Saving Century II: The Irreplaceable Saucer of the Midwest

When I moved to New York City twenty years ago, I promised my family that I would try to return home at least once a year. As my work responsibilities grew and my personal life expanded, coordinating these trips became more complicated, but I kept my vow for the most part. Save the half dozen times I chose to fly straight through to Kansas City, renting a car to complete the trip to Wichita, I primarily flew out of LaGuardia at the crack of dawn with connecting flights to tinier airplanes through Atlanta or Chicago, finally landing sometime around noon Central Standard Time at the old Wichita Midcontinent airport. No matter how tired or frazzled I might feel from the hustle and jumble of air travel, I always looked forward to driving the flyover span of US 400 toward my mother’s home on the east side of town. Past the flat boxes of retail, through old neighborhoods thick with trees, the proud spire of the Friends University clocktower, then a curve, a sweep upward, and suddenly, to the north, the singular skyscape of downtown Wichita.

It has always been a comfort and a thrill to see it, the color wheel cross-section of light, bright blues, the monolithic flight control tower of the Garvey building, the black glass hulk of the former Bank 4, the improbable brutalist Lego transformer that is the old library, and that bodacious saucer, somehow futuristic yet still mid-century modern and forever too cool for school, the Century II Performing Arts and Convention Center.

The old, brutalist library at night.

The first, informal whispers that the old library and Century II might be leveled for downtown redevelopment was met by many Wichita natives as far-fetched and, frankly, unthinkable. Buildings are not paper cups to be tossed after use, and buildings as architecturally significant as Century II and the old library are certainly far beyond mere "structures." This wouldn’t be like tearing down an old Costco or Wal-Mart. These buildings are works of art. With a little refurbishment and a bit of repurposing, they have decades of life still left in them. Unfortunately (and completely unsurprisingly), the same minds that shoehorned the uninspired Intrust Arena downtown--with little regard to aesthetics or parking, it seems--are at it again. Populous, as part of the deceptively named Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition, promoted a rigged “community outreach” by means of a push poll, and initially proposed a selection of five plans for redevelopment on the river, only one of which kept Century II. It is clear that little to no effort was put into using the buildings we already have. Why refurbish, repurpose, and rebrand solid works of art that were built to last when you can build new, prefab, cheaply constructed boxes that will be ready to tear down in less than thirty years for yet another money grab?

Back in her library glory, full of stacks.

The corruption at the root of Century II’s possible demise has been remarkably slow and unabashedly deliberate. While Wichitans lived their lives, paid their bills, grew their gardens, and raised their kids, the city’s plan for Century II was to simply let it go to seed. Instead of caring for this remarkable building, an irreplaceable piece of architecture, the city manager decided to just let it rot. Paint and power washing was put aside, improvements were not made, and only the most critical of broken things were fixed. The plan, it seems, was to let it slowly deteriorate, allowing the facilities to become so rundown, outdated, and under resourced that the city manager could finally point to it and say, See, it is “no longer viable.” The citizens would look upon the faded, dirty structure and think “yes, we deserve something better.” Something shiny and new. They would forget that Century II was properly maintained for decades, a lovely, strange, one-of-a-kind centerpiece to Wichita’s skyline and treated thusly. Not all of us have forgotten.

Rendering 1. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

Using the word “legacy” to describe the pre-fab, mini-mall village the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition has in mind is particularly galling. Unless, of course, the lowest bid, aesthetically inconsequential strip mall mediocrity littered across the country is anyone’s idea of a suitable “legacy” for their beloved town. There is a reason that the three “concept” images featured on the RLMP website are vague and almost comically misleading. The first focuses the Arkansas River, depicting it in a decidedly bluer hue that it has ever been this century (or last, or ever, maybe). There is an inset swimming area that should run chills of horror down the spine of anyone who learned canoeing at North High, or has ever braved the river in a kayak, or has ever just walked by the river and caught a heady punch of its aroma. Even in this rendering, the “dream” river dominates, and the rest is obscured by trees and mobs of Wichitans, apparently wild to get up close and personal to the dank and dirty in the proposed river pool. What great works of architectural genius are slated to replace our beloved Century II and library? What daring design is just over the horizon?

Rendering 2. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

The second concept image features more Wichitans enjoying the expansive park space that would stand in place of where Century II is now. The park layout is flat, plain, and uninteresting. It is, for all intents and purposes, a glorified suburban lawn. We already have a glorified suburban lawn downtown in the desperately trendy, oft-hyped Naftzger Park. Likewise, Wichita already has downtown-adjacent parks that follow the river and offer far more than bland views. The rendering primarily shows people and park space and very little of the structures that the RLMP coalition plans to make or break our city’s lasting “legacy.”

Rendering 3. Screenshot from the Downtown Wichita website.

