Stephen King’s approach to horror is much less about the supernatural than I think his reputation suggests. Before approaching his work back in high school, I was vaguely aware of books like Cujo, Pet Sematary, Christine and It (mostly due to their movie incarnations), and based on these, I assumed that King was all about the thrills and chills of the unexplained or just plain weird. It turns out the real horrors of his books are quite easy to explain, but no less frightening for this. Human nature is really all there is to it; there may be a homicidal clown on the loose in a small town, but you can bet it will be the people of that town that demonstrate the most monstrosity. A little boy is raised from the dead by a supernatural force, but is it the force that is frightening, or what it does to people who should leave the dead well enough alone? A teenage girl exhibits frightening telekinetic powers, but would these abilities have turned to destruction without the impetus of cruelty and isolation? The truly horrific is always human in King’s best works; everything else is just the trappings of the tale.Needful Things is very much a story about people and the horrors they inflict on each other, with little or no help from sinister forces. Don’t misunderstand me, there is a very sinister force involved here, but he’s really just working with something that is already there. Leland Gaunt, a charming man with a sixth sense for a deal (and some strange physical attributes), blows into the tiny town of Castle Rock to peddle his wares. Gaunt’s shop, the titular Needful Things, is ordinary and nondescript, and only in a town as small as The Rock would it cause much of a sensation. Well, make a sensation it does, and only King could create such an odd mixture of small-town life and big-time evil working in perfect conjunction with each other.The fictional Maine town of Castle Rock has made several appearances in King’s earlier novels; it was the setting for Cujo and The Dark Half, as well as the short stories “The Body” (which became the film Stand By Me), and “The Sun Dog.” Also, the protagonist of The Dead Zone stopped by just long enough to catch the Castle Rock Strangler, twenty years before the events of NF. Needful Things is billed as “the last Castle Rock story,” so from the very beginning it’s almost certain that something pretty sinister is going to go down. Castle Rock is a highly believable community, full of characters that successfully tread the line dividing people from morality tale archetypes. Some of them are “small town types,” but most of them have their own stories and idiosyncrasies, which is imperative to the story, as the psychology of Castle Rock’s inhabitants is the basis from which everything springs. Leland Gaunt offers amazing merchandise for a steal. Brian Rusk, a fairly typical eleven-year-old boy, collects 1956 baseball cards, and when Mr. Gaunt offers him a valuable Sandy Kofax card, signed to a boy named Brian no less, for ninety-eight cents, how can Brian say no? It doesn’t really matter that the rest of the payment is to be made by way of a “harmless prank” on another inhabitant of the town. And it doesn’t seem all that strange that when Brian holds his beloved card, he can see Kofax, smell the grass and dust of the diamond, and hear the long-dead pitcher’s voice clear as day. As Mr. Gaunt meets more of the Castle Rock folks, and sells them more of his astounding merchandise, some strange and sinister events begin to unfold, much to the consternation of Sheriff Alan Pangborn.Alan, like Castle Rock, has made a previous appearance in King’s oeuvre (The Dark Half). Sheriff Pangborn is like many of King’s protagonists in that he is almost too good to be true. He carries some typically heroic emotional baggage (dead wife and son), but his character is essentially untarnished by his suffering, and even a little unnatural. Alan is an amateur magician; when he’s nervous or stressed, he makes elaborate shadow puppets and pulls collapsing bouquets from his sleeves, and he has almost frighteningly good reflexes. He is a bit odd, but in the way that only charming and highly conscientious men can be. He is also the consummate gentleman, as his love affair with the mysterious Polly constantly illustrates. While a character like Alan is usually irritating in a book so fundamentally free of optimism as Needful Things, there is also something very basic and natural about the White Knight Alan facing the sinister Gaunt for the souls of Castle Rock. Alan and Gaunt don’t even meet until the last few chapters, but their face off is inevitable from the start.While Good vs. Evil is a big theme in Needful Things, I think Leland Gaunt’s character could have used a little more subtlety. It is pretty obvious from the start that there is something not quite right about him; he’s up to something, and his plan seems subtle at first, but soon becomes as nuanced as a slap in the face. While the set-up of playing people against each other and their baser instincts is not new to horror, King does take an interesting sort of domino approach to the overall plot, setting up seemingly unrelated characters to force simmering, small town grudges to the murderous boiling point. I also give King credit for using the inherent (and believable) selfishness of the characters to his own advantage, keeping the plot rolling through over 700+ pages. And he is rarely kind to his characters; even the most innocuous and kindly characters are subject to some pretty gruesome stuff. While it’s painful to watch a character you like suffer, it also gives a whiff of realism to an otherwise over-the-top story.There is one element of the story I find a little confusing. About two-thirds of the way through the story, Ace Merrill, an aging hood who works for Gaunt, runs across a bit of bizarre graffiti. Spray painted on a rundown old garage is the phrase “Yog-Sogoth Rules.” I’m not a huge horror fan; in fact, Stephen King is the only horror writer I read with any regularity. I have never been able to slog my way through Lovecraft (though god knows I’ve tried), but I am vaguely aware of the Cthulu mythos, and the association of the name Yog-Sogoth with said mythos. The thing is, I’m not quite sure what this has to do with the story King is telling. After a little research (thank you Wikipedia), I was able to draw a couple of possible conclusions, but they’re foggy, (view spoiler)[ as the name is only mentioned twice in the whole book, and is never satisfactorily tied to Gaunt or any higher power Gaunt may be subject to. (hide spoiler)]
