Just Finished Reading The Institute by Stephen King

The Institute is the latest novel written by my favorite author, Stephen King, published just this past September.  It's about the abduction of specially talented children by a ruthless, shady organization...I don't think I'm giving away the story by saying that the "Institute" is a remote facility in which they're housed...or more precisely, imprisoned.  In the meantime, a decorated ex-cop from Tampa is looking to sort out his life and future as he hitchhikes his way to a rural South Carolina town, where he is hired to be the "night-knocker"...a part-time, unarmed employee of the police force whose job entails checking out the town's various businesses and neighborhoods late at night for their security.  How these two separate story threads eventually come together...well, I guess you'll need to read the book for yourself as I want you to get its full impact.  Instead of going further into the plot and characters, I think I'll reiterate something I've discussed on this blog in the past...

I don't subscribe to the notion that some people have paranormal abilities such as telepathy (mind-reading and thought-transfer) or telekinesis (mentally moving objects).  Of course there are people out there who claim to be psychics, often making a bit of money publicly hawking their claims.  But anyone who actually possessed such abilities would be well-advised to keep them private and not allow them to become common knowledge.  Not only would it arouse suspicion and mistrust among the people around them, but a paranormal ability could well attract the attention of the kind of nefarious people that King described in his novel.  There was a similar situation in his excellent 2011 book  11/22/63, in which a time traveler to the past...technically not "gifted" with precognition...nevertheless had to be careful with his knowledge of upcoming events not to allow it to inadvertently slip out to those around him....

When I was in the first grade, my teacher Mrs. Parsons had the class play a little game.  One student would be picked to stand outside in the hallway while another in the class would be given an object, like a blackboard eraser.  Then the student in the hallway would come back in and, without a word being exchanged, survey the classroom and try to pick out the classmate hiding the object.  It seems I had a special talent for looking over the many faces and picking the right one...repeatedly...to the point where some kids began to grumble that I was somehow cheating.  But I wasn't cheating...or psychic...but rather was simply good at accurately reading faces and body language.  Still, I think the temptation among many of us is to quickly make that giant leap whenever a confounding situation arises and attribute it to the supernatural or paranormal...or with my example, start accusing.  It's as if the correct and intellectually honest response "I don't know why this is so" has become taboo...

I thought The Institute was one of Stephen King's better novels...why not read it and let me know your own reactions...

Weekly Short Story: The Picture Man by John Dalmas

The Picture Man, by John Dalmas, is the opening story in the anthology Donald A. Wollheim Presents The 1985 Annual World's Best SF.  The narrator is a college professor whose wife had earlier left him for another man and who is now adjusting to his empty house.  One evening he notices a man...obviously homeless...going through his garbage and invites him in for some food, even letting him clean himself up and giving him some of his own clothes to change into.  The man's name is Finnish: Jaakko Savimaki is from a town in Michigan that essentially shut down decades earlier when its mines closed.  Jake, for short, is grateful for our narrator's hospitality and wants to return the favor, asking him if he has a Polaroid camera.  The good professor then is told to take a snapshot of Jake's head...the resulting picture is of an old house...Jake's old Michigan home.  Another picture is snapped and a different scene comes out.  It seems that Jake has inadvertently developed the psychic ability of transferring something from his mind to film.  The narrator gets hold of some people who study parapsychology and they test Jake, getting even more amazing results.  Finally, he is steered toward showing what Soviet spaceships will soon look like...and then the story takes a sharp left turn.  To find out what happens, you'll have to read it for yourself: I'm not spoiling the ending...

Written after Stephen King's Firestarter, The Picture Man also addresses an issue I've discussed a number of times over the years on this blog: if someone possesses a paranormal talent, then the last thing they would want to do would be to openly advertise it in the manner that all the fake professional "psychics" around us do.  For a truly paranormally-endowed individual would quickly become a target of governments...and not necessarily ours, seen both as a potential asset in covert matters or a dangerous threat.  In any case such a person would end up losing their liberty, at the very least.  Jake recognizes this in Dalmas's tale and acts accordingly...

Besides the main story line, I felt that The Picture Man had a certain sweetness and optimism to it not only by how the professor treats Jake, but also how others embrace and accept this once forlorn man into their community.  And Finnish curiously fits into it all...

Just Finished Rereading The Dead Zone by Stephen King

I first read Stephen King's 1979 novel The Dead Zone several years ago and, when a co-worker mentioned it as one of his favorites, I realized that I had forgotten a lot of what happened in it...only that I had also liked it.  So, as I have recently done with other King novels like 11/22/63, Salem's Lot, Insomnia, and Needful Things, I reread it...it really was pretty doggone good...

