Taking a Shining

Over the years, every now and then, I've read something written by Stephen King. For the most part, I've always found his books decent: enjoyable, but not so great that I want to rush out and read another right away. Last month, when my husband and I were taking a weekend at Rocky Mountain National Park and staying at the Stanley Hotel, it seemed only appropriate that I be reading The Shining while we were there.

When you actually read the book, it's clear that while King may have been inspired by the Stanley Hotel, he's not saying the Overlook Hotel is the Stanley. The geography is tweaked, both in where the Overlook is said to be located in Colorado, and in the layout of the hotel itself, which seems in King's imagination to be (appropriately) a more spacious and yet also claustrophobic funhouse. Not that I was looking to one-for-one the real place into my imagination as I read; it's more that it's a bit funny to see how hard the Stanley has leaned into "we're The Shining hotel!" schtick when it doesn't really match up all that much -- particularly in light of Stanley Kubrick's movie adaptation, which for many people is the definitive image of what the Overlook Hotel looks like, inside and out.

That's been an irritation for Stephen King over the years, who has many times complained about different aspects of Kubrick's film. The complaints have morphed at times, receding a bit when he oversaw his own TV mini-series adaptation in the late 1990s (actually filmed at the Stanley), then heating up again around the time he published his sequel novel, Doctor Sleep (soon to be a "major motion picture," as they say).

Reading the book, you can understand why the Kubrick movie doesn't sit right with him. The film has its fans (and I'm not here today to review it), but in many ways that feel significant not just to a defensive author, it is not the same thing. From the more gradual "infection" of Jack Torrance by madness, to the menacing topiary animals on the lawn, to a significant character living rather than dying, the book charts a very different path through a similar story.

I would not necessarily say that the book is "better," though. (For one thing, it's been long enough since I've seen the movie that my memory isn't all that clear.) I do think the book is rather longer (and more long-winded) than it needs to be. There's slow burn, and then there's a glacial pace, and there are moments when The Shining comes uncomfortably close to the latter for me. With only three significant characters for most of the tale (and only one setting), there's only so much to explore here. In its narrative construction, you could almost imagine The Shining as a tight one-act play... but Stephen King has conceived of it more like a generational epic that just happens to spend the bulk of its time on one generation.

On the other hand, in detailing such a vast and sordid history for the Overlook Hotel, King gets to stuff his novel full of various disturbing imagery, to a generally effective end. If this doesn't scare you, that might. Specters abound, each trying to tickle your imagination in a different way. This was written early enough in King's career that he might be said to still be playing with technique, an interesting context in which to consider this broad array of frights. But the hotel conceit holds it well; all sorts of ghosts might plausibly inhabit an old hotel.

This encounter with Stephen King went like most of the rest for me: I enjoyed the book well enough, but didn't feel an immediate pull to pick up another of his novels. A tingle, maybe? Specifically, in this case, because King's sequel, Doctor Sleep, is soon to be released as a movie. Because it's essentially impossible to read The Shining without having Kubrick's movie worm into the experience, it might be interesting to read King's sequel (to the book) before the sequel (to the movie) has any chance of doing the same.

In any case, I'd give the source of it all, Stephen King's original book, a B.