DISCUSS "HEART-SHAPED BOX"

[JC]

  I've loved supernatural fiction ever since I was a child.  In fact, at some point this book club may read some short stories in the genre, if that meets with the approval of folk, as I sometimes feel that the short story is the ideal format for explorations of the supernatural, since the novel, to some extent, seems to require a degree of explanation for the events that occur while the short story, by reason of brevity and, perhaps, tradition, is under no such obligation.
  I can recall reading Edgar Allan Poe's short stories as a boy (there was a volume of them in my grandmother's house in Kerry) and being rather bemused by them.  The adult torments (hysterical obsession, mother-fixation, the loss of loved ones to tuberculosis) that gave rise to Poe's stories meant little to me, and I found his tales disturbing rather than frightening, without being entirely certain why that should be so.  I struggled, too, with H.P. Lovecraft (there was a collection of his tales on my grandmother's shelf too, although I have no idea who might have left it there), and continue to do so, but I suspect that is because, even at a young age, I sensed  Lovecraft's writing (which - and others may differ here - is generally poor) got in the way of his ideas, making him much more interesting in theory than in practice.
  While there are individual stories that I love by certain writers (among others, F. Marion Crawford's "The Upper Berth"; Charles Dickens's "The Signalman"; Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" - Lovecraft without the hysteria; "Mrs. Amworth" by E.F. Benton), I can think of only two writers whose entire body of work had a lasting impact on me.  One was M.R. James, still the  greatest creator of short stories that the genre has produced, and the other was Stephen King, who remains the only modern horror novelist about whom I can honestly say I have read almost everything he has written.  The shadow cast by King over the genre is immense.  He remains the only novelist who can consistently sell horror to the mainstream, and when he goes - and long may he sail - I doubt that anyone will be able to take his place.
  Anyone, therefore, who ventures into the genre has to take account of King's presence, of the impact of his work, and the possibility of being judged against that work.  How much more difficult is that task when you're Stephen King's son? 
  I've read both of Joe Hilliard King's books (Heart-Shaped Box and the short story collection, 20th Century Ghosts) and, at his best, he's worthy to stand alongside his old man, although it's hard to imagine that even Joe would argue he has not been influenced by his father's work, and, even though he has laudably not traded on his father's name, he may well have to deal with the possibility of inheriting his mantle. 
  Heart-Shaped Box works on a very simple premise: the idea that one might, either through accident or design, come into possession of a dead man's suit, and find that one has also assumed a kind of ownership of the dead man himself.  Arguably, the earliest stages of the book are the most unsettling, as the ghost of Craddock begins to encroach upon Jude's life, waiting to be acknowledged so that he can begin to enact his revenge.  I had a little trouble in the later stages with Craddock's apparent physicality, or rather the precise nature of his manifestation.  When attacked by Jude's 'ghost dogs', he seems to bleed, but when he uses his razor upon one of the dogs there appear to be no lasting effects.  What are the rules here, I wondered?  I also felt more unease when the action was limited to Jude's house.  As the book became a chase thriller and moved south, I missed some of that claustrophobia.
  But these were minor quibbles.  The book has a ferocious momentum, and some great set pieces (Craddock's possession of Jude's dying father, with that grotesque image of his feet disappearing into the old man's jaws, balanced later by Craddock trying to haul himself back out of the dead man's mouth; the encounter with Anna's sister and her daughter).  There is a real assurance and confidence about Hill's writing, and a streak of dark humor that never makes the error of attempting to laugh at sadism, or of undermining the action by veering into postmodern parody, the two extremes that have bedeviled the genre, particularly cinematically, in recent years.
  Is there something of his father in this book?  Yes, perhaps unavoidably, just as there are traces of King Snr in some of Hill's short stories, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  All writers, particularly in the early stages of their career, are the sum of the writers that they have read.  As they continue to write, their own voice begins to come increasingly to the fore.  It's hard to imagine that Hill could have grown up with a father who has been such a huge influence on the genre and not have been influenced in turn by him, but there is enough that is distinctive about Heart-Shaped Box to suggest that Hill is his own man, even as he continues the family business.