The last concept image shows the grand design of the new structures, sort of, depicting a generalized, very preliminary version of what the new development will have to offer. There will be two separate venues to replace the one Century II—a performing arts venue and a convention center—two vague rectangles of space that beg the question that if Century II was not fulfilling the entertainment needs of Wichita, why was the Intrust Bank Arena not conceived and constructed to meet those needs back in 2010? The rest of the structures and spaces in the rendering are either park space or the grimly labeled “mixed use,” which brings to mind the fate of the once-lovely little downtown park of my childhood, the aforementioned Naftzger Park, which has now been reduced to an overrated median strip next to mass-produced, derivative commercial buildings. “Mixed use” will likely be restaurants (great) and retail (maybe great depending on what ends up there), but will also likely include office and residential space. Since existing commercial and residential areas downtown are nowhere near maximum capacity, one wonders just who will be utilizing this new, “mixed use” development in the long run? Or are these just short-term goals with no long-term plans?

Winter CII

It would appear that the coalition at least has a dark sense of humor, where their deliberate use of the word “legacy” in their name could easily be construed as petty trolling. One of the proposed parks, which appears to be right in the demolished footprint of Century II, is named “Century Park.” Why? As an homage to the beautiful structure that once stood there with its cool, curved lines, bold and stark and extraordinary? Or is this just a placeholder name some snarky designer thought appropriate, akin to dancing on the grave of ingenuity and creativity, “so long as we get paid” sort of thing? What I do see when I look at that last concept drawing is a whole lot of boxy boxes of no consequence or value replacing buildings that have history, meaning, depth, and beauty.

Night angles of the old library.

Whenever I’ve traveled to popular destinations—New York, London, Seattle, Paris, New Orleans—what always strikes me first is the heft of History all around me. The stalwart permanence of the place. There is always new mixed in—new light fixtures, buildings, parks, ideas—but the old remains. People might go to New York to see a particular show at Madison Square Garden, but they do not go to New York to visit Madison Square Garden for the sake of Madison Square Garden. They do not go to see a single glass skyscraper, though they might appreciate it in the plethora of so many glass skyscrapers. And they certainly do not go to New York to see mini-malls, Super Targets, or Applebee’s. They go to see those stately brownstones lining the old neighborhoods, the elegant spire of the Chrysler Building, the handsome art deco wonder that is the Empire State Building. They walk miles to see the city in all her grandest splendor, the remarkable craft of mason work by hands folded generations ago, the beautiful, etched grace of a city cobbled together by competing interests, compelling stories, and the wearying sweat and toil of our great-great grandfathers. The city’s structures are its legacy in this world, the mark of the human hands, and minds, and hearts who created them, and the history, the story of our human permanence, that even though we pass on, our carefully crafted structures, built ever upward and outward, remain.

Main entryway of the old library at an angle.

It’s been suggested that the whole middle of the country suffers from a sort of vague identity crisis. We are the “flyover states,” the great, blank expanse, the parking lot to the Rocky Mountains. We are small town, small minded. Our cities are stopovers to better places, run through with train tracks, a gas station hub to anywhere but here. Compared to aged cities like London, or ancient cities like Jerusalem, our settlements are mere blips on the timeline, of no consequence, maybe just one bad drought away from ghost towns run flat to dust. We don’t have the alluring seduction of Hollywood, the primeval forests of the redwoods, the shining, dangerous lights of Las Vegas, the breathtaking awe of the Grand Canyon. We are not a destination. We have only scraps of history. And what we do have, too many of us are eager to take for granted. Why is there never room for nostalgia when we speak of public spaces? Is this not one of the ways we create a sense of home and belonging? Arguments to delegitimize nostalgia as a worthy aspect to saving Century II and the old library are disingenuous, dismissive, and critically flawed.

What the city government of Wichita seems to have forgotten (and the Riverfront Legacy Master Plan coalition could care less) is that the revitalization of downtown Wichita managed to take place using the existing structures that had been there for decades. Oldtown is called “Oldtown” for a reason. The brick streets, the old buildings, the sense of history, place—a true destination—made the revitalization of downtown what it is today. Ticky tacky, pressed board construction was never the answer. It is not the answer now. Nevertheless, the bulldozer of progress is chugging on. The old Wichita Eagle building (never a beauty contest winner, even in her youth) was replaced by the standard issue modern aesthetics of the new Cargill building, a similar mishmash of styles and “flairs” not unlike the new library (also near, but not on the river). Similarly styled buildings are rising up where the old Mead’s Corner used to stand and, most irritatingly, a new Fidelity megabank has gone up behind the quirky “Ho Ho” shaped Broadway Autopark, formerly the Knightly Parking Garage, on South Broadway, which was only just recently refurbished and repainted to now be obscured by yet another boxy box of boxness.

In a time when the world is on a precipice of survival, where we collectively seem to only half understand the need to re-use, re-source, and re-cycle, it is all the more tone deaf to tear down perfectly usable, perfectly astounding structures to replace them with stunted, cheap mediocrity. There is no time like the present to prove we are not locusts ever consuming, never building to stay, to stand, to commit, and not just to persevere but build true monuments to our audacity, our midwestern spirit to forge grain and stand into the wind, immovable and bound together. Do we leave crumbling detritus in our wake, choking the river, clogging the banks, or do we make a real effort to prove we as a people value beauty and art, and understand that we have already created something enduring to memorialize our grandest dreams in the name of our greatest virtues, institutions of learning and community? Our library, our Century II. Can we collectively say, Fly over us if you will, but we choose to leave something permanent and indelible, extraordinary and sublime. We dreamt big, wild, and limitless and shouted proudly that we loved this ground, these winding forks in the river, and wished to make our mark, leave sign of our daring, and state unequivocally that We Were Here.

