A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

A Canticle for Leibowitz
By Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Copyright 1960

Walter M. Miller, Jr. a prolific pulp writer of the 1950s, combined three short stories he published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction about an order of monks dedicated to a post apocalyptic hero into a short novel published in 1960. The results were the Hugo Award winner for the year 1960, A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Part I: Fiat Homo (Let There be Man)
The setting is the American Southwest, 600 years after a twentieth century nuclear war, or the Flame Deluge as posterity calls it. The monks of this remote desert Catholic monastery are dedicated to preserving and studying the works of Isaac Leibowitz – an engineer who, in the times following the nuclear devastation, worked to preserve the technology and the culture of mankind for future generations. Leibowitz and his group worked against society that, after technology had destroyed their world, rebelled against scientists and intellectuals.

Brother Francis is a brother of St. Leibowitz sent into the desert to fast and reflect. As he is constructing a shelter, he is happened upon by a strange traveler who helps him select the final rock with which to construct his shelter. When Brother Francis moves the rock, he finds that it covers a hole in the ground that accesses an underground room.

In that room, Francis finds several desiccated corpses and machinery far beyond his level of comprehension. He finds electrical schematics and handwritten notes (including a grocery list) that Francis comes to suspect might have been written by Isaac Liebowitz himself.

The traveler continues on his way in the desert and Francis hastens back to the monastery with some of the documents to report his finding. His discovery and assertion that perhaps the materials he brought back contain the actual writings of Liebowitz starts a stir among the order. Some eagerly embrace the new material as the actual work of Isaac Liebowitz. Others dismiss it as more relics of a past age with no connection to their order’s founder.

As the controversy rages, the abbot of the monastery sends Francis back to the desert to complete his meditations. When Francis returns, his ordination is delayed as the abbot fears that the new revelations might interfere with the canonization of Isaac Leibowitz. Francis is assigned to a menial job poring over manuscripts and schematics while advocates from the church visit the monastery to evaluate the work of Isaac Leibowitz. Soon after, Brother Francis becomes Father Francis.

While working, Francis finds a blueprint of an electrical schematic and recreates it in a gilded illumination. When Liebowitz is canonized, the abbot honors Father Francis by sending him to New Rome with the illumination he created and the artifact from which it was copied.

Along the way, Father Francis is set upon by bandits and his illumination is stolen. Francis counts himself lucky it was just the illumination that was stolen and not the relic. However, the pope wants the illumination recovered. He gives Francis gold and tells him to return to where he was robbed and pay ransom for the return of the illumination.

Francis returns to where he was robbed and waits. Once again, he is attacked. This time, he catches an arrow between the eyes and dies. The robbers make off with his gold. When the robbers depart, the wanderer who put Francis onto the artifacts of Liebowitz happens upon Francis’ body. He buries Francis in the desert as the frustrated vultures circle above, denied their repast.

Part Two: Fiat Lux (Let There be Light)
Part Two of Miller’s story is set in the year 3174. Centuries of study have finally started to yield results and a renaissance is underway. Father Kornhoer of the Order of St. Liebowitz has created electric light which he calls Electrical Essence. The single light is powered by four men on treadmills.

From the nation state of Texarkana comes Thon Tadeo -- brother of the mayor Hannegan of Texarkana and renowned scientist. He and his entourage arrive to study the memorabilia and learn more of the work at the monastery. They also have a surreptitious purpose: to study the monastery for its military value in the secret war plans the mayor of Texarkana is developing to control the lands of the American Southwest.

Tadeo asks to take the memorabilia back to Texarkana, claiming that it will take years to study it all and that it could be better done in Texarkana. His men have completed their military analysis and Tadeo wants to preserve the memorabilia from the ravages of war which he knows is coming from his brother. The abbot denies the request, having discovered Tadeo’s true plans. He instructs Tadeo to leave the monastery.

In Texarkana, the papal emissary to Hannegan’s government sends word to New Rome that Hannegan has united the nation states that surround him and plans to wage war on Denver, using the Monastery of St. Leibowitz as a military base. Hannegan finds out about Monsignor Apollo’s treachery and has him executed and declares fealty to the pope of New Rome a crime.

Part Three: Fiat Volantus Tua (Let They Will be Done)
It’s 3781 and mankind has recovered all of the technology of the earlier race of man – including space travel, nuclear power and nuclear weapons. It has also discovered cold warfare as two nation states, the Asian Coalition and the Atlantic Confederacy. Both sides are ramping up their preparations for real war, building nuclear weapon platforms in space.

When a test nuclear device is detonated, the priests at the monastery of St. Liebowitz grow worried about the future of mankind. They develop a plan to place the memorabilia aboard a spaceship with a manned crew to send it into space to find a new home on one of the outworld colonies.

The cold war turns hot when the two nation states exchange nuclear weapons. Texarkana is nuked and hundreds of thousands are killed and maimed. The World Court intervenes and is able to engineer a tenuous ten day cease fire to work toward brokering a full truce. The expedition to New Rome with the holy memorabilia of St. Liebowitz hopes to use this cease fire to transport the memorabilia to New Rome where they can board the spacecraft that will transport them to safety.

Meanwhile, to the abbey, comes a mutant woman named Mrs. Grales, who sells tomatoes at a roadside stand near the abbey. She wants to baptize her “baby” which is a second, seemingly lifeless head growing on her shoulders beside her functional head. She calls this head Rachel. Father Zerchi, the current abbot of the monastery promises to take it under consideration to humor her.

The abbot serves as a refugee camp as the wounded masses move west out of Texarkana. Meanwhile, near the monastery, a physician has set up a refugee camp where he engages in euthanasia for the badly suffering. Father Zerchi learns of this and argues with the physician about the evils of euthanasia. At stake are a woman and her baby. Both have horrid radiation burns. The woman’s fillings are radioactive and the baby cries constantly in agony. The physician administers the lethal drugs to the woman and her child, ending their suffering and effectively ending the partnership between the monks and the doctor.

Father Zerchi returns to the monastery discouraged and afraid. The cease fire is not holding. He worries about the fate of the mission to New Rome and for the fate of mankind. As he ponders, a nuclear warhead explodes nearby, destroying the monastery and burying Father Zerchi beneath the rubble.

He awakens to find that he is not alone. With him is Mrs. Grales. He offers to baptize the “child” Rachel. But Rachel, now alive and alert, instead administers the Eucharist to him in something resembling the immaculate conception and Mother Mary. Zerchi then dies, believing he has witnessed a miracle.

The mission to New Rome has made it and have successfully boarded the spacecraft. They launch and head for a new world, taking with them man’s technology, the seeds of its destruction.

As the book ends, nuclear war consumes the world. Mankind is destroyed. The creature of the ocean flee for deeper waters where they are safe.

A Canticle for Liebowitz is one of the most heralded and recognized of all science fiction work and fantasic post-apocalyptic fiction. Scholars have debated extensively its themes of religion versus state, the cyclical nature of history, and of course, the arguments for and against euthanasia.

While the novel is structured around the Catholic church, little Catholic doctrine (other than anti-euthanasia) makes it into the text. What is more prevalent is the church’s embrace of technology as a tenet of its faith and its dedication in preserving the earthly works of man.

What is not examined is why Leibowitz who was a Jew, converted to Catholicism near his death. There is nothing hinting at anti-semitism in the book. Why Miller chose a Jew who converted to Catholicism as the iconic father of the order is not explained.

Of the three stories told, Part One has the tightest plot. Father Francis is well developed as a character and his motives clearly defined. Part Two is less solid. Instead, it reads as an interlude, demonstrating the ongoing conflict between church and state. The plot picks up again in part three as the mission to New Rome desperately tries to get there before the world is nuked and Father Zerchi is left behind to oversee the end of his order at the hands of conflicting governments.

The whole holy conception thing was difficult to understand and did not work well. It was fitting that Father Zerchi, the last of his order dedicated to the preservation of technology, would witness an authentic miracle at the end of his life. However, the writing did not make it entirely clear what Miller was trying to say.

The end is bleak. Mankind has taken its technology and moved on to inhabit another world. But as the novel demonstrates, it’s in that technology and the cyclical nature of history that the seeds of civilization’s third demise are sown. The vignette at the end, with the shark fleeing to deep waters, where it remained hungry for a lack of prey, was chilling.

The book was apparently inspired by Miller’s bombing raids over a sixth century monastery at Monte Cassino during World War II.

