Misery Love Company
I am a Stephen King fangirl. I know it’s not cool to love
Stephen King. He’s too big, so everyone has to do what they can to knock him
down a peg. The literati hate him because they say he’s a hack… or worse, a
sellout. Aspiring popular fiction writers hate him because they say he gets too
much attention. Everyone hates Stephen King.
Except me.
I LOVE Stephen King. I want to BE Stephen King.
I refuse to say I’m his number one fan, but in the back of
my mind I’m thinking My Life For You.
Misery has been
one of my favorite King novels since it came out. Every time I read it, I’m
amazed at what all King is able to accomplish in that book. First of all, there
are only two characters… TWO! That’s pretty tough to do—to write a really
riveting book with only two characters.
But that’s what King is good at, isn’t he? I have always
thought King’s greatest strength as a writer was his characterization. I believe his characters, even when they
are batshit crazy like Annie Wilkes. I believe wholeheartedly that there is
someone just like Annie Wilkes out there somewhere, and I don’t ever want to
meet her. I love reading about her, though. Between Annie Wilkes and the mom in
Carrie, King has convinced me that
women who refuse to curse are nuckin’ futs. That’s why I curse like a sailor.
No worries about my sanity.
One of the things I love about Misery is the way that King integrates the two genres. This is not
just a horror novel. It is also a romance novel. Most people consider romance
and horror to be just about the most dissimilar of all the genres, but in
reality, they are perhaps the most similar. Both genres are about the perfect
mix of emotion and physicality. Love. Fear. Sex. Evisceration. Sweat. Tears.
Survival. King interweaves the two flawlessly, letting us see through the
juxtaposition both the polar opposites and the blatant similarities. We see
where they meet and understand how they intermingle. Love. Fear. These are
perhaps the reason we do everything. King masterfully weaves them together.
I like how you say it's also a romance novel. I see that as well, which is why I've been planning to take a Romance RIG course, not to write romances (not that there's anything wrong with that :)) but to enhance the interactions between my horror characters.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on characters that don't swear. It always makes me suspicious. It's been so long since I read Carrie that I didn't make the connection right away, but it's a good point.
ReplyDeleteOn top of the characters, there's pretty much only one setting. A bedroom. To be able to capture and cultivate an entire story, not to mention one with such strength from just two characters and one setting is pretty amazing stuff.
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