Century II and the old library are worth saving. Instead of taking for granted the things that we have and striving for the banal, we could embrace a new century’s worth of science, education, arts, entertainment, work space, green space, community gathering place, and for a fraction of the cost of a hyped-up strip mall next to another bland park. We already have a sense of place, a monument to our community and generations past, but we’ve got to invest in it to make it prevail, otherwise we commit to a future of waystation grayness, the anyplace rest area in between more enticing destinations. Have your “mixed use” boxes, plan your grand monument suburban lawn maintenance—there are plenty of places around Wichita in desperate need of some investment and invigoration—but do not tear down the two buildings that make our skyline more than just vaguely memorable. Do not erase our identity—what makes us both identifiable and inscrutable—only to build nothing special at all.

All CII and old library photos are mine. If you want to see some truly gorgeous, professional photographs of these magnificent buildings, check out Mickey Shannon Photography and Drone-tography.

Evil Thoughts of a High Toned Son of a Bitch (Thinner, 1984)

Thinner (1984)

"But who has such control over the mind? If the self really is just an illusion to make sense of reality, it didn’t create the dark thought, nor can it prevent it. The shadow self has no master."--Jena E. Pincott, "Wicked Thoughts," Psychology Today, September 1, 2015

Screenshot of the paperback edition I once owned.
Looks like someone got hungry while reading this one.

In the numb weeks following my mother's death, I floated from one bloated sugar snack of entertainment glob to the next: movies, tv series, and three Stephen King audiobooks back to back. There are whole movies and series I have no useful memory of watching, which I suppose is understandable enough, but it gives me a scare when I think on it for too long. It is unsettling to feel so untethered from the physical, linear world. Loss of time was common enough for everyone during the quarantine, but genuinely struggling to remember what month of what year I'm lost within while trying to transact business with the DMV is a whole other level. After the grim events of any given day, making phone calls, sending emails, telling yet another person that my mother had died, all I wanted to do was play Donkey Kong 64 on a loop while listening to the familiar hum of a well worn story. As mentioned in the previous post, I finished The Eyes of the Dragon sometime in mid-January, then dutifully moved on to the next book in the chronology, King's novel under the Richard Bachman pseudonym, Thinner. 

With every audiobook, I make sure to listen to the sample before committing to the purchase. The next title in the chronology, The Talisman (co-written with Peter Straub), is an excellent example of why one must always check before buying. The audio sample was absolutely dreadful. Shamefully terrible. What's worse is that the voice actor is a celebrated veteran audiobook narrator. It's confounding. I don't know...perhaps this particular audiobook narrator is simply the spicy cilantro to my soap-adverse tastes. Since I could not bear to listen to a massacre of one of my favorite King works, and because I wanted nothing more than to continue the soft drone of the audiobook experience, I skipped ahead in the chronology to the book I've been wanting to read since the Covid-19 quarantines began a year ago: Under the Dome. I will have plenty to say about that one in terms of content, but I am happy to say little of it will be grousing about the voice actor. In the case of Under the Dome, the storytelling job was just fine. Not a Bronson Pinchot knock out sensation, but a perfectly nice job nonetheless.

I wish I could say the same for the narration of Thinner. While I did listen to the sample beforehand, it wasn't quite enough to set off any alarm bells, and there was one dominating factor in my decision to make the purchase regardless. I've been an unrepentant Criminal Minds fan* since I stumbled across it on Netflix God knows when ago. I loved the first two Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin) seasons, and grew to like the replacement "old school" BSU agent David Rossi as well as I liked any of the rest of the Criminal Minds crew. My memory of Joe Mantegna is otherwise blank--to me, he is only David Rossi, and it took a google search to remind myself that he was, indeed, a whole cast of other characters before David Rossi on Criminal Minds. Because of my fanatic status, I am very familiar with the tone and cadences of Mantegna's voice, so believed Thinner would be a nice soft blanket to drown in.

Hoo boy. I'm not an audiobook expert, nor have I read Audiobook Weekly or the Audiobook Report (which should exist, c'mon), but it seems a cornerstone issue that should be studied, discussed, and rectified once and for all is the use of falsetto to delineate the voices of women and children. I have crabbed about this topic before, but here my foot must land, hard. What's the deal? Are the producers of these works just..."fine" with it? If so, for all that is holy, WHY. Does the ridiculous falsetto sound right to the veteran audiobook listener's ear? Does it not grate against their brain like some rust-encrusted cheese grater? Do I stand...Alone?

The high star rating is inexplicable. 

Per my broken little psyche, I am fully prepared to blame myself for some shortcoming in taste or sensibility. After all, I am familiar with Joe Mantegna's voice, so perhaps it just hit me triply wrong to hear him start speaking in that high, lilting tone, having never heard David Rossi speak in that manner before. Even so, I must ask: Why do it at all? I could see changing the tone of voice slightly--ever so slightly--but a full-on falsetto? Are we, the listeners, so collectively stupid that an extreme pitch difference must be employed? 

