Dr. Shock title is deceiving

          He’s been scaring the bejesus out of me since I was a teenager.

            Not the boogie man.

            Or the monster in the closet.

            Those nightmares are run-of-the-mill.

The one who haunts my dreams is Stephen King.

            And I love it.

            The first King book I read was “’Salem’s Lot.” The story line is familiar for long-time “constant readers,” as King describes his fans. A flawed hero joins forces with a young person to combat evil.

But that’s like describing World War II as a back-yard snowball fight.

            One of my favorite scenes in “’Salem’s Lot” is when a young vampire, Danny Glick, comes to one of the heroes in the book, Mark Petrie, and scratches at the window screen, wanting to come in.

            King builds on Petrie’s curiosity and fear and his sadness over seeing his former friend floating outside his second-story room while never losing the terror about a hungry vampire scritch scratching at a screen, hungrily whispering to come in.

            In all of his novels, King gets right to the point without wasting time with boring passages about spring meadows, unnecessary love triangles or people’s wardrobe.

With an economy of words, he quickly reaches into eye sockets, grabs the reader by the eyeballs and never lets go.

            In “The Shining,” I remember being too afraid to turn the page when young Danny Torrance opened the door to Room 237. I didn’t want to turn the page because I was so scared, but I had to because my curiosity was stronger than my fear.

            My curiosity was answered when Danny found a dead woman in the bathtub that comes after him.

            Let’s not begin to mention those moving topiaries from “The Shining.”

            The murdering clown from “It.”

            Or, shudder, the return of toddler Gage from “Pet Sematary.”

            By isolating those scenes, it’s easy to dismiss King as a shock writer. If a reader looks deeper, though, they’ll find King is the ultimate character writer.

Too often, I’ve read books where the main characters accomplish unbelievable feats. While wounded, they can kill the bad guy with one bullet while hanging onto a moving train.

The women are long legged with flowing hair who seduce a man in one scene and save the world in the next, all the while keeping their make up in perfect order.

King’s characters are fleshed out as real people, with flaws and virtues, and that includes the women. He artfully describes the battles they wage with inner demons, from alcoholism to cowardice to a lack of identity.

            Some of my favorite King characters are from “The Stand,” his epic novel about the end of the world. Stu Redman is the main hero, and the constant reader pictures him as a regular guy in a flannel shirt who’s called on to save the world.

            I also like the way Jack Torrance in “The Shining” is written. The movie, starring Jack Nicholson was awful. In the book, though, we see Torrance as a young father who wants to stop fighting his demons yet can’t overcome alcohol’s stranglehold on his life.

            And in all of King’s writing, we eagerly go on a literary journey with him. We might find a dead body in “The Stand,” see a sadistic teenager get the tables switched in “Apt Pupil” or feel the anguish of John Coffee – “like the drink, only not spelled the same” in “The Green Mile.”

            We come to understand hope when we read how Andy Dufresne survives in “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.”

            When a writer makes us believe in redemption, that writer is a true American treasure. And for me, that person is the prolific and incredibly gifted novelist Stephen King.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.