The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Stephen King. De klassiekers van toen ik nog klein was: Salem's Lot, Carrie, The Stand, The Shining, Cujo, Christin, Pet Sematary en zoveel meer. De verfilmingen – The Green Mile, Running Man, Misery, Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, en natuurlijk alle verfilmde klassiekers. De eindeloze Dark Tower-reeks, warts and all.

En die keer dat hij een auto-ongeluk had en dat hij bijna dood was en dat hij zei dat hij niet meer zou schrijven, maar hoera! dat hij dan toch weer schreef.

Het laatste boek dat ik van hem las was 11/22/63, en okay, misschien was het een beetje aan de lange kant, maar miljaar die mens kan schrijven. Oh zeker, de literaire snobs zullen allemaal in koor “genre-fictie!” roepen: fuck literaire snobs. King schrijft griezelig echte mensen, zelfs als ze dood zijn en in een soort Kafkaiaans vagevuur tussen dood en reïncarnatie zitten. Een paar zinnen en de persoon staat er. Zelfs een miljardair zijn met chronische pijn, en zelfs de laatste overlevende van een Indiana Jones meets The Hunting of the Snark-verhaal, in een verhaal in dichtvorm.

Twintig verhalen in deze bundel, en dat zijn er misschien wel een aantal teveel. Of beter: dit was misschien beter een aantal verschillende bundels geweest, want nu gaat het thematisch bijzonder over en weer. Er zitten ‘klassieke' King-verhalen in (Mile 81, die bijna zelfparodie lijkt, ruwweg over een auto die mensen opeet), er zit een novelle in die op zich zou kunnen staan (Ur, over een verkeerd geleverde Kindle waarmee boeken uit parallele universa kunnen besteld worden, en die actua uit de toekomst bevat), en er is een hele reeks verhalen die helemaal niets bovennatuurlijks hebben.

Batman and Robin Have an Altercation (verkeersagressie, en een man en zijn oude vader die Alzheimer's heeft), A Death (sheriff die zich voorbereidt op de ophanging van iemand die misschien wel onschuldig is), Summer Thunder (post-apocalyptisch en melancholisch, iedereen is dood of gaat dood), Under the Weather (al van de eerste paragraaf weten we dat het een man is waarvan de vrouw gestorven is, maar hij weet het zelf niet, of wil het niet weten) – veel van de beste verhalen gaan over de dood, en over hoe alledaags het allemaal is.

Bij wijze van introductie schrijft King bij elk verhaal iets over het ontstaan ervan, of de context. Ik ben er niet uit of dat een goed dan wel een slecht idee was. Aan de ene kant blijf ik er van overtuigd dat het een goed idee is om een werk los van zijn auteur te zien (anders zou ik het heel moeilijk krijgen bij pakweg Ender's Game van de ondertussen bijna cryptofascist Orson Scott Card, of bij de magische dingen van Bisqwit), aan de andere kant vind ik het fascinerend om de achtergrond achter de achtergrond te weten te komen.

Hm. Mixed bag, dus. Maar wel met een aantal zeer goede stukken. De beste verhalen zijn uitstekend, en zelfs in de minder goede verhalen zitten uitstekende personages.

Narrators can make or break an audiobook. Some of these narrators are good, but others are just downright bad. Maybe it has to do with the way the stories are written.

Some stories were great. Others were hit or miss. Favorites were Mile 81, and Bad Little Kid.

Most were not scary. They were more oddities. I probably wouldn't re-read most of these stories. The only exceptions are the two listed above.

Here is yet another Stephen King short story-collection. Those have been hit or miss for me in the past (as have the novels), with Night Shift and Skeleton Crew as the outstanding works, freakishly scary on a lot of levels. Later, there were Nightmares & Dreamscapes and Everything's Eventual, two collections I couldn't get into – especially EE. Different Seasons, Four Past Midnight and Full Dark, No Stars are overall very good stories, with the novella The Langoliers being one of my absolute favourites. Just After Sunset proved that King could still scare the s**t out of us while tugging at our heart strings. I also loved how he wrote a lot about the problems of getting older.
And now we have The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, which I really looked forward to, so I'm sad to say that it is a mixed bag.

There may be slight spoilers in the following.

Mile 81: A monster car that eats people. Yes, you read that right. It's a very juvenile and silly story, without any scares or reflections on the human condition.

Premium Harmony: A dysfunctional couple going to the supermarket. Of course something happens that changes the husband's life and though the story is somewhat melancholic, it never really hits home.