Perhaps the falsetto, for me, harkens back to the divide between old-timey and modern movies. Classic movies, even the best of them (in my opinion, All About Eve reigns supreme), are populated with people who talk like they're being watched on a stage, delivering each line with crisp precision and annunciation, even when slogging through some put-on accent. Most sound mildly British and entirely inauthentic, each performance scrubbed shiny clean and bereft of dirt, quirk, or character. Sure, little sparks flash through (Bette Davis eats that screen, tears its flesh to bloody shreds), but so much of old cinema feels weirdly sanitized, as if a perfectly square, boxed product has been presented for mass consumption and easy digestion.

If you have not guessed already, I am not a fan of old movies or television. Fake, fake, fake. I know it is already fake, but I want my food to taste like something. I am not a buff, not an expert, and would never pretend to be, but there's a line drawn I'm guessing somewhere along that cultural divide of the 1960s, when natural performances started breaking through and breaking down the old facades. Good and dirty, smirky, mean, smelly, snotty, real performances. When the people being portrayed started looking, acting, and sounding like actual people. Not celluloid interpretations. The falsetto feels like a hangover from the old guard, "this is how we portray a woman" type bullshit that is, quite frankly, idiotic as it is unnecessary. In the wealth of all performance pedagogy, there isn't one critically useful alternative to making every woman character portrayed by a male voice actor sound like Tiny Tim tip-toeing through the godforsaken tulips? Not one? 

Needless to say, I did not enjoy the audiobook experience of Thinner. Mantegna does an otherwise good job of narrating King's story, but is then inexplicably (and unforgivably) sabotaged by the producers by one of the most misguided, bat-shit insane additions to the audiobook product I have thus far experienced (and hope to never suffer through again). The producers--in the infinite chasm of their group derangement--added transition "music" to indicate chapter/part breaks. Not just any "music," either. Oh no. They went all out on the crazy. You can actually hear a transition in the audio clip provided by Audible. The clanging racket not only punches the listener out of the narrative, it overlays the narration itself, as though it fancies itself television music, effectively ferrying the audience from one point of view to the next, but in this case with a cacophonous, tittering dipshittery that is both comical and lethally rude as it drowns out Joe Mantegna's voice work. Instead of a measured, competent collaboration, the Thinner audiobook disaster comes off as a wasted opportunity where people with too much power managed to score a big name talent to read the book, then decided to add the producer's college sophomore half brother's interpretive, industrialist "muzescapes" to torque it up, bra. Of the audiobooks I've listed through so far, Thinner is the first I've considered genuinely embarrassing and unprofessional. And despite the questionable falsettos utilized by Mantegna, he deserved much better than that. As did King.

But it isn't really King, is it? I've spoken about King's Bachman pseudonym before, but I've never delved all that deeply into how the pseudonym is also a whole other persona, as well. If you've read The Dark Half, you know that King has given a great deal of thought to the whole pseudonym phenomena, how it is more than just masking a known face to cavort amongst the citizenry anonymously while carrying none of the baggage one drags along through life: personality, good and bad acts, labels. In The Dark Half, the troubled but generally "good" half, the living, established, "serious" writer, Thad Beaumont,  creates the alter ego, very wicked, pulp crime novelist George Stark, from what he believes to be his own imagination. The true origin of Stark turns out to be something else entirely, of course, but the older I get, the more I understand how easily King wound up there, considering the strange alchemy of the pseudonym, and how it is so much more than a name.

In a session with my last therapist, I was Having a Day, as was often the case since she was what I chose as an alternative to attending AA or any other type of group gatherings to deal with the fallout from my alcoholism and shaky, often terrifying, recovery. Recovery is, above all else, a goddamned miracle. It is beautiful, blissful, and soul-shaking joyous. I wouldn't trade it for anything. But it is also pitch dark and hot adrenaline, gasping awake throughout the night, sweating, heart banging a welt in your bones. It is an awakening in every critical way, the good, the bad, the mind-warpingly ugly. It was rare that I walked into my therapist's soothing presence feeling stable, rested, and chill. On this particular day, I was feeling dark and stormy about harboring bad thoughts about others--acquaintances, family, strangers, anyone--and declared myself certifiably Evil. This was not the first time I'd made such a claim. It was a common refrain in my 8th grade songs, poems, and journal entries. I would slouch over my Mead spiral notebooks, scribbling furiously with my trusty blue Bic, sorting out the indisputable facts that made me the terrible demon that I clearly was...ungrateful daughter, grandpa calls me "dragon lady," grandma always mad at me, nobody likes me, my friends pretend to like me, abandoned, unwanted, ugly, boys only want to hurt me, bad at school, lazy, mean-spirited, thoughtless, pretentious, listens to Pink Floyd's The Wall on repeat, borrowed a Satan bible from a friend and touched the pages though it was too boring to actually read and was more about nature and shit but still I touched it, loves Stevie Nicks who may or may not be some sort of witch and therefore Satan-affliliate, and worst of all, I was obsessed with Stephen King...all evidence that I carried the mark of the devil, likely branded on my very soul. My theory at the time was that if I ever accomplished anything it would be to birth the antichrist. So, yeah, I was definitely, criminally thirteen.

