I finished reading this marvelous book over this dreary sunshiny weekend. And I am totally surprised by how much I loved it.
This marvelous book, Hearts in Atlantis, is a book by Stephen King, whom I have always considered a dreary sunshiny popular writing hack. I have learned by it, how wrong I have been all along about this author. He is now established in my mind as a serious literary giant (as opposed to a comic literary giant like Kurt Vonnegut or Terry Pratchett). He deals with the emotions of fear, loss, angst, and regret, and so falls too easily into the horror writer category. I misjudged him for so many years because I read Carrie, his first success, and Firestarter… well, I tried to read Firestarter and only got 40 pages in when it was due back at the library… and… I mean, I never fail to finish a book I have chosen to read. And then I did. But both of those books showed me a writer who was trying too hard, following some road map of novel writing borrowed from some other writer he admired. And it all becomes formulaic and trite, sometimes even boring. He is mimicking someone else’s voice. I filed him in the “authors who are hack writers” drawer next to R.L. Stine.
But this book proved me totally wrong. I had to take King out and put him in a different drawer. It starts out as a typical Stephen King monster story with a first section with a young boy as the protagonist and introducing us to the monstrous “low men in yellow coats”. But it is a total trick to draw us in. And it is even a very good monster story. Like H.P. Lovecraft he has learned the lesson that a good monster story is not about the monster. And showing us the monster directly is something that should only be done very briefly, at just the right moment in the plot. Like the works of David Mitchell, this section connects you to threads from King’s other books, especially the Dark Tower series, which I must now read in the very near future. Stephen King has learned through practice to write like a master.
But the theme doesn’t really start to score ultimate literature points until he tricks us along into part two. The hearts in the title is actually the card game. It is a card game that takes over the lives of college boys in a dormitory in the 1960’s. They play it for money and it takes over their lives to the point that they flunk out of school at a time when that means they will be drafted and sent to Vietnam. And the characters that are immune to the pull of the hearts game (also a metaphor for the second protagonist’s love life) fall victim to the urge to take on the government and protest the war. Hence the “sinking of Atlantis” metaphor means the loss of innocence, and the devastation that comes from making choices when you are young that will haunt you forever.
The post-war section of the book is filled with hubris, regret, lost love and stoic determination that is barely rewarded for only two characters in the entire plot. I won’t of course, say anything that is a plot spoiler. This is a horror story, and it is not my place to reveal the truth about the monster. I can only tell you that this story is a devastating read for those of us old enough to remember. And it is a fine work of dreary sunshiny fiction that frightens us with its truthfulness.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Some books come along telling a story that has to be taken seriously in ways that don’t make sense in any normal way. The Alchemist is one of those books.
What is an alchemist, after all?
An alchemist uses the medieval forms of the art of chemistry to transmute things, one thing becoming another thing.
Coelho in this book is himself an alchemist of ideas. He uses this book to transmute one idea into another until he digs deep enough into the pile of ideas to finally transmute words into wisdom.
There is a great deal of wisdom in this book, and I can actually share some of it here without spoiling the story.
Here are a few gemstones of wisdom from the Alchemist’s treasure chest;
“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting…” (p.13)
“It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.” (p.17)
“All things are one. And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” (p.24)
“And when he had gone only a short distance, he realized that, while they were erecting the stall, one of them had spoken Arabic and the other Spanish. And they had understood each other perfectly well. There must be a language that doesn’t depend on words, the boy thought.” (p.45)
All of these quotes from the book, as you can see, come from the first third of the book. There are many more treasures to be found in this book. I should not share them with you here. Just as the main character of the story learns, you have to do the work for yourself. But this book is not only an enjoyable read, but a map for how you can execute your own journey towards your “Personal Legend”. In fact, you may find that the book tells you not only how to go about making a dream come true, but, if you are already on that journey successfully, it tells you what things you are already doing right.
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