Yeah, I hadn't read King in years, but I actually grabbed the audiobook version of The Cell for a roadtrip last fall. I thought it was pretty solid, if built on a totally silly premise. But then he's always been able to do a lot with silly premises.
I liked Cell because I enjoyed the sheer relentlessness of it. The pacing was just merciless...you can't "find a stopping place" like in all of his best stuff.
From a Buick 8 was just ridiculously bad. I didn't rally like the stuff in "Everything's Eventual" either.
He's lucky (or not) in that he can get away with publishing what has to be the first draft of each of these things, without having to really struggle to come up with the best possible ending or re-write the bad dialogue or whatever, because he knows it doesn't make any difference. It's up to US to deal with the half-baked, combination-brilliant-and-idiotic results. We get fifty half-assed but worthwhile books rather than the ten we'd get if he had any reason to or interest in doing it carefully.
Perhaps I need to give The Cell another chance. I just found his lead character to be the current old-guy-with-wisdom that he's been costing on for a while (e.g. Bag of Bones, Insomnia, Duma Key, etc).
This was typical King. I loved the nods to some of his other works as well. I am a fan of both JFK and King, so this was a must read for me. It pulled me in from the first page and kept me interested to the end.
December 27, 2011 9:08 PM
[Image]
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed.
If you had the chance to change history, would you? Would the consequences be worth it?
Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
"New Stephen King book: 11/22/63"
8 Comments -
The librarian gets shot by Oswald and so he resets history so JFK gets shot and she lives, although he can't be with her.
You heard it here first!
March 11, 2011 7:10 AM
Yeah, it's the opposite of The City on the Edge of Forever.
Maybe Ellison will sue King!
March 11, 2011 12:16 PM
I can't get into current Stephen King. He's in this effete style, like he's Mark Russell onstage with a piano or something.
March 11, 2011 12:17 PM
I've kept up with King, for the most part, and I agree that he's not as good as he used to be. Here are the books he published over the past decade:
Full Dark, No Stars (4 novellas, really enjoyed 3 out of four of them)
Just Past Sunset (short stories, mixed bag, really good and really bad)
Cell (read 100 pages, wasn't feeling it)
Duma Key (his best novel in a long time despite being completely derivative of The Ring)
From a Buick 8 (Couldn't get through it)
Under the Dome (own it but I have been too intimidated to crack this 1000+ page novel because I heard the ending sucks)
Lisey's Story (a patient of mine, who is a huge fan of King, said it was an awful love story so I avoided it)
The Colorado Kid (a novella who-dun-it with no resolution, I was so pissed)
Everything's Eventual (short stories, most quite good)
Blockade Billy (disappointing short story) & Good Marriage (another short story much better than Blockade Billy) - both stories in a small book
Blaze (novella that's a big fat meh)
Faithful (a non-fiction book about the Red Sox. I don't enjoy baseball so I never read it)
March 11, 2011 2:55 PM
Yeah, I hadn't read King in years, but I actually grabbed the audiobook version of The Cell for a roadtrip last fall. I thought it was pretty solid, if built on a totally silly premise. But then he's always been able to do a lot with silly premises.
March 11, 2011 9:33 PM
I liked Cell because I enjoyed the sheer relentlessness of it. The pacing was just merciless...you can't "find a stopping place" like in all of his best stuff.
From a Buick 8 was just ridiculously bad. I didn't rally like the stuff in "Everything's Eventual" either.
He's lucky (or not) in that he can get away with publishing what has to be the first draft of each of these things, without having to really struggle to come up with the best possible ending or re-write the bad dialogue or whatever, because he knows it doesn't make any difference. It's up to US to deal with the half-baked, combination-brilliant-and-idiotic results. We get fifty half-assed but worthwhile books rather than the ten we'd get if he had any reason to or interest in doing it carefully.
March 12, 2011 2:32 AM
Perhaps I need to give The Cell another chance. I just found his lead character to be the current old-guy-with-wisdom that he's been costing on for a while (e.g. Bag of Bones, Insomnia, Duma Key, etc).
March 12, 2011 6:01 PM
This was typical King. I loved the nods to some of his other works as well. I am a fan of both JFK and King, so this was a must read for me. It pulled me in from the first page and kept me interested to the end.
December 27, 2011 9:08 PM