The Asylum Has Many Doors
Stephen King's You Like it Darker
It must be a hell of a thing to be Stephen King. To do it and keep doing it, to watch other writer’s get hot and sell books like crazy then cool off and disappear while you just keep going, year in and year out, like some wild, unstoppable force of nature. There’s a certain mad power to the whole thing that must be, well, interesting viewed from the inside.
Of course, King is plenty interesting from the outside, too, as his latest collection of short fiction, You Like It Darker, reminds us. Although I’ve long since acknowledged that King is probably at his best when he just lets it roll and cranks out one of those eight-hundred pagers, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for his short work. Blame Night Shift (1978), his first book, which remains an absolute classic of the short form and is, for me, one of those texts that I still measure other short story collections against.
I guess by that high standard, You Like It Darker might seem like a disappointment, but it’s hard to say. Ask me in forty-odd years if the book still has the resonance that Night Shift retains for me today and I’ll tell you. All I can say in the here and now is that it’s a damn fine book.
As I expected, it’s the longer pieces here that really stood out for me. The first half of the book is dominated by “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a novella-length yarn that details the consequences the title character faces when he learns something in a strange dream and tries to do the right thing about it. The way Danny’s life spirals out of control is, perhaps, the most terrifying thing in the book—especially since King makes it all completely believable. It’s a gripping reminder of how fragile our lives are.
“Rattlesnakes” is another standout. Here, King serves up a nasty, spooky story of grieving parents and children. Vic Trenton—whose son Tad died of dehydration decades ago, trapped in a car by a rabid St. Bernard called Cujo—confronts the specters of dead children who want him to become their tie to a world they don’t wish to leave. One of the virtues of a long career like King’s is that it gives an author time to reflect on old stories and revisit old characters, and he makes the most of it here.
The shorter stories in the volume are imaginative and thought-provoking, if less gripping overall. Tales like “On Slide Inn Road,” “Red Screen,” and “Laurie” all present unexpected events that provide new perspectives on the characters’ relationships. The collection’s last tale, “The Answer Man,” a favorite, left me thinking about how the questions you ask matter at least as much as the answers you get.
Overall this is a satisfying collection from a master storyteller. King knows that at the center of any good plot are interesting characters—regular folks that readers relate to, whose lives and desires ground the story in reality when things get weird. Once more, he displays the ability to combine this human element with the darkly fantastic, the painfully uncomfortable, and the outright horrifying that has been the key to his success throughout his long career.
Of course, King is plenty interesting from the outside, too, as his latest collection of short fiction, You Like It Darker, reminds us. Although I’ve long since acknowledged that King is probably at his best when he just lets it roll and cranks out one of those eight-hundred pagers, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for his short work. Blame Night Shift (1978), his first book, which remains an absolute classic of the short form and is, for me, one of those texts that I still measure other short story collections against.
I guess by that high standard, You Like It Darker might seem like a disappointment, but it’s hard to say. Ask me in forty-odd years if the book still has the resonance that Night Shift retains for me today and I’ll tell you. All I can say in the here and now is that it’s a damn fine book.
As I expected, it’s the longer pieces here that really stood out for me. The first half of the book is dominated by “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a novella-length yarn that details the consequences the title character faces when he learns something in a strange dream and tries to do the right thing about it. The way Danny’s life spirals out of control is, perhaps, the most terrifying thing in the book—especially since King makes it all completely believable. It’s a gripping reminder of how fragile our lives are.
“Rattlesnakes” is another standout. Here, King serves up a nasty, spooky story of grieving parents and children. Vic Trenton—whose son Tad died of dehydration decades ago, trapped in a car by a rabid St. Bernard called Cujo—confronts the specters of dead children who want him to become their tie to a world they don’t wish to leave. One of the virtues of a long career like King’s is that it gives an author time to reflect on old stories and revisit old characters, and he makes the most of it here.
The shorter stories in the volume are imaginative and thought-provoking, if less gripping overall. Tales like “On Slide Inn Road,” “Red Screen,” and “Laurie” all present unexpected events that provide new perspectives on the characters’ relationships. The collection’s last tale, “The Answer Man,” a favorite, left me thinking about how the questions you ask matter at least as much as the answers you get.
Overall this is a satisfying collection from a master storyteller. King knows that at the center of any good plot are interesting characters—regular folks that readers relate to, whose lives and desires ground the story in reality when things get weird. Once more, he displays the ability to combine this human element with the darkly fantastic, the painfully uncomfortable, and the outright horrifying that has been the key to his success throughout his long career.