Over the last few months, I've had many occasions
to ponder the idea of subjectivity versus objectivity where works of fiction
are concerned; specifically, when a particularly 'contentious' book appears,
dividing opinion and now and again leading to heated debates (and arguments).
And - aptly enough - this often happens with Stephen King's books, which is
only natural as he is our (yes, our; he is, through and through, a horror
writer) most well known author. And probably most well read, too (by others I mean,
not himself). And in many of these discussions (arguments), the final
comments tend to devolve into variations on 'agree to disagree', or 'well,
that's just my opinion'; pointing to an innate inability to present an
objective argument against the book (or, by extrapolation, any work of
creativity). And this would be true if the only thing that were up for debate
was the reader's reaction to the work; essentially, stances of 'I liked it', 'I
hated it' and all the myriad shades between these. Except...except writing -
and reading - is, or should be (I believe) so much more than this. I'd suggest
if you are incapable of separating your - very - subjective opinion of
how much you liked (or disliked) a book, from the very real objective,
practical aspects of the writing itself, you're possibly not in the best place
to argue your case; or are certainly missing out on a large part of the
discussion. Of course, the notion of what's good prose itself can be suffused
with subjectivity, but I do believe you can set baselines for pace, rhythm and
flow; and then there’s grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and so on; and
a greater understanding of these comes with time, experience and reading
widely. Otherwise - to say it all comes down to simply a matter of taste - you
give anything a pass, and you are putting the best of fiction and its worst
examples on the same footing. Which is simply ludicrous. I’ve been
misunderstood on this point in the past, and while I don’t agree that any one
person’s subjective opinion of a work is more valid than another’s - at least,
not where mere opinions of like/dislike are concerned - it’s a massive
disservice to the craft of fiction writing to suggest that the practical
elements of prose are not just as important as any other aspect. That’s not to
say you can’t enjoy something that’s perhaps not very well written from an
objective point of view; and the converse can apply too. To give an example, I
adore the Harry Potter books, but as an exercise in prose writing, they do
leave a lot to be desired. Similarly, I can appreciate good writing in other
arenas, but it may be that the story itself is not for me (or bores me rigid).
I've had this with a few shorts I've come across. And this leads me to King.
I've seen King lambasted for an almost infinite
variety of fiction 'sins'; seen him criticised six ways from Sunday. I've even
seen someone dismiss him as 'writing like an amateur' (and if you knew who that
was and saw their work, you'd choke with astonished laughter at the irony...).
Yet, aside from the occasional awkward line or clunky bit of prose - which we all
suffer from, from time to time - I truly believe King is up there with the
greatest writers, and my opinion only becomes cemented more and more, the more
I read of other, wonderful, writers. However, that doesn't mean that I've loved
everything of King's I've read; no siree. There are a handful of books and
stories I've struggled with, but I can say - with almost one hundred percent
conviction - that it was not the writing that was the problem, but my response
to the story. And that, ladies and gentlemen, lies almost squarely in the
province of the subjective. All of which (and I apologise if I've bored you
thus far) brings me to the book I'm revisiting here; Firestarter.
Published in 1980 and coming at a time when King
was on the - rapid - ascent, "Firestarter" is one of King's novels that
almost exclusively never gets mentioned when discussions of his early, classic
work arise. Everyone remembers "Carrie", "The Shining", "'Salem 's Lot" , "The
Dead Zone", "The Stand"; even the collection (collection!) "Night
Shift" gets props, and the books that followed "Firestarter" - "Cujo", "Christine" and "Pet Sematary" - are mentioned with equal reverence
(most of the time). Yet "Firestarter" tends to be the forgotten one, the
black sheep of this family. I first read it way back in the early to mid 90s,
and I can't recall much from that reading except that I wasn't impressed at
all. Yet the basic plot sounds right up my street; shady government
experiments, enhanced human beings with almost superhero type powers, a frantic
chase across the country, evil people masquerading as the good guys; what's not
to love? So when the book came up for the King For A Year project, I thought, 'why
the fuck not?' And here we are.
