By and large, it seems that King's thoughts about modern machinery (or at the very least, the mindset that exists in back of most pieces of our current tech) was summed up long ago by scholar Tony Magistrale in his book, Landscapes of Fear. It's in that study that Magistrale lays out the best academic summation of King's thinking about machines. "The more pessimistic side of science fiction..."stresses the danger of the machine age and how reliance upon science and technology weakens the basic human body and spirits" (7). This awareness of the darker aspects of technology and the moral sacrifices that accompany its proliferation is an issue that often appears in Kings fiction (50)". That's an accurate enough assessment so far as Magistrale is concerned. Yet even here, it seems like just scratching the surface of things. He notes the negative portrayals of technology within King's fiction. However, I'm not sure he gets us any closer to the mindset underlying it all. In order to get that, it seems like you have to get the information direct from the artist's own personal testimony. It seems that the best explanation King ever offered for his technical themes is in the pages of Danse Macabre.
In the introduction to this sprawling non-fiction study, King talks a bit about how his upbringing in the Post-War America of the 1950s had an enormous effect on the way he's looked at the Machine more or less ever since. "We were fertile ground for the seeds of terror, we war babies; we had been raised in a strange circus atmosphere of paranoia, patriotism, and national hubris. We were told that we were the greatest nation on earth...but we were also told exactly what to keep in our fallout shelters and how long we would have to stay in there after we won the war. We had more to eat than any nation in the history of the world, but there were traces of Strontium 90 in our milk from nuclear testing. We were the children of the men and women who won what Duke Wayne used to call “the big one,” and when the dust cleared, America was on top. Further, we had a great history to draw upon (all short histories are great histories), particularly in matters of invention and innovation.
King sums this up through a neat and precise quotation from Sci-Fi author Jack Finney's novel Time and Again. From the way the quotation is framed, it's clear that while Finney might have been writing about imaginary people in make-believe circumstances, it's pretty damned obvious that King see it all as a reflection of his own personal experience. "I was... an ordinary person who long after he was grown retained the childhood assumption that the people who largely control our lives are somehow better in¬ formed than, and have judgment superior to, the rest of us; that they are more intelligent. Not until Vietnam did I finally realize that some of the most important decisions of all time can be made by men knowing really no more than most of the rest of us (333)". In other words, it was the slow dawning recognition that often the people who create and are in charge of machinery often wind up not knowing as much about the consequences their creations will either create or unleash. In other words, even with a lot of know-how under the hood, it's still no guarantee of an entirely one-hundred-percent optimum outcome. This paints a picture less of someone who is any kind of thoroughgoing luddite, and more an artist with a healthy recognition of the balanced benefits and hazards of modern machinery.
The Story.
"...The women’s basketball team...was exceptional in a good way, especially considering that most of the players were no more than five feet seven and were preparing for jobs as marketing managers, wholesale buyers, or (if they were lucky) personal assistants to Men of Power. The Lady Meerkats had won eight conference titles in the last ten years. The coach was Wesley’s ex-girlfriend, ex as of one month previous. Ellen Silverman was the source of the spite that had moved Wesley to buy a Kindle. Well . . . Ellen and the Henderson kid in Wesley’s Introduction to Modern American Fiction class.
" Ellen had been his other friend, and one with benefits, until four weeks ago. She wasn’t in the English Department, of course, but the thought of going to bed with anyone in the English Department, even Suzanne Montanaro, who was vaguely presentable, made him shudder. Ellen was five-two (eyes of blue!), slim, with a mop of short, curly black hair that made her look distinctly elfin. She had a dynamite figure and kissed like a dervish. (Wesley had never kissed a dervish, but could imagine.) Nor did her energy flag when they were in bed. Once, winded, he lay back and said, “I’ll never equal you as a lover.” “If you keep lowballing yourself like that, you won’t be my lover for long. You’re okay, Wes.” But he guessed he wasn’t. He guessed he was just sort of . . . mediocre.
"It wasn’t his less-than-athletic sexual ability that ended their relationship, however. It wasn’t the fact that Ellen was a vegan who ate Tofurky for Thanksgiving. It wasn’t the fact that she would sometimes lie in bed after lovemaking, talking about pick-and-rolls, give-and-goes, and the inability of Shawna Deeson to learn something Ellen called “the old garden gate.” In fact, these monologues sometimes put Wesley into his deepest, sweetest, and most refreshing sleeps. He thought it was the calmness of her voice, so different from the often profane shrieks of encouragement she let out while they were making love. Her love-shrieks were eerily similar to the ones she uttered during games, running up and down the sidelines like a hare, exhorting her girls to “Pass the ball!” and “Drive the paint!” Wesley had even heard one of her sideline screams, “Go for the hole,” in the bedroom from time to time. They were well matched, at least in the short term; she was fiery iron, straight from the forge, and he—in his apartment filled with books—was the water in which she cooled herself.
