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meadforddude 's review for:
Dreamcatcher
by Stephen King
I started reading this when it first came out, which would mark it as one of my first experiences with *anything* by King, and it's maybe, uh, not the best starting point for anyone diving into his body of work (which probably explains why I didn't finish it at the time). This honestly feels like a rough draft at times, and - if not for how clearly it seems to be informed by the circumstances of his accident - one could make a decent case that this was just hauled out of a drawer and released against King's better judgment (something Mike Noonan actually does in "Bag of Bones," oddly enough).
The premise is still appealing enough to me that I can hang with some of the most obnoxious characters King's ever created for a while (Kurtz being the chief offender here even though there's plenty of ignominy to go around), and the clear-eyed horror of the human body in revolt makes for some of the most personal and revealing writing of King's career (even as it results in something as howlingly unfilmable as the "shit weasels"). Considering he originally wanted to call the book "Cancer" (a better but obviously less-marketable title), it's easy to see where his mind was at in the wake of the horrific car accident that left him laid up in a hospital on painkillers writing freehand.
Honestly, the movie is an improvement on a lot of what's going on in the book, which is kind of an insane thing to realize. It's still not good, of course, but William Goldman sure as shit did his best to find something salvageable here.
The premise is still appealing enough to me that I can hang with some of the most obnoxious characters King's ever created for a while (Kurtz being the chief offender here even though there's plenty of ignominy to go around), and the clear-eyed horror of the human body in revolt makes for some of the most personal and revealing writing of King's career (even as it results in something as howlingly unfilmable as the "shit weasels"). Considering he originally wanted to call the book "Cancer" (a better but obviously less-marketable title), it's easy to see where his mind was at in the wake of the horrific car accident that left him laid up in a hospital on painkillers writing freehand.
Honestly, the movie is an improvement on a lot of what's going on in the book, which is kind of an insane thing to realize. It's still not good, of course, but William Goldman sure as shit did his best to find something salvageable here.