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.