Book Review: The Institute by Stephen King

Photo Credit: The Hardcover's Cover, from Goodreads

I've got all of King's books, and I've been writing that his stuff lately is okay, but that we need to accept that the genius is...resting. Producing, but resting. I've been writing that his stuff is "compulsively readable" for so long now, I can't remember when that wasn't the best that I had to say. REVIVAL was a rare exception, but for a long time before that, and now for a long time after, "compulsively readable," and that I read his newest book in X number days, were the best I could say. But then I read that The New York Times, and that Kirkus, had given THE INSTITUTE rave reviews. They said he was back to form, that he hadn't written about kids this well since IT (but with the release of IT Part 2, what else would they say?), and that this novel was extremely well structured--all rare positive review bits, especially from the NYT and Kirkus, who are not always enamored with King's stuff. So I bought it, as I would've anyway, because I own all of his books in hardcover, and because I knew I'd read it swiftly (check) and that I'd at least find it compulsively readable. But this time--THIS TIME!!!--I felt confident I'd have more positive things to say.

And, well...I read THE INSTITUTE's 561 pages in about 2 1/2 days. And...it's compulsively readable.

It isn't IT, and he doesn't write about kids as well in this as he did in IT. It's possible that this is the best he's written about them since IT, but how many of his recent books have only been about kids? Maybe, none of them---since IT.

The book starts off with a drifter, and a small town, and how the drifter ingratiates himself in this small town...but King has done that millions of times, and can possibly write that now in his sleep. (Which he possibly did, here.) Then it switches rather abruptly to The Institute, which seems suspiciously like The Shop, from FIRESTARTER. But this ain't FIRESTARTER, and the baddies from The Shop are much more so than the ones here. (There are similarities, too. There's a John Rainbird character here, of the opposite gender, but Rainbird was a badass that nobody here approaches.) Nobody here is Charlie McGee, either. Those were better written characters than anyone here. I mean that in the kindest of all positive ways.

This book is really about Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil." The whole book, in fact, could've been from the point of view of those who work for The Institute, and maybe that would've been a better book. (Sounds like a helluva good idea to me.) Here, there's a cleaning lady who could've been fleshed out better, and at the end there's an 81-year old woman who seemed very interesting. Why did she stick around, and with such gusto? THE INSTITUTE tries to go there, but mostly doesn't, which is a shame. The baddest badass of them all gets short shrift at the end, to the extent that King himself suddenly seems to give up on her, and all she gets is the other characters calling her "the queen bitch." She was badder than that, and deserved better, if you know what I mean. She could've been this book's Rainbird. The one who gets that honor doesn't deserve it, and in fact seems kind of lame. At the end, you won't care too much what happens to him.

In the meantime, the kids are drawn out well enough, and you will care about what happens to them. But, A) they're kids, so that's maybe automatic, and B) it's really their book, so they get the most airtime. Still, you get caught up in the going's-on, and it is compelling in a slow-moving train kind of way. It'll pass the time, and it is compulsively readable.

But it could've been so much more. The people who work at The Institute have their reasons for doing so, and King strongly insinuates that these reasons are compelling--but never appropriate, of course. The ends don't justify the means, here, and that's really the point of the book. But why do such people work for such banal evil? Many of them are obviously deranged, but some are maybe almost good people, or those who could've been. This book could've been essentially the same story, with that theme been better pondered and shown. It's never answered, not even close, but King seems like he wants to go there, that he wants to try and answer it--but then just drops it.

And so ultimately it's a good read. 561 pages in just short of 3 days means the book is good on some level. Yet maybe this is what's lacking in King's work now. The why. The big themes. King was never "deep," per se, which he takes pride in, and on some levels he's right. He wants to entertain more than he wants to instruct (he could've stayed on as an English teacher if that's all he'd wanted), but the fact remains that THE SHINING, CARRIE, IT and many others had more depth to them, more heft, without ever sacrificing story. Lately his stuff is about 95% story, to the exclusion of perhaps all else, and that's why they seem lesser. CARRIE, for example, never tried to explain how religious mania could screw up a family and a kid, but it sure did show it very well. THE SHINING showed how a very, very flawed man could redeem himself to save his wife and son. THE SHINING therefore had a hefty thing to say about personal redemption. I could go on...