"The books were the problem. That, and the fact that he had freaked out and called her an illiterate bitch. He had never called a woman such a thing in his life before, but she had surprised an anger out of him that he had never suspected. He might be a mediocre instructor, as Don Allman had suggested, and the novel he had in him might remain in him (like a wisdom tooth that never comes up, at least avoiding the possibility of rot, infection, and an expensive—not to mention painful—dental process), but he loved books. Books were his Achilles heel.
"He heard that part—“I’m supposed to be the adult”—and said Uh-huh for the fifth or sixth time, which was one time too many for Ellen Silverman. She plucked Deliverance from Wesley’s hands, threw it across the room, and said the words that would haunt him for the next lonely month: “Why can’t you just read off the computer, like the rest of us?” “She really said that?” Don Allman asked, a remark that woke Wesley from a trancelike state. He realized he had just told the whole story to his officemate. He hadn’t meant to, but he had. There was no going back now. “She did. And I said, ‘That was a first edition I got from my father, you illiterate bitch.’” Don Allman was speechless. He could only stare. “She walked out,” Wesley said miserably. “I haven’t seen or spoken to her since.” “Haven’t even called to say you’re sorry?”
"Don Allman sat in silence for a few moments, tapping his fingers on his narrow chest. Outside their window, November leaves rattled across Moore Quadrangle. Then he said: “Did Ellen walking out have anything to do with that?” He nodded to Wesley’s new electronic sidekick. “It did, didn’t it? You decided to read off the computer, just like the rest of us. To . . . what? Woo her back?” “No,” Wesley said, because he didn’t want to tell the truth: in a way he still didn’t completely understand, he had done it to get back at her. Or make fun of her. Or something. “Not at all. I’m merely experimenting with new technology.” “Right,” said Don Allman. “And I’m Robert Frost, stopping by the woods on a snowy fucking evening (275-282)".
"“You ought to get one,” the Henderson kid said, and when Wesley had replied, without even thinking, “Perhaps I will,” the class had broken into spontaneous applause. For the first time since Ellen’s departure, Wesley had felt faintly cheered. Because they wanted him to get a book-reading gadget, and also because the applause suggested they did see him as Old School. Teachable Old School. He did not seriously consider buying a Kindle (if he was Old School, then books were definitely the way to go) until a couple of weeks later. One day on his way home from school he imagined Ellen seeing him with his Kindle, just strolling across the quad and bopping his finger on the little NEXT PAGE button. What in the world are you doing? she would ask. Speaking to him at last. Reading off the computer, he would say. Just like the rest of you. Spiteful! But, as the Henderson kid might put it, was that a bad thing? It occurred to him that spite was a kind of methadone for lovers, and better than going cold turkey (287)".
"And of course he liked thinking of Ellen’s reaction. He had stopped leaving messages on her phone, and he had begun avoiding places—The Pit Stop, Harry’s Pizza—where he might run into her, but that could change. Surely I’m reading of the computer, just like the rest of you was too good a line to waste. Oh, that’s small, he scolded himself as he sat in front of his computer, looking at the picture of the Kindle. That is spite so small it probably wouldn’t poison a newborn kitten. True! But if it was the only spite of which he was capable, why not indulge it?
"So he had clicked on the Buy Kindle box, and the gadget had arrived a day later, in a box stamped with the smile logo and the words ONE-DAY DELIVERY. Wesley hadn’t opted for one-day, and would protest that charge if it showed up on his MasterCard bill, but he unpacked his new acquisition with real pleasure—similar to the pleasure he felt when unpacking a box of books, but sharper. Because there was that sense of heading into the unknown, he supposed. Not that he expected the Kindle to replace books, or to be much more than a novelty item, really; an attention-getter for a few weeks or months that would afterward stand forgotten and gathering dust beside the Rubik’s Cube on the knickknack shelf in his living room. It didn’t strike him as peculiar that, whereas the Henderson kid’s Kindle had been white, his was pink. Not at first (287-89)".
Subgenres and Literary Influences.
I bring up these three names in particular because their collective efforts are the ones that seem to stand out the most. Each wrote a work of Horror fiction which acts as a pioneer example of the trope of modern machinery possessed ghostly forces. It's Siodmak who appears to have been the first out of the gate, with Donavan's Brain in 1942. Which tells of how scientific experiment winds up allowing a ghost to exert its will on the living from beyond the grave. Sloane was next with a now somewhat forgotten novella called The Edge of Running Water. That's another story about an ill-fated attempt to use modern tech to pierce the veil that separates the dead from the living, with the usual dire results as its fallout. Wakefield rounds out the trope by giving us what amounts to one of the first Found Footage Horror stories in the entire history of the genre (a case can be made for Bram Stoker's Dracula as being the true big breakout moment of this idea; if that's true, then Found Footage story could owe its existence modern notions surrounding the vampire myth). In Wakefield's narrative, it's the early broadcast medium of radio which is forced to bear witness to a ghost hunting show whose events end up taking the inevitable turn for the macabre. Thus marking an early precursor to the Blair Witch.
