 On Writing (2000)
This book came out to unusually good reviews, much of that attributable to the media's predictable response to a terrible event – in this case, King being nearly killed by a reckless driver. The unspoken thing, it seemed to me, was that King had finally written something acceptable, no zombie pets, alien spacecraft, or murdurous impulses, and he was being rewarded for it. I read King avidly – rabidly – in my youth, and it was in my first year of college that I picked up the first Stephen King book I wouldn't finish … after discovering Nabokov, Calvino, and B.S. Johnson, Stephen King came off like comic books. I rejected him outright and chalked my initial interest up to having been a sweaty adolescent jerkoff. Stephen King, hereby, is considered a writer for young adults. But I always watched from the periphery as his career continued to ever-diminishing artistic and commercial returns. I never subscribed to the idea that he ought to write a "real" book, but I did wonder why, given his millions of dollars, he didn't slow his shit down and write a really good book. One to be remembered for. Recently I've been revisiting key elements of my past, and King is as big a totem as the Beatles or softcore porn on cable TV. I approached On Writing as much for self-discovery as for my perennial interest in what the author has to say. And what does this defiantly "popular" novelist have to say about the craft of writing? Quite a fucking lot, actually. King's book introductions have long been an ongoing dialogue with his "Constant Reader" – a personal bond forged with each individual who remains committed to his work. He knows who he's writing for, and it ain't the New York Review of Books. On Writing gathers that simmering steam into an extended flame, getting into some autobiography, but only as that informs the subject of writing. We learn a bit about King's formative years, his early writing experiences, and some of the surprising contexts in which he was writing (like, coming home from a shitty job feeding dirty sheets into a laundry boiler, then writing for hours in the back of his trailer). Whatever you think of his writing, you come away with a lot of admiration for his drive. He brings up some staggering truths; I was fascinated by his candid (though very brief) depiction of his booze and coke days, wherein he careened through, among others, Misery and The Tommyknockers (both revealed to be cocaine metaphors, incidentally!) and doesn't even remember writing Cujo. His knack for acknowledging the truth is wonderful – like, he knows he's not a great writer, but he also knows he's an almost unparalleled storyteller, and that's what he got into writing for in the first place. I wish he were more deeply introspective – he talks a lot about behaviors (cocaine's a great example) without delving into the source code – but perhaps a true autobiography will fill in the gaps. Then again, this is a guy who primarily writes about, like, vampires and shit, so clearly he's an external thinker. He goes into the 1999 hit-and-run that nearly killed him, but not beyond how writing figured into his recovery; in fact, On Writing was the book he was working on when the thing happened. It forms a nice coda to the book, though it did smack somewhat of milking the obvious to sell what otherwise would have been a book of marginal interest. As to his thoughts on writing itself: they're similar to those of every writing teacher I've ever had: you must read a lot, you must write a lot, and you must be open to criticism. One of the points he stresses is the old Strunk & White style rule "Omit needless words." Kind of funny coming from a guy for whom a more appropriate rule would be "Omit needless books." He swears that he doesn't publish increasingly fat and unedited books because he can, but that's a point I didn't believe. But I don't blame him. He's in as unique a position as any writer in history has ever been to pursue whatever the fuck he wants. The one thing I wish he could eradicate, though, is the slight Dave Barry quality to some of his commentary writing … I might make peace with King, but it would take some serious therapy to get me to admit Dave Barry has any value. As a pep-talk for an aspiring writer, I have to say that King's On Writing is excellent. I'll probably give it to some of my perfectionist-writer friends to kick them in the ass a little … King doesn't take much more than three months to write a book, so why should any of us, really? I come away from the book refreshed, inspired, and kind of relieved to have embraced once again the work of a man who I idolized as a teen. Granted, most of his books still make more sense to be read at that age, but come on … he's never made the claim to be anything other than what he is. And if nothing else, he's convinced me once and for all that this "masterpiece" novel I've been planning to write for years needs to just be written already. Perhaps one day I will be strong enough to acknowledge my own hack-ness. Perhaps that day will also see me sitting on about as big a pile of money as Stephen King, too.
Review by Manny Shields |