This book stands as a staple of science fiction with the works of Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury. It was one of just two novels Miller published before he committed suicide in 1996. Miller is a recognized giant of the pulp publications of the 1950s where Asimov and Bradbury, along with others such as Robert Bloch and Richard Matheson were plying their trade in the 1950s. While Miller’s approach to science fiction is different than the action oriented works of Asimov and Bradbury, it’s examinations of theology, government, and man’s development of technology faster than the development of his conscience and intellect make it worthy on inclusion among the great works of science fiction.

Book to Movie: Crouch End (2006)

Book to Movie: Crouch End
From the made for television miniseries Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King
Teleplay by Kim LeMasters
Directed by Mark Haber
Based on the story Crouch End from the collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King


In the notes section of his book of short stories, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Stephen King says he wrote this story for an anthology of Lovecraftian stories written by modern authors. In telling his story, King retains his own voice, but does clearly establish a Lovecraft feel and setting. This episode of TNT’s stellar miniseries felt more Serlingesque than Lovecraftian.

The story opens in a British police station with a woman telling a bobby that her husband has disappeared. We then flash back to a very proper and well to do American couple in a posh British hotel, dining at the finest restaurants and enjoying the finest coffee houses, wearing nice clothes and expensive jewelry. They are invited to have dinner with our hero, Lonnie Freeman’s, law partner who handles their British affairs. He lives in a London neighborhood called Crouch End.

The first cabbie they find won’t take them there. They finally do find a cabbie to take them to Crouch End. The cabbie warns them to beware in Crouch End because unusual things happen there. He goes on to explain about thin places in the universe where other creatures leak through. He says druids used to perform rituals in the area they called Slaughter Towen.

They arrive in Crouch End and immediately encounter the two children who appear in the King story. It is broad daylight, but there are no cars or people. The neighborhood looks cheery enough, but it is deserted (which is the major deviation from Lovecraft). It looks like the strange little town that Serling used to show in so many episodes of his show. It’s picture perfect, but something sinister lurks beneath the surface.

From there, the script deviates wildly from King’s conception of how to tell a Lovecraft story. Lonnie is yanked through a hedgerow and disappears into the yard of an abandoned mansion. When he returns, he is a little off. From there, the couple run maniacally through the town which is more dilapidated now, searching for a main road.

The finally come to a tunnel and Lonnie tries to lure Doris in. When she won’t go through the tunnel, he tries to come out, but some tentacled monster grabs him and takes him to another world.

Suddenly, Doris can hear traffic. She runs until she finds an old couple. When she tells the first part of her story, the old man says, “It’s happened again!” and the old woman tells her, “We want no part of you if you’ve been to the Towen.” They point her in the direction of the police station and flee from her presence.

The story ends with her telling her story to the police.

We don’t get King’s revealing ending with the veteran cop filing the report in a special drawer full of missing person cases from Crouch End.

IMDB.com reviewers only gave this episode a rating of 6.0. I thought it deserved higher. It had some weaknesses like the three street toughs inexplicably morphing into werewolves in a flash scene and the repeated use of those “flashes” of horror that seemed to have no other purpose than to make one jump and do not serve the plot.

But Eion Bailey’s portrayal of Lonnie after he escapes the mansion yard injects a great deal of uncertainty into the viewer’s mind once you know that we are completely deviating from the King narrative. He seems to be the same Lonnie, albeit badly rattled. Yet, he’s a bit off, becoming irrationally pissed about losing his sport coat while being trapped in a Lovecraftian nightmare. He seems to want to escape, yet there’s something a little off about him.

There's also the transformation of this very stuffy, proper couple at the beginning of the story to the distraught, frantic, and filthy couple at the end. They start the story in beautiful surroundings with beautiful trappings, only to find themselves at the end in a filthy tunnel, surrounded by filth and horrific creatures.

When I say the town was closer to Serling than Lovecraft, that is not a criticism. Lovecraft is an acquired taste. Serling is meat for the masses. I love both and for the TNT audience at 9:00 pm, the Serling look of the town was better suited. The Crouch End of this story was like Lonnie. It had a veneer of normalcy about it, but something was wrong underneath.

The duo who created this episode must have immediately leaped at the chance to work with Stephen King material. The screenwriter, Kim LeMasters, was the executive producer of the television show, Silk Stalkings and his lone genre credit was the abortion of a movie, Wild, Wild West. The director, has a limited Hollywood portfolio with one sci-fi movie to his credit in Alien Cargo.

This series did not have a bad episode. There were many episodes better than this one and Lovecraft fans expecting to see something of their favorite author are going to be disappointed. With its shortcomings, Crouch End still made for decent television and is worth the 44 minutes I invested in watching it.

White Gold Wielder by Stephen R. Donaldson

The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenent, Book Three:
White Gold Wielder
By Stephen R. Donaldson
Copyright 1983

White Gold Wielder picks up where The One Tree left off with the Giants of Seasearch, Thomas Covenant, and Linden Avery leaving the sunken island of the One Tree with no direction, no purpose, and no goal.

With them as well are Findail, the Elohim, and Vain, the enigmatic ur-vile who says and does nothing. Vain is altered by the encounter at the One Tree. Earlier, he had placed on a wrist and ankle the metal ornaments of the staff of law. Now, that arm has become wood with bark and all.

The company decides to head back to the Land because Covenant has decided that if he does anything else, it will be to extinguish the Banefire burning at Revelstone.
The giant ship, Drummond heads west, but is blown off course by strong winds out of the south and is driven into a field of ice, many miles north of their course. The giant in charge, the First, decides that they will not free their ship of the ice field in time to reach the land, so she leads a small company of giants and Haruchai to assist Covenant and Linden ashore.

The company crosses the ice field and is soon back in the Land. They meet up with Sunder and Hollian, the stonedowner couple Covenant left behind to spread the gospel of the White Gold and to try to rally the people of the Land against the Sunbane. Sunder reports that they were met in this quest with indifference some places and outright hostility in others.

He also reports that the na-Mhoram have stepped up their kidnappings to feed and strengthen the Sunbane. Most stonedowns and villages are made up now of the very old and the very young, with the healthy and vital taken for their blood.

Joined by Sunder and Hollian, the company heads east toward Revelstone. They arrive to find the place silent. They enter and Covenant, now barely able to control the white gold due to the raver’s venom pulsing in his vains, elects to use another means to bring down the sunbane. He summons the Sandgorgon, Nom, who killed his bloodguard on the island of Bhraithar and then proceeded to single handedly wreck the keep there. It must answer the summons of the person who says its name and kill them. However, wielding the white gold, Covenant is able to control and subdue the sand gorgon and make it do his bidding.

Covenant, Linden, and the giant, Grimmand Honninscrave, enter Revelstone to find the Raver Gibbon who leads the na-Mhoram. The rest of the company is left at the entrance to fight off the attack from behind. The raver, now desperate, has summoned his warriors as well as lowly peasants to strike blows at the giants who guard the rear.

Once inside, the group finds Gibbon in his chamber, wielding his Rukh with which he controls the power of the Sunbane. Gibbon captures Honninscrave by sealing his arms and legs in stone. He prepares to bring his might against Linden and Covenant so he may take the White Gold and supplant Lord Foul as the master of the universe. But before he can, Nom enters and knocks from Gibbon’s hand, his Rukh. This releases Grimmand Honninscrave who attacks Gibbon and kills him.

With the death of Gibbon, the soul of the raver is free. It enters Honninscrave. Honninscrave struggles for mastery of his own body as he duels the raver inside. He begs for Covenant to kill him while he holds the raver at bay. Nom kills Honninscrave as he holds the raver, thus slaying both. Now, no one leads the Clave, the keepers of the Sunbane.

Covenant is distraught and depressed after yet another friend has made the supreme sacrifice on his behalf. Crazed with grief, he steps into the Banefire and unleashes the magic of the white gold upon himself, enduring his own rite of Camora – the rite of immersion in fire used by the giants to cleanse their souls of hurt and suffering. Linden watches with horror as Covenant endures the pain. However, he steps from the Banefire a changed man. He is now at peace with himself and his power for the first time.

They travel to the top of Revelstone where they meet The First and her husband, Pitchwife who are there with Nom. Nom has used his immense strength to channel through the stone and plan to sluice the waters of Glimmermere Lake into the keep and to extinguish the Banefire. Nom lets the water flow and the Banefire is ended.

The end of the Banefire does not mean the end of the Sunbane for it is now deeply woven into the fabric of the Land. Covenant lays the foundation of what he hopes will be a new regime of peaceful people who will once again someday be able to see a healthy Land and make use of its innate power. He instructs his remaining Bloodguard to remain at Revelstone, keep it, and make it ready for a new generation of lords who will oversee the Land’s restoration.

