The Gospel According to Prisco

Stephen King’s been on a rough patch as of late.  Cell started out promising, but fizzled out worse that finding out your sister’s on the other side of the glory hole.  Lisey’s Story made me want to physically beat the smuck out of him.  And I had heard mixed things about Duma Key.

It’s not too bad though.  Again, it’s as if King is reliving all of his old stories through the scratched and cracked glasses of old age and post-traumatic accident disorder.  Edgar Freemantle is a super wealthy contractor who suffers a terrible accident, where he loses and arm and fractures his skull.  His life falls apart, his wife leaves him after his violent outbursts, and he finds himself down in Florida where he decides to take up painting.  Suddenly, his paintings take on haunting overtones, and it slowly devolves in a disturbing ghost story. 

That dismisses it as really M. Night Shamalayan, but it’s more than that.  The story and the artwork are very surreal, and it’s kinda nice.  It’s an older man’s story, but King is an older man.  If he has to keep plopping out stories, at least he seems to be getting slightly better.  It’s not his best work, by far, but we’re talking about a man who’s written some of the greatest horror stories in the history of literature.  I recently read a new Bradbury, and it was bit like that experience.  He has lost a few steps, and mellowed a bit in his old age, but at least he’s still got a turn of the gothic.  

If you like King, you might want to give it a whirl.  It’s a slow book, and it trundles along, but the characters are nice, and it’s a decent story.  

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King

Well.  It wasn’t his worst.  It was a pretty intriguing take on the alien abduction and invasion genre.  After watching Independence Day and the War of the Worlds remake, it was nice to see a different spin on the whole alien virus motif.  It’s funny, because it really reminded me of Stand by Me or It, especially since we flash around in the past of these four friends from Maine.  And then at one point, they arrive at the Standpipe and see a plaque placed by the kids from It and I was like, oh.  That’s why.  Apparently, the events in Dreamcatcher would happen slightly after the events of It.  Which is probably why I liked it more than I should. 

I can absolutely see why this would make for a terrible movie, and I haven’t watched it yet, despite the presence of Donnie Wahlberg, Thomas Jane, and Jason Lee.  I mean, most of the story takes place in the minds of the characters, it’s all done through telepathy.  And I can’t tell if their being exploitative of retards or not.  One of the main characters, the one with the Shinning, is also severely developmentally disabled.  So while they treat him with love and respect, he also uses a tard patois to communicate.  

I like when King uses Derry and envelopes the story in the universe he’s created for himself.  It’s why I like Kevin Smith so much too, and why I probably liked this book more than most people would.  It’s absolutely why I’m such a maniac fan of his Dark Tower series.  King was sort of operating on a different level then.  Back when he was able to turn a coke addiction into Misery.