LOTR moment

[serai]

While I'm doing relatively mindless tasks at work, I often listen to recorded books on my headphones. Today, while I was enjoying the uncut edition of Stephen King's The Stand, I came across this passage:




There was a grandfather clock standing in the far corner of the parlor. Frannie Goldsmith had been listening to its measured ticks and tocks all of her life. It summed up the room, which she had never liked and, on days like today, actively hated. Her favorite room in the place was her father’s workshop. It was in the shed that connected house and barn. You got there through a small door which was barely five feet high, and nearly hidden behind the old kitchen woodstove.

The door was good to begin with. Small and deliciously hidden, it was like the doors you encountered in fairy tales and childhood fantasies. When she grew older and taller, she had to duck through it just as her father did. (Her mother never went out into the workshop unless she absolutely had to.) It was an Alice In Wonderland door, and for a long time her pretend game, secret even from her father, was that one day when she opened it, she would not find Peter Goldsmith’s workshop at all. Instead she would find an underground passageway leading somehow from Wonderland to Hobbiton, a low but somehow cozy tunnel with rounded earth and sides, and an earthen ceiling interlaced with sturdy roots that would give your head a good bump if you knocked it against any of them. A tunnel that smelled not of damp and wet soil and nasty bugs and worms, but one which smelled of cinnamon and baking apple pies. One which ended somewhere up ahead in the pantry of Bag End, where Mr. Bilbo Baggins was celebrating his eleventy-first birthday party.

Well, that cozy tunnel never turned out to be there. But to the Frannie Goldsmith who had grown up in this house, the workshop (sometimes called “the toolshop” by her father, and “that dirty place where your dad goes to drink beer” by her mother) had been enough.




Does the fact that hearing that made me fight back tears make me just a soft-hearted ol' loony?

Comments

[blackbird-song.livejournal.com]

Well, if that makes you a soft-hearted loony, I'm joining you right in the middle of that classification. I'm also running right out to buy The Stand.

Catherine

[serai1.livejournal.com]

It's in the uncut version (which is way better than the original), so be sure to get that one.

King is a BIG Ringer, and references to LOTR pop up in many of his books. He has said that the landscape and feel of the Dark Tower series, and the monster in spider form from It were inspired by LOTR. This is one of the reasons that I've always loved his work (among many other reasons).

[blackbird-song.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for the tips! I have tended to be unfairly snobbish toward his works, I think, both because his work is available in any supermarket and because he's so prolific. However, many people I respect (including you) like his writing, and I've been slowly bending my will to the task of reading his work. Now that you've told me of his fondness for Tolkien, I think you've pushed me over the edge, in a good way.

Catherine

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Well, the ivory tower snobs think Tolkien is crap because people love him, too. King and the Professor have taught me never to hold popularity against any writer, because sometimes the reading public does get it right. ;)

[blackbird-song.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree! Having grown up amongst ivory tower snobs, I was quite aware of their snobbery toward Tolkien. While I can see a lot of the reasons why many of them criticized his work for some technical things, he certainly didn't deserve the vitriol that he got from many of them. Had my parents not read his work to me, I don't know what sort of person I'd be today. The problem for me with King was that because he'd been so 'Hollywoodized', like Jackie Collins, I pushed him all the way to the back of my mind, even though I'd read snippets of his work that I really liked.

I also tend to view writers who are slow as being a bit more careful with their work than are those who put out several tomes a year. That, too, could be unfair, given that I'm viewing them through my own lens of slow writing. (I do know of some fan-fiction authors who are both fast and brilliant, after all.) Tolkien was nothing if not slow and careful!

Catherine

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Heheh. Yeah, the speed with which he writes can make him seem like a hack. I know I get very jealous of writers who can kick out the jams like that, and most of the time really fast writers are hacks. But now and then one comes along who is wonderful, and just has a tap that turns on easily to let the words pour out.

And that just fucking kills me. *grrr*

[trilliah.livejournal.com]

I don't like all his books, but The Stand is my favorite. Not my favorite by him--my favorite book, ever. I've read the uncut version three times, and by no means do I intend to quit there. It is unbelievable, and I cry every time I read it. *shivers just thinking about it*

Sorry to jump in, Serai. It's just such a wonderful book.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

No need to apologize! You're right, it's quite a book. It's never been my favorite of his (that spot is reserved for The Dead Zone), but it's up there. He's gone back to that brilliance in the last few years, I think, with Bag of Bones being utterly heartbreaking.

[trilliah.livejournal.com]

Yeah? I haven't read much else of his--I read Pet Sematary, but didn't think that much of it; I want to read The Shining and Salem's Lot, because I've heard good things about them. I'll add Bag of Bones and The Dead Zone to my list. :D

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Pet Sematary, pfft. That's not a great book, although as with many of his books, the characters are wonderfully drawn. And it's a very chilling and tragic book for those who have children, I'm told. But he does have a habit of creating these dark, strange situations that have wonderful potential for complexity and then, at the last minute, he kind of wimps out and just throws a monster in there. It especially pissed me off in Gerald's Game, which was incredibly tense and nail-biting until he threw in the boogeyman. Made me want to throw the book against the wall, even though everything else about it was fantastic.