King's stuff now frankly just lacks this heft. It's all story, all the time, and it doesn't have too much to show, or to say, about things that it could, and should, show and say about. In this case, Arendt's "banality of evil." That's too bad, because it could've easily gone there, and it would've made this book a lot better. It's not as bad as the Bill Hodges fiascoes, but...you won't want to read this one again. It'll sit in my bookcase with all the others, but...it probably won't come out of it again.

Too bad. THE INSTITUTE is okay, but it could've been one of his better ones in a long, long time.

My Book Sacrifice

I've been tagged by a blogger friend and a vlogger friend--that'd be a person who makes videos as a blog, rather than a written blog like this; such a blog is usually on YouTube--to do an entry based on the following 4 scenarios:

1) An Over-Hyped book: Let's start this off with a Zombie Apocalypse! Let's say you're in a book store, just browsing, when BAM! ZOMBIE ATTACK. An announcement comes over the PA System saying that the military has discovered that the zombies' only weakness is over-hyped books. What book that everyone else says is amazing but you really hated do you start chucking at the zombies knowing that it will count as an over-hyped book and successfully wipe them out?!

2) A Sequel: Let's say you've just left the salon with a SMASHING new haircut and BOOM: Torrential downpour. What sequel are you willing to use as an umbrella to protect yourself? 

3) A Classic: Let's say you're in a lecture and your English teacher is going on and on about how this classic changed the world, how it revolutionized literature and you get so sick of it that you chuck the classic right at his face because you know what? This classic is stupid and it's worth detention just to show everyone how you feel! What Classic did you chuck?

4) Your least favourite book of life!: Let's say that you're hanging out at the library when BAM global warming explodes and the world outside becomes a frozen wasteland. You're trapped and your only chance for survival is to burn a book. What is the book you first run to, your least favourite book of all life, what book do you not fully regret lighting?

These four scenarios originated on YouTube by Ariel Bissette, and she explains it way better than I could. Watch that video here: http://youtu.be/Z_2UxYi8fOA.

So, the disclaimer: These are just my opinions. Can I say that again? These are just my opinions! (I was gonna put that all in caps, but that's rude.) One of the coolest things about books is that people get very, very, very serious about them. They will get offended by the opinions of others. Books can be so personal! So I get that. And I dig that. But that's why my opinions are strongly felt, too. You don't have to agree with them! That's the point!

If you disagree or if you agree, let me know. Feel free to answer these in a comment, or in your own blog.

And I gotta add: I was so PISSED at the following vlog that I almost left a comment! The vlog is from a usually-amusing and creative and smart, and always energetic vlogger named Christine Riccio. She has a vlog about books, where she talks a lot about a book, and reviews it and rates it, and she really gets into what she's read. Anyway, in her Book Sacrifice, she said that the classic she thought was terrible was The Catcher in the Rye, and she slams it. This book was Mark David Chapman's favorite (he shot John Lennon, if you're too young to know), but so what? Lots of religious books are the faves of killers past and present, so don't make me go there. Anyway, the specific vlog of hers referenced here is at this site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pEK25Z7PPs so you should see it. And I didn't leave a comment because, well, have you read the negative comments that losers leave on internet articles and YouTube videos? I mean, are you kidding me?!? Why do these people not have anything else better to do? Anger and bitterness are nasty, nasty things!

My answers:

photo: from the book's Wikipedia page

1. An over-hyped book I'd clobber a zombie with? (Does that mean it has to be big enough to be used as a weapon?) Well, where do I start? I have to say...Just about any John Green book. Great philosophical ideas and themes, so-so writing. And often books based on philosophical concepts (which most of his are) do not translate well into print, because you have to create a plot for them. Doing that for philosophical concepts can be slippery and metaphysical. Like, you can't touch it. Example: The Fault in our Stars. Two teens with life-threatening diseases are trying to keep it real, and are looking for the meaning of life, or just plain Meaning in general. They find it in the seemingly-real work of an author who turns out to be a boozing butthole, who is not his persona, who does not keep it real, who is in fact just a real jerk. Okay, except...can two teens with these diseases and cancer really travel that far? And don't get me started on Looking for Alaska. I know John Green is huge in the YA and teen world, and that's very cool. Keep reading him! (Just don't ask me to.) I'd throw other YA titles here, like any of the Twilight (You don't fall in love with vampires! You kill them! They're evil! They're not good for dates, or to introduce to your parents, or to take to Sunday dinner!) or Divergent series. And any Nick Sparks book.

