STEPHEN KING: Road Dogs starts good; gets a whole lot better...

Cold, blue steel smile , è una lunga recensione del RE a Road Dogs di ELMORE LEONARD, pubblicata anche su Repubblica il 24 maggio scorso con il titolo DIVERTIRSI CON I CRIMINALI ECCO L' ARTE DI LEONARD in occasione dell'uscita del romanzo (Einaudi, trad. Luca Conti) in Italia

Scrive, tra l'altro, King: 
Aspiring novelists who want to understand that hoary old writing seminar dictum, "Show, don't tell," would do well to save their tuition and read Leonard instead. It's cheaper and a lot more fun.
...
The fun in the best of his novels [Road Dogs] - and this is the best in years - stems from the fact that Leonard starts turning the screws on page one and never stops. The dialogue crackles; the supporting characters are crisply drawn; and the story achieves almost instant escape velocity.

Can you, Paul?

Can you, Paul?

Yeah. That's how I survive. That's how come I’m able to maintain homes in both New York and L.A. and more rolling iron than there is in some used-car lots. Because I can, and it's not something to apologize for, goddammit. There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean — hell I know that. But when the counsellor asks Did he? about those guys, sometimes only a few people raise their hands. But they raise their hands for me . . . or for Misery . . . and in the end I guess they're both the same. Can I? Yeah. You bet I can. There's a million things in this world I can't do. Couldn't hit a curve ball, even back in high school. Can't fix a leaky faucet. Can't roller-skate or make an F-chord on the guitar that sounds like anything but shit. I have tried twice to be married and couldn't do it either time. But if you want me to take you away, to scare you or involve you or make you cry or grin, yeah. I can. I can bring it to you and keep bringing it until you holler uncle. I am able. I CAN.

 

Stephen King, Misery

STEPHEN KING, Not Guilty: The Guest Word

Not Guilty: The Guest Word

It was one of those bizarre coincidences that make living in this best of all possible worlds the decidedly queer game that it is. At noon, the mailman brought my Sept. 19 issue of The Times Book Review, with a Book Ends column under the best seller list titled “Money Talk”—in it I learned that David Madden, the author of “Bijou,” one of the books I admire most in the world, made about $15,000 in cash as a result of his labors on that book, or about $2,500 for each of the six years he worked on it. At three, Jane Heller of the New American Library, my paperback publisher, called to tell me that my novel, “’Salem’s Lot,” was going to reach number one on The Times paperback best seller list the following week—Sept. 26.

Madden worked on “Bijou” for six years and made $15,000. I worked on “Salem’s Lot” for about eight months (three months first; three months second draft; two months third draft) and stand to make nearly half a million dollars, if all falls together. This is before taxes, in case any potential kidnappers happen to read The Times.

How does the contrast make me feel? In a word, guilty. But in another two words, not guilty. The two feelings are perfectly joined at hip and shoulder like Siamese twins, and I’m going to try to cut them apart before your very eyes.

As a sustained piece of craft, as an evocation of place and time, as a synthesis of plot, mood and style, Madden’s “Bijou” beats “Salem’s Lot” to the finish line by several lengths—which is a metaphoric and less painful way of saying that “Bijou” is a better book. That’s why I feel guilty.

Not guilty is less clear-cut, and I beg the indulgence of the court (what court? The one that will still be sitting while David Madden and I are looking up at the lids of our coffins with our mouldering hands crossed on our chests) while I try to explain that. It has something to do with accessibility, although that’s not everything. “’Salem’s Lot”—along with other books I could name, “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” and “Trinity” are two wildly contrasting examples—is an extremely accessible book. If “Lot” was the water off a bit of Maine beach, it would be extremely warm water, easy to slip into, pleasant to stroke around in for the next 400-odd pages. “Bijou” is a cooler ocean, and the footing underneath shelves off much more suddenly. To get through “Bijou,” you have to make a commitment; to get through “’Salem’s Lot” all you need is a sunpad and a pair of eyes and you’re in business.