[Lee Y]

I really enjoyed reading how you liked supernatural / horror stories as a kid John. I read novels that had to do with haunted houses / ghosts, and things that went bump in the night, since I was in my early teens.

I will look for some of "M R James" collections....some real early ghost stories!

I did not "skim" through this month's selection. I read it about a year ago. But, I thought it was good creepy / spooky, modern day ghost story. I really liked the premise of the haunted suit. I think Mr. Hills first novel, was a nice entry into the horror / supernatural genre.
I'll have to find his "20th Century Ghost's"....

[Clair]

Joe Hill signed at The Mystery Bookstore's booth at the Los Angeles Festival of Books earlier this year, and a nicer guy you could not hope to find.  Everyone who asked for a signature also got a doodle on the title page, along with a quotation from one of his favorite rock songs -- he gave each fan a choice of four quotes. 

One of the things I liked about this book is that it is so steeped in rock-and-roll, and is a kind of morality tale about a certain rock music subculture.  Flirt with death and devils, Hill says, and you can't be too surprised when they take you up on the offer.  Jude collects occult memorabilia because he doesn't really believe; it's a pose, and the encounter with the real thing is what ultimately makes Jude himself real. 

[Lee Y]

Joe Hill signed at The Mystery Bookstore's booth at the Los Angeles Festival of Books earlier this year, and a nicer guy you could not hope to find.  Everyone who asked for a signature also got a doodle on the title page, along with a quotation from one of his favorite rock songs -- he gave each fan a choice of four quotes. 

One of the things I liked about this book is that it is so steeped in rock-and-roll, and is a kind of morality tale about a certain rock music subculture.  Flirt with death and devils, Hill says, and you can't be too surprised when they take you up on the offer.  Jude collects occult memorabilia because he doesn't really believe; it's a pose, and the encounter with the real thing is what ultimately makes Jude himself real. 

Well said Clair....I like that!!!

[RachelAllshiny]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to be critical about this one.

First of all, that is a massive run-on sentence JC has going on up there:

  I've loved supernatural fiction ever since I was a child.  In fact, at some point this book club may read some short stories in the genre, if that meets with the approval of folk, as I sometimes feel that the short story is the ideal format for explorations of the supernatural, since the novel, to some extent, seems to require a degree of explanation for the events that occur while the short story, by reason of brevity and, perhaps, tradition, is under no such obligation.

No offense, but I would take points off for that if I were grading you.

Now for Heart-Shaped Box.  Well, I am not a big fan of the horror genre.  And I do not believe I have read a single Stephen King book.  Weird, I know.  But I had heard good things about this book, and the premise seemed interesting enough, so I tried it.

First it kind of bored me.  Guy buys a dead guy's suit off the Internet and SURPRISE!  Strange things start happening.  It kind of made me roll my eyes.

When it started getting bloody, I put it down for a while.  Okay, I read a lot of mysteries that describe dead people.  Those are hard on my sensitive stomach.  But hearing about how it feels to get a finger shot off...and then having everyone knifing each other...ugh.  Not for me.  I think I'd like a more psychological battle, not people slashing at each other until the last one standing more or less wins.

That being said, I did feel that the rock-n-roll aspect was probably the most interesting for me.  But it got covered in blood and infection, so...meh.

Okay.  So this is why I generally stay away from horror.   Unless someone can recommend something else in the genre...I've enjoyed Ira Levin and Poe and suchlike.

- Rachel

[dave]

I'm going to be a little late commenting on this because I've, err, lost my copy. I ordered it from Amazon several weeks ago and I can't for the life of me remember where I put it. I need a (much) bigger home to house my rapidly growing book collection because they take up space in amost every room and consequently tend to get lost. I've ordered another copy of The Heart Shaped Box which should arrive shortly.

[Lee Y]

Dave,

You have the signs of "Ol Timers" setting in.....which I've had for awhile now!!! 

[elliotaw]

Dave,

You have the signs of "Ol Timers" setting in.....which I've had for awhile now!!! 

I by-passed "Old-Timers" - went straight to Second Childhood...