photo: from the book's Wikipedia page

2. The worst sequel of all time is Doctor Sleep, the awful, shitty, boring, badly-written travesty of a sequel to the pitch-perfect classic The Shining. I can't tell you how angry this book made me. It sucked! Danny of The Shining turned out to be this?!? Are you shitting me? And Jack Torrance turning up at the end to push her off the cliff? And she screams "F--- you" as she falls? How...base! ARGH! I normally love Stephen King books. I've read them all and I still have them all. But when he's bad, Oh My Lord...

A close runner-up here would be the sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird. This manuscript was sent to the publisher by Harper Lee's money-grubbing agent, and she found it in Harper Lee's sister's safety deposit box. Harper Lee had had a stroke and late-onset dementia when she signed the papers to publish this. I'm thinking she had no idea of what she was signing. She infamously published that one book, despite offers of millions of dollars to publish others. Would she not publish for over 50 years and then do so on her deathbed? And the iconic, peace-making Atticus Finch as an old, angry racist?!? Are you shittin' me?!? And why was this found in Harper Lee's sister's safety deposit box? The murder / mystery fan in me thinks it was because her sister thought she'd publish it and make millions if Harper Lee died first...but she didn't! I'll bet Harper Lee had no idea where this manuscript was, that it was long gone and long lost. It's actually the book that was going to be Mockingbird, but the publisher thought it was too negative and suggested she write something else, so she wrote what became Mockingbird. So it's actually just an early draft! That a publisher allowed this to be made and tarnish the genius of her actual, only published book. A TRAVESTY!!! I haven't read it, and never will. I know someone who's an English teacher, and she's married to a lawyer, and they named their son Atticus (yes), and even she refuses to read this. Luckily for her son, most people will never associate his name with the guy from this book!!!

photo: Charles Dickens, from his Wikipedia page

3. The worst classic? I couldn't finish The Lord of the Rings until I saw the movies first. Tried a great many times. But a lot of it was good. I stalled at the Tom O'Bedlam part, or whatever he was called. Never even appeared in the movies. Anything by Charles Dickens. I've tried to get through A Christmas Carol. Still can't do it. I tried reading all of A Tale of Two Cities. Still can't do it. The sentences are just too damn long. Great individual paragraphs--notably the first and last, a classic example of bookending--and the last scenes are classics. That's how we should read Dickens today--just the classic scenes. 

Why so many words? 

Because he originally published his novels as serials in magazines. 

And he owned the magazines. 

And he paid by the word.

photo: from the book's Wikipedia page

4. My least favorite book of all time? See #2. Throw Rose Madder there, too. I stopped reading that one when this woman sat on the bad guy and peed on him. Yes. Books that were so bad they made me actually angry. Like, strike someone across the face angry. I'm an angry bitter little man and I don't care. I once read a mystery / cop novel, when I first started the 20th draft of Cursing the Darkness, I forget the title now--::tries remembering title, even keywords to Google it, but can't--and it was sooooooooo bad. Sentences like: "I got the call to go to the murder site. But I first finished my dinner. Funny how these always happen during dinner. And the dead aren't going anywhere." Are you f---in' sh---in' me?!? I mean, how bad does writing have to be to be published, anyway?!? So laughable I couldn't get angry because it was just sooooooooo bad!!!

So, those are my answers. What say you? Comment, or email, or write your own blog--whatever!

No matter what, keep reading!

Thanks for reading my blog! Bye! 

Notes from A Stephen King Interview, Part 2

Photo: Stephen King at The Harvard Bookstore, June 6, 2005.  From his Wikipedia page.

[This is Part 2 of a blog started a few days ago, which you can go to here if you don't want to scroll.]

