actually was. And… Boo’ya Moon. I dunno. Normally I can deal with whatever weird names he makes up, but this book just had a few too many of them. The readability of the words on the page itself was compromised for me; I kept getting jolted out of the story.
Now, the good. As for Boo’ya Moon, the name’s not to my taste, but I do like the idea of it and that was probably what saved the book from being another Dreamcatcher for me. For all that it’s fun to josh about how often Stephen King brings up writers and writing in his work, you can’t deny that he does know a goodish bit about both. And his descriptions of Boo’ya Moon did make me nod my head in a weird sort of recognition. I’ve never gone to his world, but all writers have their worlds and even if I don’t understand his, I can get behind the idea that it’s there for him. I can get behind the idea that everyone has one.
"I think most kids have a place they go to when they're scared or lonely or just plain bored," Lisey's troubled sister, Amanda, tells her. "They call it NeverLand or the Shire, Boo'ya Moon if they've got big imaginations and make it up for themselves. Most of them forget. The talented few - like Scott - harness their dreams and turn them into horses."
That stuck with me. There’s a theme King has done before, and this time he did remix it well. The issue of the Long Boy and the pool and the dreamers and the trees are never really explained, but I didn’t mind that because that was sort of the point. None of us see the same worlds.
But the end fizzled for me. All the real world stuff was bizarre. The big secret of the family madness just never got resolved well. It came to an ugly halting mess in the story, which I can respect because that’s often how things go. But it never resonated. It sits there and it doesn’t even connect well with Lisey’s family problems. It was like he couldn’t decide which should have gotten more precedence in the story.
Going back to text readability for a moment again, Scott’s last written revelations about his family madness as connected to his father and brother was just sort of a last kick to the junk. I can’t buy it. I can buy that a grown man will regress his speech to that of a child, but having it actually written out as what the man wrote in a state of emotion was just too hamhanded. I can accept it in theory and it could happen. But seeing it on the page as words didn’t ring true. It might have been right, but it didn’t read well. Normally King can keep that balance, between what sounds good and what sounds right, and what looks good and what looks right. But it just seemed off.
But it might all be me. I find I can’t articulate myself well on this book at the moment; this whole reaction is a muddle. So, I think I’ll give the book some distance and maybe reread it after a while again, just to see if I react the same way to it. With knowing what to expect in terms of the annoying stuff this time, it might be easier and I’ll find it’s really a good book after all.
Someone else said about the book, “It's not that it was so bad - it was just so very average.” I agree. I know he can do better than this. I’ve seen him do better than this, using the same elements, the same themes. That’s why reading this one just wasn’t satisfying. The remix didn’t outdo the originals. Also, I think he and I have different perceptions of what the euphemism “tossing the salad” means.
Now I shall wait for Stephen King to use his dread powers of darkness to reach out from Maine and kill me dead.
Ah, well. Doing a new music post soon, so the old songs will come down. Have a quick discussion of various world leaders.
ThorneScratch: I owe you an email. I will send it
twigcollins: You owe me nothing. Except twenty dollars.
ThorneScratch: Fair enough. I think I stole it from your pocket in the first place.
twigcollins: This is a dollar bill with 20 written on it. Don't think that will work twice.
ThorneScratch: And a picture of Stalin! …In retrospect, I should have picked a different dictator, but he was the easiest to remember how to draw. Except Hitler, but money with Hitler on it just seems wrong.
twigcollins: In Soviet Russia, money spend you! Lenin is way easier to draw than Stalin. Very iconic with his pointy goatee. He worked that goatee.
ThorneScratch: A true fashion mogul.
twigcollins: I love Soviet iconography
ThorneScratch: If I had a nickel for every time you said that...
twigcollins: That's not a nickel. You just tore off a part of the dollar.
ThorneScratch: I wrote a five on it!
twigcollins: I'm starting to believe you're not the State Treasury.
ThorneScratch: But I have a badge and everything. Even if that's not my name on it.
twigcollins: It looks like a picture of the Queen.
ThorneScratch: The live one or one of the dead ones?
twigcollins: I thought they were all the same queen.
ThorneScratch: Well, we’ve established in past conversations that the pope is a werewolf. The queen could be a zombie or a vampire. It's plausible.
twigcollins: Who is a ninja?
ThorneScratch: Logically, you'd think it was the Prime Minster of Japan but I actually don't believe so for a very important reason. You remember the previous Prime Minister?
twigcollins: With the hair?
ThorneScratch: Exactly. There's no way he's covering up that hair with a hood or mask.
twigcollins: Like Zack. It's a very pointy hood.
