A couple thoughts on Stephen King

I recently finished Stephen King's first "post-retirement" novel, CELL.
I've been a King reader for many many years. I'm not sure if it's because he's an amazing writer, or more because his books are found everywhere and he's a known entity. My favorite of his books is THE STAND, a post-apocolyptic world in which a man-made virus kills off something like 85% of the world's population. The amazing part of the book is the examination of the world without people, like the way nature quickly takes the Earth back after Man is no longer able to maintain his dominance. But then it gets a little silly when the population is divided into Good and Evil and a war ensues. But basically it's an epic story well told. Most of his other books are simple horror stories well told and some are simply crap.
It's easy to dismiss him as a hack who has put 46 more books than he should have, but he's also done some very challenging (for him) works. He's known as a horror writer, but he wrote GERALD'S GAME, DOLORES CLAIBOURNE and ROSE MADDER, three dramas about women and their abusive men. He also tried out a unique (for our century) concept, the serial novel. GREEN MILE was put out (and written) in monthly installments. I remember feverishly running out to buy each one as it came out. I still love that novel almost as much as THE STAND. He also wrote about 7 novels under a pseudonym and a non-fiction book about horror movies. He also has written a story cycle called THE DARK TOWER. It's a 7-book story written over 25 years. References to THE DARK TOWER abound in all of his books. It's like the DARK TOWER universe is just under the surface of ours and pops through every once in a while. It's a fascinating concept, but I just could NOT get into the first book at all.
King tried directing one of his movies, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE and it sucked. He's written a few screenplays, too, including STORM OF THE CENTURY which was a very good TV movie. Stephen King has tried just about every form of writing: non-fiction, fiction, novels, novellas, short stories, poems, essays, drama, horror, science fiction, screenplays, and the list goes on.
Then he got hit by a car.
He was clearly bitter about the accident. He verbally tore into the careless driver every chance he could. His body was broken and he was in intense pain for a long time. As part of his recovery, he finished his next book, ON WRITING, a half memoir/half advice book. He talks about his life and the accident and also about how he writes and how he thinks YOU should write. Not what style, I mean, but how to go about it. It's a fascinating book. Then he announced his retirement from writing and that his last novel would be FROM A BUICK 8.

STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ SPOILERS ABOUT "FROM A BUICK 8", "THE COLORADO KID " or "CELL."

The story of FROM A BUICK 8 is, in a nutshell, that an old Buick shows up and it turns out that the trunk is a pathway to another dimension. It sounds really stupid, but I was totally engaged while reading it. The whole story is told to a kid, by his father's buddies after the father is killed. You are lead to believe that the Buick will tie into the father's death, but it doesn't. THe ending is kind of like, "Yeah, we never figured out what the car's all about and we'll never figure out why your Dad's dead. The End." I was pissed when I read that ending, but I then realized that the point of the book was that things just happen and there's no explaining or agonizing over why. This was clearly King's own kind of catharsis over his accident.
Then he came out with a very short novel called THE COLORADO KID in which two old guys tell a young girl about this mysterious murder many years ago. At the end of the book...nothing happens. I'll paraphrase liberally: "Yeah, we never figured out how the guy died. The End." Again, the point seemed to be that things happen and sometimes you don't know why. Ok, ok, he's still getting over his accident and now 9/11 has happened, so he's just feeling helpless, fine.
Then he comes out of retirement with a full-blown novel called CELL, in which cell phones inexplicably become zombie-making machines. One day, out of the blue, cell phones begin broadcasting signals that scramble people's brains and turn them into telepathic zombies. The main zombie is organizing the zombies to turn the remaining normal people into zombies. It seemed really disturbingly similar to THE STAND. In both books, a handful of normal people must organize and try to fight the evildoers. The main character in CELL (not a zombie) spends the book searching for his son. Along the way, he finds out a way to possibly reverse the zombism. He finally reaches his zombie kid and begins to administer the "fix." The End. We never find out what caused the phones to become zombie-makers and we never find out if the kid is OK or not.
Look, Steve, we all understand your sudden realization that we don't understand much more than we do, but it makes for frustrating story-telling.