Summer of Stephen
Title: “The Crate”
Publishing Date: 1980 Length: 25 pages Start Date: January 2, 2018 End Date: January 2, 2018 This short story is, in my opinion, an example of Stephen King at his finest. It begins with a college custodian finding a box under the stairs in the zoology department. He takes it to the biology professor and they open it to discover a small beast with a hunger for human flesh. This creature eats the custodian and later a graduate student, leaving nothing behind. The biology professor goes to his friend, an English professor, hoping he can help. The English professor agrees to help, but instead drugs his friend’s drink. While the biology professor is unconscious, the English professor writes a note for his abusive wife, tricking her into meeting him on campus in the zoology department. When she finds the note, she hurries to meet him and she is soon consumed by the creature. The English professor puts the beast’s crate inside a larger crate, loads it up in his vehicle, drives out to a quarry, and dumps the crate into the lake. The English professor returns home, waits for the biology professor to wake up, and together they agree to never speak of the incident again. As I mentioned, “The Crate” is some of King’s best short story writing (up to this point, at least). The creature is described just enough to give us an idea that it’s something we’ve never seen before, and the fact that it can so quickly consume an entire human being is more than a little terrifying. The characters are great, especially the English professor’s wife, who continues to berate him right up to the moment she’s eaten. But the “twist” of the English professor deciding to feed his awful wife to this awful beast is easily the best part.
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Title: “Nona”
Publishing Date: 1980 Length: 29 pages Start Date: January 5, 2018 End Date: January 5, 2018 This is another Stephen King short story that doesn’t really feel like a King story. Until the end, of course, but we’ll get to that in a minute. To begin, “Nona” tells the story of a Bonnie-and-Clyde type of couple. The narrator meets Nona in a bar and then fights a bunch of drunks for her honor, eventually killing one of them. The narrator and Nona take off and start hitchhiking, which offers them the opportunity to make a few more kills along the way. Eventually, the couple ends up near Castle Rock, which King fans will recognize as the setting for several of his stories and novels. Nona takes the narrator to a cemetery, where she suddenly turns into a giant rat. King seems to really have a thing for rats. I don’t understand it, but it’s definitely a common animal throughout his works. The narrator is soon found by the police and taken to prison for the various murders he’s committed. The story ends with him writing his story down in preparation of taking his own life. For the most part, I really enjoyed this story. I’m a fan of Bonnie-and-Clyde stories, so I liked reading about the narrator and Nona making their way along the highway and killing whomever they pleased. The whole “Nona turning into a rat” thing, however, I could’ve done without. I would have preferred that she just disappeared before the end of the story, leaving the reader to wonder if she’d been merely a figment of the narrator’s imagination. But, alas, King had to go with the rat thing. Which, I guess, I should have come to expect by this point. Title: Danse Macabre
Publishing Date: 1980 Length: 400 pages Start Date: January 24, 2018 End Date: February 15, 2018 Despite its length, I actually don’t have that much to say about Danse Macabre. Stephen King was commissioned to write it because he was one of the most influential voices in the horror genre at the end of the 1970s. I mean, he’s still a huge voice in the world of horror, but now he’s one of many instead of a rarity. This work of nonfiction includes sections on what makes horror films and novels great as well as sections devoted to some of King’s favorite works of horror. But, honestly, he probably could have accomplished the same thing with a few bullet-pointed lists. Instead, he rambles on and on about various aspects of horror, which quickly becomes repetitive. I’ve never been big on horror movies, so I hadn’t seen many of the films he discussed, but I was at least familiar with the general plots of most of them. As for the books he mentions, I had neither read nor heard of the majority of them. At first I thought this was strange, since I read so much. But then I remembered when this book was written. And that’s truly the greatest flaw in Danse Macabre. It was written almost four decades ago. While the information was probably interesting and relevant at the time, it’s horribly dated now. Most of the films mentioned might have been terrifying in the 60s and 70s, but are laughably not scary now. Some of King’s statements in this book made it seem like he assumed it would forever remain the authority on the horror genre. As though no worthwhile movies or novels would terrify future audiences and readers. This is why I think it would have made more sense for King to just make a series of lists. He could have started with an essay on the basics of the horror genre and then followed up with lists of his favorite books and movies. This way, he could constantly add to them as more work is produced. (Plus, I just really love lists.) Final note, which really bothered me: At the time of Danse Macabre’s publication, King had only published five novels, so he couldn’t even include much discussion of his own contribution to the genre. And when he did mention his own work, it was mostly just to gush about the brilliance of the film version of The Shining. Which makes no sense, considering how vocal he’s been about his hatred of Kubrick’s film. Title: “The Monkey”
Publishing Date: 1980 Length: 34 pages Start Date: January 1, 2018 End Date: January 1, 2018 Stephen King’s short story “The Monkey” isn’t one of his more original plots. Although, maybe he was one of the first to do this plot, and other people just copied it, but I read or watched their stuff first. Who knows? This story is about one of those creepy monkey toys that bangs cymbals together when it’s wound up. But since this is a King story, that’s obviously not all the monkey does. The monkey toy is cursed and will bang the cymbals together completely on its own. And when it does that, it’s a sign that someone is about to die. Hal, the main character, has been dealing with this monkey and the consequences of its cymbal playing since childhood. As a result, he’s lost both parents and various friends and family members. Every time he tries to dispose of the monkey, it shows back up and in one piece. But now his children have found the monkey, and Hal can’t risk losing one of them to the fatal cymbal playing. So he rows out to the middle of the lake and drops the monkey in. The story ends with a report about the massive number of dead fish surfacing in the lake. See what I mean about this being a story that’s been done before? While not necessarily focusing on a toy cymbal-playing monkey, the whole “cursed object killing those who come in contact with it” plot has been done (pardon the pun) to death. So while it was an interesting enough short story, King didn’t necessarily bring any unique elements to a familiar plot. |
Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
July 2019
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