But there’s an art to accessibility, too, although it may be of a more humble sort than that which belongs to the artist who will not hew his peg to fit accessibility’s hole. Warm water books have been given a bad name by the Robbinses and the Susanns—but “Ordinary People” is an accessible book, as is “Watership Down,” “Dog Soldiers” and Tolkien’s Rings trilogy. Robertson Davies, who is perhaps Canada’s accessible white to Joyce Carol Oates’s more difficult black, calls this accessibility the Plain Style. The Plain Style is not flashy, it is rarely practiced in the little magazines, and is rarely represented in the small presses. But to use the Plain Style is always to drive directly at the point, and if the point is minor, the author always ends up with well-advertised pie on his face.

Accessibility is half of it, but I would like to add one other thing to my not-guilty plea, because accessibility cannot stand alone—the directions for cooking a roast may be accessible, but that does not make those directions literature. The addendum has nothing to do with talent either, because the recognition of talent is almost always an affair of luck. Talent can be fully used, as in the case of Faulkner’s best work; half-used, as in the case of the more recent Ross Macdonald novels, or barely used at all—a kind of twitch. Talent has nothing at all to do with money, writing or the wrath of God. It’s the cheapest commodity on earth, with the possible exceptions of mongrel dogs and table salt.

The item which must be added to accessibility to acquit the author is the honest intent to do as well as possible. I’ll give you an example that the more literary-minded among you will probably scoff at “Harvest Home,” by Thomas Tryon. It isn’t a great book, not a great horror novel, not even a great suspense novel. My own editor at Doubleday once told me that his fingers itched to get at it and cut out the deadwood; my guess is that Tryon’s editor at Knopf experienced a similar itch in his own extremities and was rebuffed by Tryon. Rightly so, maybe. Never mind the best seller list. Mind this, instead: Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, it is a true book; it is an honest book in the sense that it says exactly what Tryon wanted to say. And if what he wanted to say wasn’t exactly Miltonian, it does have this going for it: in forty years, when most of us are underground, there will still be a routine rebinding once a year for the library copies of “Harvest Home,” and, I hope, for “’Salem’s Lot.”

For all its huge sales, “’Salem’s Lot” is a humble book. It isn’t going to find a niche in the college bookstores. But for all that, I feel a certain pride in the book. Because I think it can stand on its own after I leave it behind—as I most certainly hope I will.

The honest intent to do as well as possible—that has to stand at the base of any writing career. The object in view is to not let the money sway you from that, or the critics, or the wrath of God. Honest intent has nothing to do with art, one way or the other; art is its own master and talent is merely its whore. Honest intent only applies to the more humble side of writing: the craft. You sit down in front of the typewriter and do the best you can. You play fair. You keep your hands clean. And then, if the money comes:

Not guilty.

Stephen King, October 24, 1976

Stephen King said:

''I don't want there to be a time when I think that Steve King should be exclusively a horror writer.
The temptation is great, though. You say to yourself, if I don't produce horror stories, I won't have any more Number Ones - and it's very satisfying to have Number Ones.''

Lost in Translation

Bev Vincent incontra TULLIO DOBNER

A new book on my desk is the beginning of a new love story. The first date prompts a lot of excitement, thrill, and a little fear, and I’m happy to say that my feeling hasn’t changed after 40 years. I never read a book before I translate it. I have to discover it slowly. I approach it with some wariness and a little trepidation. As I said, it is like a first date: you sit at the corner table in candlelight, you sip something, say something, you listen mostly. You place baits and examine responses, you assess hints. My effort is to recreate the author’s mood at the beginning of his/her story. I know what it is about, but I still ignore how it will develop. In this way I shall travel together with the author, experiencing his/her surprises ‘live.’ If I get the general flavor right, then finding the best translation for single pop culture terms and idioms becomes much easier.

THAT QUESTION, of course, was 'Where do you get your ideas?' It was a question Bill supposed all writers of fiction had to answer — or pretend to answer — at least twice a week, but a fellow like him, who made a living by writing of things which never were and never could be, had to answer it — or pretend to — much more often than that.

