The Dead Zone

Do you believe that you are born for a purpose in this world; that we all have some sort of fate that awaits us, no matter what other plans we have in mind? The joke is if you want to make g*d laugh, tell him your plans. I wonder about that sometimes, especially after reading another Stephen King novel.

Believe me when I say this: this is not a review that I wanted to write. I have avoided King’s work for most of a year. “Pet Sematary” and “Doctor Sleep” ended up on my desk because I found them in a book box, and I also discovered that King felt that the former book was one of the most disturbing things he had ever written. I think I understand why, and it had nothing to do with monsters stepping out of the woods when they feel their territory has been disturbed, or the vengeful ghosts of an old and abandoned hotel. Any novel that hinges on a child’s death by a runaway car, or watching his father lose his mind, was obviously written by someone who knows how easily reality can impinge on the imagination. And reality is a pretty terrifying place sometimes. It is the reason why I have so many doubts about writing this piece.

John Smith, a small town schoolteacher, finds himself in the hospital after recovering from a collision between his ride home in a taxi and some drag-racing kids on a deadly quiet road. He awakens from a four-and-a-half year coma and develops an ability to see things that others cannot envision, an ability that takes him back to an accident in his childhood when the signs were there and he could not understand them. Of course, using his “second sight” or “psychic abilities” makes him both a pariah and a celebrity throughout the story…right up until that final set of chapters when he has to make a decision that will change the lives over everyone around him.

Please forgive me. Some of you have already read the book, or seen the David Cronenberg adaptation, and may note the huge jumps over plot and incident that I am making (the solving of a murder case; the premonition of a prom night disaster – another one, Mr. King?). I am giving a schematic without diving too deeply into key moments for a reason: King seems to have had his own vision of what was to come in this book; his own personal Dead Zone.

I kept jumping back to the beginning of the book to check something. It was not the number of sections (only three this time; four-hundred pages in total); it was the year it was published: 1979.

Some of you too young to know or remember specifics should know the following: John Lennon would be killed by a gunman in 1980; the Pope would be shot in an attempted killing in 1981; President Ronald Reagan survived a killer’s ultimate gesture to Jodie Foster in the same year. Up to that point, there had been attempts on President Ford and other mass killings (Jonestown is referenced in the book), but seems very disturbing to me that King knew something about the zeitgeist that others could not name. Maybe it is a little dated and provokes a smile to predict Ford beating Carter into the 1980s, but there is nothing funny about just how close events in the book seemed to find their echo just a few years later…and even up to today. How can anyone read about a president facing another indictment and not wonder if anyone could have seen such a thing coming? Does King’s book still have lessons for us today? Is it the most terrifying thing he has ever written?

Well, no, not the most terrifying (I still find the short stories to be the best way to take him on, one dry shot of literary adrenaline at a time). But I wonder about what we should take from a book like this. As I said, some us might want to know and question their role in life. Certain artists work as dowser wands pointing us towards the source of certain things that we may not want to discover. Others simply cull the facts and tell us what could be (science fiction is brilliant at that: Octavia E. Butler; John Brunner). King seems to have written a novel both dated by the context of the material and far too ahead of itself in examining American culture.

Please read it for yourself and then join the Stephen King Book Club on YouTube. They will be going through the entire novel from the Prologue to the first three chapters tonight.

I have a vision that you might enjoy it...

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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