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Between the three of them, Siodmak, Sloane, and Wakefield end up laying out a lot of the major parameters for the Haunted Tech trope. They were the first to have the creative idea that modern technology can have a close and abiding relationship with the world of the supernatural. They also detailed various ways in which, rather than proving a hindrance, it is the exact same machinery that we normally rely on in order to live our lives which ends up becoming both a conduit and even a facilitator of and for the supernatural Horror at the heart of each narrative. From there, while all of the names and stories just listed might have been forgotten, the trope itself seems to have more or less held on. How else do you explain the appearance of this trope in later works of the genre? Without the Ghost in the Machine, you've got no Poltergeist or Ghostbusters. That also goes for works like the BBC's Ghostwatch or creepypasta's like Ben Drowned. Even Stephen King has been known to get on in on the act on a few occasions even before the story we're here to talk about today. His most notable works with a focus on this trope are, of course, Christine. Which is by this date almost prototypical story of a haunted car. A lesser known yet very good story of his is called The Sun Dog. It's about a possessed photo camera whose sole function seems to be to release a spectral demon hound on the world.
He's basically always curious about what the Imagination is, and why does its own peculiar aesthetic type things. Like I said, this is a theme that keeps cropping up during the course of his work, and I guess the writer is sort of lucky he's got me for a critic, or at least in this case he is. Turns out I find myself asking pretty much all of those same questions. I did it enough to the point that the upshot result means here this blog is, for any and all who want it. Much like with the Ghost in the Machine, what marks out the connected theme of the Nature of Stories and Storytelling is that each now finds themselves paired together for the first time. It's perhaps the single bit of novelty in this narrative. Before this, any book or screenplay that tackled the nature of where the imaginative ideas came from tended to handle the theme or trope in a manner that left no real room for any technological concerns. By and large, King's method of narrating the exploration of writing in within his fiction is handled in such a way as to make him out as an heir to the Romantic school of literary theory. Much like Coleridge or Blake, King tends to view the Imagination as a transcendent Muse, something the writer can only manage to snatch glimpses and pieces of. For King, in other words, real good writing is like collecting rare specimens of bottled lightning. This means its appearances tend to be wholly supernatural, and not much else.
"The first prototype turned out to be BASIC WEB. So, yes to the Internet question. The Kindle was apparently a lot more computerized than it looked at first blush. He glanced at the other experimental choices: music downloads (big whoop) and text-to-speech (which might come in handy if he were blind). He pushed the Next Page button to see if there were other experimental prototypes. There was one: Ur Functions. Now what in the hell was that? Ur, so far as he knew, had only two meanings: a city in the Old Testament, and a prefix meaning “primitive” or “simple.” The screen didn’t help; although there were explanations for the other experimental functions, there was none for this. Well, there was one way to find out. He highlighted Ur Functions and selected it. A new menu appeared. There were three items: Ur Books, Ur News Archive, and Ur Local (under construction). “Huh,” Wesley said. “What in the world (294-5)"? With that first off-note introduced, the author proceeds to play on it.
"The thing is...the human consciousness can deal with almost anything... which leaves the writer or director of the horror tale with a problem which is the psychological equivalent of inventing a faster-than-light space drive in the face of E = MC2 (177)". I'm not real sure King or anyone else has ever found a solution to this problem. In fact, if I'm being honest, whenever I take a long glance back at the history of the genre and all of its Things Going Bump in the Night, it becomes sort of impossible not to notice how even the best works can never get rid of this inherent schlocky, or cheap carnival trick aspect to them. Let's just say its telling that a villain as refined and sophisticated as Count Dracula seems to have been relegated to the care of the children's section of the bookstore. The implication here seeming to be that what we call "Scary" is forever fated to be a provisional substance, for lack of a better word. The classic works of Gothic fiction will probably remain as such, however the full effects of their artistry will probably always be at the mercy of shifting tastes in what constitutes as "Frightening". It's a situation that seems to apply to the genre's great achievements as much as the dullest offerings.
"Below the message, the cursor blinked. Above it, in small type (black, not red), was one further instruction: NUMERIC ENTRY ONLY. NO COMMAS OR DASHES. YOUR CURRENT UR: 117586. Wesley felt a strong urge (an ur urge!) to turn the pink Kindle off and drop it into the silverware drawer. Or into the freezer along with the ice cream and Stouffer’s frozen dinners, that might be even better. Instead, he used the teeny tiny keypad to enter his birth date. 7191974 would do as well as any number, he reckoned. He hesitated again, then plunged the tip of his index finger down on the Select button. When the screen blanked this time, he had to fight an impulse to get up from the kitchen chair he was sitting in and back away from the table. A crazy certainty had arisen in his mind: a hand—or perhaps a claw —was going to swim up from the grayness of the Kindle’s screen, grab him by the throat, and yank him in. He would exist forever after in computerized grayness, floating around the microchips and between the many worlds of Ur (295-7)". Like I said, Fear Mileage is something that sort of has no choice except to always very from one face in the aisle to the next. I don't really mind it, speaking for myself.