On this particular day, some three decades later, my obsession had turned specifically to those dark, impulsive, unkind thoughts I secretly harbored for others. People have made whole careers out of insulting the populace with panache, razor wit, eviscerating takes and devastating burns. They were somehow exempt from my assessment. I would see a person on the subway, a couple on the street, and for no rhyme nor reason the ugliest, meanest thought would burble up from the recesses of my dark brainlayers--gassy, rank, and hateful. Instead of considering that I was not the only person who experienced "evil thoughts," that it might be something that everyone does from time to time, I decided it was yet another example of why I am Evil and must be destroyed. 

You know, it's kind of amazing that therapists don't sigh more during sessions. They must have a whole section on that in school. Also, How Not to Roll Your Eyes, and How to Keep a Straight Face. 

My therapist recommended a book to me, the name of which is lost in time (and a google search has equally failed), which first addressed the fact that my mean, flittering, momentary thoughts were in fact a completely common side effect of the human condition. Everyone has them. According to Jena E. Pencott's 2016 article from Psychology Today ("Wicked Thoughts"), we all experience a myriad of evil thoughts about ourselves and others, and what is most important is how we deal with them. Instead of obsessing over the the thoughts themselves, my mistake was granting far too much influence and power to the fact that I had them at all. Decades of development behind me and I was still pulling out that old hat of self-incrimination and sabotage. It should surprise you not at all that addicts are hardwired for self sabotage. If we are failing, stupid, and yes, even Evil, then there's really no reason not to pop the cork and die in a river of wine. 

While I was listening to Thinner, gritting my teeth through the falsetto and jangle-bangle hell-music, I had time to ruminate about the origins of Richard Bachman, King's later homage to the experience in story of The Dark Half, and desire we all have to expel the demons within us, whether they are real, worrisome threats, or the the passing mean thought about a neighbor. Whether it was by accident or purpose, the Bachman books are different from the King books. And, using King's own The Dark Half as an example, the correlation of King to Beaumont and Bachman to Stark rings strangely true. You'd imagine King would be the Stark, being the bad ol' horrorbook writer, but this is not the case. King's work, for all it's suffering, terror, and gore, also contains a great deal of heart and soul. No book on God's green earth has made me cry harder--to my very mean, evil little core--than the conclusion of It. The first time I made it through It, I balled as if someone had died. I was heartbroken, inconsolable...and awed. Stephen King made a world from nothing, spun people from nothing, and they were as real to me as anyone I'd ever known in real life. 

King's work is also quirky, full of depth, and often laugh out loud hilarious. Heart, heart, heart! He makes real humans that live and breathe and leave a mark. And the reader circles round back again because it is an all-encompassing experience, beauty and horror, screams of fear and laughter. But Bachman is different. If I had to describe the Bachman works in a word, I'd say they were meaner. Just...meaner. There's something missing from them. The worlds within are still real, still full, but the humor, if it exists at all, is hard, and the realities are harsher. It is as though that darker part of King, the shadow self referenced in "Wicked Thoughts," came to life, set Berol Black Beauty pencil to paper, and started writing grim "what if" tales that only ever ended in gutting darkness. Is Richard Bachman as bad as murderous George Stark? No doubt. Given the right circumstances.

Thinner falls in line with the rest of the Bachman penned works. It is a troubling story with few sympathetic characters and a knock-out, shocker of an ending that is about as unhappy as they come. While Thinner was never a favorite, I've still read it several times, mostly for that twist ending, just to watch the wizard work the spell. The first time I saw the film Drag Me to Hell, the correlations were obvious--wrongdoing against the traveler, a curse against the White Devil, the accelerating stress and precariousness of attempting to reverse it, that cruel, uppercut twist at the end. So, so good.

There are plenty of differences between Bachman's Thinner and Sam Raimi's film, but a marked outlier is the humor, the unrepentant balls-to-the-wall clowntoonery of Drag Me to Hell, from the puking-grotesquery of bugs and bodily functions, to the FUCKING GOAT that I swear lays me OUT every damn time ("You tricked me, you black-hearted w-w-w-whore. You Bi-i-itch!"). And while the central character, White Devil in each work does questionable to downright immoral things to get off the hook, and while the outcome for each is ultimately the same, I still felt a hell of a lot more for Drag Me to Hell's Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) than I ever have for Thinner's Billy Halleck. The novel hasn't aged well, for one, with enough bigotry and sexism to choke a possessed goat, but it's the Bachman factor, too. That dark half of Stephen King that sent these particular works down the Bachman path instead of the King path for ultimate publication. They are virulently hopeless and passively unkind. 

This leaves the Thinner experience, book or audio, a punishing one not to be set upon lightly. 

