I took The Shining down from its shelf a few days before Halloween, as it seemed a seasonally-appropriate read. It had sat there for years, Danny Torrance’s blank face staring out from its silver spine, asking me what I was afraid of, what I was waiting for. This will be much different from the movie, it said. Everybody knows how much Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick’s film. “I think he wants to hurt people with this movie,” isn’t that what King said? And besides, it went on, you haven’t seen it in 15 years.
Book-jacket Danny had a point. And not only was it almost Halloween, but I’d just finished Jack Handey’s brilliantly asinine, irresponsibly funny The Stench of Honolulu. Among the books I’d recently read were Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers, Dean King’s Skeletons on the Zahara, and Bill Beverly’s Dodgers. None of these were exactly “fun,” but they were entertainments, with none of the claustrophobic dread I associated with The Shining. I needed a change of pace, and I couldn’t avoid King’s novel any longer. It was time to get down to brass tacks.
And within the first few chapters, it became clear that The Shining was all brass tacks — sharp, blunt, and efficient. I most enjoy King when he scraps his leavening impulses — inexplicable mysticism, mediocre humor, saccharine endings — and lets the darkness rip. The Long Walk and Gerald’s Game are two of his best because almost no light shines through them, and even The Stand — in which, after a trillion pages, good ultimately prevails — ends on a demoralizing note. As a fan of Kubrick’s film, I knew what I was getting myself into, but King’s book was entirely different, a much more human — and therefore, more unsettling — family drama.
As I made my way through, another unsettling drama — the 2016 presidential campaign — was mercifully winding down, and until election night, The Shining was just a way to escape the noise. What better way to distance myself from Donald Trump’s noxiousness than to read about an eerily quiet, snowed-in hotel, written decades before the terms “basket of deplorables” and “nasty woman” entered the vernacular?
Then, early on November 9th, Donald Trump fucking won. I was about 80 pages from the end of The Shining, and like everything else — large and small, consequential and irrelevant — in the hours and days afterwards, the tenor of the novel changed. I was so unmoored by his victory — by the very notion that someone so vile could be so richly rewarded — that the book and reality engaged in a queasy merge. In The Shining, King conjured a world — albeit limited to the grounds of the Overlook Hotel — in which everything was wrong. Hedge animals came alive; dead guests reappeared; fathers tried to kill their families. Having a sociopathic pussy-grabber as president had more in common with that world than the one I’d been living in.
The Shining is about many things — parental love, the strictures of family, alcohol abuse — but it is mainly about the perils of the mind. In The Shining, there is nothing more dangerous than an unstable thought allowed. And in the wake of the election, it became clear that our minds — both individually and collectively — had become territories as unsafe as anything King could muster. Trump’s more cartoonish supporters had become no less delusional than Jack Torrance, who spends the latter part of The Shining piss-drunk on imaginary gin. Those voters’ nihilism “sent a message,” we were told — as if that message would improve a goddamn thing.
Those of us crushed by the nation’s turn, meanwhile, became dazed Wendy Torrances, at once unwilling to believe what was happening and unable to dismiss it. The hornet’s nest that had sat empty and fumigated — The New York Times puts Clinton’s chances at 85 percent, you know — was suddenly abuzz. All of us — Trump and Clinton supporters both — had become untethered from reality. Or, more accurately, we were all now yoked to a reality that couldn’t possibly be real.
In the end, King’s Shining was much more hopeful than the film, the shadow of which it deserves to escape. This isn’t surprising; King seems, at heart, a warm and caring person, while Kubrick was by all accounts a petty tyrant of his own. So amid my post-election grief, I was heartened by the novel’s ending, which qualifies as “happy” without, as often happens in King — I’m looking at you, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon — cheapening its preceding horrors. And that seems about as good as I can ask for from the next four years: to emerge from the ordeal damaged but still whole. This is the limit of my optimism at the end of 2016. Because we’re all in The Shining now.
More from A Year in Reading 2016
Do you love Year in Reading and the amazing books and arts content that The Millions produces year round? We are asking readers for support to ensure that The Millions can stay vibrant for years to come. Please click here to learn about several simple ways you can support The Millions now.
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: I wrestled a bit with putting this one on because he’s getting much respect from all over the place. But it’s well-deserved. This book sprawls, it brawls, it doesn’t apologize, it enlightens and delights. A welcome return from a major talent.
Halfway House by Katharine Noel: Remember not wanting to put a book down? Sometimes I forget the simple pleasure of a book that is so beautifully crafted, so alive, that I simply can’t do anything else until I’m done reading it. This first novel reminded me of what a great feeling that is. I loved it so much that I emailed the author – that’s when I know it’s love.
