Though known for long – make that looong – novels and for being amazingly prolific, Stephen King is above all, at heart, quite simply, a gifted storyteller. As such, he’s a writer whose narrative mastery needs no page limits or lengths to define it.
In fact, to me King should be as well known for writing short stories as for penning lengthy tomes which often gain big-screen fame. Indeed, ever since his early days as a struggling unknown half a century ago, King has woven the fabric of many narratives not into a bulky novel but rather into a patchwork quilt of short stories and novellas.
Such yarns have been collected into book form 11 times, starting with 1978’s Night Shift and now including the new You Like It Darker (Scribner).
Let’s get the math handled first. You Like It Darker runs 502 pages and collects 12 stories ranging from 9 to 152 pages in length.
But page counts aren’t what matter here. Rather, it’s the compelling nature of the stories, which can be full-bodied and absorbing no matter how brief they may be.
For theatrical exhibition, a film almost has to run 90 minutes to be considered feature length. But a King story can be a few pages or a thousand – whatever serves it best.
There’s a freedom in that – and when it comes to tighter tales, a satisfaction that fits an old show-biz adage I often said while covering entertainment as a journalist: Leave ‘em laughing. That is, leave ‘em satisfied – if not wanting more.
King certainly does that here. And two of your best bets are at either extreme: Willie the Weirdo at 12 pages and Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream at a hefty 152, though it’s such a page-turner that it, too, seems to fly by.
Those tales and most others have some sort of supernatural element, but not in a full-bore way. There’s no town overrun by vampires or cemetery where buried pets come back.
In fact, Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream relies on just one unexplainable and marginally incredible detail, then spins vividly from that thanks to meaty characters with all-too-human impulses and the cuttingly real element of an innocent man being hounded by police for reporting a crime he did not commit.
Some hounding is understandable. After all, he claimed he knew where a girl was buried behind a long-abandoned gas station in a forgotten part of Kansas because he dreamed about it, then drove out to confirm it.
Dreamed it? Though no evidence links him to her death, surely he did it. That’s the only explanation, right–especially for an obsessive cop with a number-counting bent who’s plunging into madness.
From this premise emerges an absorbing account of loyalty, lunacy and no good deed going unpunished. It’s a tale which should grip you from its eerie opening pages through its unsettling descriptions (“the nails bleeding streaks of red rust”) to its sudden, jolting finish. Throughout, it’s King at his best.
As for Willie the Weirdo, let’s just say its sudden closing revelation explains an odd premise (a dying granddad tells his heartless nephew about ancient historical events with seemingly first-hand knowledge) in a deliciously satisfying flash. Remember, it’s not how long, but how good.
Of course, it’s still an adjustment after settling in for a longer story like Danny Coughlin or the 90-page Rattlesnakes (linked to King’s novels Christine and Duma Key), then pivoting to a quickie that borders on an anecdote. But they all deliver in their own way, and they’re all distinctly King.
In part that’s because, as he says in his afterward, he likes it darker, just as do his many Dear Readers.
“Horror stories are best appreciated by those who are compassionate and empathetic,” King writes. “In stories of the supernatural and paranormal, I have tried especially hard to show the real world as it is, and to tell the truth about the America I know and love. Some of those truths are ugly, but as the poem says, scars become beauty marks when there is love.”
If ever an afterward should sell a book, that one should.
– Bruce Westbrook
Tags: horror, Stephen King, book review, Books, book-reviews
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