ThorneScratch: Yeah. Koizumi Junichiro cannot conceal that glorious mane. It goes against all laws of mankind. So, I guess the ninja world leader is.... shit, maybe it's a Canadian. No one would ever suspect.
twigcollins: Dude. They are stealthy.
ThorneScratch: Yes! You never see them coming.
twigcollins: And nobody remembers they're there. An entire country of ninja vanish.
ThorneScratch: Leaving only a haunting hint of maple syrup scent in the air.
ThorneScratch: ...was that too much?
twigcollins: Probably, but with Canada it's better to overdo.
ThorneScratch: Then I'm going to go for broke on Canadian stereotypes and say that their deadly ninja training is no doubt reflected in the enthusiasm for hockey.
twigcollins: If you listen carefully at night in Michigan, you can hear the eerie sounds of their training on the winds.
twigcollins: "... ich, ni, san, eh?"
twigcollins: "Ich, ni, san, eh?"
ThorneScratch: ROFL LMAO
ThorneScratch: That is the best thing, ever. But just to reflect back on the Queen. Seriously: zombie or vampire?
twigcollins: Vampire. Zombies are too low-class.
ThorneScratch: That's true. You know what, I'd pay good money to see the Queen fight Lestat.
twigcollins: Dude, she would totally p0wn him
ThorneScratch: I know, that's why it's so great! I'm totally willing to believe Cheney is a zombie, though.
twigcollins: He's like a cyborg. A cyborg zombie
ThorneScratch: But the problem with that, is who the hell is controlling Cheney in that case? What voodoo cybernetics mastermind holds his strings?
twigcollins: He's AI. He's gone rogue and has developed his own intelligence.
ThorneScratch: …Well, we're boned.
Mind you, this conversation took place before the State of the Union address, the entire duration of which I was terrified that Cheney was about to try and eat Nancy Pelosi. I was also wondering when Pelosi was going to whack Bush on the top of the head with her gavel because her very positioning seemed to demand it. This is why I can’t be Speaker of the House. Along with myriad other reasons, of course.
Anyway. Like, the day after I got my new job, they sent me a binder that is heavy enough to kill a medium-sized dog with a single blow. It is full of papers to fill out that demand unnervingly intimate details about myself and my personal history, and basically it wants me to promise repeatedly that if I cannot tell anyone if I accidentally find out the military is involved in some shady scheme to breed a new army of lizard-monkey-men with tails that shoot lasers. Reading all the small print is stupidly hard, but I’m sort of terrified that I’ve already signed away all my internal organs or something, and I’m trying to hang on to as many of those as possible.
So, I guess it's probably worth mentioning that I'm fairly sure I'll start locking all work-related entries because I'm paranoid about shady government agents finding out I’m even obliquely referring to their lizard-monkey-men armies with tails that shoot lasers. Not that they’re breeding any, of course.
I can't imagine why anyone would actually want to hear me talking about work, but if you do, just say so and I'll make sure you're on the filter or whatever I end up doing.
I finished reading Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story a while ago, and I’ve wanted to say a lot about it since, but in between all my throwing up and new job crap, I think I’m just going to summarize. Sort-of spoilers for the novel, although it won’t really make much sense to anyone who hasn’t read it.
Here’s my theory: Stephen King loves to remix his own work.
Hear me out on this, seriously. He's put forth a very large body of work. It's inevitable that themes, characters, and plot devices are going to get revisited; this is even more likely considering how he intertwines his book universes. That's not really a crime because the whole writing world already does that, see any romance novel series. And if you manage to tie up nearly everything you write inside one universe, that’s impressive just for the task of keeping track of it. I’d love to see his concordance files.
Sometimes he does his remixing very well; sometimes it bombs spectacularly. Dreamcatcher, which is a remix of It, The Body, and The Tommyknockers, is an example of a bomber. Cell is more of a remix of The Stand, just with more zombies. However, Cell has a distinct storyline of its own, and I think it manages to come out pretty well, even if it is a prime example of "That Stephen King, he sure waffles a lot when it comes to committing to writing an ending! Ha! Ha!"
If I were trying to pick the elements out, plot-wise, character-wise, plot device-wise, and writing structure-wise, Lisey's Story reminded me of Bag of Bones, Rose Madder, and Talisman, all layered into some bizarre mixed drink. Possibly, then it is set on fire and thrown into someone’s face. After all, this is the same man who once said, "There's an audience out there, and the key is to kick it in the ass."
