Thanks for the Ride, Lady!

This is the recurring line from Creepshow 2, and more specifically from a segment called The Hitchhiker, and since we witnessed the beginnings of a similar to-be often-repeated phrase on Twin Peaks: The Return just in the last episode, I wanted to title my story with its predecessor, and, well, you know: if the shoe fits. Like the first one, Creepshow 2 was great fun, more than anything else, and I especially wanted to see it when it came out because of the inclusion of The Raft, a tale that scared the bejesus out of my already Jaws-inflicted mind when I read the short story in Skeleton Crew, Stephen King’s early collection of shorter fiction, a masterpiece, if you ask me.

My man, while an appreciator of literature both high and low, had read all of seven of King’s books before we met, and had a very strong opinion about him and his characters and mindset. It wasn’t that he hated his work, no, but all the books he had read, The Shining and so forth, had a recovering  alcoholic or one about to dive off the deep end as the protagonist. “It’s always about the same themes and what is going on around here? You’ve got four meters of his stuff on the shelves.”

Recently, he has been reading two gigantic high-brow contemporary Literary Books, since last winter to be exact, both consisting of over a thousand pages. The advancing has been slow, like it always is when reading one of those rambling big books with the cosmic ideas and world-enveloping ideologies. “Oh, for crying out loud, read something just for entertainment for a change, just for the hell of it!” I exclaimed the other day, frustrated at his I’ll-read-these-two-pages-and-then-Intagram-for-a-half-an-hour -approach to his current reading.

I should tell you now, that his work has to do with culture, and he does have a library consisting of some two thousand books (the amount would be bigger, but when we got together, our combined libraries would have consumed the Earth, so some of the books had to go, and he, always a gentleman, made the harsh choices, leaving my treasures alone. I think I threw away perhaps ten books back then), so it is far from being like trying to force the ass I mean the horse to take a sip from the stream.

Except in some ways, that is exactly like it is. We all grow accustomed to what we like to read, and develop specific interests, at least in the department of the more and more elusive Reading for Fun compartment of our lives. My man likes true stories of war and crime, he enjoys history, gadgetry, and those big philosophic works that are simultaneously about everything and nothing special. I am no stranger to those myself, but I sometimes delve shamelessly into the realms of, what I describe with no attempts whatsoever to value them below anything, Easy Reading. For the longest time, telling people I was reading a book by King made them raise their eyebrows questioningly, sort of like ‘But isn’t that what teenagers read until discovering real literature’.

I just smile back. Anyone who thinks that hasn’t really read his stuff. Yes, it is easy. It is as easy as breathing. The text just flows through you. He has always had that talent to take the reader with him from the first sentence, which is why I, and all King fans, have read every single one of his books with great gusto, even the not so great ones, because the writing, and the engage, is never poor. You always care about the characters. You have to. He enthralls you. There is no way around it.

A friend of mine from work, Bacall, asked me the other day, having listened to for two years my ranting about how great a show Gilmore Girls is, and how I watch it over and over after shifts, if there was anything specific she should know about the show. She had started to watch it, and was a little flabbergasted as to why I liked it so much. Swinton happened to be at the scene as well, another victim of my GG conversion tactics, and we both answered simultaneously: “No, there is nothing. The show won’t change at all, nor will there be any surprising or very unusual plot twists.”

“So, they just talk and talk? That’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it. I must admit, when I first started watching the show, I myself had that same moment of disbelief, like, is this really the whole point? This is what Dalloway watches every night?” Swinton said. “But then, somewhere during the second season, as I was sewing my cosplay costume and had the show on in the background, I had a revelation about it, and now I love it.”

“Yeah! You just have to let it happen to you. It will come, Bacall, and when it does, you’ll be smiling”, I egged her on.

That was about a month ago. Yesterday, when I asked her what her plans for her day off were, she told me this: “Well, I am thinking about sun bathing if it’s sunny, and because my man is working the night, I’m gonna watch Gilmore Girls the whole night.”

This is exactly what will happen with Stephen King. And this is exactly what happened to my man, when I handed him the aforementioned short story collection, opened it at The Mist, and told him: “Here. Try this. If you hate it, you hate it, but try it at least.”

“Why do I have to read more King?” he whined, in exaggerated pain, but nonetheless took the book, and said he would at least read the Foreword.

After being silent for about half an hour, I checked up on him with the corner of my eye, as I was deep into The Bazaar of Bad Dreams from 2015 myself, and noticed he was way beyond the Foreword and into the novella. I said nothing.

As I was beginning to doze off, I sort of noticed him turning off the lights and exiting the bedroom silently and shutting the door. The next morning when I woke up and met him in the kitchen, I asked him how his night was. Over a gigantic cup of coffee, he answered: “Well, I’m bloody tired, thank you very much, I was up until two, finishing The Mist.”

I don’t think literally I had ever been that happy.

   

The big books are all fabulous and great. Anna Karenina. Crime and Punishment. The Idiot. All masterpieces I reread every five or six years. But the chomp-chomping of a great King story every once in a while is such a breath of fresh air, at least for my overextended brain, and it seems that, for my over-stressed and culturally overstuffed man, it was, too, at least for a while this week.

I have always loved the simple and straight-forward approach King has had on his own writing, such a hands-on, no trickery needed, you-have-to-do-the-work-to-succeed -ideology, always emphasizing the craftsmanship of the writing process instead of the divine muse on our shoulders. What are books for, in the end, if not entertainment? You can insert all the heavy themes and important values in there you want, but if it is boring and stuffy, it is boring and stuffy, no matter how eloquent the philosophy, or world-peace-y the message. 

He isn’t saying there is nothing magical at all about writing, nor am I. When you are typing, and the magic starts to happen, well, that is one of the best feelings there are in life for a writer, every writer knows what I’m talking about, but the point is, there are no short cuts. Even Tolstoy had to write his books word by word, and if the book is at all worth its salt, reading it won’t feel like dragging a rowboat by a rope on dry land.  

Of course, the larger-than-life books on my man’s night stand were also written word by word, and I am not saying they aren’t worth their salt and perhaps a lot more, too. I just bet they are. But, in the words of my rude Cinema Studies lecturer from days of yore: “Great film making is great film making, no matter what is going on in the picture.” You need to have your 2001: A Space Odyssey and your Solaris by Tarkovsky, but also your Raiders of the Lost Ark, your Harry and Sally, your E.T.

And Stephen King? He is my Indy just happening to stumble on the exact right location of the opening to the Well of Souls, while Belloq’s men are digging half a mile away from the right spot, my Harry checking out the last page of a Stephen King novel before digging into the book - true story, my friends, my creature from another planet, hiding amid some stuffed animals in the closet, plus the proverbial wheat germ - usually reserved for Dostoevsky only - when the going gets tough in other areas of my life.

I know my man will finish his night stand big books in good time. But taking a sip or two from the Mr. Fun Slush and having that brain freeze while on break is always refreshing and makes life more, well, fun. And, a footnote: nobody can argue that King’s books aren’t big. If there was an earthquake right now, and the books fell down on me from the shelves, I would lose consciousness out of the sheer weight of his stuff.

Wisely enough, I’ve got the Russians on the lower shelves.

Today is Swinton’s birthday, so this story is for you, pretty woman.