[trilliah.livejournal.com]

(Also, if I'm totally honest, I have a bit of a crush on Nick. Hee!)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Nick is a way cool character! I've also always been fond of Stu, myself. Even thought I know he's supposed to be thirty-ish, I've always pictured him as Robert Duval, probably because of his tactiturn nature. Which is funny, since King says he pictured Duval playing Randall Flagg!

[westmoon.livejournal.com]

That's gorgeous. And I'm sniffing here too.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

*passes tissue*

I've always loved King. Many moments in his books make me want to cry, and surprising ones, too. The ending of Cujo can still put me in a sobbing fit.

[slipperieslope.livejournal.com]

We are soft hearted old loonies, but I wouldn't want us to be any other way.

*snuggles MM, Frannie and Stephen King*

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I feel sorry for people who can't be touched by things like this. Seems to me that they're a little dead inside.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Isn't that lovely? People who think he's just a horror story writer (read "hack") don't realize how he can use words to take you back in time, or to a completely different world, and there are things of great beauty in his books. And he's a fan of LotRs too, another reason I like him.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

In that one way - the way in which people dismiss him - he's a lot like Tolkien. But I've always been amazed not by his stories (which can be rather formulaic at times) but by his extraordinary ability to make characters come to life, and his eye for the real details of the everyday, and how he can weave them together to create something awesome and terrifying. (One of the most terrifying, and memorable, of his passages (from The Shining) concerned Jack Torrance's memories of his alcoholic father. That passage had nothing supernatural in it, and yet it sticks with me to this day, and always will.)

In his use of the everyday, he also reminds me a little of Shirley Jackson, although her talent lay more in scaring you with things that really aren't scary, and that wouldn't be except for some undefinable undercurrent to the way she uses words. King is, of course, far more overt in his terror, but it seems he has learned both from Jackson and from the Professor that it's the details, the sense of the real, that makes fantasy so effective. Writers who ignore those details, or who try to make their worlds too high-flown or strange in every way, that fail miserably to enchant us.

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I know the passage you mean in The Shining, and you're right, it's terrifying. He did the same thing in "It" with Bevery's father, who scared the bejesus out of me.

[marigold6.livejournal.com]

Oh I totally forgot about that - it's been quite awhile since I've read "The Stand". I should get it back out, since the LOST writers also reference quite a bit of Mr. King [whom I've always enjoyed]. And he's one of the best reasons for getting Entertainment Weekly, with his weekly essays about anything and everything.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

I put his essay on Mel Gibson's biblical snuff film way up at the top of film criticsm. That piece was incredible.

[fantasy-fan.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is a jewel of a passage. I've read The Stand and loved it, as a matter of fact, although I don't remember reading this passage. I think it's the only Stephen King book I've ever made it all the way through. I'm not a fan of scary books (or movies) but there was a whole lot in The Stand that really resonates. Can you recommend another King book that's not too scary? (I have read some of the essays and thought they were brilliant)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

My favorite of his books is The Dead Zone. It's scary, but it's not a monster book. It's more of a psychic/political thriller, and although as I said, there are some frights, the sense that I'm always left with at the end is not terror, but sadness. It was his fifth book and it cemented him in my mind as a brilliant writer.

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

Stephen King has been one of my favorites since I was about 13. I feel like I've been defending him for years, but people do seem to be coming around. I've always admired his ability to bring a character to life, and his skill with dialogue. That ain't easy!

It was only after the LOTR movies, when I read the books, that I realized how many LOTR references he's put in his books over the years.

The passage you cited is gorgeous, and I would point to it whenever anyone tells me that King is a "hack." So there, doubters! ;-)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

In the last decade, and especially since his accident, he's been writing beautiful stuff, books that recal his very early work, to my mind. I mentioned Bag of Bones above, which I think is lovely, and Hearts in Atlantis is also beautiful. It seems he's becoming an elder statesman sort of figure (which I'm sure tickles him no end) and so people are starting to (finally) take him seriously as a writer.

And yeah, he's a Ringer. He really loves LOTR, and I'm surprised that he's never yet written anything about the films, not even in his Entertainment Weekly columns. I'd sure love to know what he thinks of them.

[oohasparklie.livejournal.com]

The Stand is my favorite ever. I loved the movie, too. LOVED.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Matt Frewer made an art out of bugfuckery in that one.

[oohasparklie.livejournal.com]

MY LIFE FOR YOU!!!

Ohh, I loved that movie, seriously. I was so obsessed with it at one point. So many unintentionally hilarious quotes.

[estelanui.livejournal.com]

one which smelled of cinnamon and baking apple pies. One which ended somewhere up ahead in the pantry of Bag End, where Mr. Bilbo Baggins was celebrating his eleventy-first birthday party.

This made me teary too. It is the exact description of one of my past dream.

I didn't read the Stand; I had to fill this gap and find that book in the shop. Thank you.