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Astral Avenue 01
From Rhode Island: Birthplace of Mr. Potato-head... it's
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ASTRAL AVENUE
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Number 1 November 1986 "Eff the ineffable!"
JUDGEMENT IN ALL THINGS
TOPICS OF PRESENT INTEREST
Right Up to Date
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
Astral Avenue is an actual Providence street located not far from our
home. Short, tree-lined, unprepossessing, it and its inhabitants have never
yet exhibited any overt trace of Kozmic Konsciousness. And yet... light
fractures strangely there on a summer's day; mailmen have been seen to enter
and SKIP SOME HOUSES; LOVECRAFT NEVER WALKED ON IT; and there are STRAY DOGS
ROAMING FREE. We wonder....
KING OF AMERICA
"He thought he was the King of America/ Where they pour Coca Cola just like
vintage wine/ Now I try hard not to become hysterical/ But I'm not sure if
I am laughing or crying." -- Elvis Costello
I do not wish to indict Stephen King's story in the October issue of
OMNI ("The End of the Whole Mess") simply because it is a lame, boneheaded,
implausible farrago of old ideas and cliches. After all, plenty of
momentarily captivating SF had been written based on stale or improbable
notions (A. E. Van V.: Q.E.D.). No, what I object to about King's story is
that it is patently the work of a man who -- at this stage of his career,
after however many best-selling words -- still cannot write with any degree
of competence larger than that of an apprentice hack.
I identify three major failings in King's writings, which I'll try to
illustrate from this one story, where examples abound. The reader himself is
invited to look for instances in King's novels.
1). King has only one voice.
By this, I do not mean that all his fiction is identifiable as
emanating from the same man. That is hardly a flaw. No, I mean that no
matter how a King story is narrated -- first person, as here, or omniscient
third person -- no matter how many characters are involved (basically two
here, casts of thousands elsewhere), EVERY DESCRIPTION, EVERY WORD OF
DIALOGUE, IS FILTERED BLATANTLY THROUGH KING'S OWN SET OF QUIRKS. There is
no differentiation of characters in a King story, there are no perceptions
evident but his. King inhabits a one-man universe.
"T.E.O.T.W.M." features two brothers: one ostensibly a bright, but
normal writer; the other a "genius." Their speech, mannerisms, and actions
are identical.
WRITER: "Good shit, too."
GENIUS: "...bullshit...bullshit."
WRITER: "...some weird shit..."
GENIUS: "Shit..."
Is this some hidden commentary on the writer-narrator's lack of talent,
or how he and his brother think alike? I doubt it. What it is, is Stephen
King talking as he would aloud. (Compare this laughable portrait of a
genius, by the way, to Greg Bear's superior work in BLOOD MUSIC, which has
much the same theme as the King story.)
Let's look at some more examples of how a King story is like being
trapped in an empty room with the author himself.
The narrator is born in 1980; his brother in '87. But if you think they
exhibit consciousnesses formed by the events of the 'eighties and 'nineties,
forget it. They talk just like King, exhibiting all his by-now familiar
tics: roots or retro music (Chuck Berry, Youngbloods, George Jones);
baseball stars from two or three decades in the story's past (Catfish Hunter,
Ron Guidry); LSD; old TV shows (WILD KINGDOM, ANDY OF MAYBERRY); comics
(Peanuts); toys (Paddington Bear, American Flyer wagon); celebrities (Rodney
Dangerfield). The depressing list goes on.
If King had really wanted to limn characters born in the 'eighties, he
could have stuck with all these same interests, but just updated them. Teddy
Ruxpin instead of Paddington, different rock stars, etc. But that would have
been too much work. And it wouldn't have reflected King's own youth, his
only imaginative source.
2). King's figurative writing and his literal/descriptive writing fail
to seduce or convince the reader, and frequently accomplish just the reverse.
King employs the same metaphors over and over and over. Mostly they
involve excretion or fearful sex. "Asshole," "pissing in their pants," "pass
a mental kidney stone," "social diseases," "AIDS virus," "my back teeth are
floating," "potty trained," "our dad farted so much," "I want whores to
douche in it." And let us not forget the "shit" leitmotif.
