HoopyFrood
It's me! Hurrah!
Firstly, beware, there be spoilers in this here thread.
For my creative writing class I have to keep a work journal and one of the things I decided to write in it is a response to the criticism about the endings of Stephen King's books. These are just some informal thoughts that have been roving around the inside of my head for a while now, which I finally tried to put into some kind of coherent order (whether I succeeded is another matter!) I'm quite prepared for people to reply with "What the hell are you on about, this is all rubbish" because, as I say, this is a response to criticism I've already seen. It's quite long, too, so bear with me. But perhaps it'll make some people think from another point of view, even if they don't agree with it...
Stephen King, being the popular author that he is, has quite a following, from those who may have read one or two of his novels, to those who are, to use King's words, "Constant Readers" of his work. I think it's safe to say that I am of the latter camp, having read his books for a number of years, enjoyed them thoroughly, and built up quite the collection. But one thing that I've noticed, in both the casual readers and the ardent fans, is criticism about the endings of King's novels. And the opinions get even more loud and fervent when it comes to the most marmite-esque (either love it or hate it) ending, the conclusion of King's magnum opus, The Dark Tower series.
One reason for complaint, I've found, is that people are never given a happy ending. Personally, I'm glad. I think King's conclusions are a refreshing change; there are only so many times people can realistically skip away into the sunset. And there's the rub -- realism. King, in my opinion, is a great writer of verisimilitude, despite writing about the supernatural, the horrifying, the incomprehensible. He creates deep, complex characters; even those that might only appear for a few pages, he gives some small snippet of information, something as simple as their favourite baseball team that they watch every time they play, just something to show they are human. And, being human, many of his characters already have their fair share of problems in their lives: broken families, alcohol problems, abusive parents -- all seem to have some flaw in their pasts that move them from two-dimensional characters into figures in which we can believe. To have a neat, perfect ending for them would go against the rich, complex backgrounds King has created for them.
Is it really feasible to think that his characters could go through all that they do -- ghosts, aliens, murderous spirits, deaths of friends and family, wide-scale apocalyptic events -- and then calmly settle back into their lives when all is over? The repercussions of such would undoubtedly be huge and the only way to show such would perhaps be to have some kind of "twenty years later" section at the end. Perhaps then normality may be returning for our favourite characters. Or perhaps not even then, which is something addressed in IT, where one character, Stan, would rather take his own life than go through the horrors that he experienced as a child again.
And while on the subject of horror, we must remember that this is what King is writing (there is speculation, I know, that many of his books could be classed as science fiction, but it's still more than likely that you'll find them in the horror section). To have a resolved conclusion with a merry tone would do the genre itself a disservice, I feel. It is, after all, supposed to make us uncomfortable and unsettle us, even beyond the end of the story enclosed within the book. To leave a resonance of this beyond the final page is the sign of a good horror book. So perhaps at first glance, the conclusion of Cell appears incomplete, or the ending to The Tommyknockers weak...yet is it not unsettling to not know the outcome about Clay's son? To be left wondering whether his will be saved or not? We can hope and maybe even convince ourselves that he is saved, but there is still a part of us that whispers that he is not. In the same way we are left unsettled and uneasy about Gard in The Tommyknockers -- left alone on a spaceship flying out to space. At the very least, he will suffer a slow death from starvation, but we can also be left to imagine strange creatures moving around the ship with him, hunting him, coming closer...Would the same feelings be achieved if there was a resolution at the end of every novel? There is a desire, I know, for some kind of 'closure' some kind of wrapping up of events; it is a fundamental part of writing stories. We are, generally, given this in some form -- often there is a closing of the immediate events, but then King gives us something, or perhaps it would be more rightly called a lingering, something to prolong the feelings of discomfort so inherent in the horror genre.
We also must remember that there are not heroes, of the conventional sense, that King writes about. Granted, they often do overcome the horrors that they face, but only in a bid to survive, not because they have been picked out or chosen by fate to do so. Yet even those characters involved in his greatest work, The Dark Tower, seemingly drawn by fate to be part of this epic tale, are not the benevolent, shining knights. Eddie continually voices his opposition to being part of the quest, is unruly and half-serious for most of the time, and plagued with his own doubts and demons, including a heroin addiction. Characters like these cannot defeat the bad guy and then go home knowing it was a job well done. Sometimes they can't even beat the bad guy, such as with Ben getting into his car at the end of Salem's Lot and driving away, leaving the town to be overrun by the vampires. Yet is it not horrifying to consider that sometimes the villains cannot be destroyed? And is it not an uncomfortable comment on the human condition that, despite thinking we can be heroes when the time calls for it, sometimes the only thing we can do is run away.
This is just the first half (really!); the rest is on The Dark Tower specifically. I won't type it all up right now -- for all I know, this could be completely ignored! I may, when I've recovered from this bout, type up the rest. Anyway, there we go...