[Lee Y]

 

[Surya]

I agree with JC on the similarities with Stephen King.  I was trying not to draw them but I found a lot of parallels with King's writing, particularly in terms of characterisation and the use of dialogue as well as music.  And it's certainly not a bad thing to emulate the master of the genre...I think it was a great first effort.  Anyway, here's my two cents worth:

Even though he lives a world away from it, Jude Coyne is a man defined by his abusive past.  It is most evident in the identity he assumes, the name by which he is known to millions, but Jude Coyne carries Justin Cowzynski with him.  His name is sybolic of his burden of guilt, assumed when he was a child, his belief that he betrayed his mother with a kiss.  In my rather vague understanding of the New Testament (most of my biblical knowledge comes from watching old Charlton Heston movies in my formative years) I find the story of Judas Iscariot to be particularly moving – the man who committed the ultimate betrayal, so overcome with remorse that he killed himself.  The theme of suicide is a constant refrain through Heart-shaped Box, with Craddock McDermott’s attempts to have Jude take his own life as a form of atonement.  And, of course, it is Anna’s apparent suicide which precipitates the events in the novel.

At the same time Jude Coyne is a collector with rather dark tastes in line with the rock star persona he has created for himself.  He can be oblivious to the moral repercussions of his hobby, apparent with the snuff movie or the collection of sketches by John Wayne Gacy.  He is however forced to confront the consequences with the arrival of the dead man’s suit.  Jude Coyne is also a collector of damaged people – Danny, Anna and Marybeth – people drawn to him because they see a reflection of themselves in the music that channels his own experiences.  In that sense I would suggest an alternative understanding of his name – “St Jude”, the patron saint of lost causes, of those in such despair that he provides the only solace.

But the protagonist of Heart-shaped Box is hardly worthy of canonization.  At the outset he comes across as a pretty nasty character in his treatment of women.  He appears completely self-absorbed and if things are too difficult, ugly or painful, he distances himself.  Initially Craddock is almost just retribution for the way in which Jude treated Anna.  Yet Joe Hill’s strength lies in his characterizations and Jude is far more complicated than that, as the ghost of Danny Wooten informs him: “You aren’t as bad as you think, Jude.”

The arrival of the ghost initiates a process of redemption for him when he attempts to drive Marybeth away from him in order to keep her safe.  As the two are pursued across the country, the journey becomes one of salvation – beating up the man who abused Marybeth, his encounter with the ghost of the kidnapped child where it was sufficient to bear witness, trying in vain to save Anna and even Reese from Craddock and Jessica Price.  When he lifts a hand to reassure Reese even after she has shot him, the transition is complete – for Jude it is no longer about himself but about others.  For me his finest hour is not a dramatic one but comes in his quiet reassurance of Marybeth: “…something that’s seen a little wear is just more interesting than something brand-new that hasn’t ever had a scuff on it.”

It is almost inevitable that the novel reaches its climax at Jude’s childhood home.  Throughout the narrative the heart-shaped box keeps popping up (unsurprising really, considering the title of the book) – it houses the haunted suit, his father used to present his mother with a heart-shaped box of chocolates on special occasions as poor compensation for a lifetime of abuse, Jude’s first collection (bullets) was stored in one of the old chocolate boxes, it is present in his vision of Craddock’s activities in Vietnam and, finally, it is the means by which Craddock appears in Jude’s home – at the beginning of the novel and in his childhood home at the culmination of it.  The heart-shaped box marks a point of connection between the abusive Craddock and Jude’s own father, made even more concrete when the two literally become one.  His confrontation with Craddock and subsequent triumph symbolises his victory over the man responsible for his horrific childhood.  Jude, like Anna, like Marybeth and, later, Reese, overcome their suffering and this, for me, is the rather uplifting message of Heart-shaped Box.

Joe Hill hardly writes beautiful prose but he does use some metaphors that I really liked, for instance, when Jude thinks of his musical inspiration: “A lot of his songs, when they started out, sounded like old music.  They arrived on his doorstep, wandering orphans, the lost children of large and venerable musical families.  They came to him in the form of Tin Pan Alley singalongs, honkytonk blues, Dust Bowl plaints, lost Chuck Berry riffs.  Jude dressed them in black and taught them to scream.”  There’s also the ubiquitous heart-shaped box and I wonder if it is an accident that the title mirrors a song by Nirvana.  Both Nirvana and Kurt Cobain are mentioned in a novel that demonstrates Joe Hill’s love for music.  Google came in pretty useful here and apparently the song – originally called Heart Shaped Coffin – was inspired by Courney Love who gave Cobain a heart-shaped box of valued possessions and the song itself focuses on his feelings for Love as well as the treatment of women generally – which does seem particularly appropriate in this context.

