Back in the olden days of the nineteen eighties, a quarter to Internet and half past Model T, shopping was largely a physical endeavor. When you couldn't shuck your jive down to the mall, you had to at least let your fingers do the walking to get goods shipped to your doorstep. Catalogs were king in this regard. The Home Shopping Network was in its infancy, rarely offered anything a preteen might want, and your household had to have cable to get it, anyway.
While there were stand alone, independent bookstores and record shops around Wichita, one usually needed wheels to get there. Overwhelmed parents had an option, though, and ours took full advantage of it once we made that galvanic change from ten-year-old babies to eleven-year-old Women. T'was the Mall, y'all, and it was glorious. Mom would drop us off in the morning and pick us up for dinnertime. For six to eight hours, we walked, we lounged, we scoped, we giggled shrill and harsh.
 |
| Embossing hollers from the inner front cover. |
The midwestern and national anchor stores (JC Penney, Sears, Dillard's, Henry's) were bound together by shops with exotic, enchanting names like Cricket Alley, Ziggies, and The Wild Pair, and buttressed by standards like Spencer Gifts, Footlocker, and Radio Shack. In the revolving lottery of businesses that came and went, there were usually two music stores and two book stores to peruse for hours, day after day, searching for the new thing, the needed thing, the special shiny that would finally make life complete. Musicland and Camelot Music offered up the latest albums and tapes by Hall and Oates, Huey Lewis and the News, and 4-ever in our hearts Duran Duran, with the well tousled sheet music in the back that no one ever seemed to buy but countless kids relied upon to settle lyric disputes after rewind-play-rewind-play x 50 and the Mean Oracle Older Brother couldn't decipher "look for the purple banana 'til they put us in the truck" (let's go!). I still remember scoring the first cassette I ever bought on my own, its slick little case, black back, the cover art white save the band, all handsome and sparkly, with the lively yellow and blue lettering slanted askew as if to say there was indeed something I should know, letting those first static shutterclicks of cameras light me up and break me down, with "Girls of Film" electrifying my little silver boombox, my legs and arms flailing in unbridled, unfiltered delight.
 |
| Half title page. |
 |
| Full title page. Note that Wrightson sometimes went by "Berni" so as not to be confused with an Olympic diver of the same name. |
The early eighties had not yet seen the super bookstore come to fruition, with Borders and Barnes and Noble still on the horizon, so instead we had the tiny, packed wonders of Waldenbooks and B. Dalton to fulfill our book buying fancies...if we had said fancies to begin with, that is. I will confess that I do not recall buying books back then at all. I saved my nickels for music and merch, specifically band shirts, clever pins, snarky hats, and later, clothes. I was far more concerned with keeping up with whatever psychotic turn fashion might take (layered looks, popped collars, pin legs, jelly shoes, neon neon NEON) than spending money on something I could read for free at the library. Almost every Stephen King book I owned up until college was a gift of some sort, mostly from my mother, God love her.
When I would venture into B. Dalton (which I favored over Waldenbooks for reasons lost in time), it was always to cruise the idolatry sections, aka celebrity biographies, hot goss, slam books. Truth be told, with rare visits to sci fi and obligatory obsessing over horror (Barker, Straub, Koontz, Bradbury), this was also the section I spent most of my time in at the main library downtown, as well. It was on the second floor, sort of off in a corner, and rarely inhabited by anyone but me. Opposed to the book shops, which were already packed tight, with claustrophobic aisles and too many people leaning, reaching, breathing. Not to mention the stone cold fact that bookstore employees did not want kids grubbing up the merchandise for hours and skipping out without ever buying anything.
But it was on the floor of the library and tucked round the corner at B. Dalton that I learned about Marilyn's hair dying habits, Garbo's humble childhood, Mansfield's fictitiously gruesome end, and just how mad Brando's first wife was and would always be, perhaps even beyond the grave. When I first started going to the mall, I had a great allowance that could buy plenty of mall food (Taco Tico! McDonald's!), trinkets, at least one cassette tape, and even a shirt, but I never spent a dime on books. Once my mother's job evaporated, there was no allowance at all. I'd get money here and there, but most of my acquisitions were from discount stores, garage and estate sales, and the whim, charity, and kindness of others.
 |
| The 1983 specialty hardcover printing was by The Land of Enchantment. I owned this same 1985, first paperback edition from Signet. |
This is why I was especially lucky to get a new copy of the 1985 paperback edition of Cycle of the Werewolf since 1985-86 saw the worst of our financial drought, though whether I procured it at the beginning or tail end is not clear in my memory. I don't know how we afforded it, whether it was a birthday gift, or how exactly it came to be, but I remember being incredibly grateful for it...even if it was the least favorite thing I'd read from King up to that point. At the ripe old age of thirteen I could not have been less interested in comic books so, while the drawings were certainly compelling, the spare bits of story that bridge between those colorful smatterings of gore and horror were a bitter disappointment.
