Pulse Of A Master Helps Raise The Dead To New Highs

The Sunday Age

Sunday February 19, 2006

Simon Caterson

BOOK REVIEWS: Cell By Stephen King; Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished

By Rocky Wood with David Rawsthorne and Norma Blackburn

FICTION

Cell

By Stephen King

Hodder & Stoughton, $35

Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished

By Rocky Wood with David Rawsthorne and Norma Blackburn

Kanrock, $29.95

EVEN if the radiation from your mobile phone doesn't kill you, there is a chance the device will turn you into a zombie. In Stephen King's new novel, Armageddon is not triggered by nuclear weapons, an alien invasion or a plague but as the result of "an event that became known as the Pulse".

The effect of this strange occurrence is to turn users of the humble handset throughout the world into frenzied, babbling killers biting off each other's ears and ripping out the throats of complete strangers.

Fans of classic Val Lewton horror movies of the 1940s will be familiar with the zombie phenomenon, as will readers of postmodernist theorist Jacques Derrida, who saw them as "cinematic inscriptions of the failure of the life/death opposition".

The special place that is accorded to zombies in the annals of horror is duly acknowledged by King. "It's like the f---ing Night of the Living Dead," exclaims an incredulous policeman as he witnesses the carnage in Boston caused after the Pulse has entered the brains of the city's residents.

Indeed, one of the dedicatees of Cell is George A. Romeo, the director of Night of the Living Dead and other films of a similar vein.

Of course, not everyone uses a mobile phone (including, apparently, the author himself), so it seems there may be some hope for humanity. Among the few people in Boston left unaffected by the Pulse is visiting illustrator Clayton Riddell, a native of Stephen King's home state of Maine.

Clayton is obliged to make his way through the apocalyptic landscape of a city overrun by "phone-crazies" accompanied by two other refugees he picks up along the way. He must get back home before his young son has a chance to switch on his mobile phone and join the ranks of the undead.

King is not really concerned with the plausibility of his yarn, preferring to rely on the strength of his descriptive powers and his ability to make the narrative flow seem effortless. "Sounds like science fiction," one of the characters in the book muses, "but I suppose 15 or 20 years ago, cell phones as they now exist would have seemed like science fiction to most people." Now there's a point.

King is the most prolific of contemporary fiction writers, and perhaps inevitably his prose at times becomes windy and bloated. However, he does know how to make a little social observation and vernacular conversation go a long way.

The chaos caused by the Pulse reminds Clayton of old episodes of The Twilight Zone, "where civilisation turns out to be nothing more than a thin layer of shellac". And so it is, King seems to be saying.

Cell is a leaner book than the more expansive recent efforts such as the interminable Dark Tower series. In this moderately entertaining, albeit undeniably far-fetched, tale, King demonstrates why few horror writers can match his reputation for rendering gory scenes with gusto and panache.

Keeping track of King's vast and diverse oeuvre is an occupation in itself, and already there are concordances, encyclopedias and other reference books devoted to this Herculean task. The Australian-based authors of Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished have identified among King's papers a total of 99 works that have either never made it into print or have not so far appeared in book form.

These items are listed alphabetically and, in addition, the book features a story and a poem from the archives. There is also a bibliography.

Apart from the joy that the unearthing of this mass of stuff will bring to King's more dedicated admirers, the collection is interesting for the insight it gives into the author's creative process.

King is apparently not afraid to try his hand at anything and also to abandon without hesitation any piece that is not working.

Another aspect of King's craft is his willingness - at least in the early phase of his career - to write for any publication that would accept his work, or else to write simply for the sake of it. Thus some material was intended purely for the author's own amusement or that of his family.

There is nothing here to suggest that any masterpieces have been overlooked, but there is no doubting King's total immersion in the world of his work, or that of his closest readers.

© 2006 The Sunday Age

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