About a year ago I found myself at the Tucson Festival of Books and came across an old copy of Stephen King’s Bachman Books, which I promptly purchased. I’d lost my copy years before, and hadn’t seen these four novellas packaged together for a long while.
by Josh Trapani
About a year ago I found myself at the Tucson Festival of Books and came across an old copy of Stephen King’s Bachman Books, which I promptly purchased. I’d lost my copy years before, and hadn’t seen these four novellas packaged together for a long while.
The reason why, I later learned, is that Stephen King pulled one of them, Rage, from publication after four school shooters cited it in reference to their crimes. Originally written when he was himself in high school (later rewritten before its publication in 1977; the collection I bought in Tucson is from 1985), Rage is the story of a high school kid – bullied at school, abused at home – who shoots his algebra teacher and takes his class hostage.
Last week Galleycat reported that King released a Kindle Single called Guns talking about his decision and about gun violence more generally. Their quote from King – that Rage was “a can of gasoline [left] where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it” – kind of pissed me off. So even Stephen King is censoring himself these days?
Some context: I’ve been a King fan since I was about 12. I read The Bachman Books when I was in high school myself and – how shall I phrase it: not the happiest young man in any facet of my life, maybe? It resonated with me at the time like very little literature that wasn’t of the escapist Tolkien-esque fantasy variety. There were no doubt thousands of kids like me who found in this work not a suggestion for action but the comfort that there was some grownup out there who understood, in King’s own words, the “bullied underclass.” Did I write some stories at the time that were revenge fantasies in the same style? Heck yeah, but they were therapeutic, a channel for my … well, rage is the best word, that wasn’t going to hurt anybody. They were a way to exert some control in a world where I had so little.
So I purchased King’s Single prepared to read a lengthy self-justification, maybe even (cringe) an apology. Instead, I came away embarrassed at underestimating the guy. After all this time, you’d think I’d know better. As King writes, “The violent actions and emotions portrayed in Rage were drawn directly from the high school life I was living five days a week, nine months of the year. The book told unpleasant truths, and anyone who doesn’t feel a qualm of regret at throwing a blanket over the truth is an asshole with no conscience.”
He discusses the larger problem of gun violence and the sham that passes for political discussion of gun control. He dissects, and nails, the whole cycle of events around tragedies like Newtown or Aurora, from the first breaking news to peak 24-7 coverage to the story being shuffled off to the sidelines as no real action gets taken. He shows how the “culture of violence” stuff the NRA touts as the real cause of such crimes is nonsense and doesn’t match the books, movies, even video games that are most popular with Americans.
It’s worth a read, especially for the cognitive dissonance that King calls out. And such dissonance is not restricted to this issue. H.P. Lovecraft couldn’t possibly have envisioned the distinctly uncosmic horror of 21st century U.S. political discourse when he wrote: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
King also mentions the deep-seated paranoia of the government at the heart of the resistance to sensible gun control – paranoia that is without base. It made me think of Jon Stewart’s recent interview with General Stanley McChrystal. Watch at 2:00. If we don’t trust our military institutions not to take over the country, Stewart asks (I’m paraphrasing), haven’t we already lost?
Such paranoia is also futile. Stewart says (3:15): “My guess is, even with [paranoid gun nuts’] AK-47s, the U.S. military, if it chose to, would do pretty well in that fight.”
Watch McChrystal’s face. As Stephen King might say: that’s how it shakes out.
