Summer of Stephen
Title: “The Night of the Tiger”
Publishing Date: 1978 Length: 7 pages Start Date: September 7, 2017 End Date: September 7, 2017 “The Night of the Tiger” is another King short story that I don’t remember much about. It reminded me a little of two of Angela Carter’s short stories: “The Tiger’s Bride” and “Lizzie’s Tiger.” King’s story takes place at a circus and involves a mysterious man and a temperamental large cat tamer. Stuff happens (I honestly don’t remember what) and by the end I’m pretty sure one man turns into a tiger and eats the other. If I’m misremembering that, please let me know, because I have only a vague recollection of this story and I couldn’t find a summary online. Carter’s tiger-themed stories, on the other hand, have stuck with me since I read them for a college class a few years ago. So, since I don’t have much to say about “The Night of the Tiger,” I guess instead I’ll just recommend that if y’all want to read about tigers, check out Angela Carter’s short stories instead.
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Title: “The Cat from Hell”
Publishing Date: 1977 Length: 14 pages Start Date: September 7, 2017 End Date: September 7, 2017 I’m not a cat person, so I kind of enjoyed the first part of this short story. A professional hitman is hired to kill a rich man’s cat, because he believes the cat has murdered members of his family and is planning to take him out next. At first the hitman thinks the man is insane, but eventually decides to take the job. Now, I’m not saying I would ever intentionally kill a cat (though for $12,000 I would carefully consider it), but as someone who really dislikes them, I found myself getting sucked into the idea of this story. However, this is a Stephen King story, so things don’t exactly go as planned. The cat of course finds a way to outsmart the hitman and kills him, then heads off to kill the rich man, just as he’d planned from the beginning. So that part wasn’t quite as nice as the beginning of the story. Overall, this one falls pretty well in the middle for me. I didn’t love it, and I’ll probably never read it again. But I also didn’t dislike it. King’s writing is good, as usual; it’s just not a plotline that I feel the need to revisit. Title: “Night Surf”
Publishing Date: 1977 Length: 9 pages Start Date: September 7, 2017 End Date: September 7, 2017 I hate to admit it, but I don’t remember much about this story. I remember a bunch of teeangers walking along a beach, worrying about the member of their group who is clearly sick. And I know that it takes place in the same universe as The Stand, because they mention “Captain Trips,” which is the highly contagious super-flu that wipes out most of humanity in that novel. But for everything else, I had to read a summary on Wikipedia. After reading the summary, I discovered that there wasn’t much to the story past what I remembered. I had forgotten that the group burned a man in hopes that he would serve as some sort of sacrifice that could help deliver them from this awful plague-like sickness, but other than that, not much happens. While The Stand is a masterpiece of over 1,000 pages, “Night Surf” doesn’t even make it to 10 pages, and I’m honestly not sure what purpose it serves. I realize that it came out before The Stand, so maybe King used it as a springboard into that larger, more developed idea. I don’t know. This just wasn’t one of his more exciting or memorable short stories for me. Title: “The Boogeyman”
Publishing Date: 1977 Length: 13 pages Start Date: September 3, 2017 End Date: September 3, 2017 I absolutely hated this short story. Not because of the writing style or anything that King did wrong; it was entirely my own issue. Let me explain. When I was little, we had a VHS tape of a made-for-TV Disney movie called Mr. Boogedy. It featured a Boogeyman-like character who frightened small children and said things like “Boogedy, boogedy boo!” in a deep, creepy voice. (It was more terrifying than I’m making it sound, I promise.) Knowing how much this freaked me out, my older brother used to repeat this phrase whenever I was trying to go to sleep. This would, of course, ruin any chance I had of sleeping. Even now, 20 years later, I’m still more than a little terrified of anything Boogeyman related. Which brings us back to King’s story. It’s about a man whose young children are killed mysteriously in their bedrooms. The deaths all seem like natural causes, but the man also notices that the closet door is slightly ajar when he discovers their bodies. He had observed the kids growing more and more fearful over the nights leading up to their deaths, even mentioning a “Boogeyman,” but he didn’t think there was any real reason behind it. Through various circumstances, he discovers that a Boogeyman creature is killing his children, and may possibly be coming for him next. This story was well-written, but it scared the hell out of me. Usually, I’m a fan of stories that creep me out, but I was not into this one. I don’t know if it’s because it brought back all of that childhood trauma (thanks, brother) I’ve been suppressing all these years, or if it’s due to some unknown reason. But whatever my problem is, I will definitely never read this story again. |
Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
July 2019
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