I didn’t hate the story, but I didn’t enjoy it very much for about the first half of the book. Part of it was pacing, part of it was the characters, and part of it was the goddamn diction. The second half of the book moved along much more quickly, had more action, and tied up most of the loose ends and explained most of the mysterious words and references from the first half. Given, the whole point of the loose ends and the inexplicable words are to tweak the interest and draw you into the second half, but it was still… annoying in a way I’m having a hard time articulating. And I’m not used to Stephen King being annoying in that particular way.
The thing about Stephen King’s diction and sentence structures and general language is that they’re pretty damn distinct. He himself has stated that they’re part of what people tend to like about his work. For the most part, his characters talk like real people (even if they’re almost always from Maine) and it works. In almost all his other books, he’s mastered the skill that I wish like hell most Brokeback Mountain writers would figure out-how to infer an accent or a voice without butchering the actual written word all to pieces. He can usually keep the balance between the phonetic spelling/pronunciation or a word and the correct spelling/pronunciation; he can imply an accent without writing it out every single time; he can get his point across without sacrificing the readability of the page.
But this time, it was just a lot harder to wait for the revelations. Everything did get tied up, but I got tired of the time skips back and forward-- a device that I thought he used pretty well in It-- because rather than intrigue me about the characters of Lisey and Scott, I just disliked the both of them. It was clumsy, hiding behind the guise of Lisey’s deliberate memory blocks. And Zack MacCool wasn’t much of a villain. He had a buildup that led nowhere and sort of fizzled out. I wasn’t heavily invested in the characters as I’ve been in the past.
He uses the word “smuck” in place of “fuck” for most of the book, and there’s a reason for that. But by the time the reason was revealed, I was too damn tired of reading that word over. Same deal with waiting to find out what a “bool” actually was. And… Boo’ya Moon. I dunno. Normally I can deal with whatever weird names he makes up, but this book just had a few too many of them. The readability of the words on the page itself was compromised for me; I kept getting jolted out of the story.
Now, the good. As for Boo’ya Moon, the name’s not to my taste, but I do like the idea of it and that was probably what saved the book from being another Dreamcatcher for me. For all that it’s fun to josh about how often Stephen King brings up writers and writing in his work, you can’t deny that he does know a goodish bit about both. And his descriptions of Boo’ya Moon did make me nod my head in a weird sort of recognition. I’ve never gone to his world, but all writers have their worlds and even if I don’t understand his, I can get behind the idea that it’s there for him. I can get behind the idea that everyone has one.
"I think most kids have a place they go to when they're scared or lonely or just plain bored," Lisey's troubled sister, Amanda, tells her. "They call it NeverLand or the Shire, Boo'ya Moon if they've got big imaginations and make it up for themselves. Most of them forget. The talented few - like Scott - harness their dreams and turn them into horses."
That stuck with me. There’s a theme King has done before, and this time he did remix it well. The issue of the Long Boy and the pool and the dreamers and the trees are never really explained, but I didn’t mind that because that was sort of the point. None of us see the same worlds.
But the end fizzled for me. All the real world stuff was bizarre. The big secret of the family madness just never got resolved well. It came to an ugly halting mess in the story, which I can respect because that’s often how things go. But it never resonated. It sits there and it doesn’t even connect well with Lisey’s family problems. It was like he couldn’t decide which should have gotten more precedence in the story.
Going back to text readability for a moment again, Scott’s last written revelations about his family madness as connected to his father and brother was just sort of a last kick to the junk. I can’t buy it. I can buy that a grown man will regress his speech to that of a child, but having it actually written out as what the man wrote in a state of emotion was just too hamhanded. I can accept it in theory and it could happen. But seeing it on the page as words didn’t ring true. It might have been right, but it didn’t read well. Normally King can keep that balance, between what sounds good and what sounds right, and what looks good and what looks right. But it just seemed off.
But it might all be me. I find I can’t articulate myself well on this book at the moment; this whole reaction is a muddle. So, I think I’ll give the book some distance and maybe reread it after a while again, just to see if I react the same way to it. With knowing what to expect in terms of the annoying stuff this time, it might be easier and I’ll find it’s really a good book after all.
Someone else said about the book, “It's not that it was so bad - it was just so very average.” I agree. I know he can do better than this. I’ve seen him do better than this, using the same elements, the same themes. That’s why reading this one just wasn’t satisfying. The remix didn’t outdo the originals. Also, I think he and I have different perceptions of what the euphemism “tossing the salad” means.
Now I shall wait for Stephen King to use his dread powers of darkness to reach out from Maine and kill me dead.
Ah, well. Doing a new music post soon, so the old songs will come down. Have a quick discussion of various world leaders.
