In Which We Discuss the Dark Half

First an update on where I am with my project to read all of Stephen King's novels in published order. As before, the red and blue are books I've now read, with red indicating books I had read previously. Below that, the bolded titles are those I'd read previously.  You'll notice that Stephen King has added another two book to the end of the list so far this year, with another to be published in 2016.

- 15/6/13

Carrie - 1974 -  June 15th 2013
'Salem's Lot - 1975 - June 30th 2013
The Shining - 1977 - July 28th 2013
Rage - 1977 - July 31st 2013
Night Shift - 1978 - August 28th 2013
The Stand - 1978 - March 20th 2014
The Long Walk - 1979 - March 23rd 2014
The Dead Zone - 1979 - June 2014
Firestarter - 1980 - August 16th 2014


- 15/6/13 to 17/8/14 - 9

Roadwork - 1981 - 23rd August 2014
Danse Macabre - 1981 - 7th September 2014
- BONUS: Small World (Tabitha King) - 10th September 2014
Cujo - 1981 - 20th September 2014
The Running Man - 1982- 22nd September 2014
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - 1982 - 30th September 2014
Creepshow - 1982 - 1st October 2014
Different Seasons - 1982  - 24th October 2014

- 17/8/14 to 25/10/14 - 8 (17)

Christine - 1983
Pet Sematary - 1983
Cycle of the Werewolf - 1983
The Talisman - 1984
Thinner - 1984 

- 25/10/14/14 to 14/07/2015 - 5 (22)

Skeleton Crew - 1985
It - 1986
The Eyes of the Dragon - 1987
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three - 1987
Misery - 1987 

- 14/7/15 to 18/10/2015 - 5 (27)

The Tommyknockers - 1987
Nightmares in the Sky  - 1988
The Dark Half - 1989 

- 18/10/2015 to 22/12/2015 (30)

Four Past Midnight - 1990
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands - 1991 
Needful Things - 1991
Gerald's Game - 1992
Dolores Claiborne - 1992

Nightmares and Dreamscapes - 1993
Insomnia - 1994
Rose Madder - 1995
The Green Mile - 1996
Desperation - 1996

The Regulators - 1996
Six Stories - 1997
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass - 1997
Dark Tower: Little Sisters of Eluria (Legend) - 1998
Bag of Bones - 1998

Storm of the Century - 1998
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 1999
The New Lieutenant's Rap - 1999
Hearts in Atlantis - 1999
Blood and Smoke - 1999

"Riding the Bullet" - 2000  
On Writing - 2000 
Secret Windows - 2000 
The Plant - 2000      
Dreamcatcher - 2001

Black House (with Peter Straub) -2001
Everything's Eventual - 2002
From a Buick 8 - 2002
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla - 2003  
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah - 2004

The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower - 2004
Faithful - 2004
- BONUS: 20th Century Ghosts (Joe Hill) - Jan 2005
- BONUS: Josie and Jack (Kelly Braffet)  - Feb 2005
- BONUS: We're All in This Together (Owen King) - 2005

The Colorado Kid - 2005
Cell - 2006
Lisey's Story - 2006
Blaze - 2007
Duma Key - 2008

Just After Sunset - 2008 
Stephen King Goes to the Movies - 2009
Ur - 2009     
Under the Dome - 2009
Blockade Billy - 2010

Full Dark, No Stars - 2010
Mile 81 - 2011    
11/22/63 - 2011
American Vampire (with Scott Snyder) - 2011
"Throttle" (with Joe Hill) - 2012

The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole - 2012 
A Face in the Crowd (with Stewart O'Nan) - 2012
"In the Tall Grass"  (with Joe Hill) - 2012
"GUNS" - 2013
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County - 2013

Joyland - 2013
The Dark Man: An Illustrated Poem - 2013
Doctor Sleep - 2013
Mr. Mercedes - 2014      
Revival - November 2014

Finders Keepers - 2015
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams - 2015
End of Watch - 2016

I've just finished reading The Dark Half, which came out when I was about a year old.  It came out after the Richard Bachman psuedonym had been revealed, and draws its plot heavily from that.  In other words, it's about an author whose pseudonym comes to life after it is revealed and symbolically buried.

