The Wind Through the Keyhole--Stephen King

photo: The book cover of the mass hardcover (not one of the 800 limited edition covers) from stephenking.com.

An excuse me, I forgot something entry into the Dark Tower series, this one is actually two novellas--both completely different, though both take place in Dark Tower territory--in which one is sandwiched (or bookmarked, or framed, if you will)--by the other.  (Actually, it's literally a story-within-a-story-within-a-story, but whatever.)  As a Dark Tower book, the novella with Roland takes precedence, but the other story, with Tim Stoutheart, is actually the better, and a mini-Dark Tower series in of itself (with a touch of Jack Sawyer from King's and Straub's The Talisman).  Roland's story, with a third-person omniscient narrator, has him as a much younger guy, tracking down a shape-shifter (called the Skin-Man) who's been killing lots of people.  Roland himself tells the other story, about Tim Stoutheart, while he and a young boy await the arrival of a group of men--one of whom is the shape-shifter.  The story he tells involves a Man in Black, who readers of the series will remember, and he even comes with the initials RF, for die-hard King fans who remember Randall Flagg's various guises.  This one has a disturbing bit of Life of Pi in it (it's got an existential tiger), as well as a mischievous and possibly evil Tinkerbell-like character.  It's full of the wonderment that I like from the series, and goes easy on the crossover stuff, which some of the other books got bogged down with.  This one is better written than the Roland part, as well.

My theory on this book--as it's rare that a writer or publisher will throw in a book that comes much earlier in the series, and a series that is complete without it, no less--is that this is a tied-together piece of two novellas that had been discarded by King and/or the publisher.  The shape-shifter story is much shorter, and, though okay, isn't particularly memorable or exceptionally well-written.  I think King wrote this as part of the Wolves of Calla string, maybe, and tossed it aside, for the reasons I just mentioned.  The Tim Stoutheart story strikes me as a possible tale of Roland's beginning, as it's essentially the foundation of how Tim, a lad who essentially lived in The Shire, grew to be a fearsome and famous Gunslinger--though not as revered as Roland, of course.  King, I think, decided that the story would not do for Roland, but, as has been his wont of late, thought it good enough to publish--but how?  Well, like this.  Though narrated by Roland, the voice is obviously King's, and is a welcome one that we're used to.  King tones it down quite a bit, and dispenses with his favorite C-word--which is otherwise used extensively in the Roland story, when it's clear that King is the third-person omniscient voice--because Roland is certainly too distinguished to ever use it.

All in all, the book is a quick read, though the framing is certainly forced, and you won't want the Tim Stoutheart tale to end, and you'll be slightly disappointed by the second half of Roland's frame.  It's also slightly more unbelievable, considering Roland is the strong and silent type, yet tells a long-ish story, but he'd been more verbal in the latter books of the series, so what the hey.  Ultimately it's a good read, though nothing you haven't seen before.  You'll come away very pleasantly disappointed, as you'll be wishing Tim and his mother well.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Photo: 11/22/63 book cover from its Wikipedia page

Inner ear infection the last three days, so one of the only things I could do laying in bed is read, and that only barely.  So I read this much-anticipated book.  I have mixed emotions and thoughts about it, so...let's break 'em down.

The Good:

Well, it's gotta be a good sign that I read 849 pages in essentially two days, and about 750 of those today (Wednesday) alone.  King's detractors will say that this is bad, that nothing serious enough to be written by one of the best-selling authors of the 20th Century should be that quick and easy to read.  While this smacks of elitism to me, I smell a tiny scent of truth, but then again, King never said he was Nabakov or Shakespeare, and while it's true that this novel, like most of his, doesn't have depth, per se, it does have resonance.  (Much like the harmonies he writes about, one supposes.)  Besides that, it's a good read, for a few reasons:

1.  It was nice to see Bevvie Marsh again, and Richie Tozier, too, I suppose.
2.  Astute fans will say hello to Christine (there's a '58 Plymouth Fury in a few places here, and it ain't nice), Cujo (by reference to nice but rabid dogs) and to the gateway keepers in Hearts in Atlantis and in Insomnia, as well as the town of Derry itself, which was never right in its head.  There are shimmers of The Dark Tower series (especially the most recent) and God knows what else, too.  There's a tiny nod to Back to the Future, too.
3.  King mixes and mashes Derry, Maine and Dallas, Texas in artistic ways similar to Desperation and The Regulators, as well as the mirrored characters in both.
4.  The book is ultimately about love won and lost, and a lovely scene of (odd, but it works) love at the end that is very similar to the ending of Edward Scissorhands--and not about time warps, or paradoxes, or any of those things.  Frankly, he doesn't handle those topics in any way that we haven't seen already.