ThorneScratch: I owe you an email. I will send it
twigcollins: You owe me nothing. Except twenty dollars.
ThorneScratch: Fair enough. I think I stole it from your pocket in the first place.
twigcollins: This is a dollar bill with 20 written on it. Don't think that will work twice.
ThorneScratch: And a picture of Stalin! …In retrospect, I should have picked a different dictator, but he was the easiest to remember how to draw. Except Hitler, but money with Hitler on it just seems wrong.
twigcollins: In Soviet Russia, money spend you! Lenin is way easier to draw than Stalin. Very iconic with his pointy goatee. He worked that goatee.
ThorneScratch: A true fashion mogul.
twigcollins: I love Soviet iconography
ThorneScratch: If I had a nickel for every time you said that...
twigcollins: That's not a nickel. You just tore off a part of the dollar.
ThorneScratch: I wrote a five on it!
twigcollins: I'm starting to believe you're not the State Treasury.
ThorneScratch: But I have a badge and everything. Even if that's not my name on it.
twigcollins: It looks like a picture of the Queen.
ThorneScratch: The live one or one of the dead ones?
twigcollins: I thought they were all the same queen.
ThorneScratch: Well, we’ve established in past conversations that the pope is a werewolf. The queen could be a zombie or a vampire. It's plausible.
twigcollins: Who is a ninja?
ThorneScratch: Logically, you'd think it was the Prime Minster of Japan but I actually don't believe so for a very important reason. You remember the previous Prime Minister?
twigcollins: With the hair?
ThorneScratch: Exactly. There's no way he's covering up that hair with a hood or mask.
twigcollins: Like Zack. It's a very pointy hood.
ThorneScratch: Yeah. Koizumi Junichiro cannot conceal that glorious mane. It goes against all laws of mankind. So, I guess the ninja world leader is.... shit, maybe it's a Canadian. No one would ever suspect.
twigcollins: Dude. They are stealthy.
ThorneScratch: Yes! You never see them coming.
twigcollins: And nobody remembers they're there. An entire country of ninja vanish.
ThorneScratch: Leaving only a haunting hint of maple syrup scent in the air.
ThorneScratch: ...was that too much?
twigcollins: Probably, but with Canada it's better to overdo.
ThorneScratch: Then I'm going to go for broke on Canadian stereotypes and say that their deadly ninja training is no doubt reflected in the enthusiasm for hockey.
twigcollins: If you listen carefully at night in Michigan, you can hear the eerie sounds of their training on the winds.
twigcollins: "... ich, ni, san, eh?"
twigcollins: "Ich, ni, san, eh?"
ThorneScratch: ROFL LMAO
ThorneScratch: That is the best thing, ever. But just to reflect back on the Queen. Seriously: zombie or vampire?
twigcollins: Vampire. Zombies are too low-class.
ThorneScratch: That's true. You know what, I'd pay good money to see the Queen fight Lestat.
twigcollins: Dude, she would totally p0wn him
ThorneScratch: I know, that's why it's so great! I'm totally willing to believe Cheney is a zombie, though.
twigcollins: He's like a cyborg. A cyborg zombie
ThorneScratch: But the problem with that, is who the hell is controlling Cheney in that case? What voodoo cybernetics mastermind holds his strings?
twigcollins: He's AI. He's gone rogue and has developed his own intelligence.
ThorneScratch: …Well, we're boned.
Mind you, this conversation took place before the State of the Union address, the entire duration of which I was terrified that Cheney was about to try and eat Nancy Pelosi. I was also wondering when Pelosi was going to whack Bush on the top of the head with her gavel because her very positioning seemed to demand it. This is why I can’t be Speaker of the House. Along with myriad other reasons, of course.
Anyway. Like, the day after I got my new job, they sent me a binder that is heavy enough to kill a medium-sized dog with a single blow. It is full of papers to fill out that demand unnervingly intimate details about myself and my personal history, and basically it wants me to promise repeatedly that if I cannot tell anyone if I accidentally find out the military is involved in some shady scheme to breed a new army of lizard-monkey-men with tails that shoot lasers. Reading all the small print is stupidly hard, but I’m sort of terrified that I’ve already signed away all my internal organs or something, and I’m trying to hang on to as many of those as possible.
So, I guess it's probably worth mentioning that I'm fairly sure I'll start locking all work-related entries because I'm paranoid about shady government agents finding out I’m even obliquely referring to their lizard-monkey-men armies with tails that shoot lasers. Not that they’re breeding any, of course.
I can't imagine why anyone would actually want to hear me talking about work, but if you do, just say so and I'll make sure you're on the filter or whatever I end up doing.