There is something piercingly clever and cruel about experiencing a loss of financial stability right when a teenager has become achingly aware of the supposed "value" of Things. Every kid comes to understand it in one way or another, depending first on socioeconomic circumstance, then on individual development, personal obsessions, and the outside forces that move and motivate one's world. I remember being blissfully ignorant to the power of trend, fashion, glamour, and labels when I was in fourth grade (1981-82). I was outgoing, friendly, weird, and cute enough, though my idea of dressing up was wearing my no label straight leg jeans so blue they were almost black, my white sweater with a purple flower on the breast, and my unbrushed hair tied back with braided crochet string. I had half my teeth, stork legs, and an affinity for faking illnesses to get out of school so I could watch Sesame Street and Dallas reruns on my grandma's couch. My passion--the absolute, white-hot center of my soul--was rollerskating. I never missed a skate party, skate night, skate opportunity. I was there! First in rental skates, later in my own skates, won by taking third place in a charity skate-a-thon (what else).
 |
| Dedication. |
 |
| Epigraphs. |
I was only at Jefferson elementary that single, fourth grade year, having moved from the center of town eastward, and we'd planned to stay there if not for a little twist of fate that sent me instead to Isely Alternative School for the following two years. I made lots of friends at Jefferson, a couple of frenemies, and sported an altogether easygoing crush on the most popular boy in school, a sixth grader named Robbie who also dug skating and was perhaps one of the nicest boys I ever knew. He was always kind and patient with me, as he was with all the little gigglers following him around Skate East, and never used his power for evil (as so many do). While I was not unfamiliar with the stratagems and stretched truths of gossip (I had babysitters, after all), it was the first time I recall peers talking bigger than they had a right, making claims about who did what and when, and generally taking their Barbie wannabe soap fantasies and applying them to real, schoolyard friends and foes. At the time, it was mildly distressing. Looking back on it now, I just want to laugh behind my hand, hug every one of them and tell them to put on their footy jammies, brush their teeth, turn on their night lights, be quiet, and Go. To. Bed.
When Robbie started to "go" with one of the meanest girls I'd ever met in my nine years of life, I was dismayed. What on earth would compel such a nice, good boy to pretend to date such a backstabbing babybeast? Some faceless, 4th grade frenemy told me that I could never have what our mutual foe Krissy had because I didn't look like her and I didn't act like her. What Krissy had was the undivided attention of every boy, including fair Robbie, but I could see nothing extraordinary about her except that she was bigger than us, had the world's weirdest, most teased perm, and wore copious amounts of strawberry Kissing Potion. She was also a skilled bully but I was relatively sure that could not be a factor. The fact that her jeans had someone's name on them never clicked. The fact that she had lip gloss at all never clicked. That she wore mascara and blue ice eyeliner--a scandal!--never clicked. It wasn't until the next year at Isely Alternative that it clicked. It clicked hard. It broke the sound barrier and I felt the seismic whoosh of impact. *CLICK*
 |
| Each chapter begins with the same, stylized title plate, with the month emphasized in black. |
The influence of my fellow classmates wheedled from the start of fifth grade. They said nothing, but wore it all. They dressed the same, in clothes I did not have and, upon further investigation, learned to my shock that I could not have. This was the crack, from out which frothed a bitter scum of want, and later, jealously so bright and sharp it all but cut me to shreds. They had things called Izod and Polo, crisp and clean. The little alligator, the little man on the horse. There were signatures and stamps on buttcheeks. Gloria Vanderbilt, Calvin Klein. They wore boat shoes in Kansas, went skiing in Colorado. They wore make up and smelled marvelous. The glint of jewelry twinkled 24 karat and genuine. They all had the same little red lunchboxes.
The thing that broke my hypercharged brain, a flashcard torture chamber of designer fashions and twinkly trinkets beyond my reach, each flickering by, ablaze with want and need, need and want, was a very small, very prim, highly idiotic purse that too many of the girls had and I decided would be the absolute end of me if I didn't, as well. It was blue with white hearts and spectacularly unremarkable. I would sit in class, seething for want of it, seeing it tucked behind the pink polo'd arm of some plain-pretty girl, feathered hair perfect, dangly gold earrings swinging and (gasp) double or even triple pierced ears, bored, gum popping, and utterly at ease with that little prim purse, no worries except maybe how many boys she'd have to say "no" to when they slipped her notes asking to be her boyfriend yes/no/maybe (circle one). I wanted that goddamned purse. Even though I had nothing to put in it. I wanted it.
