Liked this bit on Slate from Jack Hamilton, a fellow Stephen King tragic, looking back on the release of Night Shift a couple of hundred years ago.
For all of King’s well-deserved renown as a novelist, the stories in Night Shift represent some of the most purely terrifying work of his career. King was always a more graceful and inventive prose stylist than his detractors gave him credit for, but from the very beginning his true genius has been for ideas, horror hooks that can produce chills even from a one-sentence logline. A lonely girl with a fearsome gift takes revenge on the town and mother who tormented her; a father and failing writer slowly goes insane in an isolated, malevolent hotel; a cemetery brings beloved pets who are buried in it back to not-exactly-life. King’s novels that don’t work—and even a die-hard fan would admit that there are more than a few of those—tend to falter not so much because their core conceits are bad, per se, but rather that they are just neither sturdy nor dynamic enough to support hundreds (and hundreds) of pages of extraneous padding.
King’s short fiction doesn’t have this problem. The inherent economy of the form means that the idea itself is the star of the show. Each story is like a guy who shows up to the campfire, tells the scariest yarn you’ve ever heard in your life, then promptly leaves before anyone can fuck it all up by asking him to elaborate. The first time I read Night Shift as an already King-obsessed tween in the early 1990s, I remember the table of contents alone sending chills down my spine. What fresh hell lurked behind titles like “I Am the Doorway” or “Sometimes They Come Back” or “I Know What You Need”?
I had a copy of this collection on my shelf for years, but I seem to have lost track of it at some point. (Note to self, a book that goes missing, or even better, gets thrown away, only to keep turning up again, driving the reader insane, is a very Stephen King idea for a short story.)
I seem to recall my copy had an introduction written by John D. McDonald, who was then a much bigger airport novelist than King, and these days is largely forgotten.
Hamilton has the excuse of a new screen adaptation (The Boogeyman) being released to revisit and celebrate Night Shift, but I don’t need any excuse. I’mma go find myself a nice hard copy somewhere. Might have a crack at that short story too.
At the expense of sounding like a Tweed jacketed and leather elbowed toff by using the word "Lovecraftian"; I suppose there are many supernatural elements to King's horror, but the true terror comes from within the characters themselves and how I/we as the reader, realise we are very capable of thinking and committing such terrible acts, given the circumstances and motivation.
The boogeyman was the one with the cupboard (and something to do with a drain or a car . . . . not It) but i think it followed him through the sewers from house to house yeah? Jeez that gave me the willies when i innocently picked it up one day. I really need to get a copy of this to give to the kids. They will probably scoff but when King is on point its really hard not to inhale those books.
I think it was Skeleton Crew for me that made me fall in love with Stephen King's shorter stuff.
Or the Bachman Books! I believe Rage is no longer in print. The making of The Running Man into a movie was also a very strange adaption.
At the expense of sounding like a Tweed jacketed and leather elbowed toff by using the word "Lovecraftian"; I suppose there are many supernatural elements to King's horror, but the true terror comes from within the characters themselves and how I/we as the reader, realise we are very capable of thinking and committing such terrible acts, given the circumstances and motivation.
The boogeyman was the one with the cupboard (and something to do with a drain or a car . . . . not It) but i think it followed him through the sewers from house to house yeah? Jeez that gave me the willies when i innocently picked it up one day. I really need to get a copy of this to give to the kids. They will probably scoff but when King is on point its really hard not to inhale those books.
How many of King's short stories has the Simpsons used for its Halloween Specials?
His novella 'Cabal' for me