Hollian and Sunder join Covenant, Linden, the two giants, Findail and Vain as they depart Revelstone and head for Lord Foul’s lair in Mount Thunder. Along the way, they are attacked by ur-viles, and the pregnant Hollian is slain. Sunder is bereft of speech with grief. He recovers Hollian’s body and takes it with him, acting if she was still alive.

The company arrives at Andelain where Covenant spoke with his dead and received the gift of Vain. There, the company meets the old forestal, Caer Caveral. Caveral is now old and tired from keeping the Sunbane from sundering Andelain – the only place in the Land that is still pure. He asks that he be killed to save the Land. Sunder obliges him with a knife to the back and Hollian’s life is restored. As High Lord Elena destroyed the Law of Death centuries before in The Illearth War, Caer Caveral has destroyed the Law of Life, restoring life through death.

Sunder and Hollian stay behind in Andelain which is no longer protected by the forestal and is slowly being warped by the Sunbane. Covenant and the rest of the party head for Mount Thunder.

Along the way, Linden becomes uneasy with the new Thomas Covenant who is so at ease with himself and his choices. She fears that he has surrendered and will surrender the white gold to Lord Foul. She resolves that she will take whatever means are necessary to prevent that from happening.

The company arrives at Mount Thunder and enters. They are attacked by Cavewights who want to use Covenant’s ring to resurrect Drool Rockworm, the cavewight who found the staff of law and was tricked into summoning Thomas Covenant to the Land for the first time. The Giants stay to hold off the cavewights while Covenant and Linden venture forward to meet Lord Foul.

Lord Foul is waiting for them. Immediately upon arrival, Linden’s body is seized by a raver and she is left as a powerless spectator as Covenant does what she’d feared. He gives the white gold ring to Lord Foul. Foul grasps the wring and immediately kills Covenant. He then begins unleashing gouts of power at the Arch of Time itself – the device which keeps him chained to the land. With the fall of the Arch, Foul will be unleashed into the cosmos to dominate the universe.

However, something blocks Foul’s attack. It is the spirit of Thomas Covenant, now unbound by both the laws of life and death, to meet Foul head on. Foul eventually uses up all of his power and is forced into submission and retreats from the Land.

Linden is able to break free of the grasp of the Raver and seizes the white gold wedding band. She sees Findail desperately trying to kill Vain and she understands their conflicting, yet synergistic purpose. The fluid earthpower of Findail of the race of the unhomed and the stoic rigidity of the ur-vile Vain, are complementary. Linden uses the white gold to bond the two and they slowly lose their earthly forms and are reshaped into a new staff of law.

With Covenant gone, Linden begins to fade from the Land. Before she leaves, she takes the staff of law and the white gold and combines the power of law and chaos to destroy the Sunbane. Before she leaves, she places the new staff of law into the hands of the giants.

While in an ethereal state between the Land and her own world, the spirit of Thomas Covenant speaks to her. He tells her that he could not use the white gold to attack and kill Foul for the battle would have destroyed the Arch of Time, allowing Foul his victory. He simply needed Foul to wield the power against himself, for as Covenant was told so many times by those repeating prophecy, he is the white gold. He leaves her with the promise of undying love.

Linden awakens in the glade where she witnessed Covenant being stabbed by the maniacal preacher. His body is dead and prostrate upon the stone, a knife protruding from his chest. Her friend and mentor, Dr. Berenford is there with the police. People have been hurt and as doctors, their place is among the wounded. The police are left to tend to the dead.

So ends the third and final volume of Stephen Donaldson’s Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

The second trilogy really pales in comparison to the first. It opens with promise as we see the Land, which Donaldson imbued with so much beauty and spirit in his first trilogy, warped and ruined. The first book was about action, reaction, and learning. Plots and subplots were put into motion and promised an epic battle for the heart and soul of the living Land.

However, Donaldson wallowed in lugubrious reflection, second guessing, and overwrought emotion. Thomas Covenant was an anti-hero. We were supposed to root for him, but not like him. After all, his first act in the Land was to rape a 16 year old girl. He finds redemption in the first trilogy.

But he’s not very likeable in the second trilogy because he’s a whiny, petulant, mouse of a man. Every little setback turns into page after page of morose introspection. Covenant is cleansed of this narcissistic brooding by his immersion in the Banefire. But by then, it is too late for the reader because the remainder of the book is written from Linden’s point of view.

Linden isn’t very likeable either. She’s no anti-hero, although Donaldson makes a half-hearted effort at making her one. We learn that Linden killed her mother by suffocating her as she lie dying in a hospital bed. This would be a tragic and painful ordeal for a real person and would certainly fill them with guilt. But it lacks the despicable nature that creates an anti-hero. The seminal and defining event in Linden's life that makes her so unsure of her emotions is seldom referenced and does not serve as a defining characteristic. It seems tacked on.

Linden is also almost always sulking about something. Much of the second trilogy, especially the second book, is page after page of Linden brooding about something Covenant said or did. Reading the interaction between them was like hanging out with a couple who look for the smallest reasons to fight with each other and ruin your evening. You don’t want to hang out with them anymore and there were times that I wanted to put these books down and quit spending time with Mr. Doom and Mrs. Gloom, aka Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery.

The second book was pointless. Through 500 pages, little new information was revealed. The plot advanced little. The point of the book turned out to be false. It was as if Donaldson was cranking out words and storylines while searching for the resolution of his story – a resolution he did not find before completing the second book.

The third book brings some redemption to the story. We rejoin the main plot. As he head toward Revelstone with the goal of bringing down the Clave and ending the Sunbane, Thomas Covenant once again becomes a man of action. With purpose defined, he becomes a less brooding figure and a more heroic one.

The story’s climax is fitting and almost makes it worth enduring the second book. The climax is brilliant because it is rather anti-climatic, but revealing. At the beginning of the book, Foul tells Covenant that he will willingly hand over the white gold. The reader dismisses this as boastful bloviating. The anti-climax is developed as Covenant does just that. There is no epic battle, just simple surrender and self sacrifice. Foul is not destroyed. We find that Foul and his existence are as essential to the existence of the Land as is the staff of law.

The end of the second trilogy sets up another sequel which Donaldson would undertake almost 30 years later. Three books have been published in the Final Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. I have read the first two, and they show promise for an exciting conclusion to this epic story.

Reading this trilogy was frequently a struggle, but worth it for no other reason than it sets up the third Chronicles. No matter how badly Donaldson’s plots sometimes falter, he remains a brilliant wordsmith. His expansive vocabulary, his strong character development (when they are not overwrought with self pity), and his descriptive narrative make him one of the most enjoyable writers I’ve ever read.

Book to Movie: Dolan’s Cadillac (2009)

Book to Movie: Dolan’s Cadillac (2009)
Directed by Jeff Beesley
Screenplay by Richard Dooling, based on the short story, Dolan’s Cadillac by Stephen King

In 2009, director Jeff Beesley took Stephen King’s long short story, Dolan’s Cadillac, expanded it, and made it into a surprisingly solid movie.

The King story is the second half of the movie. The first half is the set up that King glosses over to get us to the action. Robinson’s wife, Elizabeth, is out horseback riding in the desert when she stumbles onto our villain, Dolan, brokering a deal for Mexican women. She watches as Dolan (portrayed by Christian Slater), unhappy with the merchandise, kills the delivery men and some of the women. She starts dialing 911 when they notice her. They shoot and she flees, dropping her cell phone. Dolan’s people find the cell phone and take it with them as they tool back toward Las Vegas in Dolan’s armor plated Cadillac Escalade.

A few days later, Robinson and Elizabeth arrive at home to find a dead Mexican woman in their bed; her lips are sewn shut. Dolan has sent them a warning.

Undeterred, Elizabeth goes to the feds and reports what she saw. The FBI is thrilled to have someone that can testify against Dolan, against whom they’ve been trying for years to build a case. They put her in protective custody at a Las Vegas hotel and begin building their case.

Meanwhile, unhappy with his Mexican merchandise, Dolan starts importing women from Europe. While he is happier with the European “merchandise” he is concerned about profit margins on each load. He tasks his people with finding a way to increase profit margins on each load.

Elizabeth and Robinson go stir crazy in their hotel, waiting for the feds to build their case. One night, Elizabeth decides to slip out. Robinson gives chase, knowing that slipping their protective detail will lead to a bad end. He arrives outside the hotel just in time to see Elizabeth blown up as she opens the door of their car.

