Tags
American Literature, Apt Pupil, books, Different Seasons, fiction, Five-star reads, Literature, novella, review, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, short stories, Stephen King, The Body, The Breathing Method
Ciao, my dear strangers 🙂
Different Seasons features four short stories, each thematically linked to one of… Whoa, whoa, whoa…! Just a sec, hold your horses! OH. MY. GODS… Well, my dear strangers, according to Goodreads, this is officially the four-hundredth book I’ve read so far. I really had no idea I was this close to a new milestone, but I’m really glad I got to reach it with this particular collection of novellas. I had planned to make Your Name the thousandth movie I saw because I had heard so many great things about it beforehand but, honest to Gods, I had no idea Different Seasons would end up being my reading milestone. Still, I’m really glad it is. And, hey! Four hundred books by the age of twenty-seven? That’s not too shabby if I may say so myself. Ok, bragging session over, back to the discussion at hand.
As I was saying, this collection features four short stories, each thematically linked and corresponding to one of the respective seasons. You have your spring of hope, your summer of corruption, fall from innocence and the winter’s tale. Three of these novellas were adapted into movies and, from what I hear, they’re also adapting the fourth one as we speak. I guess we’re milking this current resurgence frenzy for King-inspired works for all it’s worth. Just kidding. On a somewhat related note, Stephen King is one of my favourite authors. Yet, according to Goodreads again, I have not read a word of his since 2017. That’s… Surprising. Disconcerting. So, I guess I’m introducing a new rule – no new year may go by without at least one King in it. And now, without further ado – Different Seasons.
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: Hope Springs Eternal
This is, by far, the best-known of the bunch. I reckon more people have actually seen the movie version than read the story, but it still counts. Fun fact: this is actually my second time reading this novella. The first was back in 2013, when I read it in isolation, and back when I probably didn’t even know it had been published as part of a collection.
This tale is so famous that I’d feel ridiculous even attempting to summarise it. And, surprisingly, I don’t really have all that much to say about it. It is fantastically written, same as the other instalments, and bears recurring motifs of hope, renewal, rejuvenation and tenacity in face of oppression and overwhelmingly insurmountable odds. Despite its drab prison setting, inhumane humans and constant reminders of a fundamentally screwed-up system the characters are forced to exist within, Shawshank is actually the most hopeful of the four stories, linking it back to that thematic spring symbolism.
Andy is a man wronged, a man whose life is brutally stolen from him, a man who suffers terrible injustices and is forced to sacrifice decades of his life to a sentence he doesn’t deserve in a place where he doesn’t belong. The thought alone would be enough to bring many people to their knees. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. Yet, in spite of all the hardships he faces, Andy manages to retain his dignity, his sense of self-worth. His unwavering determination and tenacity inspire hope in his long-time friend Red, our narrator, and lead him to rediscover his own sense of humanity and identity. Andy is gutta cavat lapidem incarnate. His story, whilst teeming with tragic elements, is ultimately a hopeful, inspiring one that reminds us of just how much a human life, with everything that goes with it, is worth.
Apt Pupil: Summer of Corruption
This story is all about the corrupting influence of evil and one boy’s naïve belief he can get close to it and remain unscathed. Todd is an All-American blond kid who discovers a terrible secret about his elderly neighbour Arthur Denker. Denker’s real name is Kurt Dussander and he used to be a high-ranking SS official during WWII. Driven by what he surely believes to be only historical curiosity and detachment, Todd plunges deeper into Dussander’s twisted mind and his recollections of the war atrocities he committed against Jews. Little by little, Todd’s own perspective shifts, as nightmares begin plaguing him.
Even before Dussander enters the picture, Todd is already seen displaying some highly elitist behaviour. He looks down on the homeless and the ones less in control of their lives than him and his family. His parents are actually pretty great people and I really like their approach to parenting. Todd’s corruption is in no way a reflection of their childrearing and I actually feel really sorry for them and all they’re about to go through.
Anyway, Todd’s exposure to Dussander’s explicit memories of even the minute details of what went down in concentration camps leads to the boy developing an increasingly deranged view of the world, his respect for human life diminishing with each following day. It isn’t long before he turns to murder, realising it causes him a cathartic sort of sexual satisfaction. As he grows older and discovers girls, Todd also comes to realise he cannot perform or enjoy himself sexually unless he conjures images of torture and human degradation. Dussander too, exposed to his past so directly for the first time in decades, turns to murder to try to scratch that congenital itch.