If any of these Jamesian themes can be said to form at least one of the ingredients of King's inspiration for his own novella, then what makes his efforts stand out are not the innovations, so much as the novelty and sense of exploration that he brings to the table. He takes the idea of stumbling upon a piece of forbidden knowledge, and like a lot of modern authors, begins to play a kind of riff on the a familiar motif. The digital Ur Reader serves very much the same sort of function as Canon Alberic's cursed scrap book collection, and Wesley is a kind of American Cousin to James' hapless and unwitting scholar protagonists. The novelty of King's version rests in the kind of lore lying in wait inside the haunted digital codex. The arcana is interesting because it isn't your typical book of forbidden spells. Instead, Wesley finds what can only be described as a very strange treasure trove. He discovers titles or books from some of the most famous authors. The catch is that most of them are titles he's never heard of. That's because they all come from books that these authors have never written before in their lives.
"He had checked his own name, and discovered what he feared: although the Urs were lousy with Wesley Smiths...none seemed to be him. Of course it was hard to be a hundred percent sure, but it appeared that he had stumbled on 10.4 million alternate realities and he was an unpublished loser in all of them. Wide awake in his bed, listening to one lonely dog bark in the distance, Wesley began to shiver. His own literary aspirations seemed very minor to him at this moment. What seemed major—what loomed over his life and very sanity—were the riches hidden within that slim pink panel of plastic. He thought of all the writers whose passing he had mourned, from Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow to Donald Westlake and Evan Hunter; one after another, Thanatos stilled their magic voices and they spoke no more. But now they could. The could speak to him.
"He threw back the bedclothes. The Kindle was calling him, but not in a human voice. It sounded like a beating heart, Poe’s telltale heart, coming from inside his briefcase instead of from under the floorboards, and— Poe! Good Christ, he never checked Poe! He had left his briefcase in its accustomed spot beside his favorite chair. He hurried to it, opened it, grabbed the Kindle, and plugged it in (no way he was going to risk running down the battery). He hurried to UR BOOKS, typed in Poe’s name, and on his first try found an Ur—2555676—where Poe had lived until 1875 instead of dying at the age of forty in 1849. And this version of Poe had written novels! Six of them! Greed filled Wesley’s heart as his eyes raced over the titles. One was called The House of Shame, or Degradation’s Price. Wesley downloaded it—the charge for this one was only $4.95—and read until dawn. Then he turned off the pink Kindle, put his head in his arms, and slept for two hours at the kitchen table (302-5)". It's to the writer's credit that King saves the best of his conceit for the very last. This comes when the transplanted Jamesian scholar decides to share his secret find with others of his acquaintance, and the following search result happens.
"“It could be an imitation,” Don said, “but of course there have always been scholars who claimed that Shakespeare’s plays weren’t written by Shakespeare. There are supporters of Christopher Marlowe . . . Francis Bacon . . . even the Earl of Darby . . .” “Yeah, and James Frey wrote Macbeth,” Wesley said. “What do you think?” “I think this could be authentic Willie,” Don said. He sounded on the verge of tears. Or laughter. Maybe both. “I think it’s far too elaborate to be a joke. And if it’s a hoax, I have no idea how it works.” He reached a finger to the Kindle, touched it lightly, then pulled it away. “I’d have to study both plays closely, with reference works at hand, to be more definite, but . . . it’s got his lilt (309-10)".
I have to admit, of all the sections to be had in King's story, it was this moment in particular that still kind of causes a knowing smile or grin to crop up up unannounced on my face. I think that's because it's just possible to see the kind of underlying dramatic logic of the scene. Here comes the part where it's always possible to accuse the critic of reading too much into the text. However, I'd defend what I'm about to say by claiming that all literature is allusive and intertwined by nature. What's H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu doing as a guard to the Gates of Moria, after all, if Tolkien wasn't a fan of that type of fiction? That's a clear case of the author having fun with his sources or inspirations, and the same thing appears to be going on here. King is taking a the Name that is often held up as the Greatest Writer of All Time, and having fun spinning a "what-if" off of that reputation. I just find it amusing that a close reading might reveal that even when trying to tackle the Bard of Avon, King can't help translating Big Bill into his own narrative voice and concerns. Let's take that made up play about an African Prince being transported to England. There are a few things about it that jump out at a constant reader.
It's a by now disused method of writing non-fiction, and Cabell seems to be one of the last few writers out there to try it. Perhaps its telling that no one else ever seems to be bother with this mythologized form of philosophical writing by the time we reach the 1920s. The important King connection comes in the shape of an imaginary library that Cabell conjures up as the podium setting for his lectures on literature. It's the most fascinating part of Beyond Life on account of the contents of its shelves. At the start of the book, the narrator is examining the books lining the walls and halls of the chamber, and can't help noticing their rather peculiar nature. One of them, for instance, is listed as The Complete Works of David Copperfield (the Dickens character, not the stage performer). The narrator asks what this all means, and Cabell's mouthpiece character tells him the following. "That section of the room is devoted to the books of the gifted writers of Bookland. You will observe it is extensive; for the wonderful literary genius is by long odds the most common character in fiction. You will find all my books over there, I may diffidently remark (11)". Like I said, the book is one big excuse plot for Cabell to share his literary opinions, and there you have a pretty good sample of the kind of thing I'm talking about.