In those two years at Isely, otherwise a dream within a dream, a school too good for this world (too pure), I did manage to acquire some of the things the other kids had, mostly the easy stuff (rainbow heart shoe strings for my hair), or things we already had that were turned back into fashion (rolled, red-paisley bandana repurposed as a belt). But while they had countless pieces with designer labels, I had the one pair of Jordache jeans. And while I eventually got the Tupperware (pitched earnestly as an essential to Isely dining, the hotmeal being too plebian to bare, and the lunchbag an atrocious affront to cafeteria aesthetics), we never skied in Colorado, and it took decades for me to stop caring about trends and labels and the altogether amorphous nature of "perfection."
I got the purse. It was, for a hot second, a resounding triumph. It was at the ass end of the year, however, and by the time school wound up again, the purse was abandoned in some corner of my room, a place to gather shiny bits of cheap jewelry picked up for a dime at estate sales where everything just had to go and yesterday if at all possible. It would have been a meaningful lesson in the shimmering mirage of Value had I the mental or emotional resources to grasp it. Unfortunately, it would take decades for me to truly understand the value of Things and the cheap emotional payoff of acquiring a new shiny only to have it dull before your very eyes, sometimes as soon as you took it out of the bag and removed the tag. Merch is, in the end, smoke, mirrors, and a sugarsweet flash of endorphins.
 |
| The introductory chapter plate is followed by beautiful, black and white, two-page spreads illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. Each chapter also includes one full-page, color illustrated plate set near mid- narrative, and one black and white drawing at the close of the chapter. |
When I got my hands on the newly released, mass market, 1985 paperback edition of Cycle of the Werewolf, I didn't know that the 1983 hardcover had been a limited edition, specialty printing. My recent efforts to track down the original, 1983 pricing for the hardcover have been in vain, but they're currently selling for anywhere from $300-$600 USD. Thirteen-year-old me would not have been impressed. It didn't matter that the book was a work of art with or without King's story. I'd only ever wanted it because it was a King story. The idea that I might have been denied access to a King work--a bestselling, mainstream, highly in demand author--would have been astounding to me. I was certainly prepared to argue over whether someone of my tender age should be allowed to read such things in the first place, but to be denied because of my socioeconomic status?
All that being said, thirteen-year-old me read her paperback copy of Cycle of the Werewolf once and tucked it away to be moved from one house, apartment, and duplex to the next and the next, likely never to be read again because I frankly just didn't get it. The linked vignettes of violent little deaths bulge awkwardly whenever King is compelled fill out the narrative a bit more. Otherwise it is a catalog of confrontations between a werewolf and the townspeople of Tarker's Mills. Little scraps of oily death. Cycle of the Werewolf is okay, and certainly engaging if you are into bloodbaths, but the real stars of the book were the illustrations. I was years from understanding that.
Also, and so true to form, werewolves are about as exciting to me as a bunch of draculas, mummies, and frankensteins running around causing havoc. Give me a double feature movie night with Monster Squad and An American Werewolf in London. Now, that is monstermash entertainment.
I found out about the special edition hardcover of Cycle of the Werewolf a few years later, when during my senior year in high school I read about another Stephen King work that I was definitively not allowed to have. It was a short story called "My Pretty Pony," which had been made into a book with artwork by Barbara Kruger. It was a special, 250-copy printing from the Whitney Museum's writer and artist series. At the time, it was available only in this extremely limited, entirely obnoxious format. There was no other version of the story printed in a magazine, no copy pirated and shared on some website because the Internet as we know it didn't exist in 1989, and it would not appear in any collected King works until four years later, in Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Not that there was any inkling that the story would eventually be available to the unwashed masses. It was only available in this one, highly exclusive format.
 |
| My favorite two-page illustration, April. |
As I sat there in the library, exhausting whatever card catalogue, microfiche cache of information I had to get my hands on this one, solitary story, all I could feel was fury. In my mind, it was a loud, beastly FUCK YOU to the millions of fans that had bought every book and waited with bated breath for the next and the next and the next. To my teen logic and limited knowledge of publishing, rights, and collectables, it seemed certain I would never be allowed to read it, nor would most people. Instead, it would be hoarded by those 250 decidedly rich buyers (it was over $2,000 per copy in 1989) and they alone would get to experience whatever magix that story held. It was unjust, grotesque, and infuriating. My vague but warm affection for Stephen King took a serious hit that day. Before, he'd been this dorky, talented, good-willed "Uncle Steve," bringer of scares both mighty and mouse-y, but always with humor and humanity and soul. Now, he was an elitist shit, probably wearing (re-branded) Lacoste and Sperry's on his gold-plated yacht, no doubt named something oogy like "Bloody Carrie" or "Here's Johnny."
