Rereading Stephen King: week 18 – The Talisman
I couldn't remember a word of this. It was bound to happen sooner or later: a book I'd read which had slipped entirely through my memory. Sometimes I find a book is loose and hazy in my memory – I have a bad memory, and while overarching plots usually stick for everything I've read, details are often significantly more vague – but for The Talisman, I couldn't remember anything. I have the original copy; I know it had a sequel, in 2001's Black House; and I know that, since it was written, it's become more and more entwined within the Dark Tower mythos that runs through so many of King's novels. But everything else? Gone.
At the tail-end of the 1970s, Stephen King and Peter Straub – an American horror novelist, and friend of King's – decided to write a novel together. It took them four years to get started, and when they did, it was essentially writing in turns: doing the beginning and the end together, and then passing the narrative back and forth between themselves in a writing relay. The book's germ was an idea that King had had in college.It was, as @jsatellite told me, something of a game for the two writers, imitating each other's style to produce something which felt like a single author's work.
The book itself is the story of Jack Sawyer, a 12-year-old boy whose mother is dying from cancer. So he heads off on a "fetch quest", to find something that can save her. He meets a handyman named Lester "Speedy" Parker who teaches him all about the other world that we can't see: a parallel version of our own, known as the Territories. The physical rules in the Territories are curious: time and distance have different meanings (with the alternate world being more akin to a compressed version of the United States), and everybody from one world has "twinner" in the other: sharing some of each other's physical traits, life events and character. Everybody has one, apart from Jack: his twinner, Jason, died when it was a baby, nearly taking Jack with it. (And Jason's name lives on in the Territories, used as a blasphemy, their own proxy for Jesus.) And, surprise surprise, his dying mother has a twinner of her own: Queen Laura DeLoessian (who is loved and adored by everybody, and has fallen into a deep sleep she cannot be roused from). Speedy's twinner, a gunslinger named Parkus, tells Jack all about a Talisman that can heal his mother, and so begins a fantasy novel fetch quest.
And make no mistake: this is very definitely fantasy. The two horror novelists wrote something with very few moments of conventional horror. They included werewolves (sort of) but made them friendly. They have a big bad guy (or, guys: Morgan Sloat/Morgan of Orris) who isn't scary per se, bringing technology and violence to the Territories in order to let them destroy themselves. There's a moment in the novel where Jack goes to watch Lord of the Rings: not a coincidence.
And there's another major theme, which also sounds through much fantasy fiction: friendship. Here, though, the primary influence is Huckleberry Finn: that book's story of friendship is echoed strongly in Jack Sawyer's relationships with both Wolf and Richard Sloat. (As Straub has said, "Twain was on our minds at the start".)
The themes are strong; the world is strong; the characters are strong. It's well written. It's long, and maybe a little over-egged in places – some of the novel's mid-section sags – but the things that they were paying tribute to come through, and the story is a good one. So: why didn't I remember it? I don't know.
I've thought about it the past few days, as I've come across moments in the book I love, now – Wolf in our world; the Blasted Lands; the Black Hotel – and I just don't understand it. It's not quite top-tier, but it's a really enjoyable novel, worthy of both writers' bibliographies. And I must have enjoyed it, because I went away and read Straub's excellent, haunting Ghost Story when I was a teenager, and his equally excellent PTSD horror Koko, and I wouldn't have done that had I not. So now I'm tempted to blame it on my teenage distaste for fantasy. It's why I didn't read the Dark Tower books; it's why I disliked Eyes Of The Dragon (but more on that in a few weeks). But in many ways, I'm really pleased I didn't remember it. I got to read a King novel from the 1980s with fresh eyes, and experience an adventure that had, somehow, pretty much passed me by.
Connections
Oh ho, this is a curious one. So, when it was written, there were a few connections to other things in King's oeuvre (and, no doubt, Straub's, though I cannot help with those): there's a reference to Pet Sematary by way of The Wizard of Oz, with The Talisman echoing that book's reference to "Oz the gweat and tewwible"; there is a reference to Rainbird, from Firestarter; and the references to Gunslingers and the phrase "do ya ken" both come from the early parts of the Dark Tower series. However, at this point (popular myth has it), the book wasn't intended to be a part of that series. It was Straub who wrote in those connections, and King just neatened the corners as he wrote more novels. And, when they came to revisit this world and these characters in 2001's Black House, they would bind the two universes completely …
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