Thad Beaumont is the writer while George Stark is the pseudonym.  George is also Thad's twin brother, who was consumed in the womb - something that may happen in as many as one out of ten pregnancies.  When Thad starts writing, at the age of twelve, the tissue of George Stark begins to grow again in Thad's brain and is removed as a brain tumour.

Later, George Stark raises an excellent point.  Why shouldn't he survive?  Why does he have to die?

Happily, he's not a very nice guy so we don't need to delve too deeply into that.

When I write, I worry a lot about being misinterpreted or offending people, to the point where it hinders whatever story I'm trying to tell.  In Stephen King's position, I'd have been worried about implying I'd like to murder the person who discovered my pseudonym.  I think that's a small part of why he's a better writer than me; that he's not overly concerned about that, and doesn't let it get in the way of a good plot.

This is the first book to be published after Tabitha King's ultimatum over Stephen King's drinking and drugs problems (not including his essay in Nightmares in the Sky), and you can see some of that in Thad's relationship to George.  George is a part of him, and not a part he completely rejects.  He can see that it's a part of him that threatens his family, his friends and his well-being, as well as something that keeps him from his best work; however, it is still a part of him.  It's still his twin.

Despite that, George Stark has to go because he's not a very nice guy.  Because he threatens everything Thad Beaumont holds dear.

Sheriff Alan Pangborn later shows up in Bag of Bones, another book that I've read previously.  You can read James Smythe's article here.

The next book is Four Past Midnight.

In Which We Discuss Nightmares in the Sky

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.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 16/52

Twelve books last week - 25 November to 2 December.  That might be a personal record!  I'd have to check my spreadsheet (that's not a joke).  I did say in an earlier post that I was reading a lot of books at once and they'd all be finished at the same time, didn't I?

I quite enjoyed Nightmares in the Sky.  It's a book of photos of gargoyles and it inspired me to go looking for a few in Birmingham.  I need to write a longer post about that as it's part of my Stephen King project.

The Point of Rescue/The Wrong Mother is the third in Sophie Hannah's Spilling CID series.  I've been listening to them on Audible, but I've stopped for a bit because I ran out of credits.

Because the Spilling CID books are mysteries, my enjoyment on re-reading (actually, listening) tends to depend on how well I remember the exact plot and whether the narrator - each book includes a personal document from one of the non-recurring characters - is unreliable.  This one is not and I remembered it pretty well so it took me a little while to get into it on this read through.   It's a great book, and there's definitely value in a reread - I listened to the last four hours in a big 3x speed rush - but this was probably a bit soon.  I am looking forward to rereading The Other Half Lives which was the first Sophie Hannah book I ever picked up.

I spent my last three audio credits on  the first three books in Jacqueline Wilson's Girls series.  I first read these at thirteen or fourteen, so around Ellie's age.  In the first book Ellie comments that she and her friends are the same as age as Juliet of Romeo and Juliet.  I remember realising that Juliet's birthday was somewhere in the fortnight before mine, setting up a pleasing parallel when I realised that I was almost exactly the right age, so I must have been twelve going on thirteen at the time.

I listened to all three this week; they're only about three hours long and I typically listen on 3x speed because I'm impatient.  They were very comforting.  I'm now listening to the last one in the series, so I'll talk about that next week.

Biology Essentials for Dummies is a book I picked up before I started college.  I like the For Dummies books.  I am happier reading them on Kindle than holding them up for everyone to see, but that's very much more on me than them.  They're good for a thorough overview.  Before I started college I was studying it properly; reading each chapter and making notes. Kind of as practice for studying, so I could test out a couple of new things.  I think I've found a system that works; I scribble down everything in class then write it up neatly, while rephrasing and looking up anything I'm not totally sure of.

Zombie Felties is a little craft book.  I wrote a longer post on it here.

