You Like It Darker: Stories
By Stephen King; Scribner
The title of Stephen King’s new collection of stories, the author notes in an afterword, is a tweaked line of a Leonard Cohen song, “You Want It Darker,” a somber and somewhat disturbing address to the Lord that appeared on the Canadian singer/songwriter’s last album.
The invocation makes sense: King not only wants it darker, he likes it darker too.
One through-line is mistaken identity: King likes to mess with the lives of innocent bystanders.
King gathers 12 stories, some brand new, others rescued from the archives (he began “The Answer Man” when he was 30 and finished it two years ago after a nephew, Jon Leonard, brought it to his attention).
His cast of characters includes aliens (“Two Talented Bastids”), a deranged detective with counting issues (“Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream”), people who can predict CAT—clear air turbulence on airplanes (“The Turbulence Expert”)—and a (mad) gentleman scientist (“The Dreamers”).
One through-line is mistaken identity: King likes to mess with the lives of innocent bystanders.
The pace is mostly brisk, the narratives generally sinister but often witty. Here’s a bit of dialogue from “Two Talented Bastids” that highlights King’s sense of humor:
“Maybe what you wanted is something that can’t be found. Maybe creativity is supposed to remain a mystery.”
She wrinkled her nose and said, “Save your metaphysics to cool your porridge.”
“On Slide Inn Road” recounts the misfortune that befalls a family of five when they pile into Grandpop’s “dinosaur of a Buick” to visit his dying sister. The GPS isn’t working and the shortcut they take proves to be, well, problematic when the kids encounter a couple of scary young men near the old inn. With brilliant storytelling skill, King brings out the evil—and the good: chalk one up for an aged Vietnam vet.
The story reminded me of Flannery O’Connor’s famous story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” featuring the murderous Misfit. King confirmed this impression at the end of the story with a simple statement: “Thinking of Flannery O’Connor.”
King gives a similar shout-out to John D. MacDonald at the end of “Rattlesnakes,” which takes place in the Florida Keys, the crime writer’s territory (my mother turned me on to his Travis McGee novels, which I whipped through as fast as the Hardy Boys). According to the headline of a recent article in the New York Times, MacDonald “knew a hurricane like Helene was coming.”
This mid-COVID story features some classic King motifs, including demonic twins. Those ghost boys prompt me to admit I didn’t read this book, I listened to it.
Over the years, King has been fortunate to have some excellent interpreters, including actor Will Patton, who might be the best of the bunch. Listening to him perform “Rattlesnakes” is to admire his vocal touches, from the sound of an unoiled double-stroller—“Squeak, pause. Squeak, pause. Squeak, pause”—to the twins’ repeated request (which reminded me of a Who song): “See us. Roll us. Push us.”
King has never shied away from commenting on politics, especially when it comes to 45 (“Since I write horror novels for a living, I feel I have some authority when I say that four more years of Donald Trump in the White House would be an absolute nightmare”).
These stories offer opportunities to take jabs at the zeitgeist. In “Danny Coughlin’s Dream,” for example, he cites a sign on a water tower in “dead-red center Kansas”: “WELCOME TO CATHCART WHERE ALL LIVES MATTER.”
After reading King, one cannot look at, say, a crowd scene in Times Square or a house on a back road without wondering what darkness lurks there. He adds an edge to one’s outlook on life and relishes doing so.
“Great thanks to you, dear readers, for allowing me to inhabit your imaginations and your nerve-endings,” he writes in the afterword, adding, “You like it darker? Fine. So do I, and that makes me your soul brother.”
According to Lit Hub, the odds of King winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024 were 50/1. With this new collection of stories, I’m not sure those odds improve, but to quote a Vietnam vet in “The Dreamers,” “Semper fi if you like it and semper fi if you don’t.”
Carl Little lives on Mount Desert Island.