To call my eventual reading of "My Pretty Pony" in Nightmares & Dreamscapes "anticlimactic" would be an insult to all things anticlimactic. That special edition hardcover now sells for anywhere from $200 to $6,000, but I reckon the story alone is worth about .42 cents a pop, or 1/24th the Nightmares & Dreamscapes paperback cost sans tax. Truth be told, I don't really remember what the story was about. Still, I always wondered how it was allowed to be one of the twenty four stories included in Nightmares & Dreamscapes collection at all. Didn't that devalue the limited edition? Wasn't at least part of the value the exclusivity of it? That if you owned it, you would be one of only 250 owners on the planet? That not even libraries would have a copy, save maybe one or two who had that kind of budget to blow?
 |
| Also in April, "Let's fly a kite, Food!" |
Maybe King decided it would be uncool in the long run. Who knows.
But whenever I think of Cycle of the Werewolf (which is seldom), I immediately think of "My Pretty Pony" and those limited edition runs, meant only for the lucky few. It never burned me that I could not own the artifact, with the special steel covers and inset clock, emblazed with signatures from the creators themselves. I was mad that I could be denied the story. Friendo, deny me every unpublished story you like, but as soon as they are published, to be set out for purchase and to be owned by another, then NO. Hellllll NO. Art should always be reasonably accessible. Every glimpse of the Mona Lisa I've had throughout my life--in text books, coffee table books, and via the Internet (the greatest equalizer)--absolutely destroy the actual view I got of her at the Louvre. She's behind glass, there are 5,000 people straining to see her, and she is very, very smol. I will never get to see her close up, see the brushstrokes, smell the chemicals, the wood in the frame, study the cracks, the tint, the smile, but I can see her in my mind's eye anytime I like because she was made as available as any work of art can be.
Creating something that only the richest, most elite, or just money foolish can attain then telling the whole world about it is gross. If it was a secret, just between you and your pal (or 250 richest pals), and it wasn't covered in national newspapers and magazines transported by truck and trolley to even the most dust-blown Midwestern corners of the nowhere to reach the eyes and heart of a fan who could never conceive of spending $2,000 on a book? Sure. Go buck wild. Write a thousand stories for a select few. But don't brag about it, fool!
 |
| According to Wikipedia, this whole project started as a calendar, thus explaining the brevity of the text, at least in part. It serves far better to explain the clear liberties taken with the full moon/kill dates coinciding nicely with familiar holidays. |
Now having read Cycle of the Werewolf for maybe the third time ever (and I'm betting it's just twice, but I can't be entirely certain), what strikes me most is the extraordinary talent of Bernie Wrightson. He's the same illustrator for the 1990 edited edition of The Stand, covered in an earlier post. His depictions of the wolf are stark with bloody, lively, murderous, sometimes funny savagery, but the full, two-page spreads of the banal beauty of Tarker's Mills set the tone in an exquisite balance of horror and the mundane. It is well worth the read just to experience Wrightson's brilliant work framed within each vignette. I wish I could have understood the true focus and value of Cycle of the Werewolf when I was a kid, but I still had miles of growing up to do.
Cycle of the Werewolf as a stand alone novel (or novella, really) is not bad, per se, but it would not be much of anything at all without Bernie Wrightson's magnificent artwork. If King ever considered reworking one of his books, this would be the perfect candidate, as sparing as it is, with so much more color and heft to be built upon the skinny bones. As an homage to Wrightson, to match his effort, at least, and truly bring this werewolf to howling life under the bright gleam of the full and ravenous moon.
[Never saw the movie, never will. Sorry, Corey Haim. You were great in The Lost Boys.]
 |
| Typical back cover copy, save the extremely avoidable typo (repeated, no less) which gives the name of the were-hounded town as "Tarker Mills." They've corrected the copy in more recent editions, but babyyyy, print is 4-ever [kiss emoji]. |
Grade: B (Wrightson gets an A, King gets a C)
Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 3. It only gets a 3 because some of the illustrations are freaky and make the reader think, maybe overthink, possibly have nightmares. Most of the "chapters" are so short and to the point that there is no real build up to the killings. It's just kill, kill, kill.
Warnings: Gore, n-word, implied weresex, extremely uneven narrative.
Artifact: Internet Archive had the goods, and for a full 14-day lend, too! Not that you need more than a few hours to finish Cycle of the Werewolf. It's only about 130 pages, including the illustrations. As with previous loans, they had the same edition I owned, and it was nice to peruse the pages once more, this time through more experienced eyes. Wrightson does beautiful, extraordinary work in Cycle, and it is well worth reading the paper copy just to experience the illustrations. While I believe the work would be better served by a more evenly spun narrative--either all brief or better fleshed--there is no denying King's ability to turn a phrase and make it sing tart or bitter in your mouth. I especially loved "November's dark iron," and King's well-known talent for expressing Maine's breadth of seasons.
No comments:
Post a Comment