Revival by Stephen King

I enjoyed this book, but find I am needing to keep reminding myself to describe the book that I read, as opposed to the book that I expected or the book that I thought could have been written.


Revival is a curious book in many ways.  I found the dust jacket misleading, and the introductory paragraph promising a relationship and situations that weren't fully realized.  My initial impression was that Stephen King wrote a coming of age kind of story about a young man dealing with his faith and religion, then either got side tracked or editorially corrected into writing a very classic style horror novel, and remembered to go back and add a couple of paragraphs here and there as foreshadowing.


On reflection however, that's not really fair.  I think what is clear... or at least what becomes clear as you approach the end of the novel, is that Stephen King is writing a tribute book to H.P. Lovecraft.  I think he may have done something similar as a short story before (Nightmares and Dreamscapes I think?).


Revival makes it explicit however.  The book opens with a dedication to Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft, among others (including August Derleth.  My first reaction was to think he was named since he was most famous for doing tribute writing (Solar Pons), but Wikipedia tells me he published Lovecraft, so I guess it's an extra shout-out to Lovecraft), and the opening quotation is from Call of Cthulu.


Although I have read some of Lovecraft's short stories, it's been a long time, so a quick refresher was really helpful, and for that I turned to Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth doing a Lovecraft re-read on Tor.com.  (http://www.tor.com/features/series/the-lovecraft-reread)  They do an excellent job, providing a nice summary and giving a real flavour for Lovecraft's writing style.  If you're potentially interested but don't quite want to dive right into the Outer Gods mythos, I'd recommend it as a starting point.


In any event, there are enough Lovecraft references in the first couple of pages that I don't feel I'm spoiling anything, and by the end of the book the Call of Cthulu couplet has been quoted by characters in the text at least twice more, the Necronomicon has been mentioned and (thanks again to Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth) the word "cyclopean" appears numerous times.  


In that regard, I think King is consciously adopting elements of Lovecraft's style.  He's setting up a narrator who is one removed from the action, a character seeking dark mysteries which may be better kept away from human understanding, and characters that are drawn ever onward by insatiable curiosity which becomes obsession.  His protagonist (Jamie) has that curiosity which compels him forward despite his better judgment, yet the recognition that some things are better left unknown.  Those themes are not dissimilar from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and her protagonist has the similar flaw of curiosity and obsession.


While that type of character worked very nicely for Lovecraft, and Shelley, I think it posed some problems for King.  For one thing, King's writing tends to drive the action forward.  In many of his novels, even when not much is happening plotwise, I can't put it down, because his writing drives the reader onward.  I don't think that's the style of Lovecraft in the same way.  He has this dreamy, once removed feeling of gradually building horror and recognition, where action becomes irrelevant.  King tries to get there, and I think, all things considered does a passable job of blending the two styles, but it is a bit disjointed in feel at times (long exposition about secret powers of the universe aren't really King's style).


The character of Jamie himself also doesn't quite work.  I think King kept thinking of him as Larry, from The Stand.  Former drug addict, with an unbreakable will inside.  Jamie's got this strong will, yet finds himself pulled along in the wake of the Reverend.  It doesn't seem consistent with the character. And from a modern sensibility standpoint, the idea that some knowledge is better not to have, that man is not meant to mess with things beyond his understanding, rings a bit oddly, and I wasn't convinced by the plot in that regard... either that Jamie would think and say that, nor that it was a valid position to take.  There are lots of valid reasons he would want to stop it (madness, obsession being good reasons not to proceed), but the stated reasons were very 19th century in mindset.


I guess my biggest issue was that the character of Jamie did not, in some ways, ring true.  I read Mr. Mercedes just recently (which I loved, and hope to post on), and I think King very effectively portrayed a man in his late 50s.  Jamie ages in the book (6 - 17 - 36 - 56) and while the youth was effective, he didn't feel "old" at the end.  There was lots of text telling us he should be old, but Bill Hodges in Mr. Mercedes felt his age.  Jamie I didn't read as such to me.  I also note a couple of brief lines from Mr. Mercedes found their way into Revival (or vice versa) (Three Ages of Man - youth, middle age and you look terrific! and Incremental Repetition as a concept the narrator analyzes) I think because they worked well as markers for the age of Bill Hodges and so were tossed in as shorthand for Jamie.


So I had some character consistency concerns and some character empathy concerns... but both of those are consistent with Lovecraft's attention to his characters, at least in my view.


I also note, in a very 19th century (Victorian) writing style, the vast majority of the plot could be summed up in a short paragraph, and the rest of the novel could be angst.  I actually think that would have been quite effective here, though that would probably turn it into a Thomas Hardy tribute rather than a tribute to Lovecraft.


I would have really enjoyed reading about Jamie, the first realization that religion and religious leaders don't have all the answers, and watching him struggle with that for the rest of his life until coming to some kind of epiphany or conclusion.  More than 2/3 of the book could lead you to believe that's exactly the story you're reading.  But the other third, and the brief glimpses of foreshadowing, are following a Lovecraft style story.  The end winds up fairly quickly, with some level of gore to make the tale significant, and have an impact beyond the individual (much like Lovecraft's need to be about saving the universe), but again, I wasn't sure it worked for me from a character standpoint.


For myself I think the story and the characters of Jamie Morton and Charles Daniel Jacobs could have done a great Hearts in Atlantis style telling of a story about faith, losing it and finding it or finding something to replace that faith.  I'd have loved to read about the touches of carny life and language we glimpse in the book, and the action in the revival tents.


But the book in front of me is a tribute to Lovecraft, written in places in his style, using his words and concepts, following a theme and delivering a message consistent with his stories.  If that inspires you to pick up and try Lovecraft (or perhaps even the Lovecraft Re-Read), then it's probably served its purpose.  For what it is, it's done well.  I would have preferred to read Stephen King writing for himself and letting the story go where it took him, instead of following it into the Null.