The Shining

I've read a lot of Stephen King's books, but it would take a stalwart to read them all, as there are about 50. But I'm missing some of this early standout works, the ones that made his reputation. One of them was The Shining, his third book, published in 1977. The book has in many ways been eclipsed by Stanley Kubrick's film version, which I will revisit in a few days. But for now, I will focus on the novel.

In many ways, it is a personal novel for King. He was dealing with his own demons, namely alcoholism. A stay in a hotel in the Colorado Rockies, and a nightmare involving his then three-year-old son gave him the impetus to write the book about a man, much like himself, who is on the skids. Jack Torrance has been fired from his job as a teacher after assaulting a student. He has a history of anger--he once broke his son Danny's arm--and has landed a job as a winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, deep in the mountains, completely inaccessible in the winter snows.

He is there along with his patience wife Wendy and Danny, who has a gift. The genial hotel cook, Dick Halloran, sees it right away: "'You got a knack,' Halloran said, turning to him. 'Me, I've always called it shining. That's what my grandmother called it, too. She had it. We used to sit in the kitchen when I was a boy no older than you and have long talks without even openin our mouths.'"

At first things seem fine. Jack discovers a scrap book of the hotel's history in the basement and becomes absorbed in the past, with the murders that took place there. A wasp nest, seemingly empty, comes to buzzing life. Then one day Jack seems to notice that the topiary hedges, shaped like animals, start coming a little too close for comfort. But all bets are off when Danny visits the forbidden Room 217: "So he pulled the shower curtain back. The woman in the tub had been dead for a long time. She was bloated and purple, her gas-filled belly rising out of the cold, ice-rimmed water like some fleshy island. Her eyes were fixed on Danny's, glassy and huge, like marbles. She was grinning, her purple lips pulled back in a grimace. Her breasts lolled. Her pubic hair floated. Her hands were frozen on the knurled porcelain sides of the tub like crab claws." That will make your hair stand on end.

The second half of the book has Jack slowly enter madness, the hotel taking him over. He hallucinates (or does he?) a masked ball (which reminds us of Poe's Masque of the Red Death) and though he is on the wagon and there is no alcohol in the place, manages to get liquored up. Danny, using his power, contacts Dick in Florida, who makes a mad scramble to get back to help him.

The Shining is just a great horror novel, but what makes it transcendent (and different than the Kubrick film) is that it is grounded in the horrors of real life--how a man's failures can haunt him and drive him to violence. Of course, King also has a way with homey language. There aren't too many pop culture references here, as there are in some of his later books, but he can stop me dead with a lovely phrase like "it smelled of grease and oil and gasoline and--faint, nostalgic smell--sweet grass." Yes, I get that, I can smell it right now.