Stephen King's "The Shining"

           Stephen King has always read to me as an author whose strengths outweigh his weaknesses, like a fighter with lousy form who still delivers a solid enough knockout punch to earn his place in the ring.  I enjoyed The Stand but thought it ended poorly.  I was chilled by the finale of Rage but thought a lot of his characterizations were a hard sell.  In general, King’s skill with scene-building, character depth, and intensely emotive narration (as well as what has to be a gargantuan memory bank of brand names and colloquialisms) do battle with, and ultimately prevail over, his tendency towards overlong plots and prose that’s decidedly, almost deliberately, lacking in finesse.  The Shining wasn’t much different.  He puts us squarely in the place and minds of his characters, wallops us with some incredible, high-intensity scenes, and then more or less shrugs off the reader’s need for emotional closure.  It’s powerful, fun, and a little bit empty when it’s all said and done.  That’s what I expected and what I got. 

           From what I’ve read of King’s thoughts on writing, he wouldn’t consider the “weaknesses” I’ve outlined to be worth losing any sleep over.  Where other writers might get hung up on weaving a concrete detail into a scene without disrupting the flow of the action, King doesn’t bat an eye.  Dude just comes right out and says whatever he wants to say.  The chance that a lengthy paragraph of description or dialogue might weigh a scene down never pushes him to pass up an opportunity to bedazzle the reader just that much more.  Given that I’d seen enough clips of (though never actually seen) the film to have a general notion of how it all shakes out, it’s hard to say what was really “necessary” for the buildup of tension for this particular story, but amidst generous descriptions of the Overlook Hotel and a few too many scenes going over similar points (Danny is psychic, Jack has violent/indulgent urges, Winnifred is worried), The Shining did seem to take its time getting off the ground.

           And this shouldn’t be read as a criticism of the author’s style.  For any points I could make about a clunky dialogue tag here or there, the guy produces some furiously gripping work.  He can afford not to worry about how tight his plotting is because he more than makes up for it elsewhere.  For those of us not blessed with the high-speed (possibly corrupted) supercomputer that is Stephen King’s brain, though, reading his work from the perspective of a learning student can feel an awful lot like watching a circus performer in awe.  “Boy, that’s impressive!  I sure couldn’t do that, and I don’t particularly want to learn.”