What does Joe have in common with Stephen King? Not much but they both had an interesting interaction with one of their book’s readers on a plane…
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.”―
In an address to the 2016 National Book Festival, Stephen King related a story that resonated with me. In it he tells about seeing a woman on an airplane reading a copy of his just-in-paperback book Carrie and he advises the audience not to do what he did (but like him I did it too) and ask the person “if they were enjoying the book,” “No,” she replied, “its (expletive deleted!)” In my case the reader said he was enjoying it so far, so I told him, ” I wrote it.” His terse replay was “no you didn’t!” And so I kept quiet. Postscript: midway on the flight from New York to Denver, he walks up the aisle, pen in hand and asks if I would sign the book for him, which I graciously did.
I’m not a big Stephen King fan but admire him as a writer and also as a human being. I do have a few of his books in my collection but didn’t always. Before I moved to Colorado, my girlfriend at the time managed a B. Dalton’s* book store and from time to time we would get together over coffee during one of her breaks, and we would talk about, what else, books. One day she asked if I liked Stephen King and I told her I didn’t like scary stories. So she presses a paperback copy of The Dead Zone into my hands and says “you’ll love this book.” And I did. So much so that I later purchased a hardcover copy of the book for my collection. Postscript: The film version, directed by David Cronenberg is excellent and features one of Christopher Walken’s most measured performances.
When Good Books Go Bad
For my “2023 Books Read” tabulation, I don’t count any books that I don’t finish reading. This happened to me recently with two different books, whose authors and titles I won’t mention, because i don’t want to influence you, especially f you are fans of both well known and even celebrated authors but…
The first book was from an author I have been avidly reading since 1981 but his last novel was, I thought, lackluster. I was reading the new one and found it mildly interesting but it felt formulaic, as if he know what beats to hit and he methodically hit them, much like “playing the scales” on a piano. And then he tosses in that his protagonist, who’s appeared in many of his previous novels, was diagnosed with Parkinson’ Disease and I immediately hit a brick wall. This was a disease my father had late in his life and this plot development became personal and made me unbearably sad, so I stopped reading. When something like that affects me I have difficulty dealing with it as I did with Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, which I talked about at the end of my Joe’s Movie Club review of Casablanca. (I provided a link but you can watch the Casablanca portion but skip The Fabelmans postscript; it makes me depressed just thinking about it.)
The next book was from another highly acclaimed authors and I have read and enjoyed many of his books. From the first page it was obvious that I was dealing with a deep dive into what I call “human misery,” where bad stuff keeps happening to good people or even characters that you really don’t care about. (This is something I also don’t like to see in books or movies and you can read about my take on that idea at the bottom of this post,) I believe this writer is immensely talented and the quality of the writing was inspirational and, for a writer, educational,but I couldn’t keep going being worn down by the weight of the “human misery” on its pages. Now some people may like this kind of book: I don’t.
What’s Next?
Speaking of Stephen King again…I was watching a YouTube interview with King and John Grisham where they talked about what books they were reading. Grisham said he was re-reading the novels of John D, MacDonald (1916-1986), especially the Travis McGee books. I’m not a huge Grisham fan but I’ve always enjoyed all his books that I did read, so I thought, what the heck, let me get one from the library. Problem is while MacDonald wrote sixty-six novels during his career, my county library only has three of them as “books” and twelve as eBooks.: I am not a fan of eBooks. I tried reading some of Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter novels on my iPad and while I enjoyed the stories, reading on an iPad wasn’t much fun for me. Sure I could get myself one of those fancy eBook readers but they seems awfully expensive for what you get. I’d rather spend the money on camera gear and real books.
I’m currently reading MacDonald’s 1979 novel The Green Ripper. Look for some thoughts on this book soon…
*Trivia: B. Dalton’s was purchased by Barnes & Noble and in February 2022, Barnes & Noble rebranded its Oviedo Mall, Florida store as B. Dalton book store, reviving the brand.