Sweeney Todd is a collection of short pieces and a vanity project from Gaiman's other daughter.  Part of that Humble Bundle I picked up aaaaaaages ago.  I've nearly read every book in it!

Speaking of the humble bundle, I picked up Bratpack based on Gaiman's introduction, which I read in Adventures in the Dream Trade which was included.  I've not finished that one yet, because I keep wanting to read the things he's introducing!

Bratpack is about sacrificing sidekicks.  It's a palette-swap parody, and I'm concerned that it's a little homophobic - there is exactly one openly gay character and he's a psychotic rapist and paedophile.  There's one female character, but she gets away with being exactly the same sort of violent and unreasonable as the men, only in straw-feminist style.  It didn't bug me as much as the gay man for some reason.  Possibly because I spoke incorrectly, and there are actually two other women, in the form of her sidekicks.  They provide a little context, to show that not all women are like that, and this isn't simply what the author thinks of women.  There's no such context for the openly gay character.

I enjoyed Bratpack; I read it over the course of a day, between classes and on the bus.  It's fairly short - a single 150 page volume.  I felt like it ended without really resolving the issues it brought up.  I felt the same way about Viral, but that's also waiting for a longer post.

Modern Short Stories is a book of short stories by writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dylan Thomas and William Faulkner.  It also includes notes about each story.  I borrowed it from the college library, so it's aimed at someone who's studying literature.  I quite enjoyed it.

Finally, The Last Unicorn.  I first watched the movie as a child and read the book for the first time about ten years ago.  I can't think of any other book that's managed to do the same thing; an anachronistic fairytale, populated by archetypes that still manage to be unique.  As I grow older I am more and more interested in Molly Grue.  I understand more of what she meant when she told the unicorn off, asking where the unicorn was when Molly was young, and new, and "one of those young girls you always come to".

In Which We Discuss Tommyknockers

Tommyknockers is Stephen King's 3074th novel, published in 1979.  I'm kidding, it's more like his 28th.  It was also the last novel published before I was born, which probably doesn't mean a great deal to Stephen King but it's interesting to me!  I didn't notice this, but the book is actually set in 1988, making it five minutes into the future at the time it was published.

The book's about a small town in Maine; not Derry or Castle Rock but an even smaller place called Haven.  A writer, Bobbi Anderson, begins digging up a huge, strange ship and as more of it is exposed to the air more and more people are changed.  They become.

Anderon nicknames the former owners of the ship 'Tommyknockers', from an old children's rhyme that both Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha King, were familiar with;

Late last night and the night before,
Tommyknockers, Tommyknockers knocking at the door.
I wanna go out, don't know if I can
'cause I'm so afraid of the Tommyknocker man.

In the introduction, King mentions that 'Tommy' is an old name for a British soldier.  It is, but it only goes back to world war I, where "Thomas Anderson" was the example name written on a soldier's paybook.  That was discussed in Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb, or possibly Johnny and the Dead.  One or the other.

I know the rhyme as well.  It's a skipping rhyme, and we'd sing;

Not last night but the night before,
Twenty-four robbers came knocking at my door,
As I ran out to let them in, to let them in, to let them in....

...and you'd run back and forth under the rope while you chanted.

So we know that in both England and the US something happened, perhaps not last night but the night before, but possibly on both nights.  In England we let them in.  Perhaps the Americans blew up the English robbers to a ridiculous, boogyman extent?

Anyway, in story, it's just a nickname, literally a word pulled out of the air by the characters to label something inexplicable.

I want to talk about something a little spoileriffic now, so please clear the area.

Spoilers

Near the end of the novel, Gard, who is somewhat immune to the 'becoming' enters the spaceship.  'Becoming' involves several physical and mental changes, including telepathy, teeth falling out and growing snouts and claws.  Inside the spaceship he finds several snouty, toothless, claw-having creatures who appear to have killed one another in an argument.  He reflects that the Tommyknockers are good inventors but have low maturity.  They invent better ways of killing each other instead of finding out how not to.

