4.70 stars.“. . . it’s hard for me to believe there ever was such a year as 1970, and . . . at other times [it’s] a handsbreath away, that I can almost touch it.”Yes!In The Dead Zone, Stephen King reflects the spirit of the times more than in any other novel previously penned, (his Bachman Roadwork serves, perhaps, as an exception). The novel reflects, like others at the time, a major shift in American culture—that to the 1980s—and the seemingly non-stop swing of “the pendulum” toward a more conservative and indifferent culture—from a decadent, excessive liberalism toward a staunch conservatism. And here, the conservatism seems vengeful as the novel shows that in back rooms and in shadows, furtive, greedy, vicious, and even psychopathic dispositions and acts arise. As expected with King, fate becomes central to the novel. And here, it serves as the controlling metaphor throughout with a “Wheel of Fate” image. Hence, the novel becomes a “fate versus free will” story.The novel’s protagonist, Johnny Smith, a cultural abortion, (he “pull[s] into a fetal shape”), serves as an Everyman and Christ-like protagonist—one who survives an accident to then be thrown out of the 1970s and into the coming 1980s—and a changed world. For Johnny, all is lost. Despite a ruined body, mind, and life, he nevertheless picks up the pieces as best he can. And, he desperately tries to maintain his humanity and free will despite a psychic “curse” or “gift” which leads him to a progressively fateful path. It is worth noting that Johnny wakes up from his coma in 1975, the year that the first blockbuster, Jaws, hits the theater screens. And, elements of The Dead Zone almost seem to reflect the essential horror element in Jaws—a monstrous shark (politician), terrorizing the staid, if sometimes seasonally complacent upper middle class of Amity Island, (United States).And so, in King’s novel, out of the mid-west comes Greg Stillson, ("still son," the abortion image again suggested), a “beast to be borne” and the novel’s principle antagonist. As with other King novels, The Dead Zone’s narrative progresses, like the unfolding of fate itself, toward a climax presenting the conflict between these two opposing characters—and by extension, “forces.” Although the same frame exists for both The Stand and The Dead Zone, the latter novel maintains a more realistic narrative, one firmly emplaced to reflect this “shift” in culture and sensibility.In another sense, King presents Johnny as an unwilling knight having to advance against an encroaching dragon, (Stillson). This last image he presents with folktale references, allusions, and characters as well as the almost omnipresent color of green. Indeed, at times, every, or almost every character depicted seems to have green eyes—save Johnny. And mirrored meanings to the color bounce from episode to episode: money, envy, suggestive images of various reptiles, etc.Similarly, The Dead Zone’s many foils and mirrors are stitched around and through each other creating an intricate weave: the “Wheel of Fate” paralleling a “Wheel of Time,” the carnival pitchman paralleling Stillson’s past, the three principle “mothers reflecting different influences on their respective sons, the influence of money in politics, business, and healthcare, dispositions of “lost” spoiled children of the 1960s-70s liberal bourgeoisie against those of respectful, responsible rich, (and poor), children, and finally, periods in history, (the 1930s Depression era against post-World War II prosperity, the rise of Hitler as a major fatalistic question, and the legacy of a Puritan past—that final scene with Sarah amidst the “. . . Bowdens . . . Marstons . . . [and] Pillsburys” is significant).There are more; and, I could continue, (the play on Frank Dodd’s name—God, dog, Dodge, Dud, Odd, Fraud, Dodd as the end of the year, “November Killer,” mirroring the end of an “age,” etc.). However, I’ll end here with these lines of thought.Although the Cronenberg / Boam film adaptation of the novel accomplished much, that visual medium seemed to demand that the larger scope of the novel be streamlined. And so, a few points, perhaps, should be made. Johnny’s “psychic” visions continue in a way in which increasingly more people are saved from tragedy. The last, before Stillson, involves an entire high school graduating class. Additionally, King depicts Chatsworth as a truly honest, caring, and discerning businessman and father—yet another mirror to other characters in the novel. Chuck’s age, too, becomes significant—a young man rather than a young adolescent. Lastly, episodes outlining the danger of Stillson are compacted in the film. Unfortunately, this simplifies somewhat the reasoning for Johnny’s later actions. Obviously, both Cronenberg and Boam had to make choices. And, the choices they made were great ones. The film stands as a great adaptation. But, like the film version of The Shining, the full import of the novel as well as the greater notion of cultural shift, unfortunately, is lost.As for the novel's setbacks, there are some, as always with any work of craft or art. The Jekyll / Hyde allusion seems to fail. The Frankenstein allusion, while absolutely appropriate to Johnny, sometimes is made too often as is The Wheel of Fortune allusion. Some readers may have felt a “more fleshed out” Johnny character was needed. Yet, given the plot, ideas, and "weave" of narrative, that choice ultimately may have weakened the work. I should say, too, that despite my weariness for King’s sometimes heavy-handed allusions, I particularly enjoyed how King referred to Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, and Blake’s “Tyger, Tyger,” which subtly suggested the forthcoming conflict and potential consequences in the fiction as well as those in our real culture. Class has become not only important, but central, it seems.As the length of this review indicates, I still could continue. But, this review already reads too long. And so, I will end with two final points:1. Regarding critics Richard Snyder and Harold Bloom:[from Wikipedia], In 2003, King was honored by the National Book Awards with a lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Some in the literary community expressed disapproval of the award: Richard Snyder, the former CEO of Simon & Schuster, described King's work as "non-literature", and critic Harold Bloom denounced the choice: “. . . extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life . . . he [King] is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.[87].Simply, with The Dead Zone, penned in 1979, King goes beyond the “penny dreadful” horror story and accurately depicts the spirit of a shifting culture, provides both surface and deeper social commentary, and creates an “anti-hero” with which readers can identify despite all the “metaphoric mirrors.”Hence, Snyder and Bloom simply have revealed their own seeming ignorance as well as dismissive arrogance. Indeed, it might be wise to pull one’s eyes away from Shelley, Shakespeare, and theory, (some arcane and idiotic) and be “open,” (i.e., truly liberal), to a potentially “new” writer and work—even if it may come from the “pop” racks. After all, was not Dickens and Twain popular?2. Needless to say, for me, The Dead Zone represents one of King's best works and has become a favorite. But, given this author's voluminous output, I will have to withhold judgment as to whether The Dead Zone is "the favorite."Yes, this novel is well worth reading.
