Cover Charge #5: A Tale Of Two Kings
I've been feeling rather aimless lately. Maybe it's the onslaught of five average-to-barely tolerable monster movies that I assigned myself to reviewing. Maybe it's the dreary atmosphere that takes over this time of year. Or maybe its a sort of post-partum side effect of having finished reading Stephen and Owen King's Sleeping Beauties and not being inspired to do anything afterward, like I summitted a particularly formidable mountain and lack the desire to take in any particular view, no matter how beautiful, nor to immediately make my way back down. I'm simply here, at a peak that feels more like a valley, waiting for the winter chill to eat my toes.
Don't get me wrong; I don't mean to say, in this age where saying "Stephen King books are too long" has become an understatement of the impossible, that Sleeping Beauties was as insurmountable to me as Mount Everest would be to, well, me. I only mean that having accomplished such a literary feat (while nowhere near as involving as having read the entire Dark Tower universe, and with nowhere near the feeling of unfulfillment), I find myself at a loss for what to do next. Sleeping Beauties is as good an example of Stephen King's writing as there has ever been: a masterful--if simplistic (I never thought I'd be using Stephen King's name and the word "simplistic" in the same sentence)--demonstration and deconstruction of human nature, with all of its good humor and dark edges, wherein King accentuates the darkness of the darkness and the sharpness of the edges in a unique and potentially terrifying way that, even if you've read other books where hero A clashes with supernatural monster B and has to make sacrifice C to save person D and/or achieve outcome E, you won't know what the letters represent until Z is long in your rearview and you find yourself pondering the ponderous tome in the passenger's seat beside you. But as good as Sleeping Beauties was, it wasn't perfect. And I've put it upon myself to tell you why.
Plot VS Premise: The first major flaw in any story, whether it be slightly imperfect or utter garbage, is in the structure. With Sleeping Beauties, the problem is that it has a premise, but not really a plot. Plots are linear. Even if accompanied by flashbacks to establish information about characters or locations, plots generally start at a point and move at a requisite pace toward another point, perhaps taking a random detour here or there to set up future books in a series, but always moving with a destination and a goal firmly in mind. Sleeping Beauties may have subplots (although the "sub-" prefix implies a larger plot, which there really isn't), but its chief driving force seems to be more of a premise. A premise is a generic forethought, an idea about where to start, a cool twist on something old that doesn't really know where it's going yet. In Sleeping Beauties, there are moths that (although this is never specifically or explicitly stated, it is as obvious to the reader as would be a shit-covered concrete snowman with rebar arms, but that's another story) put the female sleeping population of the planet in a state of cocooned, suspended animation, transporting their souls--maybe?--to an alternate, possibly future Earth while their soulless, moth-filled physical bodies remain behind to brutally slaughter anyone dumb enough to open their cocoons or...otherwise...[insert Teeth reference here]. It's your basic zombie apocalypse setup with all the inherent social commentary tropes, given the King treatment (more in the vein of The Stand than Cell). There is also a mysterious woman in the mix who is somehow immune to the "Aurora flu" and has godlike powers, serving as both a McGuffin and a tempter/trickster archetype. Once these mechanisms (the premise) are introduced, however, it suddenly becomes hundreds of pages of "there are men, let's see what happens." This may be an effect of King's style and having to flesh out an entire Appalachian community that mostly amounts to Justified and Fargo meets Orange Is the New Black, but what we sacrifice in main plot, we get rich character development in spades.
Don't Be About It: The next major flaw in any entertainment medium, at least from where I stand, is trying too hard to make something entertaining that is "about something." Batman V Superman tried to be about several somethings, and we know how that turned out. Despite the existence of The Beatles, people almost universally shun protest bands like Flobots and Rage Against the Machine because they try overtly to be about something (usually by making anti-war, pro-revolutionary statements with music that would otherwise be widely entertaining if it were simply music). A similar argument has been made several times in the past about educational video games. And--this is getting personal and specific, but here goes--I avoid Christian rock like the biblical plague because it attempts to use deceptive tactics (ie: presenting catchy love songs that turn out to be about God) to commercialize religion. But I'm falling into my own trap here by using my own entertainment medium to bluntly present a personal agenda, so let's move on.
No book, at least, no fiction title, should have as its sole main plot, the goal of being about something. Sleeping Beauties pushes the idea of inserting women into a world ruined by men--that, it is revealed at one point, the women themselves idealized simply by waking up in it; think about that for a minute--and creating a better society there based solely on the arrangement of their chromosomes. On the other side--the male side of the world--there is the idea of the reduction of women to soulless objects and possessions, referred to often in the book as "our women" to enforce the point. Alongside it are the on-the-nose male views of women as being in a "different world" than men, fragile, volatile, and prone to rage. Meanwhile, the aforementioned zombie movie commentaries recur. Are the women still human in there somewhere? Are men the real monsters? Did the occurrence of Aurora really change anything about human nature on a base level? If a cure is found, can things ever get back to the way they were? After enduring this, will anyone really want things to return to "normal?" Inserted at several points, also, are blatant shots at Trump--I don't disagree with the choice of target here, only the choice of gun, metaphorically speaking--references to 9/11 and weather disasters like Hurricane Katrina (specifically the seeming ease with which said Appalachian community, minus its unsavory elements, is able to rebuild itself in the aftermath of Aurora, and for the "better"), and the idea of a god or god-like figure--an anthropomorphic allegory for religion--succumbing to the influences of modern society (Evie, the immune woman mentioned earlier, becoming obsessed with a Candy Crush-like mobile game and being in our world for so long that she develops human emotions which derail her from her goal of proving that men are men--or at least, that a particular sample group of men are wired or fated to adhere to the negative characterization of men presented in the book). Like the average Coen Brothers movie, Sleeping Beauties goes in several directions, satisfies its many character arcs (more often than not, in conveniently obtuse ways), and succeeds at saying everything that it set out to say, but ultimately decides to stop without really ending.
