After finishing Stephen King's noir paperback original The Colorado Kid, I really wasn't at all surprised to read all the negative reviews. For the first quarter of the book, I was pretty bored with it myself, but something changed. I don't think the book changed, but maybe my perception of it did. (More about that in a sec.)
I think these were the biggest problems readers had with the book:
1 – It's by Stephen King. Fair or not, we've come to expect King to deliver some type of horror, mayhem or other weird goings-on. And in this one, we don't really get that, at least not in the way we're used to from King. At its simplest, the book chronicles two veteran newspapermen relating the story of an unsolved mystery to a young female journalist.
2 – The Colorado Kid is labeled as a "hard-case crime novel." It is a crime novel (or is it?), but there's not much there to justify the noir/hard-boiled implications that tend to accompany such books.
3 – The cover. It has absolutely nothing to do with the story. The book only includes two women, neither of which comes close to the babe on the cover.
After that first quarter of the book had passed, I realized I wasn't going to get what I expected, which was action, guns, tough-guy talk, femme fatales, darkened alleys, rain-soaked city streets after midnight – you know, noir stuff. Die-hard King fans looking for violence/blood/gore/etc. probably reached a level of disappointment much sooner than I did. In fact, I can imagine that several fans either gave up early on or grudgingly kept reading, turning the pages in a rage-filled fury. They felt their expectations had been betrayed. (Just read a few of the customer reviews on Amazon.)
I didn't give up, though, mainly because the two newspapermen are such good characters. Stereotypes, yes, but portrayed well as they try, in their own charming way, to show the rookie journalist the ropes. The Colorado Kid story in the novel is really immaterial. What's important is the power of storytelling and how the storytelling torch, if you will, is being passed from one generation to another. If I had to compare The Colorado Kid to a movie, it would be My Dinner with Andre. If you hated that movie, you'll probably hate The Colorado Kid. But if you think about it, the two are very similar. Both elevate the power of conversation, ideas, , speculation, the beauty of telling a story and the pleasure it gives us. With that in mind, I enjoyed The Colorado Kid very much. I admire King for writing it. It will probably never be mentioned in any discussions of his best work, but I'm sure he knew that going in. It's a quiet little story that deserves to be read. Only readers need to know what they're getting themselves into.
Right now I'm halfway through King's new novel The Cell, which is an entirely different can of worms. I'll blab about it next time.
Now Playing = Brain Salad Surgery – Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Just Finished = "Planet of Mystery" – Terry Bisson (F&SF Jan. and Feb.)
"The Smile on Happy Chang's Face" – Tom Perrotta (The Best American Short Stories 2005)
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