I haven't blogged much for the past month, but will be back with frequent posts very soon. I am getting used to new meds and trying to recover my imaginative and creative streak. Fellow sufferer's of depression will know how a change in meds can be debilitating in the short term. Next week, though, I'll be back with a new update on my studies towards the Advanced Creative Writing module. In the meantime I hope you enjoy this review of a short story collection by Stephen King.
This collection was published in 1993. There were some amazing stories within the pages, and commentary from Stephen King. It amazed me how resentful of critics he was. Outside social media, I hadn’t encountered the same publicly espoused vitriol that King threw at those who dismissed his work as populist. Reading that was as fascinating and shocking as the short stories.
Apart from the baseball essay, which I skipped through, there wasn’t a story that I didn’t enjoy reading. My favourites were “My Pretty Pony”, a gentle story of a grandfather discussing the fluidity of time with his grandson; “The End of the Whole Mess”, a catastrophic attempt by a young genius to cure humanity of our violent tendencies; “Sorry, Right Number”, the script of a screenplay that starts with a strange phone call; “Dedication”, a story about natural versus biological fathers, that’s disturbing and intriguing and completely unique as far as I am aware.
There were cliches galore, including vampires and zombies, but they all had something to offer the reader, a testament to King’s voice and understanding of horror. Definitely a collection I would recommend. Personally, I enjoyed King’s short stories more than many of his full length novels. Bite-sized with dashings of humour.