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman: A really, really, really sexy book that is also an impressive work of literature. If you’ve ever been young and desperate to get your hands on the object of your desire (and lucky enough to find that he or she can’t keep his or her hands off of you either), you’ll vibe to this love story.
The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter. Full disclosure: I am lucky enough to count Charlie Baxter as a friend, which is how I came by an ARC of this novel, to be published by Pantheon in February 2008. But just ’cause he’s my bud doesn’t mean I don’t know a hell of a book when I read one. Both a meditation on identity and on the nature of love, The Soul Thief is sexy, funny, romantic (without being sentimental) and strange (in the best of ways). It’s both a return to Baxter’s deepest preoccupations as a writer and an exhilarating departure from them. We already know he’s one of our best fiction writers. Don’t miss this one when it comes out.
Surprising for her omission of "Man Gone Down" by Michael Thomas, probably my favorite novel of the year and one of the New York Times editors' 10 Best Books of 2007. Maybe she doesn't want to appear too biased because she mentioned it in her NY Times editorial last July.
In last week's review of Faint Praise by Gail Pool, James Wolcott quotes Pool on the positive influence that book reviewers can have: "Their commentary influences not only literary standards but also cultural attitudes, helping to shape what we think about many issues and whether we think about certain issues at all."
Man Gone Down received no publicity and was published only in paperback by Grove, so I think the NY Times editors made a good call in giving this book some well-deserved attention.
Ooh, I can't wait for that new Charles Baxter!
Man Gone Down is an extremely fine novel but it wasn't one of my *very* favorites that I read in 2007. As I made clear in my initial comments, I used my level of immediate personal excitement in making this very idiosyncratic short list. This is not the "best" of anything.
I'm a little disturbed by the use of the word "surprising" about its absence from my list for two reasons: first, because the piece I wrote for the NYTBR was a reported essay, not an editorial, in which I spoke to Morgan Entrekin, an editor from Grove (not Michael's editor) and made no particular mention of Man Gone Down except as a book they had published this year that was prominently reviewed in the NYTBR (which, as I pointed out, hadn't prominently reviewed a work of fiction by a black man in some time)
Two: I hope, hope, hope this isn't true and it may be a bit of the racial discomfort/paranoia that comes with being a black person in America but I really hope that the commenter isn't surprised I didn't mention Thomas because he and I are the same race. This crossed my mind because…well, why isn't it "surprising" that none of the other posters (none of whom are black) mentioned it. All of our lists are idiosyncratic and highly personal. It would really sadden me if race is expected, by anyone, to be part of my criteria. It certainly isn't part of the critieria if you're not black.
Regardless of what "Steve" intended with his comment, there is no paranoia in Martha's tentative response to his words. The fact remains that writers of color have been, and still are, marginalized and isolated into our own special sections of this literary world we work within and outside of. The mainstream voice of the dominant white male has begun to lose its edge in this diversifying world, and what can white writers do now but step into the world people of color inhabit, and how can they truly inhabit what isn't their world but in the one way they can, by creating and controlling the very forums we are allowed to speak in and through. Dave Eggers co-opted the story of a Sudanese man and called it an "autobiography" and failed to let this man's voice, his African voice, live through his own story. The fact that 100% of proceeds went to a non-profit seems to have dulled any real resistance to what Eggers actually has done in taking this story and this man's history and creating a "composite" and slapping the gimmicky "autobiography" title on the front and then letting his own imagination dictate what we know of this Sudanese man's story. Ask any African whether it is an African story and you will hear at best, confusion, and most likely a 'no', and therein lies the truth of what happened to this man's story.
Martha, your hesitation to see what this comment by Steve represents is commendable, but we write in a world that cannot seem to see us outside of race. This is why you will have readings given by so-called progressive hosts that pair African-American writers together when it would be more daring, more in tune with the world we all interact and live in, if different races and varied voices were allowed to live and breathe and expand in the same space.
I was once asked to take part in a reading organized by a writer who prided himself on his progressive politics. I found out he'd paired me with another African-American writer. (And it wasn't even Black History Month) I was unable to take part, it turned out, so declined the invitation. This host could not think outside the racially confining box he'd established for the night and asked ANOTHER African-American writer to read with the already scheduled headlining African-American writer. That second writer also respectfully declined. We will continue to be marginalized until we refuse to let our voices and words be co-opted and pigeonholed by the very same people who feel they're doing us a favor by giving us a forum. The fact is that after all these hip, gimmicky literary works have run their course, people, a la Eggers, will realize that they need to find a story to tell, that they've relied on slick mental somersaults and called it literature and they will look to us and our stories to give their words weight and heart, and my hope is that we will deny them this right to our stories and we will continue to fight for the right to speak and read alongside writers who balance and challenge and create a dialogue with our words, regardless of color.
Thanks Anonymous, for your support. I'm glad I said something. I appreciate your comments as well.