For my creative writing class I have to keep a work journal and one of the things I decided to write in it is a response to the criticism about the endings of Stephen King's books. These are just some informal thoughts that have been roving around the inside of my head for a while now, which I finally tried to put into some kind of coherent order (whether I succeeded is another matter!) I'm quite prepared for people to reply with "What the hell are you on about, this is all rubbish" because, as I say, this is a response to criticism I've already seen. It's quite long, too, so bear with me. But perhaps it'll make some people think from another point of view, even if they don't agree with it...
Stephen King, being the popular author that he is, has quite a following, from those who may have read one or two of his novels, to those who are, to use King's words, "Constant Readers" of his work. I think it's safe to say that I am of the latter camp, having read his books for a number of years, enjoyed them thoroughly, and built up quite the collection. But one thing that I've noticed, in both the casual readers and the ardent fans, is criticism about the endings of King's novels. And the opinions get even more loud and fervent when it comes to the most marmite-esque (either love it or hate it) ending, the conclusion of King's magnum opus, The Dark Tower series.
One reason for complaint, I've found, is that people are never given a happy ending. Personally, I'm glad. I think King's conclusions are a refreshing change; there are only so many times people can realistically skip away into the sunset. And there's the rub -- realism. King, in my opinion, is a great writer of verisimilitude, despite writing about the supernatural, the horrifying, the incomprehensible. He creates deep, complex characters; even those that might only appear for a few pages, he gives some small snippet of information, something as simple as their favourite baseball team that they watch every time they play, just something to show they are human. And, being human, many of his characters already have their fair share of problems in their lives: broken families, alcohol problems, abusive parents -- all seem to have some flaw in their pasts that move them from two-dimensional characters into figures in which we can believe. To have a neat, perfect ending for them would go against the rich, complex backgrounds King has created for them.
Is it really feasible to think that his characters could go through all that they do -- ghosts, aliens, murderous spirits, deaths of friends and family, wide-scale apocalyptic events -- and then calmly settle back into their lives when all is over? The repercussions of such would undoubtedly be huge and the only way to show such would perhaps be to have some kind of "twenty years later" section at the end. Perhaps then normality may be returning for our favourite characters. Or perhaps not even then, which is something addressed in IT, where one character, Stan, would rather take his own life than go through the horrors that he experienced as a child again.
And while on the subject of horror, we must remember that this is what King is writing (there is speculation, I know, that many of his books could be classed as science fiction, but it's still more than likely that you'll find them in the horror section). To have a resolved conclusion with a merry tone would do the genre itself a disservice, I feel. It is, after all, supposed to make us uncomfortable and unsettle us, even beyond the end of the story enclosed within the book. To leave a resonance of this beyond the final page is the sign of a good horror book. So perhaps at first glance, the conclusion of Cell appears incomplete, or the ending to The Tommyknockers weak...yet is it not unsettling to not know the outcome about Clay's son? To be left wondering whether his will be saved or not? We can hope and maybe even convince ourselves that he is saved, but there is still a part of us that whispers that he is not. In the same way we are left unsettled and uneasy about Gard in The Tommyknockers -- left alone on a spaceship flying out to space. At the very least, he will suffer a slow death from starvation, but we can also be left to imagine strange creatures moving around the ship with him, hunting him, coming closer...Would the same feelings be achieved if there was a resolution at the end of every novel? There is a desire, I know, for some kind of 'closure' some kind of wrapping up of events; it is a fundamental part of writing stories. We are, generally, given this in some form -- often there is a closing of the immediate events, but then King gives us something, or perhaps it would be more rightly called a lingering, something to prolong the feelings of discomfort so inherent in the horror genre.
We also must remember that there are not heroes, of the conventional sense, that King writes about. Granted, they often do overcome the horrors that they face, but only in a bid to survive, not because they have been picked out or chosen by fate to do so. Yet even those characters involved in his greatest work, The Dark Tower, seemingly drawn by fate to be part of this epic tale, are not the benevolent, shining knights. Eddie continually voices his opposition to being part of the quest, is unruly and half-serious for most of the time, and plagued with his own doubts and demons, including a heroin addiction. Characters like these cannot defeat the bad guy and then go home knowing it was a job well done. Sometimes they can't even beat the bad guy, such as with Ben getting into his car at the end of Salem's Lot and driving away, leaving the town to be overrun by the vampires. Yet is it not horrifying to consider that sometimes the villains cannot be destroyed? And is it not an uncomfortable comment on the human condition that, despite thinking we can be heroes when the time calls for it, sometimes the only thing we can do is run away.
This is just the first half (really!); the rest is on The Dark Tower specifically. I won't type it all up right now -- for all I know, this could be completely ignored! I may, when I've recovered from this bout, type up the rest. Anyway, there we go...
