I'm not a huge fan of short stories, as a general rule. I like reading short stories in the context of English classes, or one at a time in magazines, but something about a whole book of short stories just doesn't really do it for me. Unless the author of said collection is Stephen King (or Neil Gaiman, but this isn't a post about him, so...)

Different Seasons is King's second short story collection, and it is clearly his best. Containing four
short (well, that term is relative in this case) stories themed around the seasons, it demonstrates King's mastery of the form. It proves that when pressed, King can, in fact, create amazing fictional worlds with well-developed characters and intricate plots without 1000 pages to work with. Whether you've read Different Seasons or not, you definitely know at least two of the stories in a different form. This is the collection that includes "Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption", which was shortened to just The Shawshank Redemption when they turned it into an amazing movie starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins. It also includes the story "The Body", which was turned into the very popular movie Stand By Me, starring a young Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, and the gone-too-soon River Phoenix. "Apt Pupil", another story in the collection, is about a teenage boy who uncovers a Nazi war criminal hiding in plain sight in his suburban neighborhood and blackmails him into detailing all of the atrocities he perpetrated. The final story, "The Breathing Method", takes place in a gentleman's club (the old-fashioned kind, not the adult entertainment kind), where an elderly doctor tells a chilling tale of a woman giving birth under gruesome circumstances.

Every story in this collection is a masterpiece of the genre. Emotionally gripping, well-paced, by turns terrifying and heart-warming, together these stories represent the very best of Stephen King. As always, his characters ring true. This is not the first instance of King using children as sympathetic heroes, but "The Body" is the first time he explores the bonds of childhood friendship that he revisits so masterfully in It. Like many of his most terrifying stories, none of the monsters are supernatural, but real people doing terrible things. The only truly supernatural occurrence in the whole book is in "The Breathing Method". Truthfully, King doesn't need the supernatural stuff to create his spectres; his insight into the evil that human beings can do to each other in their greed or lust or fear is enough.

King has several more story collections in his catalog, and I remember some of them being quite good, but none of them rise to the level of Different Seasons. It almost seems a shame that he hit his high point in this genre so early in his career, but I don't care when this collection falls in the timeline of his works; it is a gift to the world that it exists.

My Year of King #4: Rage, by Richard Bachman, AKA Stephen King

There was another school shooting last week. Another loss of life, students and teachers cut down to satisfy some young man's need for power and control. These shootings have become all too regular these days. It seems as though every other day I am getting a news alert that students and teachers are in danger, somewhere in the United States. I say United States, because this is the only developed nation where mass shootings are common enough occurences that eventually they plend together in my mind. Columbine, Newtown, Orlando, Las Vegas, and now Parkland. We're having the usual debates right now about gun control and mental health, and I suspect when the next shooting happens (and it has become depressingly obvious that one will), we'll start all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat, over and over.

(I do have hope that the youth who are standing up and demanding change will be the catalyst for real conversation and real solutions. Political statement: The NRA has got to get out of our political system, our society needs to stop fetishizing guns, and toxic masculinity has to be replaced with a kinder, gentler way to "be a man".)

Other than the weapon of choice (AR-15) and the location (institutions of learning), the school Rage, these types of shootings were almost unheard of. Sadly, this is a novel that feels more relevant today than it probably did when it was originally published. The main character, Charlie Decker, is a kid who just can't catch a break. Living with an abusive father, watching his mother be repressed daily by her husband's machismo and derision, and being the outcast at school has Charlie to be filled with a rage so powerful that he cannot express it with words. After beating up a teacher at school, Charlie is assigned daily counseling sessions with the school psychologist, but nothing helps. So one day, he enters his English classroom, shoots his teacher, and holds the rest of the class hostage for several hours. During that time, you learn more about his life, as well as his classmates.
shooters seem to have something else in common-rage. Regardless of where the rage comes from (abuse, an inflated sense of entitlement, or real mental illness), these young men are filled with a rage so powerful that it overrides their conscience and reason, causing them to do horrific things in order to express it. In 1978, when King (writing as Richard Bachman) wrote

I think that King really tapped into the intense emotions of adolescence with Charlie's character. Teenagers tend to feel all of their emotions more intensely than adults, especially strong emotions like love or anger or shame.Charlie was so up in his own feelings that no consequence, no threat, and no appeal was going to talk him down until he had done what he needed to do. Charlie's actions are dark enough, but what takes this story to another level is that in a Stockholm Syndrome-type of phenomenon, the other students in the room start to express their own secrets, their own rage. It's as though Charlie's extreme action has given them permission to admit things that they would otherwise keep hidden deep down in their private thoughts.

The book is really novella length (149 pages), so it's good that the scope is only a few hours of one day. It does mean, though, that King had to be economical with his character development, and while Charlie is certainly a fully-fleshed out protagonist (antagonist? King is so good at writing characters that are both), the events that have led to this particular act are not as developed, weakening the reader's understanding of the connection between what happened then and what is happening now.

I almost didn't finish reading this book, after the Parkland shooting happened. I wasn't sure I could stand for my mind to continue to occupy that sad, horrified place. But I'm glad I did. It is still good storytelling, and the themes should not be something we forget-that our young people are vulnerable to rage and despair, and we must provide them with the tools they need to manage their feelings and survive their childhoods.

A Book Lover's Dream-or Nightmare!

Here is but one of the many reasons that I love Stephen King as an author-who else would think to write a horror story about the Kindle, for the Kindle?  OK, I suppose it could seem a little gimmicky, but it works!

UR is a novella about Wesley Smith, an English professor at a mediocre college in a small town in Kentucky.  After a vicious fight with his girlfriend over his reading habits, he buys a Kindle out of spite.  Sure that his purchase will be a passing fad in his reading life, he begins searching for titles.  What he finds astonishes him-the Kindle seems to have access to alternate realities where his favorite authors lived longer, and wrote MORE BOOKS!  Or they died when they were "supposed" to, but wrote DIFFERENT BOOKS!  Seriously, what else could a reader ask for but hundreds of new titles in millions of alternate realities from their favorite authors?  You could do nothing else but read for the rest of your life and never get through all of them!  Which is exactly where I thought the story was going.  King does a good job with obsession-I thought that this would be a return to Needful Things.

But not only does the new Kindle let you download titles from alternate realities, it also lets you check out the New York Times, and the local news.  Difference is, with the local news, instead of getting alternate versions, you get the future of the reality you live in.  And what Wesley sees in his future is too terrible to contemplate.

This is King at his short story/novella best.  He sets the scene, develops a character seamlessly, and moves you right along.  I was so intrigued by the whole idea of the Ur alternates.  Of course, anyone familiar with King's Dark Tower series knows that the Ur references the various levels of the Tower, and I was not surprised when the low men showed up to punish Wes for his paradox infraction.  But you don't have to have read the 3600+ Dark Tower books to appreciate and enjoy UR.