"The only thing is to write the truth. To write what you know about any particular situation," Stephen King said in a recent interview with Emma Brock"The only thing is to write the truth. To write what you know about any particular situation," Stephen King said in a recent interview with Emma Brockes of The Guardian. This novel was written more than a decade before King's family staged an intervention to help him deal with his alcoholism - and it is clear that in The Shining King is writing about a personal truth, a thing he was intimately aware of: addiction.
This book, for all of its well played storylines and horror scenes is a white-knuckled, hold-on-for-dear-life battle with alcoholism. Addicts and children of addiction will recognize the signs that King places throughout the book of Jack Torrance's long way down. The Overlook hotel is a giant personification of Addiction; the battle that Jack wages against it is hopeless - and just like the way the disease manifests itself in the real world, it doesn't just take out its host: it is out to destroy everything in its wake (in Jack's case, it is his family - especially his son - that the Overlook/Addiction wants).
I haven't started reading Doctor Sleep, and have seen nothing about the book yet, but since it is a sequel my guess is that it follows Danny and Wendy some time in the future after the events of The Shining, and in some way alcoholism/addiction will be present. And that makes me wonder if in some way King is telling us that the ghosts of the Overlook never really die, and that there isn't really a cure for them - they are only in remission, dormant but potent and ready to possess you.
There was one major issue I had with King's writing in this book, and that is that he had to remind the reader in every scene with Hallorann that he was black. This included dropping the N-word like an over-used adjective; if it isn't racist it was at least very distracting, off-putting, unnecessary. I'm reading another one of his books aloud to my wife right now, and there is an African-American female character that has the same descriptives. Unfortunate....more
I am in 6th grade. My Language Arts teacher assigns us a book report; tells us we can choose the book but that our grade will be based on the maturityI am in 6th grade. My Language Arts teacher assigns us a book report; tells us we can choose the book but that our grade will be based on the maturity of the novel the report is based upon.
My mother and I are in K-mart. I've mentioned to her about this book report to be done, and so before we leave with a basket filled with clothes I know I will be embarrassed to wear, we stop by the rack of books. She selects a few pulp paperback titles, throws them into the cart.
A few days later she hands me Fahrenheit 451. "I've read those books I purchased," she says. "I think this is the best of the bunch. You should like it."
I am skeptical. When does a 12 year-old boy like anything that his mother does? I admit to myself that the cover looks really awesome - a black suited, menacing man shooting flames over something that looks like books. I give it a go.
Tearing through the pages, the chapters, the three sections, I finish it over a weekend and am in awe. A fireman that starts fires? Books are outlawed? I look at the small library that I've had since childhood; a shelf of about 30 books. They now look to my 12 year old eyes as books of a child. Fahrenheit 451 is the book that launched me from childhood, my first book dealing with the adult world.
I ask my mother to box up my old books and put them in the attic. I am proud to start a new library with this novel as my first edition. I carefully, lovingly, sign my name on the inside cover. Let the firemen come, I think, I am proud to be a book-reader.
I continue to read this book again and again through the years. I enroll in a college course at Penn State my freshman year, simply because this book is on the course materials. I memorized the entire poem Dover Beach because it is the selection Bradbury chose to have Montag read aloud to his wife and her friends. As the years roll by, and I age through my 20s and 30s, I noticed that fewer and fewer of the people I know read any books. Even my avid reading friends from childhood moved on to their careers, their marriages, their children. In the late 1990s a friend invited me to his house to show off a proud new purchase - a television screen the size of one of his walls. I mention how frightening this was, that he was basically mainlining Bradbury's foreshadowing. He handed me a beer and fired up Star Wars; told me to relax. I watched the movie and felt like a traitor.
The last time I read F451 was about 10 years ago - I think I was afraid that if I were to pick it up again that it would diminish in its importance to me - much like Catch-22 and The Sun Also Rises. But on this first day in May I have a day-trip to Socal for business and I bring this book with me. And I love it, all over again, as if reading it for the first time. Until Beloved came along, this was my favorite book. I remember why.
I joined Goodreads in 2009 with low expectations; I am not a social media person. But there was something I found here that reminded me of Montag's joining the campfire of fellow readers. We may all be from different walks of life from places all around the world, but we come here often and with excitement - because we love books. They are some of the most important things to us and our lives would be ruined without them.
So to you, my fellow Goodreaders, tonight I raise a glass to each of you, and I want to say thank you thank you thank you for making my life better, for exposing me to authors I would never have known, and for reminding me that although I'll never get to all of the books I want to read in this life, I can stand on the shoulders of you giants and witness more wonders of the written word....more
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