So if you're still interested in the marathon, I'll be picking it up again tomorrow with my thoughts on my Number 4: John Carpenter's "The Thing."
For anyone who reads this blog or even casually follows my Facebook feed, you know that Mr. King is basically my spirit animal. He's the writer who, when I was 11 or 12, served as my introduction to the horror genre, and he was my gateway drug to pretty much all my other favorite writers (Thomas M. Disch, Phil Rickman, Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, and — more recently — Justin Cronin and Nick Cutter). He's the first writer whose work crystalized for me my own desire to write scary stories for a living. He's my alpha and my omega.
That said, however, I've never been slavishly uncritical of his work. Even as a kid, I knew that I had an active dislike for certain books — "The Tommyknockers" in particular. It didn't take me long to realize that, as great as he can be, other writers (Disch in particular) were very often better. My devotion to King has always been levened with a healthy dose of skepticism.
This has become even more the case over the last 15 years or so. I think the last King novel I really embraced without any reservation was 1998's "Bag of Bones," although I'm way out by myself in the weeds in thinking that his oft-maligned "From a Buick 8" (2002) deserves a solid critical reappraisal. I've liked most of his post-2000 output — the only absolute stinkers in there are "Dreamcatcher" (2001) and "Cell" (2006)— but I haven't really loved most of it. His recent work has trended longer and with less focus, less precision of detail, and far broader characters. He's always had a bit of a sentimental streak, but that has become much more pronounced in recent years and it can balance quite awkwardly with the darker elements he's known for.
The one real beacon of light was "Full Dark No Stars," his 2010 collection of four novellas that featured his darkest and most incisive work in years (the opening story, "1922," is a particular standout). It felt like the lean, mean Stephen King responsible for such genuine horror classics as "The Shining," "The Dead Zone," and "Cujo" was back, and in force.
Happily, much of his work since then — like last year's "Dr. Sleep" and this year's "Mr. Mercedes" — has tended to be shorter and more focused. Still, as good as those books were, neither reached the heights that he used to seem to hit so easily when he was in his prime.
I will always buy each new King book on the day of its release, and I will most likely disappear for a day or two while I devour it. Chances are, I will enjoy the experience. But I've long ago given up on expecting to be blown away the way I used to be.
Which brings me to his latest novel, "Revival," which was released this week in hardcover.
I don't want to overstate my case here and suggest that "Revival" deserves to be mentioned as part of the King pantheon. It's too early to say this is a classic on the level of "The Shining" or "The Stand" or "It."
But this is by far his best book in two decades. It's certainly at least as good as "Bag of Bones." Probably better.
For one thing, this is only the second Stephen King book that I can say really scared the shit out of me. As much as I adore his best novels, I've never found them to be particularly frightening. "Pet Sematary" is the one (before this) that truly rattled me. Many — like "Cujo" and "It" and "The Dead Zone" and especially "Misery" have moments that are profoundly disturbing, but I can only think of those two novels ("Pet Sematary" and "Revival") and a handful of short stories and novellas ("Gramma," "Children of the Corn," "You Know They've Got a Hell of a Band," "1922") that actually kept me up at night.
At just 399 pages, the narrative of "Revival" spans a period of more than 50 years in the life of a second-rate rock guitarist and reformed drug addict named Jaimie Morton, and his twisted relationship with a charismatic "pastor" named Charlie Jacobs. We start with Jaimie and Charlie's first meeting, when Jaimie is a typical six-year-old kid in the small town of Harlow, Maine (a town that bears an obvious resemblance to King's own home town of Durham). Charlie is the charming and youthful new pastor of the town's single Methodist church. We pick up with Jaimie sitting in a dirt pile in front of his house, playing with his toy soldiers, when a shadow falls across him. The shadow, of course, is Charlie's. The image is striking and the metaphor is obvious — Charlie's shadow is going to stay with Jaimie for the rest of his life.