Grade: C
Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 2. The story itself is not particularly scary unless you are a true believer in curses. The audiobook is scary in that you will forever be anticipating the weird transition music that grates your nerves and scrambles your brain.
Warnings: Lots and lots of bigoted language! Jingle jangle, first circle of hell music! Falsetto! 
Artifact: 

* I was well into my third or fourth view through of the entire Criminal Minds series when I moved to Kansas to live with my mother. Being a Criminal Minds fan herself, it was one of the few primetime network shows we could agree to watch together, but she was less pleased with my impulsive sing-along to the intro song, which goes, in a high, piercing tone, something like, "deedle dee DEE!!! deedle dee DEE!!!" to match the urgent trill of the piano riff. Annoying? Obviously. Deal breaker? She endured. More evil than, say, an entirely gratuitous falsetto? Not even close. 

Like Dragonsand Through the Hourglass, These are the (lost) Days of Our (fractured) Lives (The Eyes of the Dragon, 1984)

The Eyes of the Dragon (1984)

I listened to the audiobook of Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon beginning sometime in November of 2020 and finished it in January of 2021. In between, my mother died.

I have started and restarted this blog entry more times than I care to remember. It seemed I should have something to say, first because it would be some semblance of forward momentum--in my life, my mind, my grief--second because it seemed particularly relevant to the circumstances at hand. In the book, a father has died, the lone parent to two boys, a central figure in their upbringing, mentoring, sense of self and worth...in my life, my mother has died. A single mother, central to my upbringing, development of self and worth, the person I tried to care for in what turned out to be the last years of her life. The crushing finality of that fact alone is still too much to bear.

Truth be told, my mind flattened and evaporated into tiny drifting particles of unfocused misfires and bland, muffled clicks like the relentless tock of the clock. I gather it together to form a brain, rickety and shaking emotional debris, so that I may tend to the business of the end, what must be done to settle the debts, close the accounts, and shut the book on my mother's life. This process persists due primarily to the horrifically disorganized, bloated, immoral entity of avarice that is the U.S. healthcare system, but most of the task boxes have been checked, papers tucked away, and a once long spreadsheet has been reduced to a few odds and ends. Her ashes rest in the closet. Her material world has been claimed by loved ones or donated to charities. Daily I grasp for a new distraction, or I intend to grasp, but then it evaporates, particles swirling in no particular order, no discernable plan.

At the very least, I should be able to do this. Write a short essay about one of King's departures from the horror genre, certainly one of the lesser read and least appreciated from the fan base. The unfair dismissal of The Eyes of the Dragon from the fandom at the time was later inspiration for King's far more popular (and wildly delicious) Misery, about the writer held captive by a psychotic superfan who makes him write, bitch or ELSE. I admit to being one of those disappointed fans. I read the paperback in 1988 at the notoriously merciless age of sixteen, and had no time for that boring swords and sorcery nonsense. My interests at the time were, in no particular order, King's horror, The Legend of Zelda, composing snarky poem/songs, smoking Marlboro 100s, The Cult, and rampant, unchecked idolatry. My bedroom walls were plastered in pictures of adored actors and musicians, dominated primarily by Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando, with one particularly huge poster of Bronson Pinchot, scene stealer from Beverly Hills Cop and star of the hit show of the time, Perfect Strangers. This will be relevant later.

So I read The Eyes of the Dragon once. Thereafter, the copy traveled with me from house to house, apartment to apartment, Kansas to New York. It was last seen at The Strand in Manhattan, where I believe it fetched zero dollars or cents and was tossed unceremoniously to the dregs cart. I never intended to read it again, but for a large part of my adulthood, I couldn't conceive of ever breaking up my King collection. So it was dragged along, shelved, re-shelved, and largely forgotten.

From the bottom of my heart, I apologize for my previous dismissal of this particular King work. It's a great, clever story, brimming with heart. What I most remember from my first read-around was knowing that he'd written The Eyes of the Dragon for his daughter, Naomi, because she was no a fan of his horrorbooks and he wanted to write something specifically for her. As a mean little turd, I thought TOO BAD she can't handle it but why do the rest of us have to be punished? This isn't reminiscent editorializing; I was actively mad that King wrote a dumb fantasy book that was barely scary at all. Fantasy, as you might remember, was my mother's thing. Terminally uncool.

It was a pleasure to listen to the story unfold, for as much as the book traveled with me through life, I remembered so little of the plot save the basics. I found myself gripped by the story and its pivotal conflict, and even knowing generally how it would be resolved, it was still a delight to hear it unfurl. I could not have known that parallels would be so easily drawn to my own life, when in December, over the course of eleven days, my life went from normal to fractured and askew. In the space of those short yet interminable eleven days, I had to come to terms with the drastic turn my mother's life was taking. I had to make decisions I wouldn't wish on anyone. For everything I tried, every best intention, I could not save her.

