Night Shift: Part One

Night Shift (1978) Stephen King

My friend is reading Under The Dome, the latest novel from Stephen King and I looked for it today at the library. For the past few years I've been reading all of King's book within a year of their release: Cell, Lisey's Story, & Duma Key; I liked them all.

Up until about 2002, the only King books I'd read were The Shining and Gerald's Game. Now I've read most of them, aside from Insomnia, Rose Madder, The Green Mile, and the Gunslinger series.

I've mentioned here before that I think that critics are very unfair to King. I do agree that often times the endings of his stories are disappointing but other than that I can't find fault.

Because he's a popular writer and he's sold millions of books, people like to say that he's not really a writer, that his books aren't "literature". This is usually said by people whose own books sink like stones in the marketplace.

The thing is, Stephen King is a very talented writer who cares about his craft. Have you ever tried writing a novel? Or have you ever tried reading a novel that was so bad you couldn't finish it? It is one of the most difficult things in the world to write even one page that people will want to read all the way through. Multiply that page by 100, by 300, by 1,200.

Kristin Hersh has been releasing new songs on the Cash Music page and for each one she writes about how it came to be. The songs, she says, already exist; it's her job to bring them into the world and present them the way they want to be heard.

In King's non-fiction book On Writing, he says he believes that stories are pre-existing, like fossils, and he tries to take them out of the ground as carefully as possible. He tries to work from situations and not plot- he compares plotting to using a jackhammer to get a fossil out of the ground.

There probably isn't a huge overlap between King's readers and Hersh's listeners but I think it's funny that both approach their craft in the same way.

I didn't find Under The Dome today but I did see a collection that I'd seen there before. It's a big, thick book containing King's first three novels: Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, and The Shining. I've already read those, but today I noticed that it also has Night Shift.

Night Shift is my favorite short story collection. It's got "Quitters, Inc.", "The Last Rung on the Ladder", "Jerusalem's Lot", "One for the Road", "Children of the Corn", and maybe my favorite Stephen King story ever, "Strawberry Spring".

If nothing else, get this book from your local library and read "Strawberry Spring". It's perfect storytelling.

In the summer of 2005 a good family friend died. He was friends with my grandparents and my mother's aunt and uncle from Italy, and when I lived on the Cape we got to be friends. My uncle was in charge of his estate and he asked my father and I to come for a week and paint the house so he could sell it.

We were in the empty house from Monday till Thursday. The only thing there was his bed and luckily there wasn't a boxspring- it was one mattress on top of another. We took it apart and I pulled my mattress into one of his son's old bedrooms. I'd brought along Night Shift and after dinner I'd go off to my room to read.

The second night we were there, there was a gigantic thunderstorm, the biggest one I've ever experienced. It happened well after midnight. The thing is: it was so loud that it woke me up. Not only did it wake me up- I actually woke up like people do in the movies; I bolted upright and looked around. I've never heard thunder so loud. It sounded like the storm was rolling right up 6A.

I'll always remember that week painting with my Dad, my friend's old empty house, the brutal thunderstorm, and Night Shift.