Gard manages to send the spaceship flying off to find another planet, preventing the 'becoming' proceeding on earth.  In the process, he dies from wounds received in combat.

Earlier in the novel, Gard reflected on the cuckoo-like nature of the Tommyknockers.  They come to new planets and 'improve' them, taking their technology further.

So, my theory is that the creatures who had died in the ship weren't the original Tommyknockers.  They were the remains of the last victims.

Perhaps the fact that the 'becoming' involved specific physical changes indicates that the original Tommyknockers did resemble that.  However, the 'becoming' seems to be powered by a virus-like substance.  Perhaps this was sent out in the ship - which is highly automated - to terraform new planets?

I said that Gard is somewhat immune to the 'becoming'.  He's not completely immune; it just takes a lot longer.  Perhaps the changes continue to work after he has died, so the next species to locate the ship while find just another snouted, toothless, clawed being on the upper decks?

Gard does think about most of this.  However, I'm not sure he considers the idea that not all of the Tommyknockers were fully affected by the virus-thing and that they died not because the virus makes them psychotically unstable but because some of them were in opposition to becoming.

End Spoilers

When it comes to references to other books, Johnny Smith of The Dead Zone and the Shop of Firestarter show up a few times.  One of the characters also sees a clown peeking out from the sewers as he drives through Derry - a reference to It - and at one point Gard has a conversation with Jack of The Talisman.  Stephen King himself and his novel The Shining are also mentioned as in-universe.

Tommyknockers is one of the novels published as Stephen King was coming to the end of his period of severe substance abuse.  King has said previously that the issue was so bad he doesn't remember writing Cujo at all.  Cujo was published in 1981, six years prior to Tommyknockers.

This experience of substance abuse is expressed in Gard, an alcoholic who managed to shoot his wife while drunk.  James Smythe's post focuses on this. Apparently after the bookwas published Tabitha King staged an intervention.  In 1979 their eldest daughter, Naomi, turned nine.  Joe Hill was seven and Owen King was only two years old.  Both Joe Hill and Owen King became writers and have said in a rather sweet interview that they are Stephen King's fans as well as his sons.  To my knowledge, Naomi King has not been interviewed because she is not a public figure, which is fair enough.

There's a film of Tommyknockers, which I only discovered when I was looking up info on Nightmares in the Sky.  I'll watch it if I can get ahold of it.

I'd really call the book more sci-fi than horror, but I've not been scared by any fiction in a while.  That might be a result of moving in with my partner - it's harder to be frightened when there's someone else in the house, especially when it's such a small house.

Following Tommyknockers no major novels were published until 1989, and that was The Dark Half.  However, there was a work published in 1988 - Nightmares in the Sky.  It's a collection of photographs by f-stop Fitzgerald (not a typo) with text by Stephen King.  I've ordered a copy from German Amazon which should arrive by the 27th.  Abe books cancelled and refunded my order, on the grounds that they have no copies in stock, though their website still claims twenty available.

I do quite like The Dark Half which I've read before, so I might just start on that early and read Nightmares in the Sky later.  James Smythe - who is doing the same kind of project two years ahead - didn't read it as part of his challenge.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 12/52

Only two books this week - 29th October to 4th November.  Stoner I already wrote a longer post about.  Seven Deadly Sins was part of the Gaiman Humble Bundle.  Seven short graphic-novel stories around the seven deadly sins, by different authors and artists.  Gaiman's Sloth was uncompleted, as a bit of meta-fiction.  The most interesting was Alan Moore's Lust - a retelling of World War II told as if it were a sexual encounter between Germany and Russia.  The line "afterwards, we both lay there smoking" was particularly chilly when juxtaposed with the image.

I've spent much of the week reading Stephen King's The Tommyknockers which I aim to finish this evening.  After this, we'll finally be up to books published within my lifetime!  Nightmares in the Sky was published when I was two months old.  It's a collection of photographs with text by Stephen King, and it sounds kind of like the project Who Killed Amanda Palmer?.