The characters of Heart-shaped Box are incredibly well drawn, particularly Jude and Marybeth as well as the fragility of Anna, the “yes-man” kow-towing of Danny and the crusty humour of Bammy.  He is able to flesh out these characters in three dimensions, making them anything but caricatures, and so make the unbelievable real.  Finally, I think Hill is highly effective in portraying fear.  Jude’s first encounter with the ghost at three in the morning – at the time a fairly harmless old man sitting in a chair – is terrifying.  He is able to capture incredibly well the disorientation, the fear, the desperate attempt to cling to rationality, which struck a chord within me – but then again I’m still recovering from the Blair Witch Project!

[Lee Y]

Another beautiful, well written review Surya!!! ( I need a hand clapping smiley ) 

This was better than skimming the book....which I didn't do!!! 

[Surya]

Thank you, Lee.  And of course you didn't - who would dare suggest such a thing? 

[Mark PL]

When considering Julian Hawthorne’s inevitable and unenviable misfortune to be compared with his father, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jessica Amanda Salmonson writes in her Introductory Monograph to THE ROSE OF DEATH (Ash-Tree Press, 1997), the volume of Julian’s supernatural fiction she had the pleasure to edit, that “there is sufficient [evidence] at hand to prove that Julian’s shoulders were, after all, broad enough for Nathaniel’s cape.”

But while Nathaniel Hawthorne was a towering colossus in his field, even at the height of his considerable fame he knew nothing of the popular commercial success that Stephen King has achieved. It’s easy to suspect that even Julian Hawthorne would’ve wilted and sagged under the burden of expectations set upon him if he’d been faced with that level of success to live up to.

So how wide must the shoulders be that are to wear the cape that Stephen King will eventually discard, at some point we can only hope is a long time in the distant future? With the King name comes more than the mantle, and the inevitably comparisons: there’s the “Brand”, a whole series of massive commercial enterprises ranging from movies and television shows, right through to short stories and novels – and even the odd credit card commercial. And yet it’s not like taking over running Wal-Mart.

How to deal with it if you’re a child of the great man, then?

Two different ways, it seems.

For Owen King, whose short debut novel WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER was published by Faber & Faber in 2006, the answer was to steer clear of genre, the supernatural novel and thriller genres especially. He produced a short and instantly readable novel or deception and trade-unionism, set in a real mainstream world of politics – Al Gore being the dethroned rightful President of the USA and anti-abortion kooks – grounded from the viewpoint of an eccentric American family. But even then the comparisons he’d tried to avoid with his old man were the stuff of most reviews: “He may one day take over from his father,” a critic for the WASHINGTON POST wrote. And it’s understandable as to why the critic made that point. Because Owen King has the touch. He sounds like his old man, however much he may try not to.

I don’t think Owen King in any way was trying to say that he disapproved of his father’s fiction by turning away from it to work in a different field. Like his brother Joe, there’s evidence enough to suggest he clearly loves his dad. You’ve only to look at the dedication in the book to see the sweet echo of King Senior’s work: “For Kelly, the prettiest girl in Yuma.” Anyone who remembers Ben Myers’s meeting with Susan Norton in ‘SALEM’S LOT will see where he’s coming from.

But Owen doesn’t want to be seen to be playing the same music as his old man, much as he loves him. Joe Hill, by contrast, IS playing the same music. And his way of dealing with being the son of probably the world’s best selling living writer was to neglect to tell anyone – even his own agent for a time – about his literary heritage.

For a while, it even worked, sort of. 