“We all do what we can, and it has to be good enough, and if it isn't good enough, it has to do.” Who else but Christopher Walken could play Johnny Smith in the highly praised David Cronenberg film?Johnny Smith is a rookie teacher with $8 in his pocket, just enough money to take his best girl Sarah, also a new teacher, to the local county fair. Sarah is coming off a couple of recent relationships that were exciting with aggressive, unpredictable men. Johnny is a step in a new direction, maybe a more responsible direction not driven as much by physical attraction as by mental stimulation. She has no idea who Johnny is, but that can’t be helped because Johnny doesn’t really know who he is either. We get our first inkling that something is different about Johnny as they are leaving the fair. The Wheel of Fortune guy running a crude version of the roulette wheel tempts Johnny over to try his luck with his last few remaining dollars. Johnny starts by betting on black or red and wins. As his confidence grows, he starts picking exact numbers and keeps winning. A crowd is drawn to this run of luck. But is it luck?He turns his meager money into three months pay. Sarah becomes sick from a bad hot dog. Johnny quits the game to take her home. Since they came in her car, he takes a taxi back to his apartment. There is an accident, and Johnny goes through the windshield.He doesn’t wake up for four and half years. His mother, never a stable person before, becomes more frantically religious. She throws herself at every new religious concept, even going so far at one point to joining a commune who are waiting for alien space ships to come pick them up to take them to God. With each new religious venture she brings the Smith’s closer to bankruptcy. Religious zealotry is always so scary to me. They believe it, whatever it is, so fervently that any rational thought is wrestled to the ground and pinned by unquestioning faith. When Johnny comes out of his coma, he has the ability/curse of being able to touch someone or something owned by that person (psychometry) and see pieces of their future. Some key elements always seem to be missing, and those murky parts Johnny calls The Dead Zone. An ability like this? Well...it scares people.”The nurses were lined up against the glass of the nurses’ station, staring at him. Suddenly they reminded him of crows on a telephone line, crows staring down at something bright and shiny, something to be pecked at and pulled apart.”That does seem to be our nature to fear what we don’t understand, quickly followed by the need to destroy what we fear. Anyone different, whether they have a unconventional sexual orientation or a disfigurement or just see the world differently, will feel the constant pressure to conform or...disappear. It is only logical of course that if Johnny knows about a fire before it happens that he must have been involved in setting that fire. The possibility of clairvoyance is too unique, too extraordinary for others to comprehend. Johnny is ridiculed, exposed as a charlatan. He is fine with that. It might mean he has a chance to find a normal life. He is doing well until a small town Sheriff can’t catch the Raincoat Serial Killer. A handshake can be so revealing. And yes that is Martin Sheen playing Greg Stillson.As Johnny is finding himself back in the spotlight, there is another man, a Bible salesman by the name of Greg Stillson, who is starting to have big thoughts, dreams of more power than any lunatic should ever have. Stephen King is setting up a collision course between the two men, both unusual, both psychotic, but on opposite sides of the same scale. When Johnny shakes Stillson’s hand, he sees a future that can not be allowed to happen. If you could build a time machine and go back to 1932 and kill Adolf Hitler, would you do it? It seems logical that you would save millions of lives, which I can’t even calculate the number of descendants of those saved lives. The implications of lives that never existed in our timeline suddenly being thrust into our era are staggering. The reshuffling of the DNA deck is mind boggling. On a micro level it could change your own personal history significantly. Your grandfather might marry someone different or your mother might meet someone before your father that didn’t exist before. You could wink out of existence before you can even fire up the time machine to return to 2015. Knowing the historical results of Hitler being alive, even though there is always the risk that someway, somehow by altering history you might make our present worse, I would still have to vote that I would gladly assassinate Hitler. On top of being a monster, Adolf was also monstrously annoying. I might even take a short detour and take out Joseph Stalin as well. I’m already rolling the dice, so why not cast them out there one more time? I’d chalk up another couple of million lives saved. Alter another gazillion time lines of history. Good lord, the enormity of it and the logic and the illogicalness of it all start to circle back around until it becomes very easy to talk oneself out of such a risky decision. Nobody wants to destroy the world while trying to save it. Johnny goes through the same thought processes. Logically, he should find a way to stop Stillson, but there is the nagging worry that he could just make things worse. This is not a horror book. It is a psychological