More philosophical than horror

Stephen King’s first collection of short stories in five years is an ensemble of his favourite tales and themes familiar to his readers

The master of horror is back and his new work will give us many a sleepless night. Stephen King’s new book ‘The Bazaar of Bad Dreams’ is a collection of his published and unpublished short stories. As King says in his foreword, ‘the best of stories have teeth’, the book starts in his vintage style.

The first story is about a car that was parked on a freeway, which devours every curious person, who comes too close. This absurd yet thrilling tale sets the pace. As we sift through the stories, the body count increases and one can’t help but notice that they are due to natural causes.

Barring a few stories where death is due to the work of evil, like ‘The Little Green God of Agony’ and ‘Bad Little Kid’, death is because of causes like heart attack and dying of old age. In the majority of the stories, the mood surrounding death of characters in story is close to philosophical rather than horror.

Unlike is previous works, the evil in this book is not something that can be fought. It is depicted as the door on the end of the hallway that one has to pass through. The fear of death is the basis of all King’s horror genre works.

As many stories deal about “The End” loyal fan base of King might contemplate that the author – who is 68, is perhaps dwelling on his own philosophical views of the end and being a prolific writer King explores the subject in myriad of ways.

There are personal stories in this book. In the introduction to the story, ‘The Little Green God of Agony’ King tells about a millionaire racked with crippling pain after an accident. This is inspired by King’s difficult rehabilitation after being hit (and almost killed) by a van in 1999.

‘Blockade Billy’ is an unapologetically indulgent tale about baseball, one of King’s passions. ‘Morality’, about a couple who agree to do something awful in order to escape their financial straits, recalls the early years of King’s marriage, when he was struggling to get his first novel published and worked as a teacher to pay the bills.

‘Drunken Fireworks’, the funny tale of an escalating Hatfield-McCoy feud in rural Maine during a Fourth of July, finds King, who has been rich for most of his life, still in touch with his trademark knack of exploring class differences from both perspectives.

This collection of stories has moments when King’s carnival huckster’s repertoire of tricks spark into real magic. His introduction acknowledges the almost-marital devotion of his readership – “we’ve known each other for a very long time” – and it is certainly more than duty that compels most of us to keep coming back for more.