What Worked: Okay, I lied to you a little bit; in true millennial fashion, I did not read Sleeping Beauties by itself, but with the accompanying Audible narration, which proved to be one of the best things about the book. Narrator Marin Ireland doesn't just read the book to you, she acts it out, giving each character a unique voice that adds to the Kings' already rich character development. The book's sprawling and unfocused nature nonetheless made it unpredictable and fun to read on the whole, and it ultimately served the purpose--pushed the various sociopolitical agendae--that it set out to, backed by a fairly unique and engaging premise and King's signature brand of dark humor.
B
Plot VS Premise: The first major flaw in any story, whether it be slightly imperfect or utter garbage, is in the structure. With Sleeping Beauties, the problem is that it has a premise, but not really a plot. Plots are linear. Even if accompanied by flashbacks to establish information about characters or locations, plots generally start at a point and move at a requisite pace toward another point, perhaps taking a random detour here or there to set up future books in a series, but always moving with a destination and a goal firmly in mind. Sleeping Beauties may have subplots (although the "sub-" prefix implies a larger plot, which there really isn't), but its chief driving force seems to be more of a premise. A premise is a generic forethought, an idea about where to start, a cool twist on something old that doesn't really know where it's going yet. In Sleeping Beauties, there are moths that (although this is never specifically or explicitly stated, it is as obvious to the reader as would be a shit-covered concrete snowman with rebar arms, but that's another story) put the female sleeping population of the planet in a state of cocooned, suspended animation, transporting their souls--maybe?--to an alternate, possibly future Earth while their soulless, moth-filled physical bodies remain behind to brutally slaughter anyone dumb enough to open their cocoons or...otherwise...[insert Teeth reference here]. It's your basic zombie apocalypse setup with all the inherent social commentary tropes, given the King treatment (more in the vein of The Stand than Cell). There is also a mysterious woman in the mix who is somehow immune to the "Aurora flu" and has godlike powers, serving as both a McGuffin and a tempter/trickster archetype. Once these mechanisms (the premise) are introduced, however, it suddenly becomes hundreds of pages of "there are men, let's see what happens." This may be an effect of King's style and having to flesh out an entire Appalachian community that mostly amounts to Justified and Fargo meets Orange Is the New Black, but what we sacrifice in main plot, we get rich character development in spades.
Don't Be About It: The next major flaw in any entertainment medium, at least from where I stand, is trying too hard to make something entertaining that is "about something." Batman V Superman tried to be about several somethings, and we know how that turned out. Despite the existence of The Beatles, people almost universally shun protest bands like Flobots and Rage Against the Machine because they try overtly to be about something (usually by making anti-war, pro-revolutionary statements with music that would otherwise be widely entertaining if it were simply music). A similar argument has been made several times in the past about educational video games. And--this is getting personal and specific, but here goes--I avoid Christian rock like the biblical plague because it attempts to use deceptive tactics (ie: presenting catchy love songs that turn out to be about God) to commercialize religion. But I'm falling into my own trap here by using my own entertainment medium to bluntly present a personal agenda, so let's move on.
No book, at least, no fiction title, should have as its sole main plot, the goal of being about something. Sleeping Beauties pushes the idea of inserting women into a world ruined by men--that, it is revealed at one point, the women themselves idealized simply by waking up in it; think about that for a minute--and creating a better society there based solely on the arrangement of their chromosomes. On the other side--the male side of the world--there is the idea of the reduction of women to soulless objects and possessions, referred to often in the book as "our women" to enforce the point. Alongside it are the on-the-nose male views of women as being in a "different world" than men, fragile, volatile, and prone to rage. Meanwhile, the aforementioned zombie movie commentaries recur. Are the women still human in there somewhere? Are men the real monsters? Did the occurrence of Aurora really change anything about human nature on a base level? If a cure is found, can things ever get back to the way they were? After enduring this, will anyone really want things to return to "normal?" Inserted at several points, also, are blatant shots at Trump--I don't disagree with the choice of target here, only the choice of gun, metaphorically speaking--references to 9/11 and weather disasters like Hurricane Katrina (specifically the seeming ease with which said Appalachian community, minus its unsavory elements, is able to rebuild itself in the aftermath of Aurora, and for the "better"), and the idea of a god or god-like figure--an anthropomorphic allegory for religion--succumbing to the influences of modern society (Evie, the immune woman mentioned earlier, becoming obsessed with a Candy Crush-like mobile game and being in our world for so long that she develops human emotions which derail her from her goal of proving that men are men--or at least, that a particular sample group of men are wired or fated to adhere to the negative characterization of men presented in the book). Like the average Coen Brothers movie, Sleeping Beauties goes in several directions, satisfies its many character arcs (more often than not, in conveniently obtuse ways), and succeeds at saying everything that it set out to say, but ultimately decides to stop without really ending.
What Worked: Okay, I lied to you a little bit; in true millennial fashion, I did not read Sleeping Beauties by itself, but with the accompanying Audible narration, which proved to be one of the best things about the book. Narrator Marin Ireland doesn't just read the book to you, she acts it out, giving each character a unique voice that adds to the Kings' already rich character development. The book's sprawling and unfocused nature nonetheless made it unpredictable and fun to read on the whole, and it ultimately served the purpose--pushed the various sociopolitical agendae--that it set out to, backed by a fairly unique and engaging premise and King's signature brand of dark humor.
B
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