Category / King, Stephen

by Edward Champion

Shining Through

Playbill: “Rocker John Mellencamp spent much of November working on The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a new ‘play with music’ the singer-songwriter is collaborating on with novelist Stephen King.” (via Galleycat)

Return of the Reluctant has obtained information on the first song from the play.

JACK TORRANCE & DIANE
Words and Music by John Cougar Mellencamp

Little ditty about Jack Torrance & Diane
Two American adults holing up in the Westland
Jacky’s gonna be a writing star
Diane’s a ghostly fuck in a room with a bar

Tryin’ to write a novel; all work and no play
Must kill the little boy by the end of the day
He’s got his axe and there’s Diane’s skull
There’s a ghostly bartender and he’s quite tall
Inside a giant maze
Dribble off those REDRUMS
Let me drink as I please
And Jacky say

Oh yeah death goes on
Long after the thrill of writin’ is gone
Oh yeah say death goes on
Long after the thrill of writin’ is gone, the ghosts walk on

by Edward Champion

Morning Roundup

  • Does the apple fall far from the tree? Owen King would prefer that nobody knew about the apple at all. Owen is Stephen King’s son and has a new book out called We’re All In This Together. Whatever We’re All‘s literary merits, we’re absolutely confident that nepotism and King’s connections had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the book getting published. Perhaps like other sons of famous authors, Mr. King’s talent will be separate from his father’s and we’ll see him pen a small chapbook called Invasion from the World of Warcraft.
  • As widely reported in the blogosphere this morning, the Washington Post has issued a retraction for Marianne Wiggins’ review of John Irving’s Until I Find You. It seems that Wiggins was married to Salman Rushdie, who in turn is a longtime friend of Irving’s. Ron, David Montgomery and Sarah have posted their thoughts on this issue. The question here is where the line is drawn. If a reviewer has exchanged emails with an author (which appears to be the Post policy), it seems preposterous to me that this will sully one’s critical perspective. (And in fact, I’ve struck up a few unexpected and amicable email volleys with authors whose books I’ve ruthlessly panned.) If the publishing industry can swing between art and commerce swifter than a disco king, than surely the reviewer can negotiate the much simpler divide between the parquet floor of the books and the authors who dance on it. We’re adults here, not junior high school students. Apparently, the Post doesn’t seem to believe that an adult is capable of disagreeing with someone while remaining cordial in person.
  • Poet Laureate Ted Kooser gets up at 4:30 AM each morning to write his poetry and wants to bring poetry to the people.
  • Benjamin Kunkel plunges into Balzac’s Lost Illusions.
  • The Gentleman of San Francisco, one of the first works of Russian poet Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin has been translated and published. It only took ninety years to get around to it.
  • Richard Herring and Stewart Lee have returned to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival after 18 years. They are determined not to turn into Ben Elton.
  • And while there may be more memoirs right now than ever, Andrew O’Hagan says there’s reason to celebrate over this.
by DrMabuse

Morning Linkage

I’m trying my best to post lengthy entries (and reply to the email backlog), but other obligations have kept me firmly bogged. In the meantime, here’s some morning linkage:

  • David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech at Kenyon College a few weeks ago. (via Scott Esposito, who has returned from Spain and has somehow managed to get the keys back from Dan Wickett)
  • A whole-hearted congratulations to M.A.O. for being selected one of Time‘s 50 Coolest Websites.
  • Ron Hogan has a modest proposal. Even though his idea doesn’t involve cannibalism, I did manage to cough up a few shellacs. Have you?
  • I don’t know what’s stranger: the idea of six good reads to the sound of rain or the fact that this high-concept article came from the Tuscon Citizen. Riddle me this: when did Arizona journalists become cummulus experts?
  • Tempo has announced the 50 best magazines for 2005. It’s safe to say that Beads Today and Anal Angels didn’t make the list.
  • CNN explores Maine’s literary heritage, but one has to wonder why Stephen King gets more paragraphs than Longfellow.
  • A new version of Sling Blade will be released to DVD. It’s 22 minutes longer. Remarkably, 19 of these minutes are composed of medium shots of Billy Bob Thornton saying “M’hmmm. Yup.” But there is now a three-minute monologue of Karl Childers extolling the virtues of “taters.”
  • Yes, indeedy. Michel Houellebecq is a badass. (via Maud)
  • And this compelling public access show may get me to rescind my eight year self-imposed ban on cable television. Here in San Francisco, we have a show called “Fantasy Bedtime Hour” that involves two nude women reading Stephen R. Donaldson’s 1977 novel, Lord Foul’s Bane, and other strange speculative fiction titles. I’ve always been a sucker for a nude woman reading to me in bed. I’ve also been a licker too. But then that’s probably TMI.
by DrMabuse

Afternoon Tea

  • Dean Koontz’s dog has written a book: a chapbook-sized ode to lapping toilet water.
  • An inmate has sued Stephen King for The Green Mile, claiming that there are, in fact, no magical black men inside prison.
  • It’s been reported elsewhere, but Cynthia Ozick’s book tour diary dishes fun dirt.
  • Amber Frey is set to release a memoir this week. Sample chapter titles include “Oh My God! Laci’s baby is due on my birthday!” and “You know, Scott, this murder might affect our relationship.”
  • The Rutles 2 is coming to DVD. Believe it or not, Salman Rushdie is in it.
  • A number of prominent Canadians highlight their top reads for 2004 (including Neil Peart, who champions John Barth’s The Book of Ten Nights and a Night!).
  • The Age does an admirable job trying to account for The Da Vinci Code‘s success.
by DrMabuse

Disappearing Books & Some People Just Don’t Understand

In Singapore, Starbucks cafes have initiated a used-book program to get people reading. Read a book, drop it off at a Starbucks, and get $1 off a drink. Of course, there’s one chief problem with the plan beyond this failure to encourage people to read it. (Hypothetically, you can just move a book from the National Library to one of the 17 Starbucks outlets participating.) If the book is bad and likely to put you to sleep, shouldn’t the coffee discount apply before you read the book, rather than after?

At the Three Creeks Community Library, books on the occult are the most likely titles to be stolen. More so than tomes on test preparation or sex. I leave the conspiracy theorists to figure out if the occult books are hexed or not.

Publishers looking for a quick way to pulp their overstock may wish to contact Ed Charon, who holds the Guinness world record for tearing phone books into shreds. Or not. Ed Charon, you see, was just unseated by a thirtysomething. This young upstart can tear 12 1,000-page phone books apart in 12 minutes. “There’s no age or race barriers,” Charon said. “Everybody enjoys this.”

A.S. Byatt writes on the enduring power of the fairy tale and concludes that its legacy can be found on the Web.

The Sunday New York Times reviews Wolves of the Calla and refers to Oy as “the talking dog-badger companion,” while also comparing a conversational exchange involving stew to Widow Douglas’s cooking in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Highbrow attempts to understand popular fiction don’t get any funnier than this. Or maybe they do. Also in the Times: Heinlein’s “first novel,” For Us, the Living is unearthed. No real conclusions about the quality. More of an undergraduate-style summary than anything else. But it does include the blurb-whoring revelation that “the belated publication of this early work is a major contribution to the history of the genre.” Thankfully, John Chute has also taken on the book. He notes that For Us, the Living “promulgates the kind of arguments about sex, religion, politics and economics that normally gain publication through fringe presses, not the trade publishers Heinlein submitted his manuscript to.”

The Green Man Review asks a few spec-fic names (including Charles de Lint, Gwyneth Jones and Ellen Kushner) to spill their favorite books.

And, just as Gene Wolfe’s new book, The Knight, has escaped the floodgates, the folks over at Infinity Plus have an interview up with the maestro.