With King’s backstory properly revealed on film, the King story starts. Robinson goes through the motions of living, but is empty without his wife. He begins following Dolan. He purchases a 44 magnum and prepares to assassinate Dolan as he leaves his Las Vegas suite. As he waits, another group with assassination as their goal shows up and Dolan watches as Dolan takes refuge in his armored Escalade while his men cut down the assailants with cold efficiency.

In King’s story, at one point, while following Dolan, Robinson ends up right on Dolan’s rear bumper at a detour – the detour that gives him the idea for his revenge. In the story, Dolan doesn’t notice him. In the movie, Robinson stops at a rest area for a bathroom break and Dolan and his men show up. The put a beat down on him and Dolan tells him he is too weak and pitiful to kill. He spits in Robinson’s face as he lies writhing on the bathroom floor. Before departing, Dolan delivers a cryptic lecture on the arc of descent, meant to be a warning to leave him alone.

Robinson returns to his life and his classroom as depressed as ever. He is pondering the arc of descent as he starts pushing a line of erasers from his desk into a trash can. We never see any physical signs of epiphany, but we know from reading the story that Robinson has formulated his plan.

Over Labor Day weekend, with the road crews on holiday, Dolan heads for the desert to set his trap. Dolan sets off for Los Angeles to take delivery of his latest cargo. His agent in L.A. contacts him en route and shows him the solution to increasing the profit margin. He explains that they can get a higher yield with more volume per cargo container. This load contains children to be brokered.

From there, events unfold just as they did in the story. Robinson joins the Nevada road crew and learns to operate the equipment. He digs his pit, removes the detour and waits for Dolan to arrive. Dolan’s driver dutifully drives right into the snare.

While staying true to the essence of the King story, burying Dolan in the movie is much more drawn out, with Robinson throwing shovels of dirt on the Caddy while dialoguing with Dolan, tormenting him; making him scream. At one point, Robinson turns off the cellular blocker he is using to talk to Dolan on a cell phone and allowing him to use his onboard computer to watch as he pours more dirt on Dolan’s tomb.

While Robinson goes about his business, he gets a call from the FBI agent working the case. They've raided Dolan's warehouse, arrested his people, and are executing an arrest warrant for Dolan.

With time running out, Dolan eventually gets busy with the back hoe and fills in the hole, leaving a little gap over the sunroof. He places the symmetrically cut pieces of asphalt back in place. Dolan watches with horror as Dolan slides the final piece over the sunroof.

This was one of the finer King adaptations I’ve ever seen and I’m surprised it didn’t receive more acclaim. It didn’t have any corny special effects, tacked on characters, or major rewrites that often ruin King’s stories on screen.

Adding the backstory as part of the plot was necessary to make a movie and it could have been done poorly with a series of flashbacks. To use flashback as a story telling device for this story would have been instinctive. Instead, screenwriter Jeff Beesley tells it in real time, making it much more enjoyable for an audience that had not read the story and King fans alike.

The deviations from the story such as Robinson’s encounter with Dolan in the rest stop added to the tension and were folded neatly into the story. Too often, when screenwriters pad a King short story, they tack on scenes. There was nothing tacked on in this story.

I pictured Dolan as I read the story as a character from The Sopranos – a large, middle aged man of Italian ancestry. Christian Slater was neat, prim, and attractive and played Dolan with a coldness that was striking. Seldom have I seen Slater pull off a roll so well.

In King’s story, Robinson had a cold detachment from his revenge. To him, it was a laborious task to be carried out at the behest of the ghost of his dead wife. He is methodical in carrying it out. King even opens with the Spanish proverb about revenge being best served cold. In the movie, Robinson delights in tormenting Dolan. This took a little away from the Robinson’s character who was supposed to be a mild mannered grade school teacher.

That is but a minor weakness in what was otherwise a superb adaptation of one of King’s finer short works.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King

Nightmares and Dreamscapes
By Stephen King
Copyright 1993

This third volume of short stories from Stephen King contains almost exclusively new material. Without the restrictions placed on him by various magazine editors, many of the works are long; some are bloated. But the volume also contains some of his finest short work including The End of the Whole Mess and You Know They Got a Hell of a Band.

Introduction: Myth, Belief, Faith, and Ripley’s Believe it Or Not
Stephen King opens his third volume of short stories by telling us that he was a gullible child who believed everything he saw and heard. He absorbed ghost stories and urban myths such as the one about the acid at the core of a golf ball as hard truths. As an adolescent casting his first vote, he sardonically notes, he voted for Richard Nixon because Nixon had a secret plan to get us out of the Vietnam War.

Most of the strange and macabre tales that filled King’s mind, he says, came from the comic book version of Ripley’s Believe it or Not which told of bizarre, but supposedly true happenings from around the world.

It is that ability to openly embrace the weird, the bizarre, and the supernatural that allows him to craft the stories and books that have frightened two generations. It is a necessary component of his psyche that the wisdom of years and the cynicism of middle age have not overcome.

It is also that release of reality that allows us to enjoy his stories. . .

Dolan’s Cadillac
Third grade teacher we know only as Robinson decides he is going to kill the mobster who killed his wife nine years prior. He develops a plan to capture the gangster in the middle of the Nevada desert and see him off.

To do so, he joins a Nevada road crew, working his summer off under the blistering desert sun to learn about roadwork; to gain the knowledge necessary to hatch his plan. Serendipitously, a detour is set on Route 71 – the route the mobster Dolan always takes in his spiffy Cadillac when going on holiday to Los Angeles – for the Fourth of July.

Robinson goes to the detour site and working tirelessly for two days, sets his intricate snare.

This was one of the longer works in the book, but could have easily been more bloated. This character is narrow and single-minded in his purpose. King weaves revenge tales with unabashed creativity and this is a creative end to a wicked little tale. A wonderful story with which to open the book.

Dolan’s Cadillac originally appeared in the Castle Rock Newsletter, February—June 1985.

The End of the Whole Mess
A man recounts in a final journal entry how his genius brother discovers a mineral that promises to end all hostility in the human race – and destroyed mankind with it.

The main character is introduced as a professional writer. He even remarks that he digresses too much as he chronicles how one man destroyed the human race. He knows he’s racing against time to get it all down, but it reads like . . . a Stephen King story with overdeveloped characters. Stephen King remarks in the notes section of the book that the genius brother was inspired by his own brother. The main character writes very much like Stephen King.

The End of the Whole Mess originally appeared in Omni, October 1986. It was made into an episode of Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King that aired on TNT in 2006.

Suffer the Little Children
A grades school teacher, known for being strict and having eyes in the back of her head notices one day (she uses trick glasses) one of her students morphs into a monster when her back is turned. He convinces her that all her students are in fact, just disguised monsters. So, the teacher comes up with a very practical solution to the problem.

I love the dark ambiguity of this story. While it was longer and its primary character more developed, it reminded me very much of Cain Rose Up from Skeleton Crew. We are left with a couple unanswered questions. Was the teacher simply insane, or were her students really monsters?

This story dates back to the days of Night Shift which might explain why to story telling is so tight and disciplined. It was dropped at the recommendation of King’s editor. Suffer the Little Children originally appeared in Cavalier magazine, February 1972.

The Night Flier
Richard Dees, the annoying bastard of a tabloid reporter from The Dead Zone, chases a vampire who prefers to fly – not with the wings of a bat – but with the jet engines of a private Cessna. At the request of his editor, Dees tracks a mysterious creature that travels from small airport to small airport, devouring the blood of those unlucky enough to be there when he lands. After days of flying his small plane south along the east coast, Dees catches up with his quarry.

The first time I read this story, I was reminded of the legendary Kolchak: The Nightstalker. Reading it again dispels that similarity. Kolchak was an optimist. He was always bemused, never terrified as he pursued the supernatural. Dees is a darker personality, bereft of humor. King shows once again that he can add yet another twist to the ancient story of the vampire and make it work.

Night Flier originally appeared in Prime Evil, an anthology edited by Douglas Winter in 1988.

Popsy
A man with a bad gambling problem takes up child snatching as an occupation to pay his gambling debts. One evening, he snatches a lost kid from a mall who is preternaturally strong and with exceptionally sharp teeth. While on the way to deliver the kid to the flesh peddler, he meets the kids father – who bears a striking resemblance to the character from Night Flier.

It just goes to show you that even the children of the undead cannot resist the “must have” toy of any holiday season. One can imagine the difficulty Dracula would have chasing down Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle figures for his son. This story is much darker than my glib analysis and it is enjoyable to see the vampire play the hero for once without it becoming sappy.