"For many men are poets in their youth', and in their second childhood also. That Keats' epic thing is rather disappointing: and, for one, I cannot agree with Hawthorne's friend that it contains 'the loftiest strains which have been heard on earth since Milton's day.' Milton's own King Arthur, by the by, is quite his most readable performance. And that-oh, yes, the complete Christabel falls off toward the end and becomes fearfully long-winded. And the last six books of The Faery Queen and the latter Canterbury Tales are simply beyond human patience" "Then too there is a deal of drama. But what is Sheridan doing in this galley?" "Why, that volume is an illustrated edition of Sheridan's fine comedy, Affectation, which he mulled over during the last thirty years of his life: and it is undisputedly his masterpiece. The main treasure of my library, though, is that unbound collection of the Unwritten Plays of Christopher Marlowe." "This part of the room, at least" -for I was still nosing about-"appears to exhibit much the usual lot of standard books" "Ah, if those only were the ordinary standards for inducing sleep!"-and Charteris shrugged. "Instead, those are the books with which you are familiar, as the authors meant them to be." "Then even Shakespeare came an occasional cropper-?”
"Oh, that is the 1599 version of Troilus and Cressida the only edition in which the play is anything like comprehensible You have no idea how differently books read in the Intended Edition. Why, even your own books," added Charteris, "in that Intended Edition yonder, issued through Knappe & Dreme-who bring out, indeed, the only desirable edition of most authors are such as you might read with pleasure, and even a mild degree of pride." "Go on!" said I, "for now I know you are talking nonsense." "Upon my word," said he, "I really mean it (12-14)". Are you starting to get maybe at least an idea of why I brought up the work of this once-famous-now-obscure literary name in connection with King's story? With any luck, the parallels should be obvious enough to an observant reader. In Cabell's magical library (with it's contents of books from famous authors that either could, should, or might have been) we have a neat and somewhat intriguing precursor to King's Ur Kindle and its contents. Let's put it this way. If Cabell had been born a bit later on (further up the timeline enough enough to maybe collaborate with King on this novella, let's pretend) then it's not impossible to imagine Hemingway's noir novels, or Courtland's Dogs, or even Shakespeare version of The Green Mile somewhere up on those shelves.
Conclusion: A Mostly Successful Experiment.
When it comes to my basic thoughts on this story as a whole and complete piece of Entertainment, my final judgment call is best described as tripartite. There are bits of it I love, some I like and am okay with, and one aspect really just doesn't work, in my opinion. The best parts of the novella rest in the idea of Ur Kindle itself. The renovation of the Ghost in the Machine trope as like this digitized storehouse of alternate and forgotten narratives is the kind of idea I think only something that someone like King would have been able to conjure up. If you ever decide to devote yourself to even just a goodish number of the books he's published, you'll soon come away with the realization that he's one of those "Book People" who just can't stop pondering over the Art and Craft of storytelling. In that sense, a short novel offering like Ur can be said to be a pretty good example of this kind of personal tradition that exists within the artists overall body of work. Long story short, King seems to be a very big fan of metafiction, or stories about the nature of fictional narratives. To my knowledge, he's composed at least 9 works (4 novels, more or less 6 shorter pieces that I can recall, and 1 multi-part series which amounts to this great extended meditation on the theme) in this sub-genre. So, it's pretty clear he's found of revisiting this particular imaginative wellspring.
Ur is by no means the final example of the author telling this particular type of story. It's merely one of his latest forays into the sidereal category of metafiction. Here the entire theme is manifested in the form of the Ur Reader. It's the concept of this Kindle Book as a supernatural portal into alternate realities and the myriad types of written works to be found there which makes up the biggest and best parts of the inspiration for this story. Whenever King decides to let the romance of this literal plot device take over is when the narrative is the most alive in terms of its audience rewards. In some ways, I guess the biggest criticism I have for the entire work is that I wish the author been able to find or dig up something more with it. The trouble with the Ur Kindle is that it's the kind of narrative contrivance that remains at the level of just a pure McGuffin unless you're able to unearth a story situation which can help bring it to full, breathing life. What I guess I'm trying to say is that King is able to do just that...up to a point. I can't say I wasn't entertained by the adventure that the Ur Book ultimately sends Wesley on. At the same time, there are moments where I wish King was able to come up with more.