Johnny Smith is a young man...residing in Stephen King's home state of Maine, naturally...who had a childhood accident that occasionally gives him precognitive powers.  Employed as a high school teacher, he takes his date, Sarah...also a teacher at the same school...to the carnival where he freaks everyone out by repeatedly hitting the right numbers at a gambling stand. The circumstances during that night culminate in Johnny being critically injured while riding a taxi home...and he doesn't come out of his coma until five years later.  Meanwhile, Sarah has married and had a child...and history has marched on as well...

The Dead Zone follows another character, the antagonist Greg Stillson, as he "progresses" from a dog-killing Bible salesman to a heavy-handed small town mayor in New Hampshire.  Stillson has big plans for himself and decides to run for U.S. Representative in his district.  While this is going on, Johnny comes out of his coma...with much stronger abilities...to see into others' lives, even their futures...simply by touching them.  When he encounters Greg Stillson at a campaign rally, he sees a terribly ominous future for the country and the world...

As was the case in Firestarter...written by Stephen King at about the same general time...the protagonist cannot hide his paranormal abilities from others and as a result suffers persecution.  But Johnny cannot help wanting to warn others of impending doom...some heed his words, some don't, but almost all come away with the feeling that he is one very scary guy, to be avoided.  What I liked the most about this story was how the author developed the characters and put people like Sarah, Johnny's father, and his neurologist Sam Weizak into his life who genuinely cared and supported him...it wasn't just Johnny vs. the world...

I never saw the movie version of The Dead Zone, which came out in 1983 and starred Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith and Martin Sheen as Greg Stillson.  I do know that the ending was changed around a bit, though...but that doesn't surprise me.  I also read that the television version of this story is markedly different from the book.  Although a couple of people I know who saw the movie said they liked it, I'd still recommend that you read the book first.  Oh, by the way...that term "dead zone" referred to a part of Johnny's brain that had been damaged during his accidents and which caused certain lapses in his memory...

Just Finished Reading Stephen King's Firestarter

Several years ago I saw the movie version of Stephen King's 1980 novel Firestarter, starring Drew Barrymore, David Keith, Martin Sheen, and George C. Scott.  After seeing it, I felt no need to read the book, but lately after noting how divergent some of King's film adaptations were from the original stories, I though I'd go ahead and read it anyway.  As it turned out, there were some minor differences...but the movie by and large "stuck to the script".  The only real problem I had with it was the casting of George C. Scott as the homicidal psychopathic native American John Rainbird...reading the book gave me a completely different picture of this character...

Firestarter is one of those stories common to the era in which it was written...the government has very sinister, secret, and ruthless factions within it where the law and protection of life and liberty are meaningless: in this particular story the offending agency is called the Shop.  As the result of one of their experiments, Andy McGee and his future wife Vicky are induced through a hallucinogen into having psychic abilities...which change their DNA and are passed on to their daughter Charlie.  Charlie has the talent of pyrokinesis, which means she can start fires with her mind.  The bad guys in government want to control this innocent family for their own nefarious ends, all supposedly in the name of national security.  Firestarter is how Andy, Charlie, and to a lesser degree Vicky deal with their persecution...you'll have to read it yourself (or watch the movie) to find out what happens...

Firestarter hits upon a belief that I've always subscribed to: if you find that you have a special paranormal ability, then the last thing on Earth you want to do is let it become common knowledge.  For you will then become a target and your so-called rights will good for nothing anymore when, if you had been able to keep it to yourself, then you could have cautiously and sparingly used your gift for your own benefit.  The problem with Firestarter was that the Shop was deliberately looking for signs of paranormal ability among its test subjects, who themselves were uninformed of this.  So when Andy McGee innocently called out one of the "volunteers" by name when it hadn't been revealed, it quickly became too late to back out...

I've read better Stephen King novels than Firestarter, but I tend to suspect that there are clandestine agencies within our government, which by dint of their secrecy and security clearance can and do trample on the rights of the very people they are supposed to serve.  To me, that's a lot scarier than the dubious ability of someone to mentally make fires.  Somebody in the story once hysterically called Charlie a monster for her paranormal capabilities, but the Shop was full of the worst kind of monsters as they rationalized the murders and kidnappings of their fellow human beings with their insulated, bureaucratic self-righteousness...