Popsy originally appeared in Masques II, an anthology published in 1987.

It Grows on You
Five retired New England men sit around a stove fire in a general store, recounting the history of a strange, old house in Castle Rock. It’s deadly and eerie nature have kept it abandoned for more than a decade after the death of its builder, a textile manufacturer of some wealth.

The men note that after every evil event that takes place inside the house, a new wing is added to the already expansive mansion. One of the old men notes that someone has started a new wing on the house.

This was a yankee story pure and simple. The language, the mannerisms, and attitudes are all true to form for a provincial yankee town like Castle Rock. King was writing for an audience in this story.

A different version was published in Marshroots Fall 1973 – the University of Maine literary publication. King says he made major revisions from that version for Needful Things. Perhaps, but it is still a yankee story.

Chattery Teeth
A traveling salesman stops at a roadside convenience store in the desert. Besides operating a pet zoo in the desert, they sell gasoline and novelty gag gift items. His mind seizes on a set of metal chattery teeth because they look so unusually large and dangerous. He acquires them and returns to his car, which is now beset by a sand storm. A kid begs a ride and, as they travel the treacherous, sand covered roads in the story, the hitchhiker attacks him. The chattery teeth spring into action.

This is a prime example of the contemporary King – without editorial guidelines, pumping out stories that are way too long to be enjoyed as short stories. This as a great premise and King tells an interesting story. But the literary bloat! Too many words, too much backstory, and too much time building tension.
Chattery Teeth was first published in Cemetery Dance, Fall 1992.

Dedication
A New York hotel cleaning lady receives a copy of her son’s new novel, dedicated to her, saying, “I couldn’t have done it without you.” After work, she sits in the hotel bar and explains to a colleague why that dedication is so true.

Stephen King, meet Alice Walker. Your idea for how to choose a father was done earlier by her in the book, The Temple of My Familiar. King actually defends the story in the Notes section. He then adds that the story shouldn’t need defending; it should stand on its own. It’s just more of that phase King went through in the early 1990s where he needed to prove he could write socially relevant stories. Not badly written, but the story is absolute rubbish.

This story was originally published in a horror anthology entitled Dark Visions published in 1989

The Moving Finger
Howard Mitla is dismayed to walk into the bathroom of his Queens apartment and find a single, human finger extended from his sink drain. Howard is “pee-shy” and can’t urinate with that finger with its single nail, extending from the drain and tapping on the sink. Determined not to spend the rest of his life using public johns, Mitla takes the matter into his own hands and does a little chemical plumbing. He ends up in a battle for his life and his sanity.

Stephen King has said that most of his story ideas start with, “what if.” As he states in his Notes, sometimes it’s fun to read a story without knowing why something happened. King doesn’t take himself or his idea too seriously and the reader comes away feeling as if he’s just read a delightful story from a comic book.

The Moving Finger was originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1990.

Sneakers
A recording engineer is at first curious, then apprehensive, and eventually terrified by a pair of old fashioned canvass sneakers in a toilet stall in the bathroom of a recording studio. He is able to learn the legend of the ghost that is supposed to haunt the bathroom. He eventually confronts the ghost.

This was an intriguing and engaging story with a disappointing ending. Too many words and pages expended to have a pointless ending. This story is a real bust.

This story was also published in the horror anthology, Night Visions 5

You Know They Got a Hell of a Band
Rock and Roll will never die! It lives on forever and ever in a remote Oregon town! A couple taking backroads through rural Oregon get lost in the woods and eventually find themselves in the remote town of Rock and Roll Heaven, OR. In Rock and Roll Heaven, Janis Joplin will serve you pie, Elvis will write you a parking ticket, and there is a concert every night!

I loved this story! King doesn’t mind playing with the ghosts of the dead and famous in this creepy story about a town run by dead rock stars. King keeps the tension between the couple simmering and slowly as they struggle to find their way on the narrow gravel roads in the middle of nowhere. Once we get to town, King makes no effort to conceal where he’s going. The reader is trying to guess just who they will see and what they will do.

This story was originally published in Shock Rock, published in 1992.

Home Delivery
The end of the world has come with the zombie apocalypse destroying the world one person at a time. On Gennesault Island, 40 miles off the coast of Maine, the locals prepare to watch over the island’s one cemetery to cut down the dead before they can get going. Meanwhile, a young, timid woman ponders the child in her womb and the world it will come into. Certainly the birth will be a home delivery.

I had forgotten that Stephen King had cranked out one zombie story before writing the superb zombie novel, Cell. This is one of his more graphic stories, written for a splatterpunk anthology called Book of the Dead which used the setting established by George Romero’s zombie pictures as its backdrop. Most horror fans would be surprised to learn that King is not all that graphic in his writing, usually. He ramps it up in this story.

Rainy Season
A couple rents a home in a small remote town to spend a year working on a book. When they get to the town, they are advised that they should leave for the day because this particular day in June, once every seven years, it rains toads in this particular Maine town. Convinced that the locals are pulling a prank on them, they decide to stay and ride out the storm.

Sometimes King takes an overtly absurd, silly concept and makes it horrific. This is one of those tales. It’s not the best story in this volume by far. But perhaps it’s the most creative concept.

This story was originally published in the Spring 1989 edition of Midnight Grafitti.

My Pretty Pony
A dying grandfather delivers a lecture to his young grandson about the nature of time and our perception of it; how it passes slowly when one is young, and gathers speed and momentum as you grow older.

King writes in the notes section that this short story was actually a chapter from a Bachman novel he was working on that fell apart. A gangster is waiting to make a hit. He’s reflecting back on this lecture his grandfather gave him. It’s deep, philosophical, and holds a lot more meaning for me now than it did when I first read it 20 years ago when time was passing somewhat slower.

Sorry, Right Number
In this teleplay, a woman receives a mysterious phone call from a sobbing woman. She is unable to make out what the woman says before the connection is broken. She is sure it someone close to her. She tries desperately to learn the person’s identity. She eventually does, many years later.

The script was originally pitched to Steven Spielberg for his television series, Amazing Stories. Spielberg thought it was too dark for the uplifting show. So King sold it to Tales from the Crypt where it worked much better, in King’s opinion. I’ve never seen the show.

The Ten O’Clock People
Pearson is a smoker who has cut back and trying to quit. One day, as he goes to his 10:00 AM ritual of smoke break, he observes that the president of the bank where he works is actually a deformed mutant. He learns from others who have recently cut back on their smoking that only those who reduce their nicotine intake can see these aliens and that crossing them is a bad idea. Pearson joins an underground resistance movement to kill these creatures.

I was a smoker who quit and I can remember the trippy dreams and strange thoughts that passed through my mind as I endured about a year of withdrawal. The story seems perfectly plausible. It is, however, too long. It consumed more than 50 pages when 20 might have been sufficient.

Crouch End
An American couple goes searching for a friend’s house in suburban London when they find themselves in a Lovecraftian nightmare – complete with homage to Yogsogoth. They struggle to find their way out, but only the wife makes it. She tells her tale to two London police officers.

This was an absolutely fantastic story with King recreating that ominous, washed out, completely bereft of color town like Lovecraft used to do. Reading this reminded me so much of Ramsey Campbell’s work. It may be because the story first appeared in an anthology, edited by Campbell, called New Tales of the Cthulu Mythos.

This story also was made into a screenplay for the Nightmares and Dreamscapes series.

The House on Maple Street
Four siblings, living an unhappy life with an emotionally abusive stepfather discover that, inside the walls of their home, metal is “growing.” The eldest boy figures out that, while they were away on a three month sabbatical with their stepfather, there home was somehow converted into a spaceship. As the hour for the blastoff draws near, they hatch a plan to rid themselves of their wicked stepfather forever.

I believe Ramsey Campbell wrote a story similar to this about an entire city block in London actually being a space ship that takes off. The crux of the stories is the same, but they are different tales. I think Campbell’s is the better of the two.

The Fifth Quarter
After finding his friend gutshot and left for dead, a man hunts down his friends coconspirators in an armored car robbery. Each of these three possesses a piece of a map that, when put together, lead to the location of the buried loot.

King attributes this story to Richard Bachman or maybe George Stark. I hope they write more exciting stuff than this because this was one dull story.

It was originally published in the February 1972 edition of Cavalier. It was also made into a screenplay for the Nightmare and Dreamscapes series.