The ultimate plot that the protagonist finds himself caught up in is a Back to the Future style plot if it was written by one of the more literate and "book oriented" screenwriters out there. Another way to say it is that King has written a Romantic Comedy about changing the past to better the future in similar vein to that of Charlie Kaufman. Much like the film Adaptation, King's narrative centers on a collection of bookworms and the quasi-fantastical shenanigans they find themselves having to get into when they discover a surreal access point to all the "Ur Texts" they could ever wish for. It's the kind of fictional conceit that appeals to anyone with a literary frame of mind. The good news for King's story is I happen to be a fan of this sort of thing. So, I can't say that I have or had any problems with how a supernatural plot device helps this Walter Mitty type English professor and his girlfriend get back together. It's the type of scenario that is just flexible enough that it can be told or retold in any number of ways. On the one hand, there's the Kaufmanesque route that Kings ends up going with, where there's a heavy emphasis on the literate metatextual aspect of things. At the same time, I can easily how someone like Walt Disney might have taken this and made it the basis for one of his live action comic fantasies. The kind of film with Dean Jones, Roddy McDowell, or Fred McMurray starring in it.
In that sense, there's a richness to the narrative that doesn't remain exhausted once King gets done with it. Another way to say it is that it's possible to make another adaptation of this idea and have it branch off in multiple possible directions. The one that King chose to go with works for the most part. It's when he gets to the ending that he kind of has trouble sticking the landing. No here's where I've got to stave off a stereotype that the author has gotten hit with too many times in my opinion. Somehow, the notion or complaint that King can't write any good endings has become something of an accepted folk belief among a lot of his detractors. The good news is that I'm able to report that it's not just the case in general practice for 9 times out of 10 with his books. The Shining has a perfectly fine conclusion. So does a non-supernatural work like Misery. The same goes for It which has this big, special effects, epic conclusion. The same pattern holds well for his other classic works like Bag of Bones or Salem's Lot. In the latter case, I'd say the fact that everybody is starting to say that the ending to the latest film adaptation sucks should be held up as the ultimate counterpoint to this kind of criticism. Which makes the ending of a story like Ur stand out all the more for the way things turn out in this instance.
The biggest drawback that keeps the story from succeeding as well as it does is a bit unique in that it all depends on the author's reliance on a pre-established mythos. I'm not sure how that must sound, or how common a complaint that is in the annals of criticism. I only know this is the truth of the matter here, at least. If it proves anything, then I guess it's the maxim that reliance on previous world building is only as good as the overall quality of the Secondary World the author has crafted within their pages. In the case of a writer like Tolkien, for instance, relying on the world of Middle Earth to tell any story that might enter his head proves to be a more or less zero problems kind of situation. There's something about that particular stage setting that is always able to bring out the best in the writer's toolbox. Scholar Stephen Spignesi once claimed that Tolkien was always able to be "in the zone" whenever he tackled that imaginary realm, and Tolkien's track record seems to bear that out well enough. In King's case, however, it's almost like the exact opposite is true, at least whenever he tries to rely on a specific type of world building. Much like Tolkien, King really does count as a literary architect of complete, three-dimensional Secondary Worlds. So long as he limits it to the typical American Gothic setting, he does pretty darn great for himself. It's trying to create his own Middle Earth that causes problems.
For years now, King has often been willing to kind-sorta fan gush about one idea of his in particular. This would be the 8-part Dark Tower Series narrative, and its attendant universe and mythos. There are multiple examples of King stating that it's like his most favorite creation to go back and revisit. He calls it the one story that always waits for him. It's clear enough from statements such as this that the artist has a particular (not to say very peculiar) fondness for this concept. We seem to be dealing with a writer's pet project type situation. From what I'm able to tell, it's just one of those things that can happen on occasion, anyway. Nor does this have to be a bad thing, in and of itself. Tolkien's lifelong fondness for the realm of Elves and Hobbits is perhaps the prime example of such literary fondness at its best. I'm not sure that King's secondary creation of Mid World deserves to be called the absolute demonstration of this phenomenon at its worst. Though it sure doesn't count as the artist's pet project in its best lights. King's biggest problem with deliberately trying to emulate Tolkien is that he keeps running up against his limitations as an author. His greatest literary strengths seem to all be reserved for the American Gothic mode of expression, not the straightforward fantastical or dark fantasy style.
Whenever he tried to tackle the idea of Mid World, what the reader was left with more often than not was a mishmash of various literary tropes all thrown together. These seem to have been a series of tossed-off borrowings from various literary or cinematic sources. You've got this blasted out general (and generic) wasteland setting, the kind of landscape that used to be found 9 times out of 10 in the pages of cult Sci-Fi magazines like Heavy Metal and its later film adaptation. This also applies to most of the characters you'll find within all the Tower related pages. So, you've got this Heavy Metal style landscape with the main cast making its way through to the title location or structure that gives the series its title. Along the way, they will invariably come across various people, places, and things, all of which will ultimately be drawn from famous works of literature. One moment the main character of Roland and his companions will be walking through a desert that rests somewhere between Sergio Leone, Mark Twain, and Moebius. The next minute they'll discover a yellow brick road that leads them to the Emerald Palace of Oz, and even encounter someone calling himself the Tick-Tock Man.