[Stephen King gave this sort of loose interview to The Atlantic on April 12, 2011.  The interview was in conjunction with a new-at-the-time short story, "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive," which you can read here.  (You should read the story first before continuing on with this blog entry.)]

To another vein.  You know how your writing and English teachers always tell you to walk around with pen and paper (or, today, an iPhone, or an iPad, or just talk into your cell, or--) because you must write down that great idea or you'll forget it?  Well, the guy who has sold more books than anyone currently alive says:

I never write ideas down. Because all you do when you write ideas down is kind of immortalize something that should go away. If they're bad ideas, they go away on their own.

For the record, I also believe this, and I very rarely write anything down.  When I do, I hardly ever use them.  I also believe that ideas you'll use will germinate in your head and simply not leave until you write them into a story.  All the other ideas are unwanted guests who are correctly shown the door.  The more I practice this, the more writing I get done.  The more I let every single idea take root, I stray or the elevator stops.

Out of nowhere, practically, King gives a pretty good description of what poetry is good for:

[Poetry] takes ordinary life, it takes things that we all see, and concentrates them in this beautiful gem. When the good ones do that, that's what you get. When the Philip Larkins or the James Dickeys do that, you get something that is heightened, that says to us that reality is finer and more beautiful and more mysterious than we could ever possibly express ourselves. Which is why we need poetry.

Indeed so.  I'm not a good enough poet to do this myself--I've only managed to sell one poem, though it's also true that I've only sent out one poem--but I agree that this is what good poetry can do.  It's life, super-concentrated, super-compact.  I wrote a line that says, "A poem is a thought shared in compacted time."  I believe this to be true.

But I respectfully disagree with King on one point.  When asked to compare the short story markets of his youth to the ones today, King said:

All those magazines published short fiction. And it started to dry up. And now you can number literally on two hands the number of magazines that are not little presses that publish short fiction.

While this may be true in terms of physical, tangible magazines you hold in your hands, this is not true overall.  There are a ton of markets--many of them big, that pay well--on the Web.  They're called e-magazines.  I've been published in a few of them, and they often pay better than the hand-held, paper ones.  A sign of the times, but a fact nonetheless.

In fact, when King says that people don't read short stories (or much else) anymore, I would politely disagree with that, as well.  Those online mags wouldn't be able to pay what they do if nobody was reading them.  And there's a ton of decent-paying online mags. Again, I know: I've been in them.

And, finally, here's an interesting irony:

JP: It is odd, though, if you think about it, that with all the speeding-up that we're being told about, and the dwindling of the attention span and all that, that people would rather chomp their way through a 400-pager than just get zapped by a little story ...

SK: And so many of the 400-pagers are disposable in themselves. When I see books by some of the suspense writers that are popular now, I think to myself: "These are basically books for people who don't want to read at all." It just kind of passes through the system. It's like some kind of fast-food treat that takes the express right from your mouth to your bowels, without ever stopping to nourish any part of you. I don't want to name names, but we know who we're talking about.

This is also true.  I'll name names for him: James Patterson.  Many of the heart-felt vampire books, or young-heroine dystopias.  But, I should also add, in all honesty: Stephen King himself, sometimes.

I think he would admit that, most of the time.  He was just having a negative, cranky interview.

Book Review: Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indridason

Photo: Cover, from the book's Wikipedia page

Another of the Nordic Noir (this one takes place in Iceland) to become very popular in the last ten years or so, following in the wake of authors like Jo Nesbo, Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell and many more.  Not reaping the rewards of this new trend, by the way, are the translators of such novels.  They deserve just as much credit, if not more, than the actual authors.  Or do people think that Stieg Larsson wrote in English?  The style of the English, which has gained such notoriety from these Nordic Noirists, is more the translator than the author.  I'm just sayin'.  The translator for this one is Bernard Scudder.