I won't go over the plot too much, save to say it
concerns - mainly - eight year old Charlene McGee, the daughter of two people
who got involved in a shady experiment in the 60s trailing an experimental drug
that appeared to give both of them psychic abilities. Their abilities pass on
to Charlie, where it seems to have mutated and grown immeasurably; Charlie can
create fire from nothing, amongst other, slightly less explosive (haha) powers.
The first half of the book has Charlie and her father Andy on the run from The
Shop, a shady and seemingly untouchable government agency (who were also
responsible for the initial experiment leading to all this). The second half of
the book has Charlie and Andy indefinitely detained in The Shop's secret
compound while the organisation’s scientists experiment on both. And throughout
all this, there are flashbacks and recalled events filling in the blanks. If
all this sounds a shade unusual for a Stephen King book - though by this point,
he had already released three novels where main characters had psychic
abilities - that's probably because it reads much more like a thriller than a
horror. In fact, there really isn't any horror in this story at all, aside from
a few violent events and, perhaps, the threatening shadow cast by The Shop and
some of its operatives (more on that in a mo). This impression is bolstered by
the opening, which puts us straight into Andy and Charlie's desperate flight.
It's a move typical of thrillers and action books, eschewing a slow build-up
for fast paced action and peril. Any character study or back-story is thrown in
piecemeal, with short recollections through Andy's memory, or the POV
deviations to the agent chasing the pair. I think this clearly demonstrates
that King knows what he's doing here; he knows this story is a thriller -
albeit one with slightly paranormal attributes, and even those have a
cod-scientific explanation - and he knows (superficially, at least) how to
write one. And it’s bloody enjoyable. I was sucked in from page one, flying
through the early sections very quickly; feeling trepidation and concern for
these two unlikely and weary fugitives, who haven’t even had time to grieve for
the loss of Vicky, Andy’s wife and mother to Charlie. King puts across a
palpable and convincing portrait of a man and his daughter who are haggard,
harassed, shell-shocked, and running out of both time and fortune as The Shop
closes in; their tanks are almost at empty. We also get snippets from the POV
of the agents chasing them, and while this robs the organisation of some of its
shadowy power, it conversely serves to up the tension as we see how close they
are getting to their quarry. Added to these early pages are some classic
examples of show and tell, where we see both Andy and Charlie’s
abilities in use - he with the power to push people into doing what he
wants, though at great cost to his physical self; she with her fire ability,
though it is wild and uncontrollable when unleashed - rather than merely being
told about them. It’s a very good opener and fits right in with the notion of
the book as a modern - for its time - thriller.
The problems - for me - start to appear as we head
towards the mid-point of the book, and they are hinted at even early on. One of
the criticisms often levied at King is that he takes far too long to get to the
point, and while I don’t agree that this is justified in most cases, here it
definitely feels as though it’s the case. While he handles the action of the
story well enough - following their nick of time escape at the start of the
book, Andy and Charlie receive brief respite at an old farmhouse, before
they’re tackled by Shop agents again in a disastrous (for the agents) scene
that seems to have been lifted many years later by the movie "X-Men 2" -
it’s the quiet moments in between that feel dull and drawn out. Not that there’s
anything wrong with quiet moments in a thriller; or, indeed, any type of book.
I’d argue that they’re necessary in a book full of action, to give shape and
pace to the story; providing dips amid the peaks. The problem here is that they
seem to go on for interminable pages without anything of real substance or
value being spoken about. After the botched operation at the farmhouse, the
pair hole up in an old family cabin and it’s this section that really dragged
for me. A sizeable chunk of the book is taken up with overly descriptive detail
of nothing of importance while the two drift along in situ much like the
narrative; formless, purposeless and without any sense of being necessary. Even
at the halfway mark, when they’re both finally caught and imprisoned by The
Shop and we see them again three months later, the narrative feels sluggish and
drawn out. It’s only when plans are formulated later in the book - about three
quarters through - that the pace picks up again, and starts to rattle to its
mostly satisfying conclusion.
