Tsundoku Psychohazard reviewed The Talisman by Stephen King (The Talisman, #1)
Review of 'The Talisman' on Goodreads
3 stars
This book was interesting to read from a historical perspective, because of the trajectory of both King and Straub's careers. In some ways, it feels like a trial run for both Straub's Shadowland and King's It (both of which would come out only a few years later); in other ways, it shares elements from The Stand and Ghost Story that otherwise don't show up much in these authors' respective ouvres. So, it's kind of a missing-link book.
It's also a historically important book, because (as Matthew Kirschenbaum notes in Track Changes, his cultural history of word processing) it is the first published book to be collaborated upon electronically. King and Straub were both early adopters of consumer word processing technology, and though they used different types of machines, they had a highly technical friend set up modems and a format converter and they swapped revisions once a day over the …
This book was interesting to read from a historical perspective, because of the trajectory of both King and Straub's careers. In some ways, it feels like a trial run for both Straub's Shadowland and King's It (both of which would come out only a few years later); in other ways, it shares elements from The Stand and Ghost Story that otherwise don't show up much in these authors' respective ouvres. So, it's kind of a missing-link book.
It's also a historically important book, because (as Matthew Kirschenbaum notes in Track Changes, his cultural history of word processing) it is the first published book to be collaborated upon electronically. King and Straub were both early adopters of consumer word processing technology, and though they used different types of machines, they had a highly technical friend set up modems and a format converter and they swapped revisions once a day over the phone lines. As with Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's later collaboration on The Difference Engine, they successively went over each others' prose until it blended, and so parts of this book feel very King and parts feel very Straub and occasionally they feel like both, but they never are entirely recognizable.
That said, for all its length, The Talisman doesn't contain a lot of genuinely new-feeling content. It manages to feel extremely modern, which King and Straub's other books from this period don't, but it also feels like a rehash of ideas done better in their other books. It is also a portal fantasy, with a twist that is not as original as the authors seem to think and whose relatively limited potential is nevertheless squandered by a focus on other things. Also, if you are uneasy with some of King and Straub's more problematic fixations, they are here in full force: one major plot point involves not just a magical negro martyring himself for a white boy but the fact that said white boy cannot tell old black men apart; another involves this boy balancing his need to hitchhike with being completely irresistible to gay men. Ultimately, this book also has what might be the most anticlimactic ending of either King or Straub's career.
I recommend this book to completionists or folks who are interested in the career history of these giants of horror fiction, but not to folks who want a scary yarn -- because it ain't that interesting and it ain't that scary.