Extreme Cynicism Equals Extreme Gullibility

How do you con someone to support you, either by them giving you their money, their vote, or adopting your cause?  I would answer, after having witnessed numerous examples of successful confidence schemes in the media, marketplace, and politics over the years, that first you need to establish that whatever you're promoting is outside the realm of the "establishment"...the forces that be per se...and that "they" not only cannot be trusted, but also are in opposition to your own agenda...which of course is only for the greater good and "truth".  This goes for selling alternative health food/supplements, claims about alien abductions/Roswell/chemtrails/bigfoot/ancient aliens/etcetera, denial of established science about evolution, ecology, and/or climatology, conspiracy theories such as Truthers, Birthers, and those with an anti-Semitic foundation, historical revisionism....and what the current president-elect, a fixture of the financial elite establishment for decades, has managed to accomplish by identifying himself as coming from "outside" that establishment in favor for the ordinary citizen.  To be suckered into following any of the aforementioned requires in advance a cynical rejection of established norms and an accompanying uncritical gullibility in favor of alternatives...as far-fetched and distant from believability and accountability as they may be...

I might also add that this cynicism/gullibility dualism is not just a phenomenon of America or the Western world.  I see this in the Islamic culture as well, where some people raised in the Muslim faith will cynically reject the well-developed, stable social structure within that society in favor of jumping uncritically into violent Jihadism, meekly buying into whatever lies their new masters tell them.  So cynicism and gullibility going hand-in-hand is not culture-centered...it probably spans all of humanity.  But I never hear anyone discussing it...what do you think?

Watching the Clouds and Moon Last Night

Last night after work, I came home, got a bite to eat, and then went outside to my backyard seat to look at the night sky.  It was around one in the morning, and the sky had shifted slightly from the previous time I had sat out there, with Pegasus directly overhead and the star Deneb Kaitos higher and more southern in the sky.  But with the exceptions of Capella and Aldeberan lying low above the horizon, that was pretty much all of the stars that I saw, for clouds...those with a small, patchy cotton-like appearance, covered much of the east, where I faced.  And near the bottom of the formation was the moon, very bright in almost a last quarter phase.  Clouds were flying over and around it, and I began to notice the visual interaction.  The closest clouds to the moon, as they generally approached it, did not seem to be going in a straight path, but rather in an unnatural, jerky sort of manner, as if some power were manipulating them.  I thought this most peculiar and turned my vision upward to the bulk of the cloud mass.  In it there appeared what looked like a face...no, two faces, one emerging at an angle from the other.  Then I looked back down at a torrent of low-flying darker clouds as they raced upward from the eastern horizon, passed directly over the moon, and then disappeared in the night sky...

Now you may want to take what I have just written, which is an honest account of what I experienced, and try to draw some sort of conclusion about it.  Those inclined to believing more in the paranormal and supernatural may pick up some meaning behind the connections I made with the cloud movements and the faces.  Or perhaps, some may decide that I am being unduly influenced by forces that I should leave well enough alone.  But the truth is that I just took a few minutes to exercise my faculties of observation and imagination, walking away from it with the pleasant feeling of having experienced something special.  So it's not necessary to delve "beyond reality", as a new radio talk show that deals with the paranormal and related topics is named, in order to see meaning in the world around us; learning to observe and imagine...and being able to recognize our imagination simply for what it is...can enrich one's life without going over to the "other side"...

Abby Panders to Ghost Beliefs

In today’s Dear Abby newspaper advice column, Topic Numero Uno was a woman’s fear that ghosts of her deceased loved ones were lurking around her and watching her doing things like going to the bathroom and making love with her husband. She wanted to know whether she was crazy about her lack of privacy due to said ghosts.

Jeanne Phillips (“Abby”) could have just gone straight to the point, agreeably replied “Yes, you’re crazy”, and moved on to the next letter. But no, she instead decided to do something that I term “pandering to another’s narrative” in order to offer some emotional comfort. Phillips flat-out stated as fact that “the departed sometimes ‘visit’ those with whom their souls were intertwined, but usually it’s to offer strength, solace and reassurance during difficult times.” How could she know that? No, all Phillips did was to size up the frightened woman’s belief system, which she realized wasn’t going to change by just saying that ghosts weren’t real. Instead, she made up her own narrative, which naturally affirmed the existence of ghosts, to soften that writer’s fears of privacy invasion. Is this ethical?

I have done this in the past as well, although not with ghosts. I would be with someone whose beliefs were difficult for me to digest, but who still seemed so entrenched in them that the only way I would be able to effectively communicate with them would be to temporarily presume the truth of their underlying narrative, “for the sake of argument”. I would always afterward find this type of experience to be distasteful and that I had somehow debased myself in the process.

More and more, I have become more resistant to what “Abby” did: playing along with another’s absurd notions in order to reason with or comfort them. After all, I don’t notice others bending over backward to accommodate MY beliefs!

Then again, maybe Jeanne Phillips truly does believe in ghosts and how they supposedly “behave” according to some kind of ethical code. Ouch! Say you’re more savvy, Abby!