Scan barcode
A review by thebestmark
Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Some spoilers below.
Nightmares & Dreamscapes isn't a bad short story anthology, but it's absolutely all over the place, not only in subject matter, but in terms of each story's quality. Aimlessness permeates nearly all of the stories. In "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band," a bickering couple accidentally become trapped within a purgatory for dead rock stars, express dismay at their fate. (What's the point?) In "Chattery Teeth," a man purchases a pair of fake teeth that he intuits are cursed, but which also save his life by murdering a carjacker, prompting him to return them. (...ok?) In "The Doctor's Case," King writes Sherlock Holmes fan fiction and does a passable enough job of it. (That's...fine?) In "Dedication," a verbally abused black servant consumes a rather disgusting bodily fluid from a rich, white author, which grants her unborn child the writer's abilities and slightly unsettles her in the process. (Uh...?)
That's the prevailing question I had while reading through this collection: why? This is certainly not the worst thing King has ever published, and many of the stories that fail to achieve significance are at least fun enough to read, but so much of it is empty calories. Take "The Night Flier." It's got a great premise: a reporter catches the trail of what he believes to be a serial killer only to find that he's discovered a mass-murdering vampire. That rocks! So many places King could go with that. But then the vampire lets the reporter go and the story just...ends. There's just not a lot for the reader to grasp onto.
Another example: "Head Down," the non-fiction account of King's son's little league baseball career. King is operating outside of the typical boundaries he places upon his writing in this one; you can feel him emulating sports writers and memoirists, trying to find little moments in the story to extrapolate upon, to build his story into something more than a recollection of events. And yet - that's exactly what so much of the story ends up being, a stylized recollection of events. I think it would be challenging to finish Head Down and come out of it thinking about anything other than 'so what was Stephen King thinking about at this point in his career?' It all feels like a series of experiments - King trying to find his footing in an period of upheaval in his personal life.
Still, I would be remiss not to mention "The End of the Whole Mess," a science fiction that indirectly meditates on humanity's endless pursuit of sustainable happiness, and "The Moving Finger," a totally bizarre story that King nails the landing on about a disembodied finger that periodically menaces a man in his own him, driving him to madness.
Nightmares & Dreamscapes isn't a bad short story anthology, but it's absolutely all over the place, not only in subject matter, but in terms of each story's quality. Aimlessness permeates nearly all of the stories. In "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band," a bickering couple accidentally become trapped within a purgatory for dead rock stars, express dismay at their fate. (What's the point?) In "Chattery Teeth," a man purchases a pair of fake teeth that he intuits are cursed, but which also save his life by murdering a carjacker, prompting him to return them. (...ok?) In "The Doctor's Case," King writes Sherlock Holmes fan fiction and does a passable enough job of it. (That's...fine?) In "Dedication," a verbally abused black servant consumes a rather disgusting bodily fluid from a rich, white author, which grants her unborn child the writer's abilities and slightly unsettles her in the process. (Uh...?)
That's the prevailing question I had while reading through this collection: why? This is certainly not the worst thing King has ever published, and many of the stories that fail to achieve significance are at least fun enough to read, but so much of it is empty calories. Take "The Night Flier." It's got a great premise: a reporter catches the trail of what he believes to be a serial killer only to find that he's discovered a mass-murdering vampire. That rocks! So many places King could go with that. But then the vampire lets the reporter go and the story just...ends. There's just not a lot for the reader to grasp onto.
Another example: "Head Down," the non-fiction account of King's son's little league baseball career. King is operating outside of the typical boundaries he places upon his writing in this one; you can feel him emulating sports writers and memoirists, trying to find little moments in the story to extrapolate upon, to build his story into something more than a recollection of events. And yet - that's exactly what so much of the story ends up being, a stylized recollection of events. I think it would be challenging to finish Head Down and come out of it thinking about anything other than 'so what was Stephen King thinking about at this point in his career?' It all feels like a series of experiments - King trying to find his footing in an period of upheaval in his personal life.
Still, I would be remiss not to mention "The End of the Whole Mess," a science fiction that indirectly meditates on humanity's endless pursuit of sustainable happiness, and "The Moving Finger," a totally bizarre story that King nails the landing on about a disembodied finger that periodically menaces a man in his own him, driving him to madness.