Dreamcatcher, by Stephen King.
New York: Scribner, 2001.
$28 - 620 pages.

It is a beautiful tale, Owen. Like the best lies, it incorporates large swatches of the truth.

-Abraham Kurtz, The Dreamcatcher, page 315

If you are a Stephen King fan, you will quickly find the geography of The Dreamcatcher familiar. You will find yourself back in the small town of Derry ... not far from Castle Rock. (Jerusalem’s Lot is just down the road.)

Set in the mythic land of The Tommyknockers, Salem’s Lot and It, (as well as Needful Things and Bag of Bones and Insomnia), King’s latest epic yarn unwinds in previously visited country. Also, the characters bear a marked resemblance to other memorable King creations such as the inseparable adolescent chums and buddies that inhabit The Body (and the movie, “Stand By Me”), It and Hearts in Atlantis - mischievous and appealing kids, each a distinct personality: This time it is Beaver with his Fonzie jacket and imaginative vulgarity; Pete, who wants to be an astronaut; Jonesy (King’s alter ego), who loves movies and detective stories; and the gawky Henry, the intellectual who broods too much. They hunt, drink beer, and like all teenagers, ponder the mysteries of death and sex. They are just typical King kids, sworn to be life-long friends, except ... well, Pete has a phenomenal ability to “find things (the opening sequence with the lost car keys is beautifully written)” and Jonesy sometimes knows what his friends are thinking. Then, there is ... “Duddits.”

Duddits (Douglas), a victim of Downs Syndrome and trapped forever in the world of the “exceptional child,” attends the local school for the mentally retarded, and as he walks to and from what Beaver calls the “Retard Academy,” he is often subjected to the cruel teasing and pranks of other (normal) children. However, the day he is rescued by Beaver, Pete, Jonesy and Henry, something inexplicable happens and life will never be the same. After the four boys become Duddits’ guardians (and friends), they sense that Duddits is a kind of catalyst - their lives have been significantly changed, and they now possess a mysterious power that could be either a gift or a curse. It is a power that they are reluctant to acknowledge or use except as a last resort. Well, the near Apocalypse at the end of this novel may qualify as a justification to finally “use Dubbits.” Now, does that make you curious enough to read the book?

As the four boys become adults, they try to stay in touch despite a radical difference in life styles. Henry becomes a psychiatrist; Jonesy is a teacher; Pete sells cars; and Beaver (the Jokester) remains unemployed and uncommitted. Yet, each year for 25 years, the four friends observe a reunion - their annual (November) hunting trip to an isolated camp (The Hole in the Wall) in a Maine forest called the Jefferson Tract. Time has wrought major changes to the four friends - Pete is now an alcoholic, Jonesy (like King) has suffered a near fatal accident which shattered his hip, and Henry is quietly planning his own suicide - yet, for a week, they can forget their problems and hunt, reminisce, argue and enjoy each other’s company. (They always talk about Duddits and make vague plans to visit him soon.) But this year is different. Yes, this is the year that the alien space ship crashes in the Jefferson Tract - an event that causes a massive migration of all of the wildlife in the region. Then, Mr. McCarthy shows up, a strange little man who staggers out of the woods muttering to himself. He appears to be just another lost hunter, except he is losing his teeth (they keep dropping out). He definitely suffers from, well, let’s call it a noisome flatulence - rapid-fire, thunderous blats - and each riposte is lovingly described by the author!

Yes, King may do for commodes what Hitchcock did for showers; it is there, beneath the porcelain lid, that final horror lurks. This is, of course, a typical King device: to seize on an American taboo - something that is considered vulgar and unseemly - and elevate it to the level of unspeakable horror. “Run, run! They’re back!” But instead of searching the heavens, keep a vigilant watch on the toilet.
This novel is filled with tributes to movie and fantasy/ horror novels of the past which have become mythic. Images from “The War of the Worlds” and “The Body Snatchers” abound. (The chittering little snake in the toilet is called “a Ripley” in honor of the protagonist of “The Alien.”) Of course, King’s little fanged nightmare doesn’t burst from its victim’s chest or mouth, but migrates to ... a southern exit. In addition, there is a deadly extraterrestrial fungus and a kind of intelligent fog that can literally evict the victim’s mind from its body, ejected like a delinquent renter while the invading fog “drives” the body around and learns the joys and travails of being a human — things like the joys of eating crisp bacon or murdering people. (The more human the aliens become, the more dangerous they are!)

However, when the reader finishes Dreamcatcher - when he/she finally closes this 620-page opus - it may not be the dung weasels, the red fungus or the mental fog that lingers in his memory, not even the stampede of bears, deer, rabbits and raccoons. Nor is the most abiding image in the novel the four beleaguered protagonists. No, it is Abraham Kurtz (an homage to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), commander of the military forces sent to destroy the aliens. In a surreal series of events, Kurtz and his army of rescuers come to represent a greater threat than the combined destructive power of the intruders from outer space. For this reviewer, King’s depiction of the insane, murderous commander (two parts Patton, one part Rasputin) is a tour de force, a fascinating villain who delivers some of the most wonderful poetic rants ever recorded in fiction (King himself notes that Kurtz resembles the actor, Christopher Walken! It would be an unforgivable mistake if the movie version of Dreamcatcher failed to cast Walken in this part of a life-time.)

Dreamcatcher, like all of King’s work suffers from a multitude of flaws, including overwriting, excessive vulgarity and a sentiment that borders on the maudlin. Even so, the book is wonderful. No other writer of popular fiction has King’s ability to reflect the world of American “pop” culture with images drawn from music, movies, television and commercials.

Dreamcatcher is a rich pastiche of clichés, song lyrics, folklore and cartoons that are often made to serve as narrative motifs (Henry, the potential suicide, is haunted by a Simon and Garfunkel lyric, “Hello, darkness, my old friend ...”) The narrative bristles with veiled references (sometimes classical) to subjects as diverse as the folksong, “The Frozen Logger,” to Thomas Wolfe, Gary Larson and Sesame Street. The voices of Walter Cronkite, Mick Jagger and Scooby Doo are mixed with classic movie lines “our precious bodily fluids (“Dr. Strangelove”),” “Well, Ollie, this is a fine mess (Laurel and Hardy),” “Goodnight Mrs. Callabash, wherever you are ...” (Jimmy Durante) and James Thompson’s “The Hounds of Heaven.” King’s ability to pluck trite and poetic imagery from our culture and imbue it with deep meaning is admirable.

One example will suffice. When Kurtz’s forces slaughter hundreds of hapless hunters and tourists, they attempt to mark each corpse with the equivalent of the military dog tags. Consequently, strung about the neck of each body is the victim’s Visa, or Mastercard. One dead woman is identified with her Blockbuster video rental card.

Part of Shakespeare’s genius consisted of his talent for “holding a mirror up to Nature” so that humanity could see itself at its best and worst.

Well, Stephen King certainly isn’t Shakespeare, but he catches our reflections - crude, tawdry or noble - just the same. When we recognize ourselves in the mirror, we may wince, laugh self-consciously and turn the page. Perhaps King is our generation’s Boswell (or Hogarth), who sometimes catches us picking our collective noses.

(Gary Carden is a writer and storyteller who lives in Sylva. Readers can contact him through email at gcarden498@aol.com)

 

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