Day 68 : Mr. Mercedes - Book Review

I am a big fan of Mr. King. So no matter what he writes or says or does, I am going to read/listen/support him come what may. Call be biased, but The King is the living defacto ruler of the horror fiction. Ask any constant reader of his work you will hear only praises for him.

This book is about a mass murderer who just shows up, kills over half a dozen jobless people one dank morning, and the seemingly disappears from the face of the earth never to be heard of again. He’s dubbed Mr. Mercedes by the masses owing to the vehicle he had used to run over his unwary victims. His act had caused a lot of furor and rage, media had gone 'batshit crazy' over this 'national tragedy'. (These words have started to feel so superfluous now.)

This book is also about a retired cop who was the primary working on the investigation to catch this killer. The ex-cop is now living a life of lonesome and TV robot-like addiction. He is one of those retirees who'd left a high-functioning highly-active job and now doesn't know what to do with himself. A man without purpose, at times he sits there with a revolver in front of him, building up courage to use it on himself, to find a way out of his sad lonely life. He is not built to survive in the modern age, he does not belong in the age of so much technology.

This book is also about two other characters one younger and other older in age. One male other one female. One mentally much older than he seems, other too mentally impeded to seem of her age. These characters and their perspective bring the story into the 21st century. And add the Watson to the ex-cop’s Holmes.

This book is about Stephen King trying to bring his style of impending doom and sense of human frailty into the modern literature arena that is now too cluttered with YA books and books fantasy trilogies and sexual deviation trilogies. He has introduced a trio here that he'd use in at least one other new books of his. (Finders Keepers.) A trilogy in the making? Like the Hardy Boys. It does feel queer to think Stephen King writing a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew like books.

This is book is about Stephen King trying to bring technology into his form of scare fest. Here mostly used to solve the jigsaw puzzle of macabre. I suspect we can see something from him in this direction pretty soon. I’d definitely read that!

This is book is for the Constant Reader for whom the writer gives out little easter eggs and wink-winks with mention of his more popular works of the past. The clown, the car, the dog, the hotel.

This is book most importantly for people like me who have followed Stephen King's work throughout the decades and now at this point will ravish any smidgen of genius he outputs.

Long live the King.

Day 67 : Poems

I have a friend who is a big fan of poetry. Writes a little of it himself, mostly in tamil. And mostly in old Tamil which consists of two many complicated words that we generally used in common dialogues now. So obviously makes it a lot tougher for me to comprehend. But once he gets around to explaining to me what these words mean, I turn and compliment him on the great poem it was. Then he starts on his usual rant over how poetry is dead.

I am not kidding, this is like a routine now. Every other weak he sends over a text with a peom and voice clip of him reciting it. I reply to him asking a few meanings. He calls up to explain the meaning of them words. I understand them, he reads the whole thing again, I compliment him on how good the poem was. He starts his usual rant. Which goes on for about ten minutes, or the end of the talktime on his mobile, whichever comes first.

I do get what he's saying though. I mean, how many of us really do the whole poetry thing anyway. Everything that we see is in prose (or rap). Even the new Spoken Word fad is really just prose words written in rhyme. I sort of do miss the whole poetry style that we had in the earlier times. And some of them were really good. Poetry can say so much about so many things, in so few words. I love it!

These are the one's that most recently caught my attention - 

Day 54 : Writing

"Why do you write?"

I don't know. Writing is a sort of outlet for all of the things that one needs to speak. Everyone has something to say. Most of the time it does not all that groundbreaking or unique, but for the one who is writing it, each sentence that he/she manages to form is a huge accomplishment of its own.

Everyone who writes will tell the same thing. Every time a person opens up his word processor on his computer or sits in front of a blank page on his desk with a pen in his hand, he will for the majority of the time just stare at it thinking where to begin. It is sort of easier when you are in the middle of a story, you look at the past few paragraph get a feel of how the plot's been progressing and get back to that place inside your head where all of this is actually happening and you got it all done, creating a whole new universe out of thin air.

A lot of people keep saying that you are what you write. There is a lot of nascent confession in whatever a person writes. I suppose that is right. Most writers do want to make readers feel like they relate to writer. The writer is not an alien being with long limbs, pale skin and one eye on his forehead. He/she is just as common as you and I are, only that he is spends most of his life indoors cooped up on his sofa binge watching television series and cursing at how good they're written. At the end of each awesome season finale (Breaking Bad!) he enthusiastically pulls out his laptop on the coffee table and starts punching keys away feeling inspired. That last for about six pages. Soon he realizes he has written himself into a corner and doesn't really know where he could take the plot from there.

But as frustrating as it can be, writing is actually a lot of fun; especially when you actually get to complete something worthwhile. It is such a rush. It does get to be a bit exhausting, and you do have to invest a lot into it. But in the end, man does it feel so good!

Writing is one thing I enjoy a lot - creating stories, and people, and plot, and surprises. This week, looks like I will be completing first draft of my very first short story!

:) :) :)