Anyway, this one is very effective, and not much of a mystery, actually.  A skeletal hand is found (Killer opening sentence: He knew at once it was a human bone, when he took it from the baby who was sitting on the floor chewing it.) and the detectives in charge let an archaeologist unearth the whole skeleton, a long, painstaking process that allows the author to delve into the abusive past of the family who lived nearby the grave, as well as the self-destructive daughter of one of the detectives, and his own relationship problems.  The story unfolds in layers of shifting third-person omniscient narration, and the reader soon finds that the actual mystery is the identity of the skeleton--and of the one found with it later in the book.  There's a further subplot involving the broken relationship of the owner of the place that had once stood on the spot of the grave, and of his fiancee, who left him after she became pregnant with someone else's baby.  That's a running theme of the book: broken relationships, both between a man and a woman and between adults and their children.  In that sense, the book is especially Nordic--the noir comes not just from the writing style, but also from the insinuated hopelessness about relationships.  Nobody's got a good one here, but it ends with a brief but hopeful touch, though that depends on your point of view, I guess.  Less Nordic Noir than Henning Mankell's excessively cold and distant landscapes, and Stieg Larsson's detached characters and their often-xenophobic attitudes, but still noir nonetheless.  Think Raymond Chandler, but without the ditzy dames.

If you like this kind of stuff, as I do, you'll like this one.  I started and finished it in six hours, because I was unable to sleep.  So it's a quick read, and the shifting third-person omniscient narration never confuses.  I guessed the identity of the skeleton pretty quickly, and I think any astute reader would, too.  I get the feeling that the author (and translator) sort of knew this, but the reading enjoyment isn't because of the final answer, but because of the journey it takes to get there.  You let it unfold at its own pace, which is neither too slow nor too fast, and when it gets there, you're satisfied, even though you probably knew it the whole time.

Worthwhile as we enter the Noir winter in these parts.  I wonder if I can start a series of novels that will give rise to other writers doing the same sort of thing, and it'll all be called New England Noir?

My Birthday, etc.

Photo: Brown University's University Building, built in 1770.  From Brown University's Wikipedia page.

A few quick things:

--It's my birthday, and I need some lovins.  Cuz I'm old.

--Having a writers group meeting at my house tomorrow between 5pm and whenever.  First sort of substantial entertaining at the new digs.  Yup.  Writers.  Cuz I'm cool like that.

--Speaking of such things, I bet one of the five group members twenty bucks that I'd have an agent before her.  We set a June deadline.  I'll take whatever motivation I can get.

--Working on two novels and a few short stories, all at the same time.  I can't seem to commit to any one of them for too long before working on something else.  Which is exactly the wrong thing to do, for all of you newbie writers out there.  I have to finish one of the novels before I can solicit agents.  And I need to have an agent by June.  No pressure...No pressure...

--A friend of mine said I couldn't commit to a bottle of any beverage, never mind a long, possibly year-long project.  Thanks.

--It's so cold over here that water froze on firemen as they were putting out a large local fire.  In my business, we call that irony.

--Thinking of maybe trying to get an MFA in Creative Writing at the state university, hoping that my many grad credits will transfer from an attempted English Masters that I only need a few classes to finish.  And I'm halfway done with the paper.  But if I wanted to get that English Masters, I would've finished it by now, right?  I mean, I got my Bachelors in English and Philosophy in 1994.

--Can't commit to a bottle of water, I know.

--Research into a world-reknowned local Ivy League college showed me that it would cost exactly $46,808 to get an MFA there.  Noooooooooooooooooooo problem...

--Bad economy?  What bad economy?

--$14,500 for an MFA at the state university, for those of you wondering.

--Would it be immoral to take most of the MFA classes at the state university, and then the last three or so at the Ivy League?  Probably they have safeguards against that sort of thing.  But it needs some looking-into, especially if I can get any of my many grad credits transferred.

--I'll accept any and all donations.  I take plastic.  No, I'm just kidding.  I think.

--Two classes a semester is considered full-time in the Ivy League Graduate Program.  Is it everywhere?  If you're working full-time plus, like most of us are, one class seems full-time to me.

--I can't get enough of the chimney/fireplace woodburning smell when it's cold around here.  Only good thing about temps in the single digits.  With wind chills far below zero.

--I'm still walking my dog in this, on our same route.  At night, too.  I deserve a dog-owner award for that.

--In an odd but appropriate measure, for the last two days, I've been listening to my YouTube Christmas playlist I wrote about before, here.  This is Christmas weather.

--Luckily, I live next to a relatively busy intersection.  Times are tough--don't judge.

