New Book

Last week I found Stephen King's new book, Just After Sunset, in Walmart (I know. I know. We swore it off, but that never seems to take. Plus, going there provides me with plenty of material). It's a collection of short stories. His first, I think, since Everything's Eventual back in '01 or so.

I'm a big short story fan, so I couldn't wait to see what was in this collection. One thing I love about King's collections is that he always includes a chapter on the stories themselves, what inspired them, how he wrote them, where they were originally published, and so on. It's a great look behind the writing.

The short story "N." caught my attention right away. It's a tribute to Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan." In fact, the novel has a quote from it in the beginning. King refers to it as horror's version of Moby Dick.

Here's an online version of it if you're interested -- http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/8/389/389.txt

Last year I taught Machen's story in my Sci Fi class. Some loved it. Others thought it was interesting. Several had no clue what was going on. The novella is written, like Dracula, as a series of letters or journal entries. So that threw some of the readers off.

King imitates this same form for his "N."

Here is a link to a site containing the 'webisodes' of the story.

http://www.stephenking.com/n/

Love him or hate him, the one thing you have to admire about King is that he is innovative. Remember when he was the first author to publish a story ("Riding the Bullet," which was later available in his Everything's Eventual) exclusively on the internet.

King's story didn't disappoint. Machen's story, like Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," (and the same can be said for Dracula too) gains its power from what is not said - or just hinted at.

The story thoroughly creeped me out. It's a nice companion piece to another tribute story King wrote years ago (and which appears in Nightmares & Dreamscapes)called "Crouch End." This was King's tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. It is also one of King's scariest short stories. It's absolutely brilliant.

My former colleague Loiell hates King. Now I won't argue that some of his writing is absolute drivel. But I am almost certain of this: there are far more English majors and teachers out there thanks to King than to Shakespeare.