The Doctor’s Case
In all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories, it is always the narrator, the seemingly oblivious and unobservant Dr. Watson who listens patiently as the brilliant Holmes explains the clues Watson has overlooked and how they fit together. Here, it is Watson that picks up on the important clue that solves what seems to be the perfect locked room murder.

King tries hard to imitate Doyle’s prose and actually does a good job while staying in modern diction and syntax. But I’m not a fan of Sherlock Holmes and this story did not excite me.

The story was originally published in the New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes published in 1987.

Umney’s Last Case
A 1930s private gumshoe is disturbed when little details that have shaped his life since before he can remember change dramatically. He arrives at his office to find out things are decidedly different there too, upon orders of the owner. When the owner, who just happens to be God in Umney’s world, shows up, Umney’s life is completely redefined.

I suspect that most writers have had the fantasy of injecting themselves into a world that they have created just for themselves. One has to believe that J.R.R. Tolkien must have longed to sojourn in Rivendell and taken in the fine tobacco of The Shire. Here, we see King writing about an author who actually does take over the life of a character in a world of his own creation.

Head Down
In a piece for the New Yorker, Stephen King documents the pursuit of the Maine Little League baseball championship by the Bangor West team. Kings son played on the team.

A real change of pace in the book. It’s an amusing and enjoyable read for those who played little league baseball and know what life lessons come from it. As many King stories, it’s a little long.

Brooklyn August
This is a poem that is an ode to the old Brooklyn Dodgers of 1956, to baseball itself, and to summer.

I don’t know poetry, but I know what I like. While it’s no Greenfields of the Mind, it is still beautiful.

The Beggar and the Diamond
An Hindu parable about being thankful for what you have and what misfortunes have not befallen you when misfortune befalls you.

King wrote this story in a straight forward manner, with simple descriptions and a simple narrative. It is refreshing and engaging.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63
By Stephen King
Copyright 2011

Stephen King explores a new genre of writing as he undertakes time travel and dystopian futures in his latest novel. King, who loathes doing research, did his homework and produced a fantastic novel based on the real events leading up to and during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

Jake Eppling is a recently divorced teacher forced to teach English in summer GED classes. He loathes the process of grading student essays which vary in quality, with none ever rising to the level of good. However, one essay stands out in the latest batch. The school’s janitor, who is earning his GED, writes about the night his alcoholic father broke into a rage and killed his entire family – save our janitor – on Halloween Night.

Jake is moved by the simple prose of the profoundly emotional story. He and the janitor, Harry Dunning, later celebrate Harry's graduation at a retro 1950s diner owned by a friend of Jake’s named Al Templeton. Al takes their picture and puts it on his wall of fame – a collection of his customers who are really all average Joes.

A few days later, while at school, Jake receives a call from Al which is alarming and strange since Jake didn’t think the two knew each other quite well enough for Al to interrupt him at work. Al tells Jake he has to see him tonight at the diner – it is an emergency.

Jake meets Al and notices his friend’s physical condition has deteriorated dramatically in just a few short days. He appears to have aged years. Al tells Jake this is because he’s been living the last several years in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While living in that time, he’s developed lung cancer and it is terminal.

He has summoned Jake because he must share his secret and his goal with someone before he passes on. Al tells Jake that there is a temporal anomaly – or a time portal – in the pantry of his little greasy spoon diner – a diner which will undoubtedly be torn down upon Al’s untimely death. This temporal anomaly has but one terminus – October 1958 Maine. Al says that he dedicated more than four years to being at the right place at the right time to save President Kennedy from assassination. In Al’s mind, the world would be a better place had Kennedy not died that November afternoon.

The temporal anomaly has a fixed return point in time and place as well. The return is always back to Al’s diner and the return time is always just two minutes after you leave. If you go back, all the changes wrought previously are reset. Al invites Jake to try it out. All he has to lose in his own time and place is two minutes of his time.

Jake resolves to return to Derry, Maine in October 1958 to stop his janitor’s father from killing his family. He steps through the portal and finds himself outside of a working textile mill and it does appear to be 1958. He is greeted by a drunken old man who asks Jake for a dollar to take advantage of a two for one special at a liquor store just around the corner. This man, who Al calls the Yellow Card Man because of the strange yellow card stuck in the band on the guy’s hat. Jake gives him fifty cents as Al instructs him to do.

He is struck by the differences in his hometown and the cultural differences as well. Well stocked with 1950s vintage cash, courtesy of Al who used his knowledge of future sporting events to amass a healthy stock of cash, Jake acquires a set of wheels and motors off for Derry to save Harry Dunning’s father from killing his family.

While biding his time and trying to learn more about Dunning, Jake acquaints himself with 1950s culture. He buys the right clothes and tries to learn to adjust his speech and mannerisms for the times – with uneven results. He also encounters two characters well known to fans of Stephen King. Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh, just a few months removed from sending IT into deep hibernation, are in the park trying to learn the fine art of swing dancing with a battery powered record player. Jake stops long enough to provide a little instruction. He also encounters the taciturn and abrupt Norbert Keene, proprietor of Derry’s only apothecary who, one day in the summer of 1958, told Eddie Kaspbrak that the only asthma he had was the asthma his mother placed in his head.

Halloween night finally arrives and Jake prepares to make his move. However, Mr. Dunning the elder has more than one enemy and Jake has tipped his hand to this guy who is determined to stop Jake from killing Dunning so he can do it himself. He and Al eventually head to the Dunning house together and encounter Mr. Dunning in his full rage. Dunning kills one of his sons with a hammer, but Jake and his accomplice are able to save the wife, the daughter, and Harry Dunning – future janitor extraordinaire.

After what seems like a month in another time, Jake returns to 2011 to find Al patiently waiting for him, finishing the cigarette he started when Jake left. Jake tells Al that he is successful in preventing the horror that would shape Harry Dunning’s life. Al asks Jake to consider taking over the quest to save Kennedy and change the world for the better. Jake, born long after Kennedy’s untimely demise, says he will take it under advisement.

Jake returns to the school to find that Harry Dunning is not a janitor there and never was. This does not particularly surprise Jake, so he starts research to find out what happened to Harry Dunning. The Internet reveals no clues. It seems there never was a Harry Dunning. Finally, Jake is able to track down the sister whom he calls. She informs Jake that Harry grew up and went off to fight in Vietnam where he was killed in action.

Jake is distraught that he doomed a man to die in an undeclared war instead of living out full life. He reasons that if he goes back again, saves Harry Dunning again, and then saves Kennedy, that Kennedy will not escalate the conflict in Vietnam and Harry Dunning will be saved by the wise political actions of JFK. (This is specious historically, but serves the story).

Jake goes to Al’s house to tell him that he’s decided to make the trip. However, when he gets there, he finds that Al has ended his life and his suffering with an overdose of painkillers. Jake helps himself to the remainder of Al’s 1950s cash and heads for the past. He takes with him Al’s extensive notes on the Kennedy assassination and the biographical notes on the last years of the misbegotten life of Lee Harvey Oswald to guide him.

First, he goes back to Derry and, in a much neater fashion, saves the Dunning family. Finding Derry, Maine to be an unfriendly, unsettling place he’s eager to vacate, Jake attains an education degree from a correspondence school and heads to Florida where, using his fake credentials, he gets a job as a substitute English teacher.

Jake warms to his job and his colleagues. While in Florida, he places a number of bets on sporting events. Some are small, routine bets. But others are high yield bets which are sure things to Jake with his knowledge of events, but draw attention from his bookie with strong ties to organized crime. Sensing he has overplayed his hand, Jake vacates Florida and heads for Texas. He later learns that the house he was renting was firebombed shortly after he left town.

He settles in the town of Jodie, Texas and takes a job teaching English there. He soon falls for the school librarian, Sadie Dunhill who is in the process of divorcing her husband who lives back in Atlanta. The two quickly fall in love, but Sadie soon grows suspicious of Jake for his strange language and odd statements. Despite his best efforts, Jake can’t help but have lapses and one day, starts singing Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones – a song’s lyrics that were mildly risqué in 1971 when it was released and would be over the top by the standards of 1960.

Sadie pressures Jake to tell her more about who he is and where he came from, suspecting that Jake is holding back. Jake finally admits there is more to his story, but will not tell her. She breaks off their relationship at the end of the school year. Sadie heads off for Las Vegas to establish short term residency to get her Vegas divorce. Jake heads for Fort Worth where Lee Harvey Oswald will soon set up residence.

