Tracing The Trails Of The King : Firestarter

FAIR WARNING – if you have not read this book, there will likely be spoilers contained within this piece. This is the seventh essay in my ongoing series on Stephen King, and is intended to be a free discussion of the book. I cannot be held responsible if I inadvertently ruin the ending for you, so if you think this might apply to you, I would encourage you to turn back now.

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“The world, although well-lighted with fluorescents and incandescent bulbs and neon, is still full of odd dark corners and unsettling nooks and crannies.”

― Stephen King, Firestarter

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Stephen King continues his march through characters with paranormal abilities with his classic book, Firestarter. Even if you haven’t read it, you’re probably familiar with the story, at least in concept. There are certain characters of King’s who have graced the silver screen: Barlow, the cherry red car, Tim Curry in full clown makeup, pointing into the camera and laughing hysterically, Jack Nicholson shoving his face through the shattered remnants of that bathroom door. Add to that, the image of a young Drew Barrymore, with the world behind her engulfed in flames. These are some of the most iconic images and faces of the Stephen King movie catalog.

I’ll be completely honest about the fact that while Stephen King is my favorite author, I have never been much of a fan of the film adaptations of his work. There have been some good ones, but for the most part I feel like they often just stand as pale imitations. My all time favorite King films are actually the ones that most people wouldn’t even associate with his brand, movies like Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption or The Green Mile. So much of King’s writing takes place within the internal musings of the characters and it is extremely difficult to accomplish that kind of a narrative device on film.

As such, this is one example of, not only a book that I hadn’t yet read but also a movie I had never seen. I may have seen short bits of the film during the course of channel flipping but for the most part it was completely off my radar. All I really knew about it was Drew Barrymore and fire. So I came to this book with a clean slate, free of any kind of expectations or pre-conceptions.

One thing I found interesting about this book, having read it in order with all the books that led up to is, is that it seemed to have a distinctly different feel to it than the books that came before but at the same time, there were also elements that felt familiar. Certainly plenty has been said about King’s tendency to create so many characters who are coincidently writers, themselves. However, it seems that he also has a large number of characters, especially in these early books, that are children. More specifically, we see a lot of children who boast some kind of telekinetic or extra-sensory ability. Carrie was a teenager but you could certainly make the argument that emotionally, she was much younger. Danny Torrence was obviously a young child, still learning how to even express himself and understand the world around him. Tom Cullen in The Stand had a child-like view of the world and I think you could make the argument of him having mild abilities to shine or, at least he possessed some form of foresight.

I think that making these characters into children adds a complex depth to the stories and to the relationships between the characters. The experience of growing up into adulthood is challenge enough for most. Add to that the difficulties of realizing how different you are from all the other kids, and you have immediately established the tragedy of these kids’ lives. It is a brilliant way of isolating a character, and highlighting the challenges of their day-to-day lives. Additionally, while these kids often have abilities that make them incredibly powerful, it also implants them with an inherent weakness as well as dependence on others.

With Firestarter, we come to Charlie McGee, and I think that she is a big part of what places at least some of this book into the realm of the familiar. Charlie is the daughter of two individuals who met as subjects during an experiment conducted by a clandestine governmental agency on the effects of certain hallucinogenic drugs. While both of Charlie’s parents exhibit some telepathic abilities, they are somewhat limited and, in her father’s case, can cause physical harm to him in the form of migraines and bleeding in the brain if he uses them too excessively. Charlie, however, develops a previously unseen pyro-kinetic ability that for most of the book, is a complete mystery in terms of the limits and scope of what she can do. She, of course, immediately becomes the object of desire for the government to capture, and conduct extensive testing on her to learn more.