Now, to be as fair as possible, there is no inherent reason for this not to be a fun and engaging read. On paper as an outline, at least, this could go either way. It could be a genuine bit of fun, the kind of story with a great deal of metatextual elements, thematics, and commentary packed into it, while at the same time still managing to be a wild and genuinely entertaining romp. I have to be this fair to King. I think that's more or less what he was hoping would be the result of these several years of hard labor. And so, the trouble with all of its remains that he just can't seem to find any viable way into this sort of material. He can't bring either the characters, settings, or situations to life. None of it ever manages to jump off the page at you like things do in novels like It or Salem's Lot. That's because each of those other two novels are classic example of the artist writing his strengths to the hilt. There you get to see what its like with King firing on all cylinders. The writing, characters, setting, and situations are of such a quality that you can tell the author doesn't even have to pause to catch his breath or look back. The story is just taking him along and all he has to do is make sure he gets as much of it as possible.
In contrast, while King claims on a consistent basis to have had nothing but fun in Mid World, the text itself keeps demonstrating tell-tale signs of a constant uphill struggle. Maybe that was all part of the fun for King. If so, then more power to him, I guess. The trouble is it remains a slog for the reader, which is something else. It's more akin to the kiss of death for any promise that the creative idea might have had in it to begin with. In the case of the Dark Tower books, I can't even tell if the final results were the product of inspiration or mere literary hubris. All I know for sure is that the writer just couldn't make it work. So, it's a bit of a misstep to see King relying on it to help close up what should have been a simple little piece like Ur. With all due respect, there's just no way to justify a reliance on such a sprawling mess (say sorry, yet it's true) on what is clearly meant to be a simple, low-key short story.
Without going too much into spoiler details, the gist of the ending is that Wesley uses the Ur to help better life in general, then when he gets home from work one day he's met with a group of individuals who played a technical sort of part in the Tower books. Imagine a bunch of video game mooks with animal heads like creatures out ancient mythology, or maybe a bunch Narnians that have gone bad. If any of that sounds interesting to you, all I can say is "Man, I just wish King had found something more to do with such an image". However, it's like I say. The guy has his limits, and he keeps running up against them every time he's tries to tackle anything to do with that particular figment of his imagination. The result is that the ending with these Tower mooks just feels shoehorned in. It's a tack-on whose presence can't help but come off as too artificial for its own good. It creates a jarring note that clashes with the rest of the tone that's been established throughout the majority of the pages. The result is that you have a denouement which kind of has no choice except sound like it's come out of some hitherto unknown left field that the vast majority of audiences have probably never heard of and won't be able to just dive into with a lot more information and build-up. It's a real creative misstep.
The worst part about this chosen ending is that it showcases the author getting lost in his own little pet interests to a greater degree than is necessary or warranted for a story like this. It's true that all writing is the case of an artist getting caught up in their favorite subjects. However, the trouble with telling stories is that it is a fundamentally communal endeavor. King himself once made an observation to the effect that all tales are mute without someone to hear, see, or read it. That's pretty good advice that all creative types should keep in mind when they paint their masterpieces. It's also what turns things into such a glaring irony when I run across King sorta-kinda forgetting his own guidance. Apparently, if the writer gets too caught up in a pet project he'll run the risk of falling into an obsession with making it the best damn thing he's ever written. It's possible to understand such a drive from an artistic perspective. It can be said to make sense enough from a creative frame of mind. However, when you run across the artist in a blind sweat struggling to make the narrative match the vision in his head and learn this isn't the first time it's happened, it's obvious the writer has gotten stuck turning a molehill into something it can probably never be. There's no real inspiration in the Tower, and it's all just a waste of time.
That goes double for the audience, as well as the artist himself. The challenge is to know when to make sure a good story is accessible for the masses, when it's okay, and might even be necessary to give the readers something in the way of a literary challenge, yet above all, when to recognize a bad idea for what it is, and just move on to more promising creative concepts. In the case of Ur, however, it kind of leaves us with a narrative in search of a better ending. I guess the sort of good news there is that it is possible to at least see the faint outlines of what a fitting closer to this story would have been. There's a moment in his non-fiction study Danse Macabre where King is discussing a scene from Peter Straub's most famous novel, Ghost Story. It might be one of the most perceptive judgment calls ever made about that book in the history of Gothic criticism, and it goes a long way toward showcasing what King is like, or is capable of at his best. He discusses the scene in terms of its thematic content. I think it's worth giving his insights in full, as it just sounds like the right sort of artistic note that he probably should have been aiming for in the first place when it came to the writing of the Ur novella. In order to do that, I'll have to seek the help of one of King's friends and fellow Horror writers to achieve it.
