King on the art of short stories

As we prepare to read Night Shift, the first story collection published by Stephen King, here's some advice from the Master of Horror himself:

Rage (1977)

It only took four books to reach what may very well be the most controversial book of the King oeuvre, his first Bachman book, Rage. Up until this point everything with Stephen King has been on the up-and-up. Carrie was pretty good, 'Salem's Lot was better, and The Shining hit "classic" territory (but the movie was better). Then comes Rage.

To put this book in the same continuum as the other three is probably unfair on a number of levels. First off, this book wasn't intended to be the proper fourth novel, but since novel #4 would be the magnum opus The Stand, it was necessary to throw something out there to tide folks over until then. While the short story collection Night Shift filled in for early 1978, King realized that some of his earlier unsold works may now actually have a market that they didn't have in the early 1970's. However he wasn't at the point in his career where his publisher was prepared to break the "one-per-year" rule, and thus Richard Bachman was born to skirt this little problem. Therefore, no one living at this time was probably aware of the pseudonym. Bachman was just a sick and twisted paperback writer in no way related to the rising star known as Stephen King. So they thought.

I don't have the details handy and I'm just writing off the cuff, but Rage probably dates back to the early 1970's, written well before Carrie. Undoubtedly the book was heavily edited for its paperback-original publication, but the juvenilia shines through nevertheless. Even before Stephen King himself decided to yank Rage from publication in the late 1990's, not because it's a poorly written book, but out of concern (guilt?) that he may have inadvertently inspired the recent uptick in deadly school shootings.

So, yes, if you haven't figured it out yet, Rage is about the not-too-uncommon adolescent fantasy of blowing up your school. For those who are (usually) male and were not in the top 5% of the popularity scale in high school, it is more than likely you had a passing fancy of one day being the great equalizer and cutting your more-popular peers and clueless teachers down to size. Of course you didn't act on it, but the thought probably flittered around in a hormonally-clouded weak moment. And then you fall back into the healthier and safer "it'll get better" mode of thinking. Charlie Decker, the "protagonist" of the story, however, has decided that thanks to his miserable past it will most definitely not get better and it's time to settle accounts. He starts off guns blazing, taking out two teachers, and then holding a class hostage. Unlike the more horrifying real-life school massacres, Charlie threatens, but never kills a fellow student. Instead he submits them to horrific examinations of consciousness. Meanwhile, the adults get to bear the real brunt of his rage, either through bullets or harsh interrogation.

One thing I've grown to accept in reading any given novel by Stephen King is that there is some kind of supernatural element. Richard Bachman, however, has no room for this. It is all deathly real in Bachman's world. Everything that made Charlie the deranged psycho he turned into were all things that could happen to anyone. Among his struggles with his parents and social life, there are episodes that anyone can relate to or perhaps experienced themselves. Few of us are cursed enough to experience all the struggles Charlie went through, and of those, most probably wouldn't lash out as he did.

And oh my is Charlie a cruel guy. But perhaps the cruel one is the author. While I was reading it I felt like it was coming close to violence porn, where the characters were created simply to hurt each other as part of the amoral world they were made to populate. Certainly in the beginning with the shooting of two teachers and before that tearing into the principal in the most callous imaginable way, it all felt very icky. However most of the act is holding a classroom of his peers hostage and, as he puts it "getting it on". Not like that, but rather getting everything out in the open. People crack and true selves ooze out. It ends up feeling like an awkward delusional fantasy, where the loser tears the masks from the trendy kids he suffered under for so long. The class is strangely interactive with Charlie. I don't know about you, but if I was held hostage I shut up tight as a clam and only speak if my life depended on it. These kids started acting like they were on Springer or something, bickering and fighting with each other,

Ultimately, to nobody's surprise, following the incident Charlie is sent away to an institution for the criminally insane, because, according to the rules of polite society, he's completely off his rocker. If the book had been better written, I think the reader would be more sympathetic to his lifelong ordeal and seen him as more justified. Unfortunately, I saw this as a fitting end for an ultimately unlikable character. I never really saw him reaching the point where the standoff ended either victoriously, or in a total bloodbath topped with a suicide. Sadly, that latter seems to be the more likely scenario in the headlines of recently.

As a final note here, I implore you NOT to spend large amounts of money to get this book. If you aren't a completionist you can live a perfectly normal life without it, because it really is not a good book (in either quality or disposition). If you are, do what I did and find a modestly-priced edition of  The Bachman Books. At least you get The Long Walk included, a much finer effort (to be discussed about three books from now!).

In Progress: Rage

February 9 (page 23): This Richard Bachman guy is one sick puppy. I'm not ready to label this violence porn yet, but it is definitely toying with the limits of violent behavior right out the gates.

February 11 (page 76): I can't wait to be done with this book. Maybe I've just been hardened from news stories of myriad school shootings, but Charlie's interactions with the rest of the class just seem a little too cozy. On the other hand, if it's an adult, it's cruel and/or fatal.

(Note: I later finished the book. I guess these updates work better for stuff like The Stand. Review to come.)

Early intermission

I know it's probably bad blog karma to let a whole month slip by without a post, but I promise the next entry is coming up soon. Just in case you don't have the list handy, it will be Rage by Richard Bachman, the first book by Stephen King's now-widely-known pseudonym.

If I was being respectful of King's wishes, I would be skipping this one, which has been effectively out of print by request of the author for the last twenty years. This article from Business Insider provides some background as to why. However, I am not a respectful person, so I've got my unexpurgated copy of The Bachman Books ready to go. I believe that whole collection is now out of print, with the other three novels being returned to individual publication.

For the curious, here is the essay "The Importance of Being Bachman", which I am skipping (for now) since it is riddled with spoilers, and I am but an innocent lamb. What is interesting to keep in mind is that he effectively had the public fooled through the early Bachman books, so one must approach the reception of these stories as being from a deranged mind with no relation to the by now venerable Stephen King. I believe it was a crafty librarian that was finally able to crack the enigma.

After three straight novels under King's own name, this will be a bit of a divergence. There is no movie based on Rage, but the next entry in this mad quest is Night Shift, a short story collection that spawned no less than ten movies of varying quality.