Okay, I finished Stephen King's Rose Madder a few days ago, and I guess I'm still at least a sort-of King fan. Now with Licey's Story, the King I read a few weeks ago, I didn't realize how much I did like about it until I was writing the review. Let's see if the same thing happens with Rose Madder, with which I did frequently have problems. In terms of story, I found the book quite uneven. When Rosie, the protagonist, escapes from and eludes her abusive husband, I was close to can't-put-it-down. When she "enters" a painting she bought for her living room and performs a type of "heroic task," it was okay. It was still pretty good after her husband finds her and she again "enters" the painting to rid herself of her him. But then—once she returns to the real world, the husband dead, she and her boyfriend safe—the book goes on for another fifty plus pages. OMG, the tedium. Maybe my boredom prevented me from understanding some vital aspect of the conclusion, but as I read in ten-page hunks, I felt like I was taking another bottle of beer off the wall. Would it ever end? "Take one down and pass it around, seventy-six bottles of beer on the wall." AARGH!
But there are dog-eared pages. Let's see if King can win me back by details.
1) I have always liked King's ability to reference popular culture and even classic literature. An example of the latter: The woman who heads the "safe house" in which Rosie stays says to her, "It was Providence that brought you here—Providence with a capital P, just like in a Charles Dickens novel." (page 67) So for the rest of Rose Madder, whenever there's a really important Concept, its name is capitalized. Cool.
2) Rosie is thinking about troubles she had when she first arrived in the really big city. "These recollections possessed her mind wholly for a little while, as only our worst recollections can." (page 86) Yeah, Powers-That-Be, why can't the good memories haunt us like that? Or maybe, for people with no self doubts, people like John McCain or George W. Bush, the good memories do. Scary.
3) When Norman, the Abusive Husband, arrives in the big city bus station, he figures out Rosie probably went to the help desk, manned by a quiet, gentle, "Pravda-reading Jewboy." (page 135) In the next paragraph, Norman jots "down Thumperstein's address." Thumperstein. Isn't that great? And only a character as Obnoxious as Norman could come up with it.
4) Rosie thinks about how Norman always refers to prostitutes as gals. "She had never realized until this moment how much she had hated that back-of-the-throat word. Gals. Like a sound you might make when you were trying hard not to vomit." (page 141) I'll never hear or read gal again without thinking of that. Or, at a minimum, clearing my throat.
5) Right before Norman is about to beat Thumperstein to death: "Norman raised one foot and kicked the door shut behind him, feeling as graceful as Gene Kelly in an MGM musical." (page 152) Cool contrast.
6) The first time Rosie enters the picture on her living room wall, an inner voice says, "No one actually walks through pictures." (page 236) Come on, Stephen! I read that and immediately thought, "Mary Poppins!" Where's your fabulous connection to popular culture? My disappointment was lessened but not totally erased when later he refers to the event as being like "Alice going through the looking glass." (page 275) Grumble, grumble.
7) During the first trip into the painting, Rosie "was sprinting, yes, but in slow motion, and now all this seemed like a dream again, because this is the way one always ran in dreams, especially the bad ones where the fiend was always just two steps behind. In nightmares, escape became an underwater ballet." (page 263) Yeah.
8) Foreshadowing. Gotta love it! "Rosie felt a burst a happiness which she would remember later on that long, long day with sickened horror." (page 319) I dare anyone to stop reading after a sentence like that, even if King could have expressed it better.
9) Crazy Norman is kicking in the door to Rosie's room. "Rooming-house doors were not built to withstand insanity." (page 406) Now that, IMHO, is a truism.
I've reached my King conclusion. I'm a fan of his writing and his humor; it's his stories I no longer care for. I think Misery and 'Salem's Lot might go on the unread shelf. I remember liking the stories in both and in Misery, particularly, the humor—lots and lots of humor.
Speaking of humor, in Rose Madder someone (Norman?) is a Paul Sheldon fan. If I remember right, Paul Sheldon is the name of the writer in Misery. OMG! We're back to characters in Ed McBain novels discussing who wrote the script for Hitchcock's The Birds. Or, for a more academic comparison, Perry Miller, a writer on Colonial literature, actually footnoting himself. All of the above amuse me. Because I feel smart when I get the references? Oh, I hope not. I thought I left intellectual snobbery behind when I finished school. Martha, cool it with the stream-of-consciousness babble. Now! Okay. Bye.