Batman and Robin Have an Altercation: A man and his Alzheimer-ridden father confronts a road ragey guy. Had some sweet elements but just peters out.

The Dune: An old judge discovers a dune on a remote island where upon names are written, names of people who will die shortly after. I liked the idea a lot, but it couls have been so much more and it was extremely predictable.

Bad Little Kid: This may be my favourite story in this collection. A kid shows up several times during a man's lifetime and everytime, something bad or violent happens. This story really had a surreal and tense feeling.

A Death: A western murder mystery. Rather boring and silly.

The Bone Church: A poem which didn't make a lick of sense to me.

Morality: A couple in financial trouble gets a proposition that can erase all their problems. I liked this story, though the wife's later reaction to it all seemed a little cartoonish.

Afterlife: A man dies and is given the choice to pass on or go back and live his life again in every, little detail. Again, loved the idea but the execution lacked substance.

Ur: Read this one a year or two ago on my Kindle for PC, and didn't really get into it, but this time I really liked it. Ironically, this story is about a Kindle that has access to parallel worlds, and I can't seem to get into a book when using an electronic device for reading it.

Herman Wouk Is Still Alive: Two trailer trash women go on a drunken road trip with their kids in the back seat. I kinda liked this one, it was tense, but it just ends too sudden.

Under the Weather: A ”love story” with a dark twist. Grim and somewhat sad.

Blockade Billy: A baseball story. I gave it a chance, read one third of it and gave up. I have no interest in sports whatsoever.

Mister Yummy: An old man at a retirement home tells his friend that he's seeing some version of the grim reaper, in the shape of a young guy he and his gay friends lusted after when they were young. Again, King writes very well about people at the end of their lives, but this story also lacked bite.

Tommy: Another poem about a friend thinking about one of his dead friends. Better than The Bone Church, but a little meh.

The Little Green God of Agony: A man has been in an accident and can't seem to get well, so he gets a priest to get rid of this ”pain demon” inside him. This is more of a straight-up horror story, just without any scares. And a silly conclusion.

That Bus Is Another World: A man is on his way to New York City for a job interview, when things start to go wrong and he sees something that forced him to make a moral choice. I liked the set-up of this and it would have benefitted from being fleshed out.

Obits: A man discovers that he can kill people by writing fictional orbituaries. I liked this one as well, though it didn't quite go as far as I wanted it to.

Drunken Fireworks: A man and his mother start a fireworks competition every year on July 4th, with the people across the lake from them. This, I guess, was more of a dark comedy that didn't go all out. It has the honour, though, of being the only story in this collection that had a line that made me laugh out loud.

Summer Thunder: The end of the world. This one was one of the best, not scary, but chilling and rather melancholic.


While King is a gifted writer, and I liked the fact that this collection dealt a lot with moral choices and their complications, none of the stories really hit home.
Overall I will give this collection 2½ stars, rounding up to three, because of the cool cover and the endless hours of entertainment King has given me in the past.

Mai mult un 3.5/5

Mile 81 - 3
Premium Harmony - 3
Batman and Robin - 4
The Dune - 4
Bad Little Kid - 5
A Death - 4
The Bone Church - 2
Morality - 4
Afterlife - 3
Ur - 3
Herman Wouk - 2
Under The Weather - 4
Blockade Billy - 4
Mister Yummy - 2
Tommy - 2
The Little Green God of Agony - 4
That Bus is Another World - 3
Obits - 3
Drunken Fireworks - 5
Summer Thunder - 4

Total - 3.4

I think I prefer King's shorter works, because often with his novels I find he can go on and on and on, run out of steam and then slap a crappy ending on it. With shorter works, at least the bad endings come before you've invested so much in the story.

Not that he's a bad writer - in fact, it's because you can get so lost in the worlds he creates that the bad endings are like a slap in the face.

(I found it quite funny to find, in one of the story ‘intros', a complaint from the author that the TV movie ‘I Bury The Living' was wrecked by its denouement, and his wish that someone would remake and fix it. How about you rewrite the end of Needful Things, then, Steve?!)

His ability to sketch a scene or a character with a few strokes is on display in this volume, as is his imagination, some fantastic ideas (what if...) and - dare I say it - even one killer ending. He also showcases that he doesn't have to rely on horror or sci-fi to tell a good tale. In fact, all of my favourites here are just these kind of stories: character studies.