Some authors write about king slayers. Others write about serial killers. Stephen King? He writes about fuckers capable of leveling entire towns. Whether those responsible are aliens or devils, it doesn't matter. The ride is usually a fun one. Needful Things is no different. It is, however, the epitome of a bloated Stephen King novel. There are entire characters herein that serve zero purpose. George T. Nelson and Frank Jewett's stories could have been left out. Ace Merrill is another pointless character. I simply do not see what he added to the proceedings. I never understood why Buster couldn't do everything by himself. Even when those two split up, they're still only across the street from one another. Even the movie version cut Ace and nobody cared. I theorize that Ace was a loose end for King, the bad guy that got away, so he felt the urge to give the hood a proper send off. Insert Ace in Needful Things. Problem solved.Now I know what you're thinking. "Doesn't sound like you enjoyed this one, E." Well, that's not entirely true. Yeah, I think certain characters are useless and some scenes are pointless, but I dig this book quite a bit. King always impresses me with how he manages to create entire fictional towns populated with such true-to-life personalities and make it seem so fucking effortless. At this point in his career (1991), King had killed two small towns and crippled another three: 'Salem's Lot was sucked dry; Chamberlain was never the same after Carrie White; Derry died a special kind of death but refused to go away completely; Haven would be off-limits for decades; and Castle Rock had one bombastic enima. I remain in awe of that fact. Think about that. In less than fifteen years, one author populated and then ravaged five small towns. And we loved every minute of it.I think several things make readers ignore the bloat in Needful Things. Cora and Myra's Elvis Presley fascination is awfully hilarious, as well as some of the shenanigans other characters get into. The beshitted picture of one townie's mother had me in tears, I was laughing so hard. Buster was blissfully insane, and Nettie and Wilma's fight scene is one of the most gruesome in all of horror literature. This novel is jampacked with awesome occurrences, and that makes the bloat feel worth it. Even the uber goofy ending can be ignored because the rest of the book is... well, it's just a shitload of fun. Obvious Tie-ins:The Dark HalfThe BodyThe Sun DogHidden Gems:Gaunt refers to the items in his shop as "gray things", which supports my theory that all of King's works can be tied back to the Dark Tower series by way of The Tommyknockers or IT. I believe all of King's supernatural villains, all of his monsters, belong to the race of Old Ones known as the Prim. But more on that in my A Decade with King: (1985-1994) post coming in April.Notable Names:Pop MerrillAce MerrillEvvie Chalmers (I love how this woman is in five different King books, but is never on-camera, as it were)George BannermanThad Beaumont (view spoiler)[(This poor fucker made it through The Dark Half only to have one of the longest off-camera downward spirals King has written. It's mentioned here that Thad's wife leaves him and takes the kids with her, and then, ten years later in Bag of Bones, King mentions how Thad ended up killing himself. Poor guy.) (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Needful Things (1992)?
I was going to say that the reason I didn't like this book was the huge cast of characters, but that isn't true. Sure, the huge cast bothered me, but I've read books like that before, the problem was far more to do with the writing. The writing was belabored, tired, and trite. I say this with the utmost respect for King, but it was.For example, the huge cast of characters followed a largely identical format. With a book rocking 730 or so pages of small font, that's a lot of reading, and, as with Atlas Shrugged, it had better be worth it. But it wasn't. Scenes were repeated, almost identically, with different characters. A dozen characters marched into Needful Things, had a nearly identical conversation with Leland Gaunt, and then marched out. Different characters vandalized cars and I had to watch them both. Even though they were there for the same reason, doing the same thing, and it was largely the exact same scene. THAT was the problem with Needful Things. It was that the book was extremely repetitive with no payoff.Additionally, the end was far, far too gimicky. The ending was just a variation of riding off into the sunset but with the identical language that every other book/movie uses. "what happened?" "we'll never know" blah, blah, blah. I know endings are hard, I really do, but using a cliche one is not okay. Use a variation, spice it up, do something new. To top it off, the final, final, ending was the end of 90% of horror movies "Is it REALLY over?" It was unnecessary. It added nothing, and it didn't improve the story or development.Sorry to say, but this is the worst King book I've read, and I really hope it is the worst of them all.
—Nicholas Armstrong
LEIDO PARA EL 2015 READING CHALLENGE: #01 A BOOK WITH MORE THAN 500 PAGESFinalmente terminé este clasico de King y me resulto difícil decidirme en qué puntaje ponerle. Estaba en la duda de una puntuación máxima, pero tuve que ser honesta conmigo misma... Aclaro antes que nada que el libro ME ENCANTÓ. Ni mas ni menos que eso. Como siempre, sus personajes son llamativos e inquietantes, muchos personajes a los cuales seguirles el rumbo y, especialmente acá, a los cuales es conveniente recordar cada nombre para poder entender como se cruzan las historias.Un párrafo aparte para Leland Gaunt, amo y señor de esta obra. Personaje malévolo pero, en algún punto, simpático. ¿Por qué no llega a la perfección? Simplemente porque para mi fue muy largo. He leído obras de King mas largas que este, pero le sobró un poco.Mas allá de eso es un libro mas que recomendable y entretenido, que me gusto mucho, como casi todo de King.
—Laura
As with most Stephen King books, the story starts out normally and gets weirder and weirder with each page.The concept behind it is a powerful one - greed, and the lengths to which people will go just to get something that they think they need. The town's destruction starts out slowly, but picks up pace very quickly.There's a lot of blood and gore involved - some may think it's almost unnecessary, but I think, why not? Stephen King goes to that great length to show the effects of greed.The ending was not so great in my opinion. Maybe because it didn't jam well with the suspense created up until that point. Still, it wasn't bad.The book is definitely recommended.
—Preeti
