Why review a book you didn't finish?
I read and really liked Stephen King's On Writing. This got me fired up and I thought I might enjoy his fiction, so I picked up The Shining. Despite my patrician attitude towards reading, I am always looking for middlebrow surprises to keep me on my toes.
The Shining wasn't bad, but I couldn't warm up to it. So I put it down after about 200 pages, which was giving it more than a fair shot. I think my reasons for putting it down are as useful to write about as the reasons I might have been compelled to finish the book. Besides, there is a certain selection bias in book reviews. We tend to review only the books we finish, so we never get to see a review of a book that a reader couldn't get through.
Does that even make sense? Question withdrawn. So what was the problem?
Didn't find the characters believable. The book is about a writer who takes a job as a caretaker for a hotel in the Rockies in the winter, a time when snow seals off the hotel from the outside world and the hotel has to close. The writer has his demons, as the first half of the book takes great pains to spell out. As winter sets in, the writer descends into madness, threatening the lives of his son and wife who are there with him.
The problem was the character development. King strikes me as a technically sound writer -- I really like some of his sentences. The story breaks down because King spends way too long trying to develop tension in the story. I felt he was unsure of who these characters were, and had to prove to the reader who they were by making the same point with them, over and over again. I only need a limited number of hints and foreshadowings. King goes bonkers with it, poking me in the ribs twice on every page.
For example, we find out early on that the protagonist, the boy Danny, has some kind of telepathic ability called the Shining. He can read other people's feelings, if not their thoughts. And he can see into the future. Fine. That is established by page 30. Then King has to reiterate that, again, and again, and again, and again. Before his father gets the hotel job. When they arrive at the hotel. During an interminably long chapter at the doctor's office where he demontrates his abilities. Back at the hote again after that. Yes, I get it already, he has visions. Story please?
So repetition made you put it down, then?
And slow development. I made it to page 200, and by then we had established that Danny has the Shining and his father has a drinking problem. That's about it. Now, as a reader I am used to slow plots -- I am a fan of Faulkner and Proust, after all -- but there has to be more emotional dynamics going on to make this work if it is to drag on that long. The dynamics were more repetitive than interesting. This might have been a better book at about half the length.
And at half the length, I probably would have finished it.
A much better writer would have only hinted at the father's drinking problems. King has him wiping his lips every time he wants a drink. Wipe, wipe, wipe. Every page, every paragraph. He wipes his lips so much his mouth bleeds. Literally. But I don't need the agony of alcohol craving pounded into my head this way. It could have been hinted at, sparingly, in many ways. The hints would have increased the shock when he starts drinking again. With the lip wipes, I found myself thinking, "Enough! Just take the goddamned drink already! We know you will!"
Anything good about it? Your mother would say always say something good.
Oh, yes. I can see why a lot of people would like King. He spells out the emotional dynamics in a scene in great detail. Painstakingly. Perhaps he feels general audiences don't like to fill in a lot of blanks, so he needs to do that. Which is fine, I can respect that. But I am used to reading more challenging writers, people like Alice Munroe or Jonathan Franzen or Colemac McCarthy, and I am used to things being left unsaid. I am used to having to fill in the blanks. For me, having all the blanks filled in was not something I could enjoy. But someone used to reading more pop fiction might want more filled in, might not be used to having to figure out so many things.
That sounds like pomposity to me. You, not him.
Yeah, probably. But I don't like to leave my superiority complex undefended.
It is like the difference between pop music and jazz. Jazz leaves a lot of chords and melodies unresolved. The tension hangs out there, incomplete, and the listener has to resolve it himself. Pop music closes every loop and resolves every musical hook with a satisfying conclusion. It is different. Not necessarily worse, but different.
(Actually it's better, but I'm not supposed to say that.)