But before your ick-factor goes into overdrive, let me assure you that King has no interest in exploring the pedophile-priest phenomena. It's not a spoiler to say there's nothing sexual or abusive in Jaimie and Charlie's relationship. In fact, Charlie is presented as a genuinely good man, a well-meaning man of the cloth with a beautiful wife and son. King drops enough hints as to where things are going to create a palpable but very quiet sense of dread in these early chapters — we're waiting for the shoe to drop...and drop it does. We're introduced to Charlie's odd hobby of tinkering with gadgets and electricity, and we can see the seeds of a flowering obsession there. Yet Charlie and his family are universally loved amongst his parish, and Jaimie seems to see him as not so much a father figure but as a friend.
The other shoe falls with a resounding thud three years later, when both Charlie's family and faith are torn asunder by a shocking and meaningless tragedy. Charlie delivers a blasphemous sermon in the wake of the event, and promptly loses his job. He piles his gadgets into his car and disappears, seemingly forever.
We spend a few years tracking Jaimie's teen years, when he simultaneously discovers girls (in the form of his beautiful classmate Astrid Soderberg) and the guitar. The two are inextricably linked, and there's something genuinely exhilarating about experiencing Jaimie's awakening talent and the all-consuming passion of his first love.
Being a King novel, this doesn't end prettily. Jaimie spends the next decade throwing his life down the crapper as he descends into a spiral of addiction. It's when he's at his quite literal rock bottom as a 36-year-old washout abandoned by his bandmates in a seedy motel room in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that his path crosses with Charlie — now a carnival huckster going from state fair to state fair — once again. Charlie's obsession with electricity has turned into a mania, and his experiments have become much darker and more profound.
Things just get weirder and weirder from here on out. King's narrative takes us all the way up to the present day and beyond, as Jaimie and Charlie keep circling in and out of each others' life in more disturbing ways, and it all culminates in King's most existentially horrific conclusion since the devastating tragedy that made "Pet Sematary" so chilling.
This isn't a balls-to-the-wall horror novel like "It" or "The Shining." The more overtly supernatural elements are kept largely at bay throughout most of the narrative. We know there's something going on with this "secret electricity," but we don't know what it is. It's all doled out in hints and suggestions up until about the final third, and King wisely keeps his focus on the characters and their relationships through the brunt of the story. He tightens the screws subtly but implacably, and it's not until you're nearing the end that you realize your heart is skipping a beat with every new revelation.
And then...bam. He delivers his knockout punch. The less said, the better.
This isn't a perfect novel, and King's portrayal of Charlie Jacobs in the back half is unfortunately the book's biggest weakness. What makes Charlie's arc so compelling early on is how much we empathize with him. He's a good man twisted by tragedy and madness. But, unfortunately, as the story progresses King begins to slip into some of the same broad characterizations that have marred so many of his more recent novels. Charlie devolves into a sort of James Bond supervillain/cartoon mad scientist. It's the book's only real misstep, but it's a big one.
Luckily the rest of the book is so tight and the characters so richly defined that this misstep doesn't manage to derail the rest of the good work King has done here. Jaimie is one of King's best lead characters in years — good-hearted but fundamentally flawed — and we stick with him even as he starts making some understandible but truly dreadful choices in the last few chapters.
Likewise, the secondary characters — from Astrid to Jaimie's sprawling family and his first high-school bandmates — come flying off the page as living, breathing human beings. King's biggest strength in his prime years had always been his willingness to take time away from the plot to develop his characters and the specific textures of their lives, and he shows in "Revival" that he hasn't lost that ability. Like in "From a Buick 8," the horror — when it comes — is so devastating precisely because of our investment in these people and their fates.
King also throws in a few nice little bones for the horror geeks in his audience, with subtle but specific references to Lovecraft, Arthur Machen and Robert Bloch. Previous knowledge of these writers' work is by no means necessary here, but for those of us in the know, the easter eggs are a lot of fun. There's something charmingly old-fashioned about this novel; it's classic horror of the pulp/"Twilight Zone" school, and reads almost as the type of book you might have expected Bloch or Richard Matheson to turn out in the 60s or 70s.
I'm not going to make any grand pronouncements about a "comeback" or (ahem) a "revival" here. We'll have to see if King can sustain this newfound focus with whatever he comes up with next. But, in the meantime, I'm just so grateful to have once again had the exhilarating experience with a new King book that I used to expect as a matter of course.
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