There's a very powerful scene in Straub's novel. It happens somewhere in the middle of things, where the protagonist of that earlier book makes contact with the story's title character. She's this gorgeous woman who casts a beguiling type of supernatural enchantment over him, and they spend a night together. Then, not long after, the following scene and exchange occurs between Straub's main character, and this mysterious woman. "And during a weekend spent with her, Don wakes up and sees Alma standing at the window and looking blankly out at the fog. He asks her if anything is wrong, and she replies. At first he persuades himself that her reply has been “I saw a ghost.” A later truth forces him to admit she may have said “I am a ghost.” A final act of memory retrieval convinces him that she has said some¬ thing far more telling: “You are a ghost (275)". A few pages earlier, King can be found providing the proper context for that whole scene and bit of dialogue. When you've read the author's thoughts on this significant moment of dialogue in Straub's book, then it might just become possible to see why yet another back and forth between these same characters would make a perfect fit for the way that King might have been able to find and ending for his novella that actually worked.
"And when, in Ghost Story, Don Wanderley tries to ascertain who this eerie little girl is, this disquieting exchange follows: “Okay, let’s try again,” he said. “What are you?” For the first time since he had taken her into the car, she really smiled. It was a transformation, but not of a kind to "make him feel easier; she did not look any less adult. “You know,” she said. He insisted. “What are you?” She smiled all through her amazing response. “I am you.” “No. I am me. You are you.” “I am you.” ...What are you? Don asks. I am you, she responds. And that is where the heartbeat of this extraordinary book seems the strongest. What is the ghost, after all, that it should frighten us so, but our own face? When we observe it we become like Narcissus, who was so struck by the beauty of his own reflection that he lost his life. We fear the Ghost for much the same reason we fear the Werewolf: it is the deep part of us that need not be bound by piffling Apollonian restrictions. It can walk through walls, disappear, speak in the voices of strangers. It is the Dionysian part of us ... but it is still us (272)". Are you beginning to see why I highlighted that little repeated exchange from a different Horror novel? I can't say that King should have just copied and pasted Straub' dialogue verbatim, that would be phoning it all in, as well as being flat out dishonest plagiarism. However, he should have let the theme guide the ending of his story.
In other words, a better to conclude Ur would have had Wesley having some kind of existential confrontation with the quasi-spectral Gadget. He could have opened it up one day and found a message in the mail slot waiting for him marked URGENT: CONSULT THE TECH SUPPORT OPTION. Wesley tries to ignore this only to discover that he's been supernaturally locked out of the Ur Library, and can no longer gain access to any of it. Because: of course. After a moment to nerve himself, Wesley complies with the phantom Kindle's request. What follows should have been a confrontation between the M.R. James styled protagonist and the Ghost in the Machine. In thematic-allusive terms, it would mark the first time any of James's questing and curious scholars would be given a chance to answer back to the ghosts that they either pursue or are pursued by. The Ur Reader would inform Wesley that: AN ERROR HAS OCCURED IN PROCCESSING - SHIPMENT - AND DELIVERY. THIS MISTAKE IN TRANSACTION WILL NOW BE CORRECTED. THIS DEVICE SHALL BE ERASED. When Wesley reads this missive from nowhere, he treats it like a jealous owner anxious to keep a pearl of great price. He types a quest to keep access to the Library. SUCH A COURSE OF ACTION WILL NOT BE PERMITTED, the Ur will reply, or words to that effect. Wesley will then be given a chance that few of James's characters ever got the choice to walk away on his own two feet.
The main character might get away with his own life intact, though it should be clear his character has undergone some sort of transformation. It should all culminate in King finding the right way of posing Straub's metaphysical question and answer. Wesley must find the equivalent way to ask, What are you? The Ur Kindle must find the appropriate means and method of responding, I AM YOU. I MAKE YOU NERVOUS, AND YET YOU ALWAYS WANT TO COME BACK FOR MORE. The best possible conclusion I can come up with for a parting between the Jamesian protagonist and the Ghost in the Machine would probably go something like this. FOR WHAT IT IS WORTH, WE HOPE YOU HAVE ENJOYED THE OPPORTUNITY OF EXPLORING OUR COLLECTIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND PATRONAGE, MR. SMITH. The screen would then give a parting message, something along the lines of A GOOD BOOK CAN CREATE THE WORLD. Then the machine does a brief, glowing white out before going completely blank. No matter how much Wesley futzes with it, he can bring back either the power, signal, or features of that very curious reading device. He leaves it on the coffee table, and falls asleep staring at the eReader that shouldn't exist and so it does. When Wesley wakes up, the Ur is gone. Or at least that's the best possible ending I can come up with all by myself.
It would provide the best type of closure, one that leaves a greater depth about the nature of the Ghostly Kindle by never entirely explaining it's mysteries. Instead, the boundary between machine and specter would be blurred to the point where the sense of Romance behind all of Gothic fiction is able to leave its aesthetic note or imprint on the reader. It's not much, just the best I can do. In terms of what we've been left with in reality, both writer and reader are faced with an intriguing idea that doesn't quite manage to stick the landing. At the same time, it's still possible to say that the vast majority of the story keeps its entertainment value. I don't know how much cold comfort for change that sounds like. All I can say is that the ending didn't ruin the overall experience for me. With that in mind, I am going to have to recommend this little experiment of Stephen King's. Ur may never be the best thing he'll ever write. It is, however, a fun, funny, and surprisingly heartwarming look at stories and their effects on us.
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