Weekly Reader: Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales by Stephen King; King's Short Stories are Just as Well Written as His Long Ones

Weekly Reader: Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales by Stephen King; King's Short Stories are Just as Well Written as His Long Ones


By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Stephen King's doorstopper novels are well known but he is just as noted for his shorter works. They can be just as scary and filled with terror and suspense as the longer works. Even though King describes himself as “more of a putter inner than a taker outer” never discount the shorter works as his anthology Everything's Eventual proves.

Everything's Eventual is filled with 14 short stories that are memorably creepy in how they explore various fears and how they affect the characters. The six best are:

1, “The Man in the Black Suit”- This story is a descriptive version of the whole “Stranger Danger” fear. Gary, an elderly man recalls an incident that occurred when he was a boy and encounters a sinister character that he believes is the Devil.

While the story isn't long on plot what really makes it is the description. Not many Readers will forget the sinister figure with his pale features, long black suit, long fingers,curled nails, and screechy voice using nursery room taunts to disturb the young boy.

The setting is also unforgettable as it starts off as a safe and secure space where Gary goes to fish and be alone with his thoughts but the Stranger's arrival fills him with such fear that he can never feel secure at that place ever again.

It isn't entirely clear whether the man really is Satan or a human child abductor/molester but either way this incident changes Gary forever. He managed to escape from the Stranger but never forgot him. Even as a dying old man, when he forgets the faces and names of friends and family members, Gary remembers every detail of that incident. As he lays dying, he is panic stricken that The Stranger will return for him when he's old, dying, and unable to defend himself.


2. “Everything's Eventual”-

This story is more science fiction than horror, but the fear is no less real. It plays on the paranoia of who is watching us and why.

Dinky Earnshaw is a young man with a smart mouth and an unusual talent. Whatever he draws comes true. When he was younger, a dog attacked him so he drew an image of the dog dying which it did.

After a disastrous encounter with his former boss, Dinky meets Mr. Sharpton, a mysterious man in a fancy suit. Sharpton wants to hire Dinky to write certain names and draw symbols and it will be done.

It is entertaining at first when Dinky uses his new found opportunity to receive sport cars and CD’s that have not yet been released. He receives so much money, that Dinky just tosses coins in a gutter. But things become tense when Dinky is ordered to write names down of “evil people” he is told. After doing some research, he learns that the people he wrote about mysteriously died and were not evil just rebels, activists, and political dissenters.

Much of the fear lies in the unknown that is never resolved. Who is Sharpton? Who is he really working for? Dinky's paranoia increases as he fears that he is being monitored and watched. He is able to turn his captivity around by his own unique way.


3. “The Little Sisters of Eluria”-

King's most ambitious world building project is his Dark Tower series. This story is an early adventure in the series (Thankfully for me, who hasn't read any of the books in the series.)

In this one cynical gunslinger, Roland is attacked by humanoid mutants in an abandoned village. He is awakened and nursed by a group of mysterious nuns. It doesn't take long for him to learn that the Sisters are really vampires and they feed on the humans that they heal.

This story is one half Gothic story one-half horror story. The Gothic elements come in the setting of a dark creepy abbey with the hidden passageways and the secrets shared by the people. There is also the innocent trapped inside who decides to aid the protagonist. In this case, the innocent is Sister Jenna, a novitiate who doesn't want to be one of them anymore.

The horror elements come from the plot of the human protagonist alone with an approaching horde of undead creatures. Roland has to rely on his strength, wit, and know how to survive his captivity. This time he also has help from a medallion which holds some unique powers.


4. “1408”-

As he did with The Shining, King visits the haunted hotel concept. This story is more tightly constrained but no less terrifying than its predecessor.

Mike Enslin, a horror writer is known for such works as Ten Scariest Haunted Houses, Ten Scariest Haunted Roads, etc. However, the skeptical writer has never actually seen a real haunting. While researching his latest book, Ten Scariest Haunted Hotels, he spends the night in a creepy hotel and insists that he sleep in the haunted room, 1408.

This story plays on superstitions by revealing that 1408 is listed on the 14th floor but is in reality the 13th. This is in reference to the common superstition that many buildings don't have a listed 13th floor. Also the room number 1,4,0,8 adds 13.

If the triskaidekaphobia doesn't get you, what's inside the room certainly will. Mike hears voices and footsteps. He sees faces in the walls and shadows. Also his tape recorder records messages that he never recorded saying that his friends and loved ones will die. The fear leads to intense violence as Mike is desperate to do anything to make the terror go away.

Mike survives his encounter but the true mark of any horror is how it affects the protagonist. Mike is left forever changed by the encounter. He can't sleep without a night light, still hears the voices in his mind, and never turns on the tape recorder for fear of what he might hear.


