“Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do—to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies across the street.”
--Stephen King
No one does the short story like Stephen King; he’s pretty much perfected it. And as much as I love his novels, I am usually even more excited to read any new compilation of his short stories. So when I got “Full Dark, No Stars” for Christmas, I couldn’t wait to find the right opportunity to work it into the rotation. Suffice it to say that a lengthy plane ride to and a six-day stay in England were the perfect recipe.
This collection starts out with the 131-page “1922,” a novelette that watches the complete degeneration of a farmer who decided to murder his wife -- enlisting his son in the process. His decision is methodical and semi-rational (“The Bible says that an ungrateful child is like a serpent’s tooth, but a nagging and ungrateful Wife is ever so much sharper than that.”), lending an almost surreal quality to the writing and wording of the actual act. It’s an engrossing confession letter/story, with enough of King’s patented otherworldly, supernatural events to make it a bit more than just a documentation of a murderer losing his mind with guilt. One of the few qualms is that the 14-year-old son uses dialogue that feels much too mature for his age -- though the argument could be made that participation in a murder tends to age one rather quickly (“The rage in his eyes was of the raw, pure sort that only adolescents can feel. It is rage that doesn’t count the cost.”). And rather sadistically, this was the second straight book I read (along with “The Lost Symbol”) that featured a severed hand and a stump.
Regardless of how you feel about the actual crime and the decision behind it (“I believe that there is another man inside of every man, a stranger, a Conniving Man.”), it’s depressing to see how much of a shambles the farmer’s life becomes. And this lengthy tale ends with a newspaper account that calls into question how much of the farmer’s account of the matter you should believe or not -- always a nifty touch.
“He cried this so loudly that crows took wing from the fenceline and swirled away into the blue sky like charred paper.”
“In the end we are all caught in devices of our own making. I believe that. In the end we are all caught.”
“Big Driver” contains a few more lighthearted passages, including references to the Subaru-lesbian connection and George Costanza and “Seinfeld.” This tale is fairly long as well (112 pages), and turns out to be just as dark and twisted as the preceding story. It documents the brutal abduction and rape of a middle-aged female author who is returning from a book reading, after which she is left for dead amidst a collection of other murdered victims in a drain pipe (“At least there would be no more pain, no more waking to watch the monster-man dance in the burning sunset light.”).
The story follows the journey of a woman slowly going insane, drifting in and out of consciousness as she pursues blood revenge. Her ongoing conversations with her cat and her car’s TomTom begin to depict her loose grip on sanity, and the convention of using the TomTom as another character is another clever twist from King. You begin to notice small slipups and mistakes she may be making, and you subconsciouly attribute them to her understandably shaken state of mind. I thought the ending was a little bit contrived, as the protagonist confides in a stranger, making for a bit of an odd conclusion. Yet overall, it is a pretty fascinating read about the mindset of a victim in electing to dismiss the usual solution of hiding the truth (“The sound of the lie she would now live until it felt like the truth.”), instead plotting their own avenging path.
“When it came to the dark fuckery of the human heart, there seemed to be no limit.”
Continuing with the rather morbid content, “Fair Extension” was the next tale in the collection, and represented my least favorite of the quartet. Despite the presence of another “Seinfeld” reference and one of King’s popular descriptions of someone having too many teeth in their smile, this one turns a cancer victim (Dave Streeter) into a completely unlikeable and smug dude, moving him from pitiable to evil. It’s a little difficult to read and digest due to its harshness, but in a nutshell, it basically involves Streeter making a deal with the devil (“He supposed everyone’s shadow started to look sick as sunset approached, especially in August, when the end of the day was long and lingering and somehow not quite pleasant.”) to transfer his misfortune to his friend, who doesn't even suspect that he is also Streeter's arch-enemy as well.
There was a neat twist in putting the story into the context of real news, but the ending was a bit sudden and unexpected (even though I liked it). The lack of a comeuppance, the lack of a punishment for Streeter’s greed and lack of guilt is a bit jarring. At only 31 pages, it’s easily the shortest of the bunch -- which I found to be a good thing.
“‘Life is fair. We all get the same nine-month shake in the box, and then the dice roll. Some people get a run of sevens. Some people, unfortunately, get snake-eyes. It’s just how the world is.’”
“Janet laughed and shook her head. ‘What would I wish for? I have everything I want.’
‘Me too,’ Streeter said, and then, with his eyes fixed firmly on Venus, he wished for more.”
The most intriguing and compelling story of the collection fittingly brings the book to an explosive conclusion. “A Good Marriage” checks in at 83 pages, packing each and every word with emotion and almost mind-searing intensity. It starts out wistfully, painstakingly describing the minutiae of marriage in nostalgic language (“These things and ten thousand others comprised the secret history of marriage.”). Then, out of nowhere, the tale takes a mesmerizing turn, as the good wife makes a discovery about her husband that almost can’t be rationally processed (“Opening the box. Thinking, Does anybody really know anybody?”). Has a blood donor card ever carried more weight as a harbinger of impending pain and hidden, unthinkable violence?
Parts of it read a little bit like “Big Driver,” and there is a little bit of a “Fringe” feel to it as well. In broad stroaks, the wife discovers that her husband may be a serial killer, and based on a terrifying scene when she wakes up from a drifting sleep to discover him beside her it leads the reader to realize that his series of crimes just may have driven her nuts (“The sweet dream of one more ordinary evening in an ordinary life had been swallowed by a nightmare.”). She begins living outside of her own mind, obsessed with mirrors and a perceived other world that lies just beyond their surfaces.
While I felt an ending that ties more to the mirrors and a possible last forebidding glance into the world that was, is and could be might have been a nice touch, the interview at the end with the old codger was unbelievably well done. It was so fraught with tension, double meanings and layers of language that you felt like you were right there in that kitchen, experiencing all the same emotions and anxieties.
“The refrigerator whirred, the water dripped in the sink, and the raw seconds passed. This was the Darker Life, where every truth was written backward.”
“In that moment her understanding of him was complete. He loved nothing, least of all her. Every kindness, caress, boyish grin, and thoughtful gesture -- all were nothing but camoflauge. He was a shell. There was nothing inside him but howling emptiness.”
In the afterword, King offers up as close to an apology as he ever has for the supreme darkness that pervades these stories (“The stories in this book are harsh. You may have found them hard to read in places. If so, be assured that I found them equally hard to write in places.”). He writes very honestly about his quest to “provoke an emotional, even visceral, reaction in my readers,” then reminds that his work is always about the truth, about calling it like he sees it:
“Here’s something else I believe: if you’re going into a very dark place … then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don’t want to see, why in God’s name would you dare the dark at all?”
He also freely offers up some tips about writing, specifically fiction. His definition of fiction is about as good a one as this writer has ever heard: “It’s the way we answer the question, How can such things be? Stories suggest that sometimes -- not always, but sometimes -- there’s a reason.”
In this book about secrets and the lengths folks will go to to hide them, to come to terms with a life of living with them, King has constructed a piece not for the faint of heart. But in his carefully crafted characters and environments, he painstakingly endeavors to write about emotion more than ever -- about the emotions in these people, and yes, even the ones in you.
So be brave … cast whatever light you can muster into the dark and shadows spread by King. Then revel in a genius at work in the medium he first mastered, then owned … and now redefined.
“From the start … I felt that the best fiction was both propulsive and assaultive. It gets in your face. Sometimes it shouts in your face. I have no quarrel with literary fiction, which usually concerns itself with extraordinary people in ordinary situations, but as both a reader and a writer, I’m much more interested by ordinary people in extraordinary situations.”
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