King's Abdication

You know the truth, because when you cut your self or someone else with it there's always a bloods show --Stephen King, Different Seasons

STEPHEN KING could be an artist.

But dubbed the master of modern horror by his publishers, and a B-horror flick screenplay writer by most contemporary critics, King does not seem able to determine precisely what he is.

He does write horror fiction. He writes damned good horror fiction. Rabid dogs, haunted hotels, telekinetic teenagers, and other assorted bogeymen constitute the bizarre realm in which King operates. But Stephen King writes best-selling horror fiction, and that, to many, makes him a schlock writer.

That assumption, however, is unfair. King transcends such stereotypes because he is a writer with a vision--a vision for which horror is simply a medium. Beneath the macabre lies a majestic conception of good and evil, a perceptive appreciation of human nature, and a basic understanding of fear as a primordial element of that nature. King could be an artist. With endless sessions of revision, a dash of torment and a bit of solemnity, king could, if he tried, be a serious artist.

With Different Seasons the latest in the author's string of best-sellers, King puts forth the effort. Technically, the book is a collection of four novellas, each written in separate periods following the completion of specific novels. In this book, King cuts the bogeymen, employs a first-person narrative, and restricts the imagery.

The result is disastrous. The first story is insignificant and shallow. The second, trite. The third, unfulfilled. The fourth, pitiable.

The essential flaw in Different Seasons lies not in any inherent lack of ability on King's part, but moreso in his insecurity. He has been typed as a mass-market horror writer, and is experiencing the fatal pangs of self-doubt. King has been convinced that in order to establish himself as a serious writer, he must abandon his ghost stories. He does so, not realizing that horror is, in fact, the most effective vehicle for his creative sense.

IN RELINQUISHING his familiar medium, King surrenders more than an efficient context. He loses his originality and his honesty--the easy, style which characterizes many of his earlier novels.

The opening novells of Different Seasons, "Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shasta Redemption," is about a jailbreak. Not a very imaginatively conceived jailbreak. Not a very credible narrator. Not many quotable lines. Not a very good story.

King wrote it immediately upon the completion of one of his later novels, The Dead Zone. But in "Rita Hayworth," his sense of the macabre is notably absent. The story suffers: the style is stilled, the mood is tense, the characters shallow, and the ultimate effect is forced. "Rita Hayworth and Shasta Redemption" is not Stephen King.

The second attempt, "Summer of Corruption: Apt Pupil"--which followed what is considered to be King's best novel. The Shining--proves even worse. Devoid of the usual terror, the story's potential is overwhelmed by a contrived situation and hackneyed plot. In "Apt Pupil," King relates the tale of an All-America-honor-roll-blonde-haired-blue-eyed-12-year-old corrupted in a relationship with an ex-Nazi war criminal. The imagery is suggestive, and the sense of an almost unholy irreverence--the juxtaposition of good and evil--is affective. But the application of his powerful in might is diminished in the banality of his subject matter.

What is patently established in Different Seasons is that Stepheo King is not effectively impassioned with Jailbreaks and Nazis. Nor is he overly inspired by Peter Straub--the author of Ghost Story--whose style King emulates in the fourth and final story. "A Winter's Tale: The Breathing Method."

Only in "Fall from Innocence: The Body, "the third and the oldest of the novellas, does King even approach the brilliance of style and content so evident is his previous masterpieces such as The Shining, The Stand, and even Nightshirt, It works simply because King is dealing with that which he knows. The central character in 'The Body" is King. Gordie Lachance, a would be Writer, represents the embodiment of each of his dreams, thoughts, insecurities and, most regrettably, potential. Although the plot revolves upon a central childhood experience-four boys' trek into the wilderness to view their first dead body--"The body" essentially details the agony of a young writer's maturation Stepson King knows horror. And Stephen King knows the pain of being a writer.

"The Body" is a tender story-even beautiful-but by no critic's standards is it a work of art. This story, however, acknowledges that reality, and deals with it. As Gordie remarks, "the most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. It's hard to make strangers care about the good things is your life."

Gordie is right. It is hard, But The Shining made strangers care. And The Stand made strangers cry. And while Cujo may have only made strangers afraid of their dogs, it still made strangers fool.

Different Seasons won't

And is Stephen King has indeed fallen victim to the misconception that horror is schlocky, he certainly has not yet located an effective substitute.