home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac 1990
/
1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
/
time
/
112089
/
11208900.080
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-09-19
|
3KB
|
50 lines
BOOKS, Page 105Slice of Death
THE DARK HALF
by Stephen King
Viking; 431 pages; $21.95
Another Stephen King blood leaker is loosed upon the world,
this one in a record first printing of 1.5 million copies. The
ghost of Gutenberg, calling feebly for beer from the gridiron of
some Germanic hell, must be wondering whether movable type was
really a good idea.
That is snobbery, of course, and a reader addicted to another
sort of trash -- detective stories, say -- must distrust his
instinct to ridicule horror novels. But in each genre there is good
trash and bad trash, and King's does not seem very good. Mention
this to a fan -- young, intelligent, well read -- and the reply is
the same as is heard, above the level of pop lit, when one more
dismal fiction by Joyce Carol Oates appears: "Yes, but you
should read the early books."
In his new thunderation, the first of four in a reported $30
million to $40 million publishing deal, the author plays with a
twist of the old good-twin, bad-twin theme. Novelist Thad Beaumont,
who lives in Maine (as does King), collided with writer's block a
few years ago and rescued his career by writing four novels under
the pseudonym of George Stark (just as King has written five novels
as Richard Bachman). These tales, unlike Beaumont's, were violent,
brutal and very successful. Now Beaumont, writing on his own again,
wants to bury Stark.
No dice. Stark, actually the ghost of Beaumont's fetal twin,
who was incompletely absorbed in utero (the medical horror here is
the book's only high-voltage shocker), comes to life as a cunning
psychopath who, somewhat ludicrously, is determined to keep on
writing. He slices up Beaumont's agent and editor and several other
innocents with a straight razor, in scenes so lovingly detailed
they would be called pornographic if the author had given the same
attention to sex.
As usual, King's prose is fast, simple and sloppy. He has young
Beaumont in 1960 use the current slang "get off on," meaning enjoy,
and lets an elderly English professor say he will "loan" the hero
a car (old pedants say "lend"). The climax has the brutish Stark
absurdly trying to write another novel to keep his ectoplasm from
sloughing away in rivulets of goo. Characterization is perfunctory,
with an odd exception: Beaumont's eight-month-old twin babies are
vividly and charmingly described. For King fans this may be the
sort of thing that sustains the myth that "he writes so well."