The Outsider by Stephen King

Been a busy week (coming through from the weekend too). I rushed to complete my Lone Wolf & Cub essay (see previous post for that struggle) and then immediately dove into some freelance coverage work. Specifically, summarizing The Outsider by Stephen King for a production company. I covered the 600 page novel in two days and turned in the summary and character index. To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I read a Stephen King all the way through, let alone did a full day speed immersion. It’s left me a bit dazed, but I like the experience! I guess my first observation is that, obviously, the man is just insanely good at his craft. Like, mystically good - I don’t get it. How he turns these out so quickly, such fully formed characters, worlds, plots. The investigative stuff (and this one is quite procedural throughout) probably becomes second nature after years of plotting novel after novel. But things like the chapter structure really struck me. How he developed a rhythm of micro chapters and extended chapters. Many times, the deepest emotional moments were built up to and fully earned across a long chapter. You wouldn’t even notice by the time they were over. Then, the next chapter would be micro - like a 20th of the length - and give you a totally mundane but necessary bit of info along with a little bit of forward plot movement. Really interesting, I have no idea if he organically just improvises his way through that or methodically plots the rhythm in advance. On a broader level, he really works hard to transition the reader from super-intense whodunit straight-police story into full blown horror. And the way he does it, I think, is by focusing on the belief system of one of the main detectives — who turns from the reader’s adversary into our surrogate (after some horrid and shocking twists). Once he’s our surrogate, we realize how pragmatic, passionate, and just he is — but he’s also the holdout non-believer of the superstitious element. It’s through his investigation, and a recurring Stephen King character, that he’s finally convinced. By that time, the reader’s seen more than he has - but his crossing the invisible-Indiana-Jones-bridge threshhold is a serious climax of the story. I’m still absorbing it, the assignment was purely plot coverage based anyways, but I think it was a great read.