Joe Hill’s first stories appeared for little or no money in the small press and in backwater literary magazines so backwater that you needed a dowsing rod and scuba-diving equipment to find them. He persevered. Won a prestigious Bradbury Fellowship Award. Wrote a fantasy novel that no one wanted to publish and then made big inroads into a kind of mainstream novel featuring an itinerant giant drifting across America during the Depression years. Yes, Hill got frustrated at the lack of success, and for a time says he did consider submitting under the King name. But he’d learned a long time ago that seeing his name in print wasn’t a thrill if the only reason it was there was because his old man was Stephen King. So he went back to slogging out short stories and picking up rejection letters.

His debut collection of mostly horror stories eventually appeared from PS Publishing and aroused a lot of interest. Especially when people saw him and noticed a resemblance to a certain American author of horror stories. The cat may have been keeping quiet about it, but it was certainly out of the bag. But not before, it seems to have been the case, an American publisher purchased the rights to a novel of the supernatural that Hill had completed. With the revelation of who Hill really was snowballing (the cat must’ve been in danger of being crushed under the avalanche), interest in the forthcoming book was high. It was nearly inevitable that it’d be a best-seller. The only question left hanging as it shot up the lists was, “Is it any good?”

The answer, thankfully, is yes. Yes, it is good. Hill’s book is a fast-paced ghost story, written with confidence and yes, in that easy laid back style his father and so many of the great American “Invisibles” writers have to an art form. Perhaps it’s not the staggering work of genius the cover quotes suggest it to be, but then what book ever is?

HEART-SHAPED BOX apparently started life as a short story that didn’t want to stop. Perhaps that explains why the first part of the book is the most successful, being a genuinely claustrophobic work of rising unease. I won’t go into the story, as JC’s summed it up earlier, but the appearance in the hallway of the ghost bisected by moonlight was one of the novel’s stand out moments for me. The whole of the pieces in the rock star’s mansion at the start of the book are successful, and richly rewarding. Here we’ve got a modern ghost story that isn’t reliant on weighty prose, written by someone who’s sat down “to write, for t’was the time at which the urge was upon me to set down in prose that which had afflicted my night’s sleep.”

But the book all too quickly becomes a chase novel, and at that point this particular reader’s interest waned somewhat. Hill didn’t do anything wrong – his prose was fine and better than that, all his characters well-rounded and likable – but this is all standard territory, the chase novel. He pulls it off in an accomplished way (little niggles as detailed by JC earlier aside), but chase novels are two-a-penny on the book shelves. Dean Koontz has pretty much written them all anyway, hasn’t he?

The conclusion, though I was happy to get there and had been turning the pages in anticipation, is also a little muddled. Whatever internal logic the book was running on seemed to fizzle out and it felt like anything could happen for any reason at all. It does, and in truth I’m still a little puzzled by it all.

But I was glad of this book. It carries the inevitable influence of Hill’s father in it, I was going to say. But then I stopped and wondered about that somewhat. Because, you know, what strikes me about how familiar the voice behind HEART-SHAPED BOX is is not that it’s Stephen King I’m hearing an echo of, but King’s pen-name, Richard Bachman. Joe Hill’s book could quite easily have been published under the Bachman pen-name without, I suspect, anyone being the wiser as to it being not the work of King/Bachman Snr but that of the young whipper-snapper Joe Hill.

Who knows? Maybe one night in the early 70s, Stephen King forgot to put away Richard Bachman and took him off to bed with him . . .

Whatever, I’ll look forward to more of Joe Hill’s work, short fiction especially, and be interested in reading further novels.

Perhaps wisely, given his father’s prolific output, he’s not launched into producing a steady stream of novels. His short story collection has been reissued by larger publishers, and he’s been talking about working more in comic books and of finishing the book he’d been in the process of writing before HEART-SHAPED BOX came out, a novel for Young Adults. In that respect, maybe he’s following the career path of Neil Gaiman more than his father. But that’s all right. That’s very all right indeed.

Because you’ve only to ask Batman and he’ll tell you: you should only wear the cape if it feels right. And Joe Hill’s got one that fits nicely already, thank you.

[Mark PL]

Argh! Argh! Preview, Preview, Preview; not Post, Post, Post.

Sigh.

Sorry about the typos.

(And Rachel, you've a lot to deduct points for. . . )

[Jayne]

Stunning review, Mark.