Three Memoirs

The Accident (from Run Over, 2001) - Douglas Bell
Ghost Rider - Neil Peart
About Alice - Calvin Trillin

The most striking thing about the Accident is the conversational, matter-of-fact way that Bell recants the most traumatic moment in his life. He describes his morning routine, the path he would take to school, and the feeling of a truck crushing him with such familiarity that you understand instantly that he's recovered. The intersection where he was run over is literally a block away from my house, so my personal reading experience was enhanced – I can literally pinpoint in my mind the place where Bell was injured to the meter. This added a level of realism to the piece that really improved it for me.

Neil Peart surprised me with his adept writing and poetic prose. I suppose I expected a musician to be an incompetent writer in the same way I expect Stephen King’s band isn’t quite as good as he describes them. I forgot, however, that Peart writes poetry for a living – poetry set to music, sure, but poetry nonetheless. The correspondence between himself and his friend is an effective way of communicating the story without utilising too much exposition.

Trillin’s piece takes bittersweet to an extreme – the humorous account of his meeting with his wife is marred by the revelation that she died so young. John Cleese once said that humour is the only way to make an audience truly sympathize with a character – we sympathize with Calvin and Alice, and so we are affected by their tragedy.

Stephen King's On Writing, Parts 19-38

I was taken aback by Stephen King’s ability to transfer emotions from his past into the reader’s mind. By creating in perfect detail the circumstances surrounding sad events, he doesn’t have to describe his feelings –you feel of your own accord what he must have felt in that situation. Such empathy is rarely found in modern literature, where authors force the emotions of central characters down the reader’s throat with no remorse. To be sure, King describes his mental state with gusto, but he earns it with his writing chops and constant sense of humility.

I cannot attribute all of the entertainment value of this book to King’s own talent – there are, perhaps, some aspects of his life that afford him some unfair advantage. How many of us have written for nudie-mags after coming home from a job where the janitor has hooks for hands. He seems to have had uncanny luck in being around bizarre and fascinating characters all his life, Perhaps all good writers do.

Stephen King's On Writing, Parts 3-19

Stephen King has led an incredibly interesting life. His tales of brotherly love and scientific woe are so fascinating and bizarre that one is entranced by his telling. It would be perhaps too easy to depict his brother as a cruel tormentor, eager to make his little brother suffer – instead, King describes Dave as simply curious and smart, a dangerous combination. The fact that a ten year old managed to blow out an entire power grid is impressive regardless of whether or not it was intentional, as is his flooding of an entire street in King’s hometown of Stratford. There are so many memorable lines in this section of the book, it’s hard to pick a favourite – “Stratford’s answer to Chuck Yeager” stands out, as does “Wipe yourself with some leaves. That’s how the cowboys and Indians did it.”

I also enjoyed King’s vitriolic and hypocritically self-aware rant on the evils of television. He is perfectly aware that it was his exposure to late-night films that inspired him to earn a living in horror and fantasy, and yet he encourages young writers to turn their TVs into Super-Duper Electro-Junk. This paradox is typical of King’s writing, and demonstrates that even he doesn’t follow all of his own rules.

Stephen King: On Writing, Parts 1 - 3

Stephen King’s memories of his childhood are unique because they are told from an adult perspective. One pictures young King as an astute, bespectacled child, somewhat naïve but full of all the wisdom of his elder incarnation. He relates his experiences with startling clarity, which shocked me a little bit, as I always assumed he only wrote about murderous dogs and snowmobiles. He connects his past to his present with such incredibly efficient brevity that it seems completely natural – “I screamed so long, and so loud that I can still hear it,” he says of an early, traumatizing run-in with a malicious doctor, “In fact, I think that in some deep valley of my head, that last scream is still echoing.” This particular statement, taken out of context, could be a line from any horror story – and yet, in such a flippant setting, it adds to the air of levity that surrounds his first memories. Somehow, I feel like only Stephen King could pull off a trick like that.

I also enjoy the way King points out how even his earliest experiences prepared him for his career in writing. When discussing his babysitter, Ulla Büla, he says that after having a large woman sit on his face and fart, yelling “pow,” no critic can phase you. It’s this kind of insight that proves King was always meant to be a writer.