There are no parallels in the death itself--the father, King Roland, is murdered, after all--but the aftermath resonated; the shock, the inability to think clearly, the thin membrane of nothing protecting my soul from any further injury. When I picked up with the narrative of the book again, some weeks after my mother's passing, my mind kept circling back to one theme: potential. The Eyes of the Dragon is chock full of familiar themes, one of which is the ever-compelling spectacle of dueling brothers, in this case not so much against each other as for ownership of their father's love and admiration. One son, the eldest, is tall, handsome, and quick minded, a beloved reflection of the lost mother who died giving birth to the second son, an average, portly kid who takes after his average, portly father. The king favors the elder, Peter, of course, much to the dismay and heartbreak of the younger, Thomas. King's favorite, time-and-universe-hopping, go-to villain Flagg, King Roland's right hand man and house freak in this time and world, takes full advantage of the situation. Flagg, across all King works, is an agent of chaos and despair. He seeks riches only to buy suffering and grabs power only to bear misery. The well-adjusted, intelligent, self possessed prince Peter is a problem to be solved, and Flagg beats an intricate path to his dark purposes by means both foul and fouler. He isolates the king by killing his queen (a slip of the knife by the midwife), and befriends the surly, rejected Thomas early on, mentoring him with emotional manipulation and well-timed, wholly self-serving confidences. When the time is ripe, Flagg strikes, dispatching King Roland in a memorably horrific way, setting up Peter to take the fall, and unintentionally (and unknowingly) ensnaring young, simple, emotionally stunted Thomas into the stinging web. 

Both boys are destroyed by their father's death in entirely different ways. Peter, reeling with shock, is soon imprisoned for murder; Thomas, knowing the full truth of what has transpired and in no way prepared to confront or deal with it, is bedridden in a fever of grief and despair. There is a moment early on in Flagg's scheme when he sees young Thomas harm an animal after another dismissive, lecturing interaction with the king, and knows how he can use the boy's insecurities and growing inner turmoil to his full advantage. The boy, powerless, finds power in hurting something smaller and weaker. Flagg can relate. Anyone who has ever been hurt in such a fundamental way can relate. The difference is how we deal with it. Thomas, set permanently to the margins, grew toward the dark, and Flagg pruned him twisted and fed his roots bitter water. 

Still. Thomas never becomes Flagg. He never wrings his hands in evil glee, cackling like a malevolent loon at the suffering of others. He simply sags, leaden with the weight of the evil he's witnessed, sodden with the poison that surrounds and drowns him. He is not evil; he is weak and terrified of the terrible crown placed on his head through the inscrutable mechanics of malice and murder. Thomas, knowing full well what Flagg has done, has no one to turn to but Flagg. He clings to Flagg's cloak hem like a mewling, yellow toddler. After all, Flagg's duplicitous attentions are the only nurturing Thomas has ever been able to count on. His inner turmoil is as genuine as it is paralyzing. 

The twists and turns of the plot never let you forget about potential, what brave and resourceful child might grow from consistent love and adoration, beyond whatever genetic advantages might bear...versus the opposite, or the lazy inevitability of the second son, whose genetic misfortune was sunk even further by his own father's worst qualities now borne again in his own making. The criminal unfairness of the father holding the "lesser" son somehow accountable for these shortcomings, and brushing the boy aside to favor the shiny, clever boy lucky enough to take after the mother brings terrible consequences for them all, but is familiar enough to any family. The banality of neglect. 

When the king dies, every chance Thomas might have had to claim his father's respect, validation, and love is gone in the flash of dragonsand fire. He doesn't flow over with evil, he curdles with despair. The pain of being denied that love in favor of another is one thing; the notion that there will never be redemption is something else entirely.

It's all about potential. Proving oneself to the whole world still wouldn't add up to impressing that one particular person. So what does it mean when that person is gone? When that particular validation will never happen? Ever? Whenever my mind coalesced enough to consider sitting down to write this piece, this is where it would inevitably land. Thomas in his lost misery, bedridden with grief, me and my pollen brain, drifting, drifting. What value is potential when the only person whose opinion mattered is gone?

My therapist once told me that the one thing I wanted from my mother--ultimate validation--I would never get. It was impossible. Instead, I should work on coming to terms with this fact before it metastasized into something unmanageable and irreparable. I didn't understand what she meant at the time. In fact, it made me furious. I wasn't ready to admit that I wanted my mother's approval for anything, first of all. There was still a great deal of work ahead, grappling with the past, the things I wished were different and had not yet realized never could have been because we are the people we are. Could things have been different? Somewhat, maybe, but not uncharacteristically so. I was still mired in the blame game, obsessing over lost potential, what it cost us as a family, how she could have made a million different choices better than the ones she'd made. I was fully focused on judgement. I didn't need her damn validation.

Also, what an infuriating notion. I would never get what I really wanted from my mother? Never? Why? How? She would never be proud enough? Or I would never do something extraordinary enough to garner her ultimate praise? Just what the fiddlyfuck was that supposed to mean? I bristled at the very thought. I understand it now, though. And while it's taken decades to figure it out, it's been an immeasurably healing revelation for me and for my relationship with my mother. 

One small and irritating-yet-hilarious example: My very sense of humor--hambone, attention seeking, razor wit, honky-horn, clown-shoe goofballery--was honed specifically around my mother's extremely twisted, entirely unpredictable sensibilities. Her sense of humor was an ever-moving, often invisible target. From an early age, I would riff and jive, test every level of funny against her granite expression, landing little, sometimes provoking the smallest chuff of laughter, more of a charitable grunt than anything. Then, when I would least expect it, the most benign thing would set her off into gales of laughter, leaving me all twisty browed, gesturing at the tv in annoyed bemusement, "This? This you find funny?"

