It’s a walk to the death, the last man left standing winning the ultimate prize: Whatever you want for the rest of your life.īecause the action is somewhat limited (they walked, then they walked some more), King’s gift for characterization gets to shine bright here. The punishment for stopping? Being shot on sight. All of these things must be done while keeping the pace. You cannot stop to relieve yourself of bodily functions. (Think Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies. The Long Walk depicts an annual contest operated by the government, wherein dozens of teenage boys chosen from a lottery compete against each other while the world watches on as a spectator sport. It’s extremely mature in its scope and allegory. While The Long Walk might not be the most popular of Stephen King’s work, it is astonishing to think that he wrote it at 19 years old. The Long Walk is the second of Stephen King’s novels to be written under the guise of Richard Bachman, first published as a paperback original in the summer of ’79. After all, if this is what my legs felt like from standing for three hours, what must Ray have felt during the walk? It was then that my mind wandered to Ray Garraty. I found myself wondering: How do they do it? They’re not just standing, they’re performing! How have their legs not given out on them? By the end of the three hour tour through their vast catalog of classics, sitting down for an encore felt a lot like eating after a fast. I jumped and danced more, which made the dull throbbing sensation dissipate but only temporarily. This, however, is not the case.įleetwood Mac performs 25 songs in a show that is nearly three hours in length, its fearless leader Lindsey Buckingham gyrating his way up and down the stage with more energy than he had in his 20s, Stevie Nicks twirling and belting, Christine McVie doing her Christine McVie thing, and Mick Fleetwood exuding the same wide-eyed mania he embodied the day he stepped onto the scene.Ībout halfway through their show, my legs started to hurt from standing so long. See what happens when you leave a comment?Įarlier this year, I attended a Fleetwood Mac concert.įor performers in their late 60s, you might expect them to “phone in” their shows, warbling out a handful of tunes from their Greatest Hits album for an hour and a half before retiring backstage so they can all still get to bed by 10. Edwin Fritz, who was the first to comment on our introductory column, saying he “couldn’t wait” for a write-up on The Long Walk. Yes, I do believe there’s wisdom and life lessons to be found in the works of Stephen King. So to answer the horror film actress’s question: Yes. It is in the reflection of their choices that we often find ourselves stopping to reflect on our own. It is because of King’s immense talent for portraying humanity (particularly that of modern day American culture) that it is so easy to not only relate to his characters, but to learn from them. By the very nature of the medium, the characters have the potential to be less black and white, more multi-dimensional, more human, more like us. In King’s novels, his characters live, breathe and have souls of their own – not merely the soul of the actor or actress adapting it. A 90-minute movie can’t touch the characterization King provides us with in hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pages. This is perhaps one of the biggest differences between reading a Stephen King story, and watching a film based on it. More than writing about horror, he writes about people – and he writes about people in a way that is so brutally honest, we see ourselves in his characters. Stephen King is a supremely talented writer. So what makes Stephen King different? What makes his stories rich with the stuff Sunday schools are made of?įor me, the answer is: Talent. Okay I’ll admit, I’m the kind of person who can find spiritual wisdom and life lessons in the pages of Penthouse just as easily as a church pew. When asked, the first thing that springs to my mind is self-doubt: What if I’m wrong? What if there really is nothing spiritual about Stephen King’s stories and I’m just grasping at straws here? What if I’ve doomed myself to write a monthly column about… nothing? The writer’s worst nightmare. It’s not the first time I have been asked the question since starting this column three short months ago, and I’m always somewhat alarmed by it. The question was served cold with a heaping side of skepticism, and it took me slightly off guard. I was having brunch with a friend of mine on a recent Sunday, a horror film actress in fact, who asked: Do you really think there’s anything spiritual about Stephen King’s books?
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |