This short story from “The New York Times…” by Mr. King really needed to be longer, it’s better than “Harvey’s Dream,” but that’s not saying much. It begins with a mystery and ends at twilight. He is far from Bram Stoker when it comes to writing short stories; it’s silly, a bit gross, simply written, more satire than drama or whatever: to be honest, when he wrote the book “Just Before Sunset”, he should have reviewed some of the short stories by HP Lovecraft and Clark A. Smith, and Stokers – you can see he’s out of practice.
It’s about a plane crash, and while Mr. King has a great imagination, he endlessly and unnecessarily plants silly innuendos here and there throughout this ten-page story, though I think he’s having fun doing it. There isn’t a lot of energy to this story anyway, but it’s a good plot. He swears, and I can’t guess why, do people really swear so much around him? Do people really get startled by that? It doesn’t do the story any good. His style is like a flat balloon although his dialogues are better than “Harvey’s Dream” and the narration is one step ahead.
I’m not going to tell you the end of the story, a writer needs to sell books, good or not. If you read it, you’ll have to read it twice to fully absorb it, I think: or read it slowly. Also, I could have found a better name for the story. He’s lucky to have a following; You would starve if you depended on this book. (8-12-2010)