Their game grows ever more dangerous, as the two of them engage in a cat-and-mouse game and pull each other into a twisted web of lies, deception and manipulation, with each trying to blackmail the other and gain the upper hand. It is undoubtedly a twisted, disturbing tale of the depths of human depravity, but a masterfully crafted one I couldn’t have stopped reading even if I wanted to.
The Body: Fall from Innocence
This story is thematically linked to autumn, or fall, as the Americans would say. It’s all about the loss of innocence, the end of one’s childhood, as a group of boys sets out on what they believe will be a short, exhilarating trip, only to find themselves face to face with death, maturation and an adult world full of injustices they don’t deserve, but will have to inherit either way, a trip that changes them so profoundly in ways they couldn’t have predicted.
It is another one of King’s works whose silver screen adaptation is actually more famous than the original text. And I’m fine with that. Stand By Me is a hauntingly beautiful movie, without which I wouldn’t have discovered the original work. The plot of the film closely follows the events of the novella, with only minor creative liberties taken, and certainly none of the thematic elements sacrificed.
Gordie, Chris, Vern and Teddy head out to find the titular body of Ray Brower, a local kid their age, who recently went missing. Each of the boys comes from a fractured, dysfunctional familial environment and each of them experiences this expedition into adulthood in a different way. No character gets wasted, no line thrown just because. Even Teddy and Vern, who largely serve as the more comedic characters, have depth and nuance to them. Even so, it’s clear they’re the two most immature ones, focusing more on the spectacle than the core, whether it comes to Gordie’s stories or the corpse before their eyes. They are great supporting characters, but the heart of the story lies with Gordie and Chris and the friendship they share.
Chris is a born leader, more mature than the rest, but perhaps also the most damaged one. He comes from a truly hopeless home, forced to suffer his drunken father’s abuses on a daily basis. His older brothers’ reputation precedes him, impairs him. His family is like shackles around his young ankles. Nobody expects him to amount to anything and he knows firsthand how cruel and unjust the adult world is and just how ready the adults around him are to take advantage of him.
Gordie is the quiet one, the narrator, the storyteller. He is the only one still alive by the end of the story, the only one left to tell us what happened that summer. His story feels autobiographical, almost as if King were using his character as a mouthpiece to tell us some of the inner secrets of a writer he’d otherwise feel uncomfortable sharing in first person.
Anyway, Gordie is a sensitive, observant kid, the kind of kid other kids laugh at for noticing too much, caring too much. Not that I’m equating myself to a great writer, or really any kind of writer, but I know what it’s like to be that observant kid who cares too much and is made fun of for her sensitivity. I know what it’s like to be the only ten-year-old during a class trip to the movies to cry at the end of E.T. even though, back then, I had no idea why I was crying. Or have the same thing happen to me smack in the middle of literature class while reading the ending of The Little Prince. Again, only ten or eleven at the time. Again, no idea what it is making me so emotional. Again, having other kids laugh at me for things they are still too immature to get. That’s how I see Gordie.
Gordie’s and Chris’s maturity is reflected in their friendship. They’re good kids, both wounded in one way or another, relying on one another because they don’t receive the support they need anywhere else. Their camaraderie is beyond touching and you want to see them thrive and be happy. One of the most bittersweet, touching moments in this narrative already chockfull of bittersweet, touching moments comes when the adult Gordie describes to us his reaction upon learning of Chris’s death, his retreat to his car and his long drive to a secluded place where he lets himself cry, unable to share his sorrow with anyone, even his closest loved ones.
We do see Gordie thriving and perhaps even achieving happiness. In any case, we see him reach adulthood. The same cannot be said for the rest of the characters. Each of their deaths affects you, but none hits harder than Chris’s. To see this good kid succeed in spite of all the obstacles through sheer guts and tenacity, only to watch him die at such a young age, while still at University, was such a freaking punch to the gut. It really messed me up, even though I knew it was coming thanks to the movie.
