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Stephen King, who I firmly believe will go down in history as one of America’s greatest writers [Ed. Note: AGREED AGREED AGREED] despite being frequently dismissed as a dime-a-dozen horror book author, has tackled the area of marriage—and the complexities found within—in many of his writings.
His new collection, Full Dark, No Stars (due to be released in November) features a novella entitled “A Good Marriage” which, based on the excerpt available online, takes a long, hard look at the intricacies of matrimony.
Since the story is by Stephen King, the question repeatedly asked in the story becomes increasingly creepier.
“How’s your marriage?” The question is asked Stephen King style; a voice that is neither the narrator or the author as much as the horrified conscience of the story. King frequently employs the omniscient voice to inject terror in his works; A distant hint comes to the character, almost through the character.
The answer to this quintessential question is no doubt horrifying when explored by the fictitious Darcy Anderson in the tantalizing excerpt released by Simon & Schuster. King sets this up as he always does, though, in the little details that we can all relate to.
There is also a sense of doomed normalcy in Stephen King’s newest short story. In “Lisey’s Story,” King writes what could be a summary of his work, “No one loves a clown at midnight.” “A Good Marriage” has a lot of hints of ill-timed normalcy; Darcy’s secret from her husband is that “she sometimes (mostly on rainy days or on those nights when the insomnia was on her) gobbled Butterfingers or Baby Ruths, for instance, eating the candybars even after she no longer wanted them, even after she felt sick to her stomach.” Even a simple indulgence carries weight for Darcy, both literally and figuratively.
So what is it that makes Stephen King “get” marriage? Perhaps it’s his longtime marriage to college sweetheart Tabitha. Maybe it’s his Yankee sensibilities (if you’ve been to Maine, you know what I mean). What I think, though, is that King is one of the rare people able to look beyond the surface face that people put forward. He knows that there is darkness and secrets lurking behind even the most guileless eyes … and his great writing gift allows us to catch a glimpse as well.
Consider this, an excerpt of the posted excerpt:
His bald spot had become well entrenched; his glasses had become bifocals; his weight had spun up from one-eighty into the two-twenty range. He had become a partner in the accounting firm—Benson and Bacon was now Benson, Bacon & Anderson. They had traded the starter home in Pownal for a more expensive one in Yarmouth. Her breasts, formerly small and firm and high (her best feature, she’d always thought; she’d never wanted to look like a Hooters waitress) were now larger, not so firm, and of course they dropped down when she took off her bra at night—what else could you expect when you were closing in on the half-century mark?—but every so often Bob would still come up behind her and cup them. Every so often there was the pleasant interlude in the upstairs bedroom overlooking their peaceful two-acre patch of land, and if he was a little quick on the draw and often left her unsatisfied, often was not always, and the satisfaction of holding him afterward, feeling his warm man’s body as he drowsed away next to her . . . that satisfaction never failed. It was, she supposed, the satisfaction of knowing they were still together when so many others were not; the satisfaction of knowing that as they approached their Silver Anniversary, the course was still steady as she goes.
While works like Lisey’s Story and Bag of Bones might use the nuances of marriage as part of a larger story, “A Good Marriage” promises to be an in-depth look at the institution itself—and unpleasantries that can lie dormant beneath the surface.
With Dolores Claiborne, King gave us a strong woman who took control of her fate when her husband’s domestic abuse turned in a new and unspeakable direction. In It, readers are able to contemplate the hollow remains of matrimony following the death of a child. A woman makes a choice to give her abusive alcoholic husband another chance with dire consequences in The Shining. An elderly widower gets a second (albeit short-lived) chance at happiness in Insomnia.
I could continue–my doctoral thesis is going to be on Stephen King’s literature–but there’s no need. See, the more I think about it, the more obvious it seems that the husband/wife dynamic is a theme in virtually every one of King’s works. And make no mistake, he is no misogynist blaming every problem in the fictional marriages he creates on the women. On the contrary, King seems to fully appreciate the give and take necessary to make a marriage successful.
It’s a crying shame that he is so often written off as a guy who could make the bestseller list by publishing his weekly shopping items. I have a degree in literature, and let me tell you … not only can this guy write, he can make you believe wholeheartedly in his characters. Reading one of his works is like being inside the mind of a living person, and the world view is absolutely remarkable.
I await “A Good Marriage” with eager impatience as I’m curious to explore yet another fictitious and yet wholly believable marriage through the eyes of the great Stephen King.
If you’ve read any of King’s works, what are your thoughts on his depiction of probably a thousand invented marriages and his place in the definition of feminism?
And if you haven’t … why not?
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Bag of Bones was, in my opinion, an absolutely amazing book (my favorite King book), largely due to the relationship between husband and (late) wife depicted therein.
I’ve never read any Stephen King, but I like the writing style already from the excerpt. I do like the movie version of the Shining; I’m sure the book is fantastic.
I read The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon as my first Stephen King book and I’ve never been able to force myself to give King another chance I hated it so much.
Stephen King is my favourite writer on earth. Not only does he has an amazing writing style/plot/characters but his books are anti-racist and anti-homophobic.
This is something new for Stephen King. Looking forward to the novel.