'All writers have a pipeline which goes down into the subconscious,' he told them, neglecting to mention that he doubted more as each year passed if there even was such a thing as a subconscious. 'But the man or woman who writes honor stories has a pipeline that goes further, maybe . . . into the sub-subconscious, if you like.'

Elegant answer, that, but one he had never really believed. Subconscious? Well, there was something down there all right, but Bill thought people had made much too big a deal out of a function which was probably the mental equivalent of your eyes watering when dust got in them or breaking wind an hour or so after a big dinner. The second metaphor was probably the better of the two, but you couldn't very well tell interviewers that as far as you were concerned, such things as dreams and vague longings and sensations like déjà-vu really came down to nothing more than a bunch of mental farts. But they seemed to need something, all those reporters with their notebooks and their little Japanese tape-recorders, and Bill wanted to help them as much as he could. He knew that writing was a hard job, a damned hard job. There was no need to make theirs harder by telling them, 'My friend, you might as well ask me "Who cut the cheese?" and have done with it.'

He thought now: You always knew they were asking the wrong question, even before Mike called; now you also know what the right question was. Not where do you get your ideas but why do you get your ideas. There was a pipeline, all right, but it wasn't either the Freudian or Jungian version of the subconscious that it came out of; no interior drain-system of the mind, no subterranean cavern full of Morlocks waiting to happen. There was nothing at the other end of that pipe but Derry. Just Derry. And —

—and who's that, trip-trapping upon my bridge?

[LA DOMANDA, naturalmente, è: «Da dove prende l'ispirazione?» È presumibile che tutti i narratori debbano rispondere a una domanda come questa, o fingere di rispondere, almeno un paio di volte alla settimana, ma a uno come lui, che si guadagna da vivere scrivendo di cose che mai sono state e mai potranno essere, è richiesto di rispondere, o fingere di farlo, ancora più spesso.

«Tutti gli scrittori hanno una loro linea di comunicazione con l'inconscio», spiegava, sorvolando sul dubbio che gli si andava consolidando con il passare degli anni sulla reale esistenza di un inconscio. «Ma la persona che scrive storie dell'orrore comunica forse con qualcosa di più profondo... qualcosa che potremmo chiamare l'in-inconscio, se vi piace.»

Risposta elegante, questa, ma non proprio sincera. Inconscio? Be', qualcosa là in fondo doveva esserci, ma Bill pensava che la gente avesse molto sopravvalutato una funzione che probabilmente era l'equivalente mentale della lacrimazione degli occhi irritati da un granello di polvere o l'emissione di gas intestinali un'ora circa dopo un pasto pesante. La seconda metafora era probabilmente la più esplicita, ma non sarebbe stato molto simpatico raccontare agli intervistatori che per quanto lo riguardava i sogni, le confuse nostalgie e le sensazioni di déjà-vu si riducevano in fondo a una serie di rutti mentali. Si vedeva che avevano bisogno di qualcosa, tutti quei reporter con i loro taccuini e i loro piccoli registratori giapponesi, e Bill desiderava aiutarli come meglio poteva. Sapeva che scrivere era un mestiere duro, un mestiere maledettamente duro. Inutile sarebbe stato rendere ancor più arduo il loro ribattendo: «Amico mio, tanto varrebbe che mi chiedessi chi ha gettato la luna nel pozzo».

Ora riflette: Hai sempre saputo che ti rivolgevano la domanda sbagliata, ancor prima che telefonasse Mike; ora sai anche qual è la domanda giusta. Non da dove prendi ispirazioni, ma perché ti vengono le ispirazioni. Certo che esiste una linea di comunicazione, ma non con un presunto inconscio, in versione Freud o Jung a seconda delle preferenze; non con un canale scolmatore della mente, non con una caverna sotterranea piena di Morlock che aspettano di manifestarsi. Non c'è niente all'altro capo di quella linea di comunicazione che non sia Derry. Solo Derry. E...

... chi è che vien trotterellando sul mio ponte? (trad. T. Dobner)]