But I can't go on. After a while, it's like fill-in-the-blank: if you
can think of a urogenital image, King'll use it. Perhaps this is some grand
Yeatsian "Love has pitched its temples in the place of excrement" riff. Yeah,
and maybe Billy Idol now houses the spirit of John Lennon. These aren't
planned tropes, they're psychoanalytic free-association -- and they're simply
embarrassing.
As for his attempts at transcribing reality in a convincing manner, King
fails because he only knows three tactics: a) make it "cute"; b) make it
"gross" (a favorite King word, used in "T.E.O.T.W.M."); c) make it "hip."
All three stratagems are miserable substitutes for simply observing
reality and transcribing accurately. CUTE: "genny" for generator; "footy
pajamas"; "Bow-Wow" for Howard. GROSS: "died raving and pissing"; "his
body... impaling itself on a tree"; "some senile farmer got pissed at a pig
and hit him with a shovel". HIP: "acid flashback"; "the goddamnedest
popskull"; "a big bulldyke who smokes Odie Perodie cigars" (my fave).
King seems to believe that by employing these three tactics he will
create fiction that allows him to live up to his undeserved rep as a
popculture maven, someone who has his finger on the pulse of America. To me,
that describes William Burroughs and his work. Who King sounds like is
Johnny Carson. The same mentality is evident: funny words like "Albanian"
and "nostril hair" automatically rate a laff.
3). King has no sense of pace, plotting, or climax.
This is a familiar charge against the man, and I will not belabor it
here. I only direct your attention to the ostensibly thrilling but draggy
passage about the boy genius's glider, and the interminable "Flowers for
Algernon" ending.
And although King seems to realize his lack of brevity -- "Shit, I
can't afford these digressions" -- he does nothing about it, perhaps
realizing, rightly so, that he hasn't developed (and probably never will, at
this point) the skills to shape his fiction consciously, and must rely on
whatever tepid lava is vomited up.
(Also note this Freudian slip: "Sometimes his syntax was garbled and
his modifiers misplaced... such flaws... plague most writers all their
lives.")
King is the F. Marion Crawford of our day. His work is like
pigeontracks in cement: arbitrary, but with a semblance of intention. But
cement is just sand and water, and crumbles eventually.
AVEDON ASKED HER TO POSE, BUT SHE ATE HIM
A recent frontpage article in the Arts section of the Sunday NEW YORK
TIMES mentioned a "life-size sculpture of the Sphinx." Is this one of New
Journalism's fictional sources?
"GER--? GER--? DOES IT MEAN 'PROTO'?"
Has anyone else noticed that a prominent Soviet spokesman is named
"Gerasimov"? Who knows Russian out there? Does "asimov" mean something, and
is "ger" a prefix? What if "asimov" is the Russian word for some kinda slug
or sumpin? We demand to know!
GRAFFITO OF THE MONTH
"Dyslexics of the world, untie!"
FREEFLOATING INVECTIVE: PASS IT ON
"The sheikh of my quarter is a creature of such horrible ugliness that
I doubt not he was born from the coupling of a hyena and a pig. His approach
is pestilential; for his mouth is no ordinary mouth, but rather a dirty anus
like the hole of a privy; his fish-colored eyes pop sideways; his scabby lips
are like a venereal sore and jet out spittle when he speaks; his ears are a
sow's ears; his flabby painted cheeks are like an old ape's bottom; his teeth
have fallen from his jaws from eating filth; his body is fretted with every
foul disease of the earth; as for his anus -- well, he has not got one: for
he has so long given himself to be a ditch for the tools of donkey-boys,
nightmen, and sweepers, that his arsegut has rotted away and is now a cave
stuffed with cotton swabs to prevent his tripes from falling out." -- 1001
Nites, "The Tale of the Sweeper
Wakened."
ASTRAL AVENUE -- Paul Di Filippo
2 Poplar Street
Providence, RI 02906