The Body is definitely the saddest of the four stories, yet teeming with humour and more comedic elements that perfectly describe what childhood feels like, but still so, so, so bittersweet and melancholy and nostalgic. King really hits the nail on the head when it comes to so vividly conveying what being a kid feels like, so much so, that you look down at your twenty, thirty, fifty, seventy-year-old body and still manage to see yourself as a twelve-year-old, as though no time passed at all. And who knows? Maybe it didn’t. I’m not crying, you’re crying. Gods, this is such a good story. Definitely my favourite of the four.
The Breathing Method: A Winter’s Tale
Winter. An ending. It’s over. Death. Yes, as you may glean from the corresponding season, this novella is about death and all its many strange shapes and forms.
The Breathing Method may be the least-known of the featured stories. That subtitle, A Winter’s Tale, immediately had me thinking of Shakespeare’s play but, if King was trying to somehow link the two thematically, I have to admit I don’t see a connection there at all. The only element they seem to share in common (and this is me reaching) is that of a disgraced pregnant woman, slut-shamed by and ostracised from a bigoted society. If that’s what King was going for, fine. Personally, though, the play I found it resembling more is The Taming of the Shrew, not because of any thematic elements, but rather because both use the structure of a narrative within a narrative.
In The Breathing Method, the frame story concerns a lawyer named David who gets invited by his senior partners to mysterious club meetings held at a mysterious house where they’re waited upon by a mysterious butler who never seems to age. The entire affair is spooky and eerie and shrouded in, well – mystery. David longs to solve the enigma surrounding the club, but never accomplishes this. Whether he does or doesn’t, however, isn’t the focus of the story. The club is all about storytelling, the highlight of the year for the members being the stories told on Christmas. And that’s why we’re here, for that one particular story, The Breathing Method.
It is told by an elderly doctor, McCarron, who worked as an obstetrician in the nineteen-thirties, when a young woman named Sandra became his patient. Sandra is pregnant, but unmarried, her precarious social position forcing her into a number of demeaning situations, as she fights for her and her unborn child’s life, financially, socially and in any other way required of her. This novella features some macabre, eerie details King has, perhaps unjustly, become synonymous with, but I’m glad that, despite their inclusion, the narrative doesn’t linger on them too much. Instead, it focuses on the very real terrors of human injustice and dedicates quite a lot of page space to what carrying an illegitimate child meant for a woman back when something like that was seen as disgraceful.
We fume along with McCarron at the narrow-mindedness and ignorance Sandra has to deal with and the many sacrifices she has to make just because she got pregnant out of wedlock. We admire her quiet strength, tenacity and the dignity with which she carries herself. She reminds me of Andy Dufresne a bit, to be honest. They both know their worth and carry on about their lives as successfully and dignifiedly as they can, without holding grudges.
The crescendo, of course, occurs during the final chapter, as Sandra rushes to the hospital to have McCarron deliver her baby. It’s a freezing winter day, the streets of New York City are slippery with sleet and her taxi driver is too impatient to get her to her destination to slow down. What follows is a genuinely compelling childbirth that, despite its more macabre aspects, somehow manages not to be gruesome or repelling in any way. We read on, mesmerised, rooting for this tenacious young woman, even though she is no longer with us. I know many readers would describe that ending as one steeped deeply in the horror genre but, for some reason, I simply don’t see it that way at all. What I see is simply a woman trying to deliver her baby under extraordinary circumstances, nothing more.
Stephen King is known, first and foremost, as a horror writer, an epithet we unfairly impose on him, one we use to pigeonhole him. What he is in reality, as Different Seasons proves, is a great writer, period. Myself dreaming of a career as a professional fiction writer, I’d hate to think this might happen to me one day, presuming I make it, that I might be pigeonholed within one genre only and unable to write the kind of stories I feel like telling. There are days I feel like plunging headfirst into tales of depravity and the grotesque, days when I’m all about romance and shameless smut, days when I want to pen a comedic story, or a dramatic one or one firmly lodged within the realm of fantasy or science fiction.
Genres are fine. Genres help us navigate bookstores and arrange our shelves. They have a purpose, many purposes in fact, but the one purpose they should never serve is that of limiting a storyteller from telling any damn story he or she feels like telling. And, as we’ve established, Stephen King is an excellent storyteller, regardless of the genre.
Keep reading, my dear strangers 😉