By Kendra Hibbert
Because I feel so close to my loyal readers (all three of you) I'd like to use this week's column to confess two of my deepest darkest secrets, both related to the two books I've reviewed here.
EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL by Stephen King
Confession #1 -- I really can't stand reading Stephen King.
Believe me, I want to like him. I've wanted to like him ever since high school when all of my friends were signing Stephen King books out of the library, bookmarking the dirty parts and taking turns reading them to each other during study break. For the longest time, I thought Stephen King filled page after page with either sex scenes or images of intense gore. That is until I borrowed IT from a friend of mine and discovered after reading four chapters that it takes a long time for anything to happen in a Stephen King novel. Years later I gave him another chance with PET CEMETERY, only to develop the sudden urge to throw the book across the room after fighting my way through 10 chapters. I vowed right then and there that I would never try to read another Stephen King novel again.
Then shortly afterwards I found myself in a situation where I had to wait for five hours in a room filled, I was told, with books. As a compulsive reader, I knew I'd have no trouble at all passing the time. However in a sick twist of fate previously only reserved for TWILIGHT ZONE episodes starring Burgess Meredith (obscure nerd reference alert!) the books were all written by Stephen King. "Oh the Horror!" I thought. "Or lack of it." (Because frankly I had yet to read anything even remotely scary in a King novel.) But being a compulsive reader, around hour 2 of my 5-hour wait, I was unable to resist at least trying to read another selection from this "Horror Master," so I picked up SKELETON KEY -- a collection of his short stories -- and had a shocking revelation. As a short-story writer, Stephen King wasn't half bad.
His latest collection, EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL, was the first ever book put out by this prolific writer that I was able to read from cover to cover. However, I suspect if I hadn't promised that I'd read it in the last column, it probably would have taken me a much longer time to get through. The main problem I find with reading Stephen King is that, although he's capable of coming up with some really cool/creepy ideas, most of the time I feel like he's just phoning it in, filling space to meet his required page count.
Although the book started out okay with the guy-mistaken-for-dead story "Autopsy Room Four," around mid-book my patience with Stephen King started to wear a little thin. I got tired reading yet another story about a character who has just quit smoking (seriously there are at least three), just gotten divorced or just bought a pet. Many of the stories just reinforced my opinion about his lack of occasional lack of imagination -- but every once and a while King would surprise me by sticking in a yarn that was not only entertaining but full of good writing.
By far my favorite was "1408" -- a haunted motel-room story that honestly gave me the creeps. Another story, "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French" (about a woman who keeps living the same event over and over) started to give me the creeps but then didn't go anywhere, so I only half got the creeps (I guess that would be called the "cre") and ended up being just more disappointed when I discovered the story was over before it really got to explore the concept of the story. "The Man in the Black Suit," a parable-like Boy vs. The Devil tale, was nice in a coming-of-age-y way, as was "Riding the Bullet" -- the story that supposedly "broke open" the world of e-books and put King on the cover of TIME magazine. The title piece "Everything's Eventual" was also an entertaining and interesting piece of work, but again it ended too soon for me. "The Death of Jack Hamilton" and "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" are both very impressive dramatic stories. Nice work -- but in all that's only 7 stories that were memorable at all. The other half of the book just failed to anything for me.
What's funny about my whole "I hate Stephen King" stance is that I honestly really like him as a person. Okay I don't know him personally, but every interview I've read/seen of his I've always been impressed by his intelligence and intrigued by the way he writes, what he writes about and the reasons why he's writing about it. I was also impressed and excited by his introduction to EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL -- basically an appeal to all his loyal readers to go out and read more short stories (I also encourage everyone to pick up more short stories. If you specifically like the spooky kind, pick up SKIN by Roald Dahl, or his collection GHOST STORIES; not written by him but still very cool). He's a passionate writer and I'm not about to damn the man for liking what he does. The fact that he's still a best-seller and there's a whole new generation out there still picking up his books (and no doubt still scanning them for the dirty parts) proves that he's still as popular now as he ever was (probably as proportionately unpopular as I'll be once this review is published).
Ultimately, I'd be lying if I said there weren't some fine moments in EVERYTHING'S EVENTUAL. If you're a fan of the King, pick it up (if you haven't already). If you're not a fan, check it out anyway. You still may find, like I did, a reason for not hating Stephen King so much.
SALMON OF DOUBT by Douglas Adams
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Confession #2 -- Up until 3 weeks ago I thought Douglas Adams was still alive.
Seriously, can somebody invent a mandatory newsletter where people would get important events like the death of Douglas Adams mailed to them so they don't make a fool of themselves by arguing with someone a year later that he's still alive? Cause I was really choked up about this one. Douglas Adams, whose books saw me through the dark times of my high-school years (after being ostracized by my Stephen King-reading friends), whose love of technology introduced me to this strange thing called the Internet, whose writing continues to make me laugh no matter how many times I read HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, had been dead for a year and three months before I heard about it. Granted, as a fan I probably should have been frequenting his site a lot more than I was, but I refuse to take all the blame for missing this piece of news. Instead I blame society. I blame a society that doesn't treat the death of a genius like Adams at least as important as the death of a Beatle.
Though it's billed as the lost Dirk Gently novel, SALMON OF DOUBT is more a collection of Adams' previously uncollected written works -- essays, speeches, interviews, articles and notes from his Web page about (among other things) technology, religion and the fate of the universe. The book includes eulogies/remembrances from friends, sometimes written just a few days after his death. It also has many insights into the history and inspiration behind some of Adams' greatest ideas. The chapters from the Gently novel are added more as an afterthought at the end and really don't make too much narrative sense because they are still unfinished and still in rough-draft form. Still, they serve as a last farewell to a man whose most memorable joke was of a whale inexplicably falling out of the sky, a man who will, alas, never write again.
Of course SALMON OF DOUBT is a must read for fans of "The Guide." but it also makes a pretty darn interesting introduction to those who haven't yet read anything by Adams. You will inevitably become intoxicated by his love of technology and humorous frustration at the sometimes brainless culture he saw around him. It is however hard to get excited about reading interviews in which he talks about a new Dirk Gently novel, knowing that the novel will now never be finished. I got the same feeling at the end of this book that I felt when I finished John Kennedy Toole's CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES and realized that there will never again be another word written by this mastermind of satire. SALMON OF DOUBT is therefore ultimately a depressing book, but a very humorous one nonetheless.
Letters
In the interest of explaining next week's column (and feeding my own ego), here are a couple of e-mails I've received over the last few weeks (I realize it's very uncool to say this, but fan mail rocks).
The first one comes from Lorynn Conklin:
I just finished reading THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY by Michael Chabon. Have you read it? If so, what did you think and will you do a column on it? I think because it's comic book-related, maybe a lot of people on the site would like it.
And here's another one, from Joseph Macaluso:
Love the column.
Now, are you only going to talk about books that are new on the stands? How about books that are a year or two old? For example, I'm betting this crowd would love AMERICAN GODS by Mr. Gaiman.
And so, next column: The All-Singing, All-Dancing, Semi-Retro, Somewhat Comic-Related Book Review Featuring THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY and Neil Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS.
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