Is the radio play dead?

Writing radio plays, it seems to me, is a lost art.

Stephen King says that in his intro to the collection of short stories Everything's Eventual. He talks about how he was trying to write a radio play, something along the lines of of Orson Welles' treatment of H.G. Wells War of the Worlds, starting the play as fake news announcements. But he couldn't do it. It was reading more like an audiobook. Which is what lead him to make the above comment. Or in full:

Writing radio plays, it seems to me, is a lost art. We have lost the ability to see with our ears, although we had it once. I remember listening to some radio Foley guy tapping a hollow block of wood with his knuckles...and seeing Matt Dillon walking to the bar of the Long Branch Saloon in his dusty boots, clear as day. No more. Those days are gone.

It seems true. The only time I listen to the radio is the few times I'm in the car (I train it to work and try to walk as much as possible rather than take the car out) and then I tend to listen to music.

So radio no, but I do listen to some podcasts. Serial. Freakonomics. Welcome to Night Vale. Night Vale is probably the closest to a radio play, the type King is talking about, but it still isn't quite the same.

But then I found something that is like King's lost radio play. And oddly enough, it came from his son, Joe Hill.

Kayleigh over at Nylon Admiral posted about how Hill's Locke & Key was currently available as an audiobook for free. For those who don't know, L&K is a graphic novel, so my first reaction to a GRAPHIC novel being made into an audiobook was a confused Britney

but I went with it cos I like free. And it's treated like an audioplay. There are multiple actors playing the different parts. There are sound effects. We're not hearing them tell a story, like the World War Z audiobook does. The characters aren't narrating. It is what I imagine King's radio plays were.

When I first read the Everything's Eventual intro, I was thinking that King is probably right, that the radio play is dead because who's going to sit around listening to the radio again? I'm glad I was wrong.

And seriously, go download Locke & Key because it is FREE until November 4th so you have a few more days.

It was the human mind's final great parlor-trick: the perception of eternity in the place where you'd always expected to spend it

The opening line is from the story "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French" which is not really one of my favorite stories of this collection, but I like this quote.  I like this story while I'm reading it, but as soon as I read the last sentence I'm done.  Out of sight, out of mind as it were.  But I made note of this line while reading the story this time and even though the rest of this entry will be about the story "1408" I wanted to include that line. 

First I want to get it out of the way that I love this story.  It is certainly my favorite of this collection and absolutely in my top 5 favorite short stories.  When I got to the last sentence of this tale, it certainly didn't leave me like the deja vu story did.  As a matter of fact as soon as I read that last sentence I exhaled (I didn't realize I had been holding my breath) and then I immediately went back to the beginning to do it again.  The emotion kind of reminded me of a roller coaster: there's a lot of build up as you climb that first hill, you're grasping tight and screaming as you go around the loops and corkscrews and then when you pull back into the station there's relief and you just want to hop back in line and do it again.  That's how I feel about roller coasters anyway and it's how I see this story.

"1408" is King's "story about the Ghostly Room At The Inn" (457) and I can say this is the only story that really scares me.  The other stories here might interest me or revolt me but this is really the only one that gets under my skin.  I think this is because of that first hill, the build up in Olin's office.  Mike Enslin wants to stay in the hotel's haunted room for his book and Olin has been trying to prevent this and this meeting at the beginning of the story is his last attempt to talk Mike out of his quest.  But the build up is subtle.  You know King is setting you up for the horror to come, but the foreshadowing doesn't beat you over the head.

At one point during this intro Mike pulls out his mini-recorder but soon this move has turned on him.  "Usually [the mini-recorder's] little red eye seemed to be watching the other guy, daring him to say the wrong thing.  This evening it seemed to be looking at Mike himself." (466).  This is the first of many times in this story that simple electronics become this evil presence, but on the first reading I didn't consciously fear the mini-recorder.  I just saw this as the first of many things not going the way Mike had intended, but the fact that the mini-recorder is one of the initial sources as discomfort sets you up for that discomfort later in the room.