The Girl Who Played with Fire--Swedish Movie

photo: Noomi Rapace, about to terrify.  From rogerebert.com.

Overall this second film of the series was better than the very good first film, which makes sense, as the second novel in the series was superior to the first.  I suspect that the American version of the second book will stay as true to its original as the first did; this Swedish version kept more closely aligned to the source than did the first one, but still not too much.  And so there's little to say here that I didn't already say for the first movie, when I compared that to what I felt was a superior American version.  (You can read that here.  And you can read more of my blog entries about the movies and books here, here, and here.)  So I just have a few tidbits, some more relevant, I suppose, than others.

--The closing credits to this Swedish-language film play to an English-language song, Misen Groth's "Would Anybody Die."  The credits themselves, of course, were predominantly in Swedish, but every now and then you'll see "Worldwide Distribution," or "Collection Agent," or "Completion Bond."  There isn't a way to translate these last three into their Swedish equivalents?

--You'll be hard-pressed to find an American film, spoken in American English, with end credits that play to a foreign-language song.  Give the Swedes credit here.

--The film itself plays unlike American films.  I was surprised at the difference, but I don't know why.  It's just simpler, and I mean that in a good, stripped-down kind of way.  No flash, no substance.  The viewer is content to see the movie unfold at its own pace, which is slow compared to an American film of the violent, serial killer, suspense genre.  When the action does happen, it isn't glorified, which American movie violence so clearly is.  This last is maybe the biggest difference between the films of the two countries.

--Maybe it's the substance of Salander and Blomqvist, but the film seems to indicate that the average Swede in general is more advanced technologically.  There was a computer in every house of every character, even in the log cabin in the woods.  I haven't made it a point to notice, but I'm going to guess that this is not shown in American movies to this degree.  Is it the movie style, or is it that Americans aren't as connected?  And, if the latter is true, how in God's name is that possible?

--Michael Nyqvist and Lena Endre are almost completely naked in one scene.  There is no way they would be in an American movie, and I mean that in the kindest of all possible ways.  But here it fits--they're lovers, after all.  More than that, they play average--maybe slightly better than average--looking people in their, say, mid-40s, who do not work out or do anything that your average Swede in their 40s wouldn't do.  So he's hairy and a bit out of shape, and a tad flabby.  She's wrinkly and a little saggy.  And it's--normal.  Again, no glitz, no flash, no substance.  And they're known, for God's sake, for their brains and persistence, more than their sexiness.  Again, so much not an American movie, and I mean this in a good way.  It's more real.

--I'm thankful that not one character eats an open sandwich in any of the three Millennium films I've seen.  This happens maybe 5,000 times in the three books, to the point that you wonder about their cholesterol counts.

--Salander's half-brother doesn't see demons in this film.  Okay by me, but then you wonder why he just drops the bar he's holding and simply walks away at the end, when he clearly could've taken care of Blomqvist and finished off his father and half-sister, had he the desire.

--Lots of scenes where characters are sitting down and explaining things to other characters, usually while sipping coffee and/or smoking.  (Again, you wonder about the health of the average Swede.)  Anyway, this simply wouldn't happen in an American movie, as it would be considered too slow and boring.  I mean, it is slow, but that's real, right?  It works here because this sort of thing is consistent throughout the movie and series, and books.  I'm no sleuth, but I'll bet investigations really do unfold like that.  So why not show it that way?

--Speaking of smoking cigarettes, I hope Rapace smokes fake ones in the movies, like they do on Mad Men, because she's consumed about 25 cartons in the two films.  And is it okay that I say that Rapace looks prettier in this one, with her longer hair?

--Swedish cities look like pretty, happenin' places.  Swedish countryside, not so much.  Very, very blech.  I know it's countryside, and I know it doesn't really look like it does in The Wizard of Oz, but here it just looks drab and depressing.  And wet, splotchy and old.

--Ambulances in Sweden are canary yellow, and have an odd shape.  Not odd to the Swedes, though, of course.

--Swedish cities look clean.  Where are all the cigarette butts?

--Roger Ebert disagreed with my comparison to the first film, saying that they're both good, but the first one was better.  But what does he know about films?