thriller written by a writer near the top of his game. While working in the book business, I have always puzzled over why Stephen King was read by so many people. Of course, then I didn’t read him. I didn’t need to read him because there were already plenty of people queuing up to buy and read his next book. My job, of course, was to read people like Cormac McCarthy or Alan Furst, or writers like John Williams and try to bring them to a wider audience. I have tried a couple of newer King offerings, but have found them to be bloated, overwritten, and ponderous. I read The Shining, fairly recently, and realized that the King’s gold is in the dusty trunks of his early writings. The book spawned a movie, which spawned a popular TV show starring Anthony Michael Hall.King even made a playful reference to his book Carrie in this novel which made me laugh-out-loud. It was a bit of tongue in cheek referring to his own celebrity. This book also fits very nicely into my 1970s nostalgic tour of horror books even though technically I can’t call this horror. Here are the other books that I've read on this quest. The Exorcist ReviewThe Shining ReviewJaws ReviewThe Omen ReviewHarvest Home ReviewIf you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.comI also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
What do You think about The Dead Zone (1980)?
Three-fourths into this book, I realized that the slow burn that King tended was turning into something much fiercer; after reading the final paragraph, I was struck with a keen sense of melancholy and loss. In brief, this is a story about a man who is struck with a tragic circumstance, and how he deals with it. A sketch of the social and political situation in America circa the mid-1970's runs, at first, parallel to this account; later, it all intertwines with the kind of neatness that one finds in a good thriller. Clearly, King had things to say about American politics as he saw them in his present - and in a frightening projected future.The supernatural element in this story isn't a new one. King does bring it out into the open, though, and his description of how it all goes down is believable and in itself something different in genre fiction. No skulking about in a literary microcosm where reality's rules can be bent without regard to wider repercussions: this protagonist makes major news - becomes a game-piece, even, on the media playing board. And besides, the supernatural here ends up acting as deus ex machina: Johnny has an episode, and both he and reader get a huge dose of foreshadowing, and all of the character development and drama now has precise direction, which is over here, says the narrator, this way this way, look at this here: a ha, the plot thickens.I wonder: did this device allow King to circumvent any evidence to support his take on contemporary politics? Never mind how or why things are headed in a bad direction - they are, and this guy sees it, and he needs to do something about it. Go Johnny go!This is all speculation, and it's all in good fun, because in the end I had fun reading this, and I experienced a range of emotions as a result of reading it. This is a sad story, and I agree with the sentiments of one of the characters: things should have been different.
—Daniel
Recently I have been bored by the books available to me, so I have returned to my roots. Good old Stephen Kind seemed to fit the bill. I chose The Dead Zone because I used to watch the tv series. It was awesome, so I had quite high expectations.Needless to say I lost myself in this book. Stephen King has quite a way with building characters, era's. You feel like you know them, you feel like you are there.Quite a talent. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful author who has been spinning tales for decades.The book is quite different from the tv series, but that wasn't a negative. I will say that this was quite a traumatic tale. So many times I found myself yelling or frustrated at the turn of events or a characters actions.I was immersed, I was moved, I enjoyed. Simple.
—Jill
For some reason, my recollection of reading this book before was very vague. Therefore, I went into the rereading process without knowing what to expect at all. Boy, was I surprised. After finishing it, I think that The Dead Zone is one of King's best novels.The character development is superb and I think that Johnny Smith is possibly one of King's best developed characters. We also spend considerable time with his family members and the principle villains and these characters are all strongly developed and quirky in their own ways.The story, while not action packed, takes the reader completely into the world of Johnny Smith, a regular guy with a bit of psychic ability and some incredibly bad luck. A big part of the storyline revolves around the political climate of the 70's but it is written in such a way that it stays interesting throughout. I honestly did not experience any moments of boredom with the story.As I'm finding with several King books that I've re-read lately, The Dead Zone is not really a horror novel at all. There's a little bit of gore and graphic violence and of course King's choice of language is a bit colorful at times, but really this is a good suspense story with a bit of politics and psychic powers thrown in for good measure.All in all a GREAT novel. I highly recommend it.
—Stefan Yates