5. “The Road Virus Heads North”-

Remember the old story about the woman who loves jigsaw puzzles sees that the puzzle that she is solving reveals a picture of herself being killed by a mad man? This story is an update of that one.

Richard Kinnell, a horror writer (Maybe King is trying to tell us something.), is a collector of bizarre macabre artwork. At a yard sale, he buys a portrait of a tattooed punk-like man with long fangs and a hungry cannibalistic expression riding in a fancy sports car. Despite the warning from friends and his sweet aunt, Richard purchases the painting and mounts it on the wall. He watches in confusion as the expression on the man’s face changes and the background resembles the highway just outside of town.

Tension mounts when the picture shifts to the yard sale and the bloody corpses of the woman that Richard bought the portrait from. He learns on the radio that the woman was graphically murdered. The picture then changes to his aunt's house then his. Richard stares in fear as a car pulls up right outside his house.

Anyone who has sworn they have seen portraits staring at them or pictures change will relate to this frightening tale. It did a number on me. My Mom has a tapestry that is swirls of color around a black center. I swore the oval small center was larger and more circular. After reading this story, I thought that I saw faces in the tapestry. Luckily, it was only my imagination. Or was it?


6. “Riding the Bullet”-

This story is not only well written but is ground breaking for another reason. It was one of the first works that King released first online. When he released the story, over 400,000 copies were downloaded crashing the server. Since then, many of King's other works have been released online revealing that King knows how to adapt and reinvent himself to the modern Reader.

Luckily, this story is worth the publicity. Alan Parker, a university student, learns that his single mother is dying. He decided to hitch a ride to see her.

He accepts a ride from George Straub, a seemingly amiable but creepy man. Straub starts asking Alan weird questions and knows about his personal life.

Alan begins to think that he is riding with the Grim Reaper when Straub asks him who should die, him or his mother. Terrified, Alan makes his decision.

The story doesn't end the way Alan or the Reader expect. But what is truly haunting is neither the experience nor the aftermath. It is how we answered and the emotional repercussions that resonated from our answer.

Classics Corner: The Shining by Stephen King; Book Takes Us Inside Where The Movie Failed To Go

Classics Corner: The Shining by Stephen King; Book Takes Us Inside Where The Movie Failed To Go

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: There are many who think that the film version of The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick is a classic horror film. They remember the dolly camera angles around the Overlook Hotel, the ghostly Grady Sisters taunting Danny with a “Come, play with us”, and Jack Nicholson smashing through the door with an ax crazily chanting, “Here's Johnny!” Yes, there are many who consider it a classic horror film, if not the ultimate horror film.




Nearly everyone that is except Stephen King, the book's author.

Well, Steve that makes two of us. I agree with his assessment of the movie for many of the same reasons that he cited. So technically this review is half why I like the book and half why I hate the movie to The Shining. So I guess you can call this a-book-and-movie-review.




Now the movie is visually impressive, I won't deny it. The way the Overlook appears is alternatively warm and inviting as a hotel should be and imposing and terrifying as a haunted house should be. Some of the horror sequences such as the woman in Room 237 (217 in the book) and the eerie Grady Sisters are excellent in their ability to produce chills. Stanley Kubrick did some impressive film work on the project. But that's all the movie is, visual with nothing that takes us inside, nothing to tell us about the Hotel, it's residents, or the Torrance Family.

It turns what is a tightly constrained book about a family haunted by their internal demons and the ones at the Hotel into a mish-mash of scenes that could be anything and mean nothing unless you read the book first. (No wonder why the movie produces some off the wall analysis by film historians and fans who ponder its meaning from the genocide of the Native Americans to Kubrick's reported admission or apology for his alleged staging of the Moon landing.)




The plot, for the five people who don't know is: Jack Torrance, a writer, husband, and father has been hired as a caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in Colorado. He is suffering from writer’s block, is recovering from alcoholism, and feels guilty over breaking his son’s arm in a drunken binge and hitting a kid while sober costing him a teaching job. He takes his wife, Wendy and son, Danny to Colorado as they endure the wintry off-season.

While at the Hotel, each of the family deals with their own emotional crisis as well as the Overlook's guests, some of which, to paraphrase the Eagles, checked out any time they liked, but never left. Wendy has to deal with her conflicting feelings for Jack wanting to help him, but also fearing the alcoholic he once was. She also recalls the emotional abuse from her mother and is envious of the bond Jack and Danny share that seems to not include her.