I also had issues with the depiction of some
characters and The Shop itself. Because of the piecemeal way in which the
narrative plays out, you never get a full sense of who the players are. Even
Andy and Charlie are a little two-dimensional, Charlie most of all over the
course of the book; the narrative is supposed to show her developing
emotionally as the story unfolds, as she moves from being afraid of her power
to refusing to use it, before finally learning to control it and almost enjoy.
Yet I got little sense of this happening in an organic way; it seemed that we
were to simply accept it as having happened, through a couple of throwaway
lines. The gap of three months between capture and picking them up again
doesn’t help in this instance, as everything then gets spoken of in retrospect,
robbing it of impetus. As for The Shop; as much as I love the idea of this
organisation, and the role it plays, I wasn’t quite convinced of its
overreaching power, its position as an unaccountable force. Part of this, I
think, is that we get too much insight into a number of its agents and they
tend to be two-dimensional bully boys, taking cruel, immature delight in
hurting those they see as weaker than themselves. It's not a terrible way to
depict your antagonists, but it does strip them of that overshadowing nature
that I think an organisation like this would require; it reduces them, makes
them less serious, less significant. I also felt that the likes of Buddy
Repperton from "Christine", or Henry Bowers from "IT" were far more
terrifying presences. The only possible exception to this is the scarred form
of John Rainbird, one of The Shop's most callous and probably psychotic agents
(who is, essentially, a hitman); his aura of placid amorality unnerving even
those he works with and for. And the method by which he manipulates and
hoodwinks Charlie in the latter stages of the book is pretty chilling. Yet for
all that, he still doesn't seem to dominate the narrative the way I feel he
should. I think this is my biggest issue with the book; all the elements are
present, it's just that none of them seem to feel big enough for the story.
There's far too much waffle and meandering in between the actual action, and
very little of it actually necessary to the unfolding story. Certainly most of
it could have been told in a far more concise fashion.
However it does pick up again in the last quarter;
as Charlie's powers grow, as Andy starts to formulate a desperate plan to
escape, as the intentions of both Rainbird and The Shop towards both their
prisoners begin to turn to the terminal... The pace really starts to pick up
here, and it's a welcome return. There is also a nice line in the extent of
Charlie's powers, a hint that they might be limitless, reaching far beyond anything
any of the characters - Charlie herself included - could have possible feared
or imagined. I also loved the scene when Charlie finally unleashes her powers
against those who have taken her - and her father's - liberty, have
experimented on her, and have pushed her into using the one thing she wishes
she could get rid of. It's the sort of thing King is great at, the turning of
the tables on bullies and oppressors; and it's something I'm an absolute sucker
for. Even though I felt he could have gone further with this, I recognise that
it's appropriate for an eight year old child to not necessarily want to go on a
revenge/murder rampage...
Sadly, the final chapter returns to that
ponderous, dragging method of writing with a twenty page epilogue that could -
and probably should, in my opinion - have been only a couple of pages long. It
cements - for me - the idea that this book would have worked far better as a
novella, taking out all the extraneous fat and making it a lean, powerful, fast
moving action-thriller. Alternatively, King could have expanded massively on
the mythology and concepts, giving everything the breathing space I felt it
required, making the book more epic in scope. Instead we have something that
feels uneven, choppy and thin; characterisations that feel half-hearted, a plot
that feels too small and intimate despite its national (and potentially global)
implications. Might just be me, but I think this is possibly why "Firestarter"
is not really mentioned much when people gather to talk about their favourite
King works. A missed opportunity, I feel.
One thing I did take away at the end of the book
was the notion that this novel could really benefit from a sequel; a revisiting
to Charlie and her strange powers. Far more than the uneven sequel to "The
Shining", "Doctor Sleep", I'd actually love to know what Charlie did
after she grew up. I think that has the potential to be something very
interesting, especially in the current climate of superhero adulation. After
all, Charlie is only one or two steps away from an X-Men...
-----
Paul M. Feeney is fast approaching middle-age
but denying all knowledge of it. He was born in Scotland UK and Ireland , he is now currently settled in the
North-east of England
Paul previously reviewed "Blaze" (which can be found here) in the King For A Year project
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