Which leads me to

The Bad:

Mostly, what I just said: There isn't much in here about time travel, paradoxes, messing with time, harmonies or shimmers or whatever that we haven't already seen before.  And, maybe, better, elsewhere.  In fact, if the reader doesn't fall in love with Sadie (which this reader did), then the book falls apart at the seams.  But, to King's credit, you will love Sadie; I think the logical planner in King realizes that she is watermark here, and that he loses us if he loses her.  So, of course, he doesn't.  Like Juliet, Sadie seems to deserve better than the guy she falls for.

There's also no question at all about what will ultimately happen to her, or to Jake/George, which is both bad, and good, considering that you are compelled to read on despite this.  There's also no question about what'll happen when Jake/George goes back to the future (there's the nod), which King also correctly realizes and spends no more than a few pages on--and his character spends just an hour in the future close to the end.  But, again, despite all this, you read on, which is the ultimate good for writers and readers alike.

The only question is: What will he do, if anything, to set things right again?  I guessed it right, mostly because, as a writer myself, I couldn't imagine the character doing the whole thing all over again (there's another nod to the last Dark Tower), but you want to resolve the George/Sadie thing, too, which he does.  Or, at least, according to the Afterword, his son, Joe Hill, does, and King just writes it.  But, whatever.  It's satisfying and it works, despite borrowing heavily, I suspect, from Scissorhands--and it was Joe Hill's idea, to boot.

And so you get the idea.  It isn't The Stand, or It, and we'll have to agree that such high points may not be reached again.  (King himself thinks that The Stand, The Shining and Salem's Lot, out of all of them, will stand the test of time.  I mostly agree, except not for the Lot, which will be eclipsed by the Dark Tower series, by It, and by Different Seasons.)  But 11/22/63 is also not The Cell, Rose Madder or Under the Dome, either, so that's all good.  (Under the Dome is severely overrated.)  It's not existential fodder, either, as there is no grey area with its depiction of a future with a JFK who's lived--or of its depiction of 60s Dallas, either, for that matter.  It's a s--thole, clearly, and it better be undone.  Fast.  Luckily, every re-appearance is a quick reset.

Ultimately I gave it five stars because I read its 849 pages in about 48 hours, which has to be testament to the book's quality, or to my reading stamina, or both.  I'm a writer myself, and if someone told me he read my 849-page book in 48 hours, happily engrossed in its story as he recovered from an inner-ear infection, that would make me perfectly proud.  To relate: A friend of mine, who can be a very good, if not occasionally harshly helpful, reader and critic, read my 11-page zombie story recently--very, very quickly and, as it turned out, appreciably.  Never in a million years would I think that this fine poet would devour and appreciate my 11-page zombie story, but he did.  And I can't think of a better compliment to a writer than that.

And so there it is.  I'll leave you with one more thought, just realized: Sooner or later, King will have to be appreciated for his whimsical portrayal of 3-dimensional female characters who are all too easily appreciated or fallen in love with by his male readers--from Sadie, here, to an adult Bev Marsh in IT, to a feisty Wendy in The Shining (who was NOT a sniveling Shelley Duvall) to Carrie White, in a way, to Charlie McGee in another odd way, and even to Annie Wilkes, in a VERY odd way, as well as a few others in between.  Don't get me wrong, there were some real clunkers in there, too, but overall he is very good, if not entirely realistically good, at this, and I haven't heard anyone say so before.  Woody Allen (rightfully) gets tons of kudos for his developed female characters, and while they are in a different stratosphere than King's, there is still a consistent solidity to them after all these books and years.  And The Woodman's women aren't exactly completely realistic, either, right?