Charlie has an interesting arc in this book, as you get to see her grow up very quickly. In the beginning, she plays the part of the stereotypical child, clearly terrified of her abilities, and in her difficulty in controlling them. Her fear of causing harm to, or hurting anyone acts as enough of an incentive for her to abstain from using them but, as is often the case with children of this age, she often has difficulty controlling her emotions, which can lead to unintended consequences. Her father does what he can, to help her keep her powers under control, but also to try and get her past the guilt she uses to punish herself with whenever she does happen to use them. By the end of the book, as a result of being betrayed by people she trusted and from her sense of loss, she becomes even more powerful than anyone had imagined up until this point. She has the moment of realization, as she takes full hold of her abilities and brings the magnitude of her rage on all those who had intended to harm her and her father. Great literature is about showing change in characters, for good or bad and this book definitely gets top grade for this aspect.

One thing I liked about this book was how quickly King puts the reader into the action. It’s something that I think that Hollywood could learn a lesson from, when it comes to how they are choosing to craft the endless stream of super hero movies coming down the pipe. We don’t need to see forty five minutes of story, showing the origins of our hero. Start out with the action, the point where the story really starts to get interesting, and the really essential parts of the person’s history can be placed strategically throughout the story, in the form of flashbacks, or other forms of exposition. King manages to get a lot done in a very small amount of space.

And this isn’t to say that the story is perfect, by any means. I do feel like there are some pacing issues that, if they had been addressed, could have made the book even stronger. There are some portions that feel to me like they drag, and don’t really serve any real purpose to the overall narrative. I think that some aspects of Charlie and her father’s attempt to avoid capture could have been condensed down into fewer scenes, without losing any of the integrity of the story. In fact, I think that the intensity and power of the book could have been increased if it had maybe been a bit shorter.

And of course any conversation about Firestarter has to include one of my favorite Stephen King villains. King often does an amazing job crafting antagonists that you despise but, at the same time you also find yourself empathizing with them a little bit also. In Firestarter, that character is John Rainbird. He’s the enigma of the story. While he operates and functions for the agency that is trying to track Charlie down, really he is after his own best interests. He knows what he wants, and seems to get it, much of the time. King puts the reader so far into his point of view that there are some times that you find yourself rooting for him. His tactics to trick and win over Charlie are so effective, that you find yourself even wanting to trust Rainbird. I will say that one downside of this book is that while King devotes so much time in creating this powerful, frightening villain, by the end of the book, Rainbird is dispatched in fairly anti-climactic fashion.

I think that in the end, what I would have to say about this book was that I liked it, to be sure, just that I wasn’t necessarily blown away by it. If I had to choose five of Stephen King’s books to have with me after crashing on a desert island, this would not be one of the five. And this brings me finally around to how I felt this book was a departure from his previous books at this point. I don’t know if King was consciously making an effort at branching out into a different genre, but this feels more like a thriller, than any of his other books up until this point. The supernatural aspects of the story are still present, to be sure, but it still had more of the feel of the action and the political intrigue than any particular horrific aspect of the story. It also had the feel to me of a book that was designed to be friendly for transition into a film screenplay. To me, that seems like the most logical explanation, as Firestarter is one of the more popular film adaptations of his work, but the book isn’t one that you hear very often when people are discussing their favorites.

I think that one last criticism I would have would be relating to the epilogue of the book, which I didn’t really think accomplished anything. My main complaint is that the way it is written, it seems to suggest that at least at some point, King might have intended to write a sequel, and there seem to be several hints dropped that would suggest possible launching points into another book. As of yet, this has not materialized.

Still, you can’t expect to love every single book. I recall a quote from Martin Scorcese that essentially, he doesn’t expect anyone to like every single film he makes. He went so far as to say that whenever someone approaches him to tell him that they love all of his films, that his natural impulse is to react with suspicion. There were parts of this book that I really loved and then there were other parts that I thought were just fine. If I was to suggest a first book for someone who wanted to be introduced to Stephen King, I would probably not suggest this one. Still, it is Stephen King and overall, I found it to be an entertaining book and another ensemble of fantastic King characters.

My name is Chad Clark, and I am proud to be a Constant Reader.

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