The build up is my favorite part of the book and it contributes to the fear and unease I feel when Mike actually makes it up to the haunted room.  But the fear comes from Mike's time in the room.  I think this is because the horrors mostly stay on the peripherals.  There's something not quite right you just catch out of the corner of your eye and slowly it builds and it's a gradual build up.  Like a frog in a pot of boiling water, you don't notice how everything is going wrong until it's too late to turn back.

King mentions in the intro to this story there is an audio recording of this in the compilation Blood and Smoke.  I'd love to hear this.  I think I'll avoid the movie because I'm afraid not only will it not live up to what I hope it will be (and really, I don't see how it could, regardless of how well it's made) and I don't want the movie to taint how I feel about the story.  There's no moral reason for not wanting to see the movie; I just want the story to keep scaring me.

Next up on the reading queue: I Was Told There Would Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

Title quote from page 455

King, Stephen.  “1408”.  Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales.  Pocket Books: New York, 2002

Newest acquisitions

I'm planning another entry or 2 on stories from Everything's Eventual.  By planning on I mean I haven't come up with them just yet.  I just finished the stories "Everything's Eventual" and "L.T.'s Theory of Pets" and I'm more than half way through "The Road Virus Heads North".  I'm surprised the book is taking me as long as it is, considering it's not much longer than the other books I've recently read and I've read it before.  You'd think this would go faster.  I had planned on writing an entry today, but I ended up going out for dinner, frozen yogurt and books instead.

I'm excited about my new books.  New books always excite me.  I like re-reading old favorites too, but any of these books could be a new favorite.  There's so much potential. 

Anyway, I picked up I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell  by Susanna Clarke.  I skimmed a couple of the essays by Crosley and there's a good chance I'll read this before I actually finish Everything's Eventual.  The little bit I read cracked me up.  I've had a few friends with trusted book tastes read and recommend Strange & Norrell and it was on sale so I decided to pick it up.

I also want to make mention of the awesome local bookstore we have in town, The Brookline Booksmith.  I do shop at the big boxes like Borders and Barnes & Nobel but I try to support the local places and the Booksmith is fantastic.  Great new selection, lots of used books, and fun events like Christopher Moore showing up. It's the type of place I would like to run.  Now if only they would get some of Jasper Fforde's stuff in.  Especially Shades of Grey once it comes out in paperback! 

Mr. Maybe They Will vs. Mr. Even If I Do

I'm slowly making my way through Everything's Eventual.  I've been traveling for work so my normal reading schedule has been thrown, but I'm back now so hopefully things will move a bit quicker.  I also think the fact that this is a book of short stories makes the process longer.  I feel like I can't jump right from one story into the next; I need some time to take in what I just read, some time to reflect.  Especially with a story I liked.  If a story really draws you in you become invested in the characters.  It's hard to finish reading their journey and then just move right into a whole new world.  Do you find yourself needing some reflection time after finishing a story, be it a short story or a grand epic?

So far I've read through the stories "Autopsy Room Four", "The Man in the Black Suit", "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away", "The Death of Jack Hamilton", "In the Deathroom" and "The Little Sisters of Eluria".  My favorite story is near the end of the book, but right now I'll focus on the story "In the Deathroom".

I wouldn't say this is one of my favorites of the book, but other than the one I've already written about it's the one I like the best out of the one's I listed above.  Especially as I just finished "The Little Sisters of Eluria" this afternoon, "the Deathroom" is a realistic horror tale.  At least as real as my extremely skewed-by-pop-culture view of South American dictatorship allows.  Maybe because I've heard/read/watched awful stories about unspeakable crimes happening in dictatorships all over that just the general premise of the story scares me.  Even the more ridiculous parts get this extra oomph of realism, simply because in my mind I could imagine this actually happening.  I even found myself playing along with the main character Fletcher as he considered his options Maybe They Will, such as "maybe they really will let [him] go" (144) and Even If I Do, such as even if he gets away where will he go.  During the "conversation" as Escobar puts it, I found myself thinking what would I do?  Would I lie?  Play dumb?  Try to play it strong?  Break down and tell everything I knew?  I mean, realistically I know what I would do.  I'd get killed.  It's pretty much that simple.  I found myself going the play dumb route and then getting myself killed.  It would be an even shorter story if I was the main character is the bottom line.  The game is certainly difficult to play after I already knew the outcome of the story, but I know the first time I was reading it I disagreed with everything he did but then realized he was right, or at least mostly right, and I was wrong.