Jake rents the house across the street from the house that Lee and Marina Oswald will soon take up residency in a Fort Worth slum. Jake also finds a bookie so he can maintain his cash flow. He talks to the current residents who are preparing to vacate the home that the Oswalds will soon occupy. The woman’s name is Ivy Templeton. The name is striking in the story because it happens to be Al’s last name. Through Mrs. Templeton, Jake is able to learn the layout of the house across the street.

Jake settles in to observe and study the Oswalds and to worry about Sadie whom he misses badly. The Oswalds soon take up residence. Jake has bugged their apartment and studies the Oswald family with the underachieving Lee with his delusions of grandeur, his domineering mother who henpecks him constantly, and his lovely, but submissive wife whom he beats and mentally abuses.

One of Al’s major concerns he documents in his notes is whether or not Lee received help in killing Kennedy. Conspiracy theories regarding the Kennedy assassination have been an industry unto themselves in the United States since that date in Dallas and Al had one major concern regarding a Russian émigré who was close to Oswald.

The Oswalds receive frequent visits from a Russian named George de Mohrenschildt who is obsessed with a ranting right winger who takes to the radio to speak out against all things communist. General Edwin Walker will soon survive an assassination attempt undertaken by Lee Harvey Oswald. Jake is convinced that if he ascertains whether or not de Mohrenschildt was actually a participant or just an agent provocateur, he will know the truth about Oswald’s role as either a lone assassin or patsy in a conspiracy.

Jake continues to worry about Sadie as well. He is convinced that Sadie’s strange husband is not going to take the divorce well and is concerned. One night he calls Sadie and she doesn’t answer. Convinced that something is wrong, he heads back to Jodie instead of observing the assassination attempt on General Walker. As Jake often notes, the past is obdurate; it does not want to be changed. Time itself is fighting Jake’s efforts to change it.

He arrives in Jodie to find that Sadie has been attacked by her ex-husband. She is badly beaten and slashed across the face by her husband who is killed by one of Sadie’s fellow teachers. Sadie falls into a deep depression over her disfigurement and injuries. Jake briefly abandons his pursuit of Oswald to help Sadie return to mental and physical health.

The Cuban Missile Crisis comes and goes. As Sadie and the rest of the world look on in terror as the two superpowers play chicken over a Caribbean island, Jake reassures Sadie that the Russians will look for a way out to save face and avoid nuclear war. When Sadie demands to know how Jake knows this, he finally confides in her his true nature. She doesn’t believe it at first, but with more and more information flowing from Jake, she soon accepts it.

The Oswalds abandon Fort Worth and head for a brief sojourn in New Orleans before they will return to Dallas one final time. Lee rents the downstairs apartment in the duplex where the Oswalds will reside upstairs. Jake is resolved to track all of Oswald’s final days to ascertain whether or not there was a conspiracy. He visits Dealey Plaza and visits the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

Before he can learn much, he is attacked by a bookie who is angry over having lost so much money to Jake. It turns out that his bookie in Derry, in Fort Worth, in Florida, and in Dallas are all linked to the same organized crime organization. Time is being obdurate again. One of the Dallas police officers investigating Jake’s assault is none other than Officer J.D. Tippit – the officer Oswald will kill in his desperate attempt to escape police pursuit.

Jake is brain damaged and much of his memory, his ability to speak, and his ability to reason is damaged. He has no recall of who he really is and what he is doing. Sadie tries to help him regain his senses. As the final month passes and October 1963 turns to November 1963, the man who would stop history altering events isn’t sure who he is.

Finally, one phrase breaks through Jake’s mental block – “The word of Al.” Jake remembers that he had a notebook put together by a guy named Al that told all about what he was doing and why he was doing it. Jake retrieves the notebook from a safety deposit box and reads it. Most of his memories come flooding back to him over the next several days.

November 22 finally arrives and Jake takes off in a frenzy to reach Dealey Plaza in time to save the president. Sadie is determined to accompany him. Along the way, they have a flat tire, are caught in a traffic jam, and are in a car wreck. History is trying to keep him from his appointment with Oswald.

Sadie and Jake race the final few blocks to the book depository and climb the steps to the sixth floor. As they weave through the stacks of books, they hear the first shot fired and see Oswald sitting at his perch, chambering another round into the bolt action rifle. Jake shoots and misses Oswald. Oswald turns and fires, hitting Sadie in the chest. Jake returns fire and kills Oswald. Kennedy’s motorcade flies out of Dealey Plaza and back to Love Field.

Jake spends Sadie’s last moments with her before she dies and he is arrested. The police question him but his story matches what apparently happened: Jake saved the president’s life. While still at police headquarters, Jake receives a call. President Kennedy calls to thank him for saving his life as well as that of Jackie and others in the motorcade. Jake becomes a national hero.

The FBI accepts that Jake is not part of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy, but they want him to drop out of sight for awhile so they can investigate, not entirely sure how Jake knew that Oswald was going to be at that particular place on that particular day. Before Jake leaves 1963, a massive earthquake kills thousands in California – an event that did not happen in the normal course of history.

Heartbroken over the death of Sadie, Jake returns to Maine and the textile mill where the portal still exists. There, he finds another man standing where the Yellow Card Man used to stand. This man reveals himself to be a guardian over the time portal. There are many portals and many timelines, the guardian tells Jake. The guardian that Jake knew as the Yellow Card Man died of alcoholism. It is an occupational hazard, the guardian tells Jake, with many guardians driven insane by trying to keep timelines straight in their own head.

This particular guardian wears a green card in his hat band. This, he says, is indicative that this string of time is healthy. He encourages Jake to return to his own time. Jake is eager to see the world as it would have been had Kennedy survived. He arrives to find the future he created quite dystopian.

The world has been nuked. Kennedy did not save the world. Instead, he became increasingly unpopular. Hostilities between the superpowers increased with the gunslinger Kennedy in the White House. Ronald Reagan, elected president in 1976, made matters worse and eventually nuclear war broke out and the government of the United States fell. Maine seceded from the union and joined Canada, Jake learns. He learns this from none other than Harry Dunning – the man he saved from Vietnam but doomed to live out his years in post nuclear Canada.

Realizing that he’s badly messed up time itself and fundamentally altered the course of the human race, Jake returns to 1958. He can immediately set things to right by sampling returning to 2011. But he can’t forget Sadie. He checks into a hotel room and contemplates returning to Jodie, getting a teaching job, and meeting and falling in love with Sadie all over again to live out his life in the 1960s and 1970s.

Finally, he realizes he cannot doom man on earth for his own lost love and steps back through the portal one final time. All is as it should be. He travels to Jodie to find Sadie, now an old woman, has survived the attack by her ex husband without his help. She is an old woman now, having never married. Jake asks her to dance. . .

Give Stephen King kudos for doing his homework on the Kennedy assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald before writing this book. In his closing notes, King tells us that he and a research assistant invested hours in interviewing historians, visiting Dallas, and learning all they could about Oswald. Their primary text in research was William Manchester’s 1967 book, The Death of a President. This factual account of Oswald’s actions prior to killing Kennedy and the events themselves that day in Dallas is a narrative account of history, unfettered by the wild conspiracy theories that developed later. Although it was one of the first books published on the subject, it remains one of the most authoritative. I've read more than a dozen books on the subject of the Kennedy assassination and none are more straightforward in the telling than Manchester's.

As for the story, it is one of King’s better works – certainly the best thing he’s written since Cell. As is King’s wont, each character is provided with extensive backstory, making them deep and rich. The story is not only a narrative of a man trying to change history, but a man observing what was good and bad about another time and a man in love, which is always timeless. King weaves Jake’s dual motivations together seamlessly and we experience Jakes struggle between what he regards as his duty to save Kennedy and his desire to love Sadie.

I feared that this book would become an outlet for all of Stephen King's liberal politics and fantasies to play out. I've never let the difference between King's politics and my own discourage me from enjoying his work. Seldom do his politics creep into his work, even when dealing with political issues such as he did in The Dead Zone. When the do, such as in the horrible book, The Regulators, it is always distracting. I was certain that King's political hero, Gary Hart, was going to be savior of the world in the end.

Alas, King spared us from all that. He instead developed a plausible series of political events that did not disparage any person or political party. Gary Hart didn't even figure into the equation.

King, like many writers his age, has romanticized that time of the late 1950s and early 1960s as a wonderful time. I’ve heard of people referring to November 22, 1963 as the day the “nation lost its innocence.” King does not rhapsodize on how beautiful that period was and how innocent they all were back then. His story points up the overt racism, sexism, and narrow mindedness of American culture as well as the terrifying international events that transpired. He notes that Dallas circa 1963 was a mean place. It was and the political rifts that existed between the competing ideologies were as wide then as they are today as is evidenced by the ascendency of ardent right winger Barry Goldwater to the Republican presidential nomination in 1964.

