The Shining is a bona fide classic. Whether speaking of the novel or the film, if you are in a crowd and mention you have never read it, never watched it, you will be pelted with outraged expressions of disbelief and exasperation from nearly everyone else within earshot. You may even be asked what you are doing with your life. So here I am, protected by the safety of my own website, saying I had never read The Shining.
Had. Past tense. I have remedied the situation and feel strange saying I feel a sense of completeness now, but that is the only way I can think to put it. The fact that I had not read The Shining had bothered me for years. During my junior year at university, I took a class that was listed in the university course catalog as a history of film studies, but the professor Dr. “Bob” Davis was a Stanley Kubrick überfan and had retooled the entire course to be an in-depth review of the director and his work. It was a fascinating class and one of my favorite university experiences. Students of Kubrick’s body of work will note that all of his feature films beginning with “Spartacus” (1960) are based on a novel or novella. Dr. Davis’s lesson plan was to assign the novel to read followed by an in-class screening of the film followed by analysis and discussion. It was a wonderful experience and one I am so sad to admit I did not take full advantage of. Being a full-time student while also holding down a full-time job left little to no time for sleep let alone in depth study of any of my class subjects, even of a subject that fascinated me as this one did. I wish I could take the class again today as a wiser adult with an appreciation for the gift that was being delivered to me every Tuesday and Thursday morning in that university auditorium classroom.
The first subject was A Clockwork Orange. Having been assigned for reading at the end of the class session on a Thursday with film screening and discussion scheduled for the following Tuesday, I had essentially four calendar days to read the novel. It is a short novel and I managed to do it. Following the Anthony Burgess masterpiece was The Shining. I bought the novel — I worked at a bookstore at the time so even received an employee discount! — but was not able to read it before the next class and so was without Stephen King’s original version of the story to guide me through the discussion. With the class charging forward to Barry Lyndon the following week and then Dr. Strangelove and beyond, I did not have the time to back up and read The Shining properly. After purchasing the book though, I did peek at the first page and will always remember the first line. “Officious little prick”. Why did that stick with me for two decades?
Fast forward to April 2020. In recognition of the global COVID-19 pandemic quarantine that has us all locked in our homes, my podcast (The Hero’s Journey) cohost and I decided it would be fun to cover a book or film featuring main characters trapped in isolated locations. Many projects were on the initial list but we narrowed it down to three finalists that we then presented to our Patreon patrons for voting: The Shining (novel and film), the John Carpenter classic thriller “The Thing”, and the criminally underappreciated Dan Trachtenberg directorial debut “10 Cloverfield Lane”. The Shining won with 50% of the vote and so I had a project to undertake.
I have seen the Kubrick film many times and that in-class screening in Dr. Davis’s auditorium was not the first, but I still had yet to read the novel. Appropriately enough, I had been toying with the idea of undertaking a Stephen King project wherein I would begin reading every novel of his that I have not yet read in publication order. I read Carrie last year — wait, was that last year… please hold, checking Goodreads… no, my goodness that was the first week of October 2018! — and had thought I would continue with ‘Salem’s Lot this year with The Shining to follow some time after. The people have spoken however and demanded I read The Shining immediately. So more than two decades after I should have read it like a good little film student, I finally read Stephen King’s The Shining from April 16-22. I did read it in less than a week and my first instinct upon snapping the book shut to test its thumpability was to chastise myself (and more?) for not doing it when I should have, but then I had to remind myself that more than two decades ago, I was working 40+ hours per week at a bookstore and shouldering a 16-unit university course load. The lesson here is be kind to yourself. Be forgiving. You’ve been through a lot.
I have read many Stephen King novels in my lifetime. Nowhere near half or probably even a quarter of his ever growing bibliography, but certainly more than any other author in existence. My first was The Stand, Complete and Unabridged. I have read Under the Dome, 11/22/63, Bag of Bones, Misery, On Writing, and several others. All of them have been great experiences. While reading The Shining, I struggled with this sense that I am reading one of the literary world’s horror classics upon which one of the cinema world’s horror classics was based and I was expecting the moon and more. “Wow, this is so cool,” I thought. “I’m having so much fun! This is amazing!” But was I? And was it? There is no question that The Shining is a great novel. Even though it is only the third of King’s massive oeuvre, King’s incredible skill at creating characters that capture the reader’s attention is on full display. The man understands people and what makes them who they are. Who we are. We recognize ourselves in them and isn’t that just the most frightening fucking thing?
I enjoy that King takes the scenic route to the destination. In the Hero’s Journey mythology, the World of Common Day is the first segment of the Journey and usually a brief one, especially in modern storytelling. The segment introduces the hero in their normal environment and is meant to give the reader the opportunity to relate to the hero or their situation which then helps the reader insert themselves into the story. Stephen King gives readers the veggies along with the meat and potatoes and I chew every bite slowly. In The Shining, I was a good hundred pages into the novel before I felt like other elements of the Journey were really beginning to take shape. At the very least, King’s Act One is juicy.
What would be the Journey’s second act of The Shining is where I began to flounder just a bit. I was still enjoying the heck out of the experience, but after seeing Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Jack Torrance, a troubled writer and his descent into hysterical homicidal madness, that became the version of Jack Torrance I expected. It is not the Jack Torrance of the novel. In some way, I enjoy the person of Jack Torrance in the novel much more than the film version. I see too many elements of myself in him. Jack Nicholson’s portrayal is unsettling, theatrical, almost comical, but always frighteningly human. In the novel, the troubled but earnest father and husband is possessed by supernatural forces of the Overlook Hotel and forced to commit his heinous attacks. While this is certainly unpleasant, I was not afraid of the novel’s Jack Torrance the way I am still today afraid of the film’s Jack Torrance. It just did not affect me the way the film did and does.
Where the novel is far superior to the film is the establishment of the Torrance family. All three characters are developed and interesting whereas in the film, it just feels like the Jack Nicholson Show. In the novel, the family is strained to the point of breaking but the job at the Overlook Hotel gives them another chance and it seems to cement them together again as a family unit. Then Stephen King does what he does best nobody escapes unharmed. The conclusion of the novel is vastly different than the film, but every bit as tense.
Stephen King’s talents are clear and present if slightly raw still. Do not misunderstand me: slightly raw for Stephen King is still masterful compared to many of his contemporaries. I think maybe I just prefer Stanley Kubrick’s film ever so slightly. This is why I tend to prefer to read the novel first and why I even now kick myself for not generating the time to read this story back in college when Dr. Davis assigned it to the class. Would I feel differently about it? It is such a subjective thing that I cannot think my way into an honest answer. All I know is that I enjoy both experiences and am grateful to Dr. Davis for his class. Two decades later, I have finally completed the coursework, Professor.