Danny has a power that he barely understands in which he can read his parent's minds, especially in times of emotional stress, and talks to an invisible friend, Tony, that gives him creepy visions of blood and death. Danny is afraid of being “taken away” so he keeps the secret to himself except in front of Dick Halloran, the Hotel's chef who also has the ability which he calls The Shining.

Jack has to deal with his guilt about his past actions that combat his desire to protect his family and longing for a drink. As Jack tries to fight his inner demons, he becomes obsessed with the Overlook's history and encounters its late spirits particularly Lloyd, a bartender that satisfies Jack's thirst for alcohol and Grady, the former caretaker who murdered his own family, including his daughters, before committing suicide. Grady influences Jack's temper and urges him to “punish” his family and give them their “medicine.”




Among the many issues I have with the movie is casting Jack Nicholson in the lead role. Because of his performances in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Chinatown (the former which I also liked the book better than the movie but the latter I actually liked), already gave Nicholson the reputation of playing off-the-wall crazy potentially dangerous characters, a reputation that grew in films like Witches of Eastwick, Batman, and As Good As It Gets. The second he walks into his interview with the Hotel manager, Ullman, he is barely restraining rage. (While in the book, he doesn't like Ullman but keeps his thoughts to himself because hey he needs this job.) The conflict that Jack goes through is that he wants to be a good husband and father but can't resist his addictions and urges. Nicholson's performance seems to have no such conflict. He is bullying and domineering all the way through. They are barely in the Overlook before Nicholson's Jack is practically measuring his family for cemetery plots. With his hammy bombastic performance, a gripping book about a troubled family of three becomes the Jack Nicholson Show.




Make that the Stanley Kubrick/Jack Nicholson Show. Another issue in acting that I have is Shelley Duvall's portrayal of Wendy but less because of her but because of what Kubrick put her through to get that performance. The book version is strong in her own right and though she realizes that she is in an abusive marriage that she can't get out of, she is active and willing to challenge Jack both physically and verbally. Just as Jack is dangerous from the beginning in the movie, Wendy is passive and emotional as well. While Duvall depicts a woman in an abusive marriage, the book version reveals that it isn't the whole story that Jack recognizes the monster in himself and wants to repress it and Wendy alternates with loving and hating Jack for his actions. Plus much of Wendy's motives for staying in the marriage such as having to face her equally abusive mother are removed making Duvall's decision to remain with Jack almost a masochistic one.




Unfortunately, much of Duvall's fragility and emotional performance was not by choice but by the abuse given to her by Kubrick. According to many accounts, Kubrick put Duvall through untold physical and psychological stress that caused her hair to fall out and her body to become dehydrated from the tears she cried. He also re-shot the scene where she swings a baseball bat at Nicholson over 100 times with the intent of making her disoriented. Why is it that in most jobs if a boss acts like a total jackass to his employees, he is held accountable for it and would be rightly unemployed and charged for it? But when a director like Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock abuses his female actresses to get a “performance” out of them, he is hailed as a legend and is considered above criticism for his behavior? People like Shelley Duvall are actors, they act. That's what they do. A director doesn't have to resort to such theatrics. If they want a performance, the actor will give it. If not, they should get another one.




There are other issues with the book-to-movie transition. The movie version of Tony is a creepy character that moves inside Danny's finger and may be an evil conscience making him do bad things. The book version is more explainable and is connected to Danny's shining ability. It is a mental depiction of his older self (We later learn Danny's full name is Daniel Anthony Torrance) that is trying to protect Danny and see him through the troubles he is going through. Even the Overlook ghosts are given more depth. The woman in the bathtub? She was a woman who was in a relationship with the former manager and committed suicide. The tuxedoed man having sex with a man in a dog suit? They were the manager and a male lover in a dominant/submissive relationship. The hedge animals? They are manifestations of the Hotel's ghosts and Grady and Jack's anger. Without the book's context, the film just turns them into set pieces for Kubrick to show off his directing ability. (Though I do miss the Grady Sisters. They aren't in the book at all, though their father is.)

Also the movie destroys the ending where Jack's humanity remains long enough to get Wendy, Danny, and Halloran (who receives a telepathic .message from Danny to save him. In the book, he survives to become Danny's teacher but the movie makes his subplot pointless by killing him off.) to safety. Since we already know from the get-go Movie Jack has no redeemable qualities whatsoever he freezes to death outside the Overlook becoming one of its ghostly inhabitants. So what made him a subtle nuanced character slowly succumbing to madness, instead turns him into a loud obnoxious manic character who has no depth at all.




The Shining is among King’s best books. (My favorite is still Carrie), but the movie is a visually impressive film with little depth. It took what was good about the book and minimized it. The worst part is that it receives praise for doing so.