But he also notes how we, as a people, were less suspicious of each other. How trusting we were in our fellow man 50 years ago as opposed to now. Some things, as King notes, do get worse with the passage of time. We are a nation of paranoids now when compared to the halcyon days of modern society in 1963.

King has reverted to form in linking 11/22/63 to his earlier works – a practice he’d all but given up. We see Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier from IT. Also in Derry are the aforementioned Norbert Keene as well as the Tracker Brothers who own the trucking depot that became the metaphorical mental refuge of the main character in the novel Dreamcatcher. King seems to revel in his return to Derry and helps the reader revel in it as well. Derry is a dark place, King readers know. Now we have Jake Eppling’s confirmation as he was palpably aware of the Derry’s dark undercurrents. There is also passing references to the Shawshank State Prison that is the setting for Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and is referenced in so many other King Castle Rock stories.

King uses the name Ivy Templeton as the person who rented the Fort Worth home before the Oswalds. Many horror fans will recognize her as the young girl who dies at the end of Frank DeFilitta’s 1976 novel Audrey Rose. I doubt this was an homage to DeFelitta since King ridiculed his work in his 1981 non fiction book, Danse Macabre, saying his work and that of author John Saul were not what he regarded as good horror. Perhaps just a name King grabbed out of his subconscious. He never elaborates on it.

The book comes in at just under 900 pages. While King is often criticized (often rightfully) for overwriting his stories, 11/22/63 is not one of them. In those 900 pages, there is nary an unimportant event or word. The story is epic and King tells it in the grandeur it deserves.

Book to Movie: Needful Things (1993)

Book to Movie: Needful Things (1993)
Directed by Fraser Clarke Heston
Screenplay by W.D. Richter
Based on the novel, Needful Things, by Stephen King

In the early and mid 1990s, movies and made for television miniseries based on Stephen King’s works were cranked out in Hollywood the way cars are cranked out in Detroit. Like an assembly line, the end product almost always had a sameness about it that resulted in more than a dozen undistinguished works. Some were awful. Some were entertaining. None were great. Needful Things falls into the category of entertaining, but not great.

Screenwriter W.D. Richter used King’s story as a guideline to tell a much different tale. The opening scene has Leland Gaunt tooling down a main country road in a stunningly beautiful, vintage Mercedes sedan, arriving in Castle Rock.

The story introduces us to many of the characters quickly. In the first five minutes, Sheriff Pangborn, not widowed, but having moved to Castle Rock years before after a tour of duty with the Pittsburgh police department, proposes to Polly Chambers. We are also introduced to Nettie, Dan Keeton, and Brian Rusk before five minutes have elapsed.

In the book, much of the action was centered around Alan and Polly and their relationship. She harbors a dark secret about her past involving a child who died in an awful tragedy. He's still grieving and guilt ridden over the death of his family. Their relationship is complex, dynamic, and delicate. The movie pushes commitment to the fore without any of that interaction between the two main characters.

As in the book, Brian Rusk is indeed Gaunt’s first customer. In the book, it is a 1956 Sandy Koufax baseball card that Brian covets. In the movie, it is Mickey Mantle. The change makes sense since Mantle’s name is almost universally known while few of the Generation X age group could even identify the team that Koufax played for. Many of Leland Gaunt’s gifts are changed to make them more identifiable for the movie audience.

As King has him do, Leland Gaunt bargains with each customer and extracts a promise of a favor to be delivered later.

King makes a point of never having Pangborn and Gaunt meet face to face. This is because Gaunt is afraid of Pangborn and his “white magic.” In the movie, Gaunt sits down with Pangborn in his shop and has tea, telling the sheriff he is from Akron (which German actor, Max Von Sydow manages to pronounce correctly. American Ed Harris who plays Alan Pangborn later pronounces it AK-RON). This changes the whole dynamic of the story.

To document all of the differences and deviations from King’s original story would be a distracting undertaking. As in the book, many tricks are played and the first two Castle Rock residents to meet their doom are Nettie Cobb and Wilma Jerczyk who die in the Jerczyk home rather than on the streets of Castle Rock.

The conflict between the Catholics and the Baptists over Casino Night is in the movie, but not developed. It is referenced with two or three throwaway lines, but we never see any conflict. This conflict was central to the plot and the conflict around which all other subplots revolved.

Missing is the entry of Ace Merrill, who was to be set against Alan Pangborn. Also eliminated is Polly’s backstory of her child and her belief that Alan has gone looking into that secret. Instead, Pangborn sets it up so Polly finds envelopes full of money aboard the boat that Alan lives on after Gaunt told her that he and Keeton were embezzling from the village. There is also a senseless and needless scene of Gaunt ravishing Polly after she is entranced by him.

The turning point in the movie is the investigation into what happened at the Jerczyk home with Nettie and Wilma. Brian Rusk shows up at the scene and asks to talk to Sheriff Pangborn. When the sheriff comes to talk to him, Brian runs off.

Later, Pangborn finds Brian near the rocky coast. Looking out on the ocean, forlorn. Alan approaches him and finds the Mantle card discarded on the steps leading up to an observation platform. As he approaches Brian, Brian produces a gun – a gun that Leland Gaunt took away from Dan Keeton and gave to Brian. Brian warns Alan to stay out of Needful Things and tells him that Gaunt is not human; he’s a monster. He then shoots himself.

This was a wonderfully written and directed scene and would have worked well had there been any set up for it. But the script provides no hint of the horrible guilt and torment building up inside Brian, nor are we allowed to observe how Brian arrives at his conclusion. This is the primary shortcoming of the movie: the viewer never becomes emotionally vested in the characters or their conflicts because, while King provides tremendous amounts of background and introspection, the script provides no real motivation for any of the characters to hate each other.

After Brian nearly kills himself (we are told he will survive), Alan goes to the Catholic church and talks to the priest, asking him if he believes in the devil. Another good opportunity for developing a central premise for the movie is lost when, instead of talking about the nature of evil and how the devil is the ultimate salesman, the church blows up before they can get down to business. Both Alan and the priest survive. Alan heads for town while the priest heads for the Baptist church to kill the Baptist minister.

Alan arrives to find dozens of people fighting in the streets and widespread looting. Frustrated, he unloads a clip of rounds into the air to get everyone’s attention. Once he has their attention, he makes a sappy speech that ends up sounding like George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life, transplanted into a horror movie.

As Alan is speechifying, Gaunt comes out onto the porch of his shop and tells the town he only sold them what they wanted. Caveat Emptor, he tells them. As he and Alan argue, Dan Keeton emerges from Gaunt’s store with dynamite strapped to his chest. After whining and complaining about the persecutors who are persecuting him, he blows up Needful Things with Gaunt still standing on the front porch.

However, Gaunt emerges from the wreckage unscathed. He bids adieu to Castle Rock, telling them that business has been good, but not great, and he must be moving on. He gets into his Mercedes and heads out of town. As he passes by the “Welcome to Castle Rock” sign, his car vanishes, ending the movie.

With all of the noted shortcomings, it wasn’t a tremendously bad film. It had moments of dark comedy and scenes such as the noted interaction between Alan and Brian that were quite good. The cast, many of whom were veterans of other King works dating back to 1979’s ‘Salem’s Lot, lifted the mediocre script with stellar performances. Max Von Sydow was almost as I’d imagined Leland Gaunt long before I saw the movie and his is the best of a bunch of great performances.

Needful Things was probably not a good Stephen King book to make into a movie. The story is simply the closing chapter in an ongoing tale King has been telling about this strange little town since the publication of The Dead Zone in 1979. The reader already knows the town and many of its people. Readers are already emotionally vested in Castle Rock before they pick up the novel.

The movie didn’t emotionally vest the viewer. The script does nothing to make us care about these people. King is careful to make sure that each of the characters – even the less noble like the drunk Hugh Priest or embezzling Dan Keaton – are complex with good and bad in each of them. With just two hours of screen time and many characters to work with, it was simply impossible to develop the characters to that extent. The complexity of the characters is an essential element in making Needful Things a good book. Without that, the story is flat.

Needful Things is better suited for a two or three episode miniseries. In such miniseries as It, The Stand, and Storm of the Century, characters are developed to their maximum potential in the visual medium. It could have been so with Needful Things. Instead of a stellar television miniseries, Needful Things is an incredibly average feature film.