King, Stephen.  “In the Deathroom”.  Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales.  Pocket Books: New York, 2002.

The nine-year-old boy I was had done nothing for which he might legitimately fear the devil either…and yet the Devil came

I like the method King used to choose the order of the stories.  Get a deck of cards, assign the stories a value Ace through King, shuffle and deal.  Whatever order they come out, that's the order they show up in.  I like the randomness of this method and I think it works out nicely, though I always prefer this sort of random order.  My iPod Shuffle gives me a similar experience, jumping around from Flight of the Conchords to Frank Sinatra to Buck-O-Nine to Rx Bandits to David Bowie to Bob Dylan*.  I get bored if there is some sort of thought out order to these things.  Every once in awhile I'll try to make a playlist that doesn't sound like I had a seizure while in the middle of creating it, but I always find myself bored with those mixes.

I was thinking of how to discuss this book.  Should I do brief entries on all of the stories?  Should I pick a couple I like?  Do a quick synopsis of all, but focus on some point I like?  I’ve decided I’ll focus on the stories I love, and perhaps make a quick mention of the other stories I like.  Or maybe I’ll make one entry dedicated to quick synopsis of the stories I like.  Who knows?  I’ll just play it by ear. It lets me be as ADD as I'd like.

“The Man in the Black Suit” is among my favorites of this collection.  It’s not my absolute favorite but I’ll get to that one in a later entry.  In his description at the end of the story King describes this tale as “a rather humdrum folktale told in pedestrian language” (68). I don’t know that it feels exactly like a folktale, with the exception of the time period, nor does the language feel pedestrian; modern sure.  It certainly doesn’t read like a Hawthorne piece, which King used as inspiration for this story and in my mind this is certainly not a criticism of the piece.  I always like the idea of early American Lit, the idea of Hawthorne, but when I actually read it I find myself so distracted by the language I have trouble fully appreciating the story.  Here I can completely focus on the tale without the distraction.  I’m sure this just means I’m not working hard enough at Hawthorne, but I’ve spent plenty of time getting used to Elizabethan English that I don’t feel too much need to work too hard on another dead dialect. 

Back to the story!  Sorry, I easily get off topic.  I think it’s the innocence of the story that I enjoy so much.  It’s early 1900’s and the main character, Gary, who meets the man in the black suit, is only 9 years old at the time of the story though he is telling the story as an old man.  Had Gary been older, even if only by a couple years, the story would have progressed much differently and certainly much more violently.  Who but a child would offer the Devil a freshly caught fish when the Devil tells you he’s hungry?  Perhaps someone older than a child wouldn’t have met a man in black.  He wouldn’t have believed and accepted the Devil would just walk out of the forest and start talking to him.  It’s true that Gary is telling the story as an old man who clearly still believes in the Devil but this is only because as a youngster he was confronted with this reality.  The horror of the story really comes from this belief Gary carries with him through old age.  He writes his story down to try to release himself from these memories but he fears he’ll meet the Devil again when he shuffles off this mortal coil.  There’s a line at the end of the story, the line I used as the title that describes the fear succinctly.  “The nine-year-old boy I was had done nothing for which he might legitimately fear the devil either…and yet the Devil came” (67).  It’s the fact that even living a good and innocent life cannot necessarily save you from the Devil.

King, Stephen.  “The Man in the Black Suit”.  Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales.  Pocket Books: New York, 2002.

*I actually did an iTunes shuffle for this, so if you're wondering what songs came up here you go!

Flight of the Conchords "Hip Hopopotamus Meets the Rhymenoceros"

Frank Sinatra "Young at Heart"

Buck-O-Nine "Who Are They?"

Rx Bandits "Only for the Night"

David Bowie "China Girl"

Bob Dylan "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"