The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park,
Colo., was the inspiration for Stephen King's "The Shining." King
stayed in the hotel on the final day it was open before closing for the winter.
King wandered the empty hallways and he and his wife were the only ones in the
dining room at dinner. "By the time I went to bed that night, I had the
whole book in my mind," King later said. (Trine Tsouderos/Chicago
Tribune/MCT)
Photo
by Trine Tsouderos
-----------------------------------------
by Shawn Ryan
in Life Entertainment
Times Free Press
January 27, 2017
When
Chris Dortch was an adolescent, he snuck a copy of Stephen King's "The
Shining" into the house.
"Stephen
King was someone that my parents didn't really police for me," he says.
A bit
more investigating might have been in order.
"I
read it when I was about 12 years old and absolutely terrified myself,"
Dortch says happily.
He took
that terror and turned it into a lifelong love of horror in all forms — books,
movies, TV.
"That
book meant a lot to me," says Dortch, director of the Chattanooga Film
Festival and founder and programmer for the Mise En Scenesters film club.
"I'm a sucker for a good ghost story, and it's one of the books that put
those hooks in me. It sent me down a major rabbit hole."
On
Saturday, "The Shining" (novel, not film) turns 40 years old. When it
came out in 1977, King was in the process of building the name that would
become internationally synonymous with horror. It was his third book after the
telekinetic teen in "Carrie" and the vampires of "Salem's
Lot."
"What
stood out to me about 'The Shining' was that it was a work that had so many
levels so much going on," says Robert R. McCammon, a compatriot of King's
who has written 22 novels, including such critically acclaimed books as
"Boy's Life," "Swan Song," "They Thirst" and
"Speaks the Nightbird."
"I
think that right off the bat after reading it I thought it was truly a great
piece of literature," he says. "I know that King's work has been
described by some critics as being 'pop' for the masses and, while I don't
think there's anything wrong with writing a book that everyone might like to
read, I certainly disagree with that assessment of 'The Shining,' which I
believe is a deep book about the nature of evil that stands out as a 'shining'
example of what true literature is a book that can be appreciated on many
levels.
"There
are so many 'small' moments in the book that add up to the larger picture of
evil," McCammon says.
King,
dealing with his own drinking problems when he was writing "The
Shining," used his personal issues as elements in the plot, which focuses
on a family of three — father, mother, young son — who are caretakers and the
only people in a huge, isolated hotel in the middle of the Colorado winter. The
hotel, however, has its own designs on the family, or is it all in the head of
the alcoholic father?
"Sometimes
you confess. You always hide what you're confessing to. That's one of the
reasons why you make up the story," King said in "The Stephen King
Companion." "When I wrote 'The Shining,' for instance, the
protagonist of 'The Shining' is a man who has broken his son's arm, who has a
history of child beating, who is beaten himself. And as a young father with two
children, I was horrified by my occasional feelings of real antagonism toward
my children. 'Won't you ever stop? Won't you ever go to bed?'"
Local
attorney Tracy Culver doesn't remember being terrified when she read the novel
as a young adult, "but there are things in it that have stayed with me
throughout my life."
"I've
never looked at a hotel corridor the same way or, for that matter, a hotel
shower. It doesn't matter whether it's a low-end hotel or high-end hotel; when
I first go into the bathroom, there's always that moment of ," says
Culver, a collector of Stephen King first editions who figures she has about
30.
Jen
Litton recalls reading "The Shining" when she was about 24 and found
it "more intense than scary."
"It
makes you look differently at hotels, but it didn't make me lose sleep at
night," says Litton, director of operations and trading with the Patten
Group.
Still,
she recognizes its standing in the world of horror.
"I
definitely think it kind of set the course for the horror genre in this kind of
supernatural or internal struggle motif," she says. "It upset the
balance between reality and fiction in what could really happen inside
someone's mind,"
"It's
so rich with imagery and internal conflict and different interactions, it goes
beyond just beyond a scary book."
The
book was turned into a film in 1980, helmed by world-famous director Stanley
Kubrick. But it raised serious hackles in the King universe. Some said it was
masterpiece of horror while others, many of whom had read the book, trashed it,
complaining that it downplayed the supernatural elements of the book in favor of
the psychological. Right after it was released, King said he hated it but later
softened that stance.
Nathan
Bounds of Cleveland says "the book did a much better job of getting inside
the main character's head, which isn't surprising, since that's one of the
central advantages a book has over a movie.
"It
made you feel his hangovers, his addiction, his obsession, his slow loss of the
ability to distinguish reality from illusion," says Bounds, a recent
graduate of Chattanooga State Community College. "The scares were less
blunt, less dependent on surprise, more creeping and subtle.
"It's
definitely worth the read, and now I'm thinking I'm going to reread it
myself."
Daniel
Griffith has read "The Shining," but "it's been a long
time."
A local
documentary filmmaker, film preservationist and owner of Ballyhoo Pictures
which focuses on, as its web page says, "Making Movies about the Making of
Movies," Griffith agrees that fans of book tend to "kind of disregard
the Stanley Kubrick film because it added an element to the story that explored
something much more psychological than supernatural." For his part,
though, he thinks that decision made the film more interesting.
But for
Dortch, it all comes back to the novel's scares. Reading "The
Shining" compelled him to read Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of
Hill House" and Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw," among many
others.
"I
read everything I could get my hands on," he says, but King remains at the
top of his personal list.
"There
isn't a day when I don't reference him. I referenced 'Cujo' just this
morning."
