Nightmares in the Sky is a collection of photographs of gargoyles by F.Stop Fitzgerald (sic) (not the photographs on this post - those are mine). The only text in the volume is a long essay by Stephen King on the subject of gargoyles - "nightmares in the sky". Stephen King talks about how he was astonished to learn that there were a number of gargoyles on buildings in New York City which he'd never noticed. He didn't believe it until he went and looked for himself and found that there were dozens on streets where he would have sworn there wasn't one.He also observed that gargoyles are always looking down.
I did go on a little hunt of my own, hoping to have a similar revelation. I didn't find quite as many and most were on the buildings you'd expect - churchs. The ones on the costa coffee surprised me.
It's actually quite a fun hobby, looking for gargoyles and I intend to continue with it.
Stephen King also mentions a horror movie which scared Joe Hill as a child. He let him watch it again with the idea that another viewing would show the strings and Joe Hill wouldn't build it up in his mind. It worked. A sweet story. In 1988, when this book was released and I was born, Joe Hill was sixteen. Owen King was eleven, and their elder sister, Naomi, was eighteen. Stephen King himself was the same age as my grandmother - thirty-nine, going on forty. Naomi King is actually the same age as my mother.During this entire period, since the death of his mother in 1979, Stephen King was depressed, suicidal, and drunk. It was in when Owen King was ten, in 1987, that Tabitha King threatened to leave him and he began to sober up. According to another article I've read, Stephen King's depression was made worse by the savaging the critics gave Tommyknockers, which was the catalyst for Stephen King finally cutting back. One of the stories I've heard most often about this period was that Stephen King cannot recall writing Cujo (1981) at all.
It's interesting that Stephen King has such a healthy relationship with his family when his issues with addiction and depression would have covered such a large part of their childhoods. As far as I know he was never abusive towards his family, which is the trait that typically marks the child of an alcoholic, so I guess it's that that made the difference. In the article I've linked to it's claimed that Stephen King believed whatever he wrote about wouldn't happen - hence The Shining. I suppose that also explains Pet Semetary.I've just started reading The Dark Half again, which I've read before. It's one that I find quite interesting because the main character is a chimera; he contains cells and DNA from his dead twin.
It's theorized that as many as one in ten pregnancies begin as twins, with the weaker one being absorbed. Sometimes their cells stick around, like in the case of Lydia Fairchild who gave birth to her dead sister's children.
That's one of the things that makes me want to study genetics. How often does it happen? Why? There are lots of creatures that are able to absorb foetuses when a pregnancy would not be welcome, such as rabbits, and having the little bit of competition amongst two embryos might give us a better chance of stronger descendants, so that might be a good theory to start from. There are also strains of yeast which make use of chimerism as an alternative to mutation - so maybe humans get a similar benefit?I'll write more about that one after this read through. I'm excited to get on with the Dark Tower series after the second one finally hooked me. After The Dark Half I'll need to reread Four After Midnight and then I can finally read The Dark Tower III: The Wasteland.
After that, there's a string of seven books I've read before. Although I'd read maybe one third to one half of Stephen King's bibliography before starting this project that's the longest string. I wonder why those appealed to me? It wasn't intentional. Looking over the list of the seven it looks like three of them are about women, which might be the linking factor.
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