Wednesday, January 7, 2009

This Would Have Scared the Screaming Jeebies Out of Me

Bit of set up here... The Guardian is reporting that a fan of Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick has written and published the manuscript that Jack Torrance's character purportedly created in The Shining, the novel by King, adapted to film by Kubrick.

In the story, Torrance is secluded with his family in a snowed-in, isolated hotel, where he hopes to complete a novel. Later in the story, his wife Wendy discovers that the entire manuscript is composed of the aphorism "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," repeated over and over.
Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley
Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance,
repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the
words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.
Buehler limited himself to formatting that could be created with a typewriter- none of the graphic tricks that a writer/artist can pull off with computers. Predictably, at a certain point he was having a hard time coming up with novel formats for additional pages. He got to about page 60, out of an intended 80, and ran into writer's block (layout block?).
"I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on
for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film,
became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie,
and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.
If I had been that poor woman, I'd have been out the door, out of the city, and out of the country in flash, screaming like a banshee.

2 comments:

Christie Lynn said...

WOW, that would have had me disappear in a heartbeat. Lucky guy!

Dean Wormer said...

"I finally showed her the movie,
and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.


As you point out she shouldn't have stuck around that long.

(If he writes "redrum" on the wall then you really have to be scared.)