Sometimes I could make her laugh, really laugh, by some odd observation with only the glint of hilarity around the edges. I'd never know what would get her, so it was always a bright surprise. It would just happen, out of the blue, that chuckling, deep roll of laughter. More rarely, I'd get the coveted whipcrack cackle. For nothing. For things I couldn't remember even in random reverie and in the right here and now as I write this, no matter how hard I try to recall even one time that I made my mother really laugh. Because her humor was set to Random and I was on a lifelong journey to ferret out the secret, impossible circuit. The sheer volume of humor, ranging from simplistic to sophisticated, the quips, the puns, the overarching themes between Big Large Ideas and Small Mundane Life, all of it, casting the widest net to catch the tiniest, most elusive and clever little butterfly of a laugh. That genuine expression of delight from my mother. It was galling, insane, frustrating, and priceless.

This "ultimate validation" my therapist mentioned was far more than the ability to make my mother laugh. And the truth of the matter is that it would never happen because no matter how many times she told me she was proud, or how much I understood this to be true, it was never going to happen how my most secret, shamed heart had imagined it. Perhaps a cinematic kind validation filmmakers build whole movies around--Lucas, Rudy, etc.--that dramatic, world-shaking astonishment. By God, you've done it! You are indeed the very best girl! There is no shining moment like that. Worse yet, as close as you might get to that movie magic parallel, the moment will end. You could chase that high for the rest of your life never realizing that it will never quite feel the same way again. It can't. And in the case of chasing validation from that one person who shaped your life from birth, those moments never translate the way you imagined. Random conversations, overarching compliments, healing words to counterbalance harsh ones. Once the high dissipates, you're still you; still flawed, still wonderful, still short-tempered and longwinded. You're changed, maybe, but largely the same. One of the worst feelings in the world is standing quietly alone, after the noise has abated, the thrill of the moment has faded, wondering "Is that all there is?" Especially if you aren't prepared for it.

Mostly, though, that ultimate validation was never going to happen because I simply am not wired that way. It's the cyclical curse of the way we grew up together. To the very end, I wanted to please her, to make her happy, even when I knew that it was out of my control. As much as my inability to feel the full measure of her pride and love for me was completely out of her control. The ruthlessness of this self-sabotaging drive has diminished the older I've gotten and the better I understand myself and my motivations, but it still lingers. The saving grace is understanding my limitations and hidden pitfalls and knowing, at least intellectually, the truth of my mother's love and pride. Those sword and sorcery brothers, with their dragon slaying father, scheming doofwizard, royal lineage, and an ever-twisting drama spinning their lives into folklore, aren't nearly as lucky. 

Grade: A

Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 3 (this is not a scary book, more a tense book, but one element of the audiobook makes it scarier than the print version, see below).

Warnings: No real warnings other than prepare to be verklempt, clutch your pearls gobsmacked because the...

Artifact! Is! Amazing! So far, my audiobook experience has been fair to good, but this one blew me right out of the water. In many ways, I am still in the tree, clinging to my pearls, and in utter disbelief. Who is the narrator? Teen dream, big poster, omigod he's so cute Bronson Pinchot, of course. Imagine my surprise when I saw his name in the credits before pushing play. My teen crush on Bronson Pinchot was relatively short-lived and transpired about six hundred years ago, but I've always had warm feelings of support towards him since, and it was a twinkle of delight to see he'd be the storyteller for this leg of the Stephen King redux. I vaguely remembered he had a sort of deep voice, but what exactly would he bring to the table? Interesting but odd choice, I thought (ignorantly). Turns out, Bronson Pinchot is a fantastic audiobook actor. Stellar. And in this case, what sets him far beyond the skills of the rest is the fact that he somehow made that old, hokey hat, batshit crazy, dorkamania clownboy Flagg truly and completely terrifying. Oh. My. GOD. I don't know how he conjured it, I don't know how he cast that spell, but Pinchot does :::something::: with his voice--and I believe his voice alone, no digital manipulation--that brings Flagg to livid, horrid life. Pinchot's Flagg is somehow slick and grizzled, sticky-wet avarice and dry desert bone of the vacuum of his heartless, black hole soul. It is spine-tinglingly incredible. Once I finished the audiobook, I had to look Pinchot up just to find out if he'd received some kind of award for his performance. Alas, he had not, but it turns out this is GIG, this is his CALLING, and frankly I am still in awe (in the tree, blown free of the water, I say), having won seven Audie Awards for other audio works. If you ever wish to experience The Eyes of the Dragon (for the first or 101st time), I strongly suggest the audiobook. The book is great, yes, and deserves far more love than it has received, but Bronson Pinchot's performance of The Eyes of the Dragon is extraordinary. Talk about potential. Whew.

Jordache Bitches and the Vengeful Wereteen (Cycle of the Werewolf, 1983)

Cycle of the Werewolf (1983)

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.