‘Morality' is a brilliant thought experiment riffing on the old premise: what would you do for a million dollars? ‘Premium Harmony' and ‘Herman Wouk is Still Alive' are two stunning little vignettes of desperate lives and sorry ends.

‘Under the Weather' is a great little tale of delusion (with the second best ending of the book); ‘Blockade Billy' is a proper Boys Own sporting adventure, (with a Kingian twist); and ‘Drunken Fireworks' is a pretty hilarious tale of back country one-upmanship.

I also enjoyed his attempt at poetry in the style of the Ancient Mariner: ‘The Bone Church' telling the maniacal tale of death and hallucinations deep in the jungle, in the voice of a man driven mad by the experience and faring worse than those who never made it back.

Most of the ‘typical' King stories here were of course entertaining and fun to read (a Kindle that predicts the future, a malevolent devil in the guise of a small boy, a monster car from another dimension) but for me, the glory of this collection are the stories that ditch the silly gimmicks and get to the heart of who we are.

King includes an anecdote about meeting a lady in the supermarket who recognises him as the author of “scary stories” that she doesn't care for. Instead she prefers “uplifting stories, like ‘Shawshank Redemption'”.

“I wrote that, too” he says.

“No you didn't” the lady replies, and goes on her way.

This sums up how I feel about this book, and perhaps King in general. He has such capacity for hope and beauty and can startle us with a view of ourselves and the human condition (I think this is why his horror leaves us so breathless and engaged) - but this element of his range is often lost or ignored in the majority of his books.

King clearly writes what he loves, and that, mainly, is horror. But it's a shame that his chosen genre and populist tag overshadows his talents, and that critics and fans alike overlook these less fantastical revelations of his skill.

This collection is aptly titled - a lot of the stories end in gruesome and bitter ways. In recent years, King's style has long since changed from the rural characterizations of his 1970s early work to a more grand guignol approach. Some will like that, and I can enjoy it in small doses. The most positive aspect of King's short stories are the tight, controlled, on-point writing within the confined space. Personally, I think his longer novels could stand some more aggressive editing. His short stories - especially this collection - seem to have gone through a round or two of outside influence.and I think that helped a lot. In a story like “Herman Wouk is Still Alive,” the bitter ending needs to get wrapped up with a punch, and that happens here. I think that impact would have been lost in an extra 10 pages, for instance (I also read this story in its original magazine appearance, and something about it being in a book gives the narrative more weight...I was not as unsettled by the ending in the magazine, as I was here. Strange...).

“A Death,” I think will appeal to King's longest-running fans. It's the story that captures the rural-speak “Night Shift” vibe the closest. “That Bus is Another World” is close to the grim view a lot of the stories in “Skeleton Crew” had - it's not supernatural, not even horrible in a direct, specific, “it's happening to me” way - it's the ‘distance' from the horror that makes it terrible. If that makes sense.. “Mile 81” is sort of like “Mrs Todd's Shortcut,” except not so benign.

Very few of the stories are straight-up supernatural. Ultimately, it's four stars for me because of that. I loved “Night Shift,” for example, because of the supernatural/horror elements of the stories. They weren't “real.” This collection IS real - these events, mostly, COULD happen. And frankly, that took some of the fun away for me - which isn't to say I don't appreciate the writing. As Stephen King has gotten older he's much more attracted by the grimness of what's right in front of him, rather than fictional tales of zombies or vampires. We see that not just in these stories, but his new “Finder's Keepers” trilogy, which is mostly a real-world setting, with a little supernatural influence. That same vibe is through most of these stories.

But I like ghost stories where I don't have to think that world doesn't actually exist. I like horror of creatures beyond my imagination that might not actually show up to murder me (I really liked “Revival,” which WAS old-school horror)...and these stories by King are a world that could/does/will exist - and that IS a very true bazaar of bad dreams!

Ik vond dit boek ergens op zolder. Waarschijnlijk ergens gekocht in 2015, maar nooit gelezen. Zonde, wat het is prima leesvoer. Wat het eigenlijk altijd is als je een boek van King in je handen hebt. Want het valt nooit tegen. Een verzameling van heerlijk diverse verhalen, de ene kort en de ander iets langer. Het blijft me verbazen hoe King in 20 tot 40 pagina's zo'n dijk van een verhaal kan schrijven. Echt genoten van de 14 dagen dat ik hier doorheen ben geschoten. Toch maar zoeken naar nog meer vergeten parels.