Saturday, December 14, 2024
The Syrian dictator Assad has been forced to run for his life and is now in Moscow. It is unclear how many, if any, of his closest associates were permitted to avail themselves of a “Humanitarian exception” and sneak into the kennel of exile along with Assad. Putin knows perfectly well the horrors that Assad had his henchmen perpetuate in the prison at Sednaya. At least 30,000 people were tortured and murdered in a manner that can only leave any thoughtful person reluctant to believe that human dignity actually exists as anything other than a necessary fiction incapable of defending itself against the avariciousness of evil. Evil as a mental virus feeds on human consciousness, and there is no antidote or vaccine.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/12/7/syria-war-live-news-govt-says-president-al-assad-has-not-fled-damascus?update=3370892&gsid=564ff7be-3c6b-495c-935e-52927fb4e397
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“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” the saying goes. Israel has wasted no time in expanding its war of debilitation in the region. Gaza: check. Iran: check. Syria: check. Does any serious threat to Israel’s continued existence actually exist at this point? The major question, in fact, is how well is Israel prepared to deal with its success? The people of Israel probably have no more idea of how to take best advantage of the sudden disarray and disminishment of their enemies than the rebels in Syria are truly prepared to reinvigorate a nation ravaged by a merciless dictator.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues to inflict an unfathomable amount of sorrow on all those being skewered by the nationalist ambitions of a Russian billionaire for whom the word dictator is too mild an accolade.
Given the current horror show — the truly Grand Guignol — of current events, it’s understandable that some people might just want to crawl into bed and read a book that they first read back when they were young and one could indulge in some “escape fiction” with only a moderate amount of shame for turning one’s head away from the slaughterhouse on the other side of the world.
For those so inclined — and I do not fault you at all — here are some notes I dug up from long ago tat I jutted down about “The Shining.”
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THE SHINING – “Redrum” Redux
“the Shining” by Stephen King
Signet Books, New American Library – Times Mirror (paperback, 1978)
The climax of the book made me remember the original nurder/suicide of Gray, the alcoholic caretaker Since there was no mention of putting in a new furnace, why didn’t it blow up when Grady murdered his family and himself? Did the ranger arrive an hou after it happened? That’s damn had to believe! So the hotel should have blown up with Grady’s death.
Later on, after Wendy asks Jack if anything happened in 216 when Jack went up to check the room, and then asks him a second time, it’s obvious that she doubts him. At that point, it would only make sense for her to go up and check. How much better it would have been if she had gone up to check, had gotten trapped in the room, gone raving ma; then Jack and Danny would have to look for her and they would hear sounds coming from the place. They would have to decide to go in there and rescue her. Danny and Jack would have a serious confrontation what they had seen in there, and a question of the father’s courage forms in Dany’s mind, and they finally go in there.
Perhaps combining certain sequences where Danny has to fun down and get a passkey and the fire hydrant hose then writhes at him. On the whole, there is too much one on one in this story.
The hedge animals are used very well. Jack, Danny, and Halloran all confront the hedge animals. Once again, though, Wedny does’t confront them. It’s as theought she is kept of out of the story – she doesn’t confront room 216 and she doesn’t confront the hedge animals. The whole story falters because of this.
The wasp thing appeared to be only a one-time incident, but the lock on the attic trapdoor which Hack had put there after the wasp incidenct comes back beautifully a the climactic scenes.
The woman in 217 should have been involved in the climax in some way. What if Wendy and she had had a direct confrontation. Or at least if all these people were waiting down by the furnace when Jack is down there just before it blows up – the part should have going full-force there.
What stands out about these notes is how I am emphasizing the diminishment of Wendy as a leading character in the story. She is certainly not reduced to cameo status, but one does not have the sense in the story that King sat there and ran the story line through her eyes. How would the entire story be seen through her subjectivity? My emphasis on women writers in my publishing project, therefore, was aligned with how I saw women presented as active agents in lthe culture at large.
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As a postscript, I believe these notes were written back when Craig Bolotin was my roommate in the two-bedroom apartment I lived in on Hill Street in Ocean Park. The notes probably reflect the kind of conversations we had about story structure back then.
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