Thinner by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachmann

[H0LD0Nthere]

I just read Thinner for the first time. I know it's been out for ages, but it took me this long to feel ready to read most of King's stuff (not all).

Anyway, I found the book brilliant and want to compare notes (spoilers allowed). Anyone game?

[Christina O Phillips]

It's been awhile since I've read it, but I'd like to try and talk about it.

[H0LD0Nthere]

Sweet, thanks, Christina O!

So ... bottom line, did you like it?

Obviously there was an amount of grossness, because it's Stephen King after all, and there was not a happy ending, but I felt the ending was satisfying somehow, like the ending of a great tragedy like Oedipus Rex. I felt it had that perfect tragic twist.

What I liked most about it was the way it explored our worst fears about things like blame and privilege. The main character runs down the old gypsy woman, and he and two others who covered up for him are horribly cursed. At first, it looks like the curse is way out of proportion to their crimes. As he points out, it wasn't his fault alone that he hit the woman - she stepped out from between two cars rather than at a crosswalk, his wife was distracting him, he didn't ask anyone to waive his trial - but as the book goes on, the effects that the curse has on him reveals bad things in his character, so that by the end it kind of seems like he did deserve it after all.

[Christina O Phillips]

Yes! I really liked it.

As for the ending, I love when the endings aren't happy because things don't always work out well in life, so why should they in fiction? I thought the ending was fitting and satisfying.

You said, "but as the book goes on, the effects that the curse has on him reveals bad things in his character, so that by the end it kind of seems like he did deserve it after all." I wonder if that is how the curse was supposed to work: if we weren't such a bad person, maybe it would have still affected him, but not as badly?

[H0LD0Nthere]

Hmm. I don't know whether the curse would have been any lighter on him if he'd had a better character. That certainly was the gypsies' intent. They had already decided the "white man from town" was worthless, his excuses didn't matter, and he didn't deserve any mercy.

But weirdly, like many things that seem unfair, the victim ends up appearing to deserve the curse just because of the person he becomes in his desperation.

The main character (I read the book like a week ago and now I can't remember his name!) started out as a pretty good person. He loves his wife and daughter. He honestly feels sorry about killing the old gypsy woman and he even feels bad about the injustice the gypsies have to put up with, and wants to apologize to them. But once his life starts ebbing away, he ends up hating his wife and is willing to curse her instead of himself.

Now that I think about it, it's sort of like Winston in 1984 screaming out, "Do it to Julia! Not to me!" It's like a picture of how desperate and immoral people get when everything is stripped away from them, when they face something like starvation or having their face chewed off by a rat.

I guess that's why I liked the book. It shows how easy it is for - God, fate - to make someone completely selfish, just by taking away a simple thing that they depend on. I know I wouldn't have liked this book at all when I was younger, because we all start out idealistic and don't want to believe how selfish we really are. But having been in some desperate scrapes (not as desperate as this of course), now I can relate and see that this story is "true."

[Christina O Phillips]

But once his life starts ebbing away, he ends up hating his wife and is willing to curse her instead of himself.

Now that I think about it, it's sort of like Winston in 1984 screaming out, "Do it to Julia! Not to me!" It's like a picture of how desperate and immoral people get when everything is stripped away from them, when they face something like starvation or having their face chewed off by a rat.

I guess that's why I liked the book. It shows how easy it is for - God, fate - to make someone completely selfish, just by taking away a simple thing that they depend on. I know I wouldn't have liked this book at all when I was younger, because we all start out idealistic and don't want to believe how selfish we really are. But having been in some desperate scrapes (not as desperate as this of course), now I can relate and see that this story is "true."

But is it really selfish? Or is it just someone's drive to survive? Billy is rightfully angry that his wife wasn't cursed because the accident wasn't 100% his fault. Winston just wants to survive and not be hurt. Self-preservation shouldn't be seen as a bad thing, right?

[H0LD0Nthere]

So, this is a complex topic and I'm not sure I can do it justice, but here goes:

Of course self-preservation is not selfish per se. It's just a natural instinct that we all have, and we usually ought to follow.

But we live in a nasty world where horrible and unjust things happen on a regular basis. Thus, we all find ourselves at times put in situations where we have to choose between someone else's well-being and our own. Example: a blame storm is happening at work, and you have a choice between taking an unjust amount of blame for a failed project yourself, or letting a colleague take an unjust amount of the blame. These kinds of situations are very common. Sometimes they involved death and torture, but not always.

In situations like this, it is our duty to put the other person's well-being ahead of our own if we have a loyalty or responsibility to that person AND they are in some way weaker or more vulnerable than we are. Examples: they are our wife, girlfriend, elderly parent, child, dependent, or rookie partner.

Of course, this duty calls us to deny our self-preservation instinct. In other words, it calls us to heroic self-sacrifice.

It's sad but true, in some situations our only two options are heroic self-sacrifice or shameful, cowardly selfishness.

Thinner illustrates this really well. The Gypsy's curse was unjust. Nobody deserves to go through what Billy was going through (let alone the fate of the other two guys who got cursed!). The curse was out of proportion to the offense. But if the curse was not completely just when put on Billy, then it follows that it would also be unjust when put on his wife Heidi. (She was equally responsible for the gypsy woman's death, but no more responsible than Billy or the woman herself). So Billy was faced with meeting an unjust fate himself, or making his wife meet an unjust fate in order to save himself.

Of course, by that time he's so mad at her that he's convinced himself that cursing her would be just. But we all know it wouldn't. In fact, his anger with her and his desperation, which seem to justify cursing her, are exactly what I was talking about when I said that suffering can make a person selfish.

This dynamic is highlighted even more by the way the Gypsy explains the pie to Billy. He doesn't say that the curse will revert to someone who really deserves it. Billy can gives the pie to whoever he likes, and if that person eats it, they will be cursed. The only way he can get rid of the curse is to pass it on a way that's at least as unjust as the way in which it was laid on him.

Sorry for this superlong post. I'm a verbal processor, so I'm learning as I type.

Anyway, whether you agree with me or not about our duty and all that, this is clearly a complex and important theme.

And that, my friends, is why Thinner by Stephen King is so brilliant in the first place!

[Manang Muyang]

I believe this is the only Bachmann book that I haven't read. Thanks to everyone for the inputs. I will try my best to get hold of a copy soon.

[H0LD0Nthere]

What other books did King write at Bachmann?
What have I been missing?

[Manang Muyang]

Published under the name Richard Bachmann:

Rage 1977
The Long Walk 1979
Roadwork 1981
The Running Man 1982
Thinner 1984
The Regulators 1996 (twin book to Stephen King's Desperation)

Bachmann supposedly died before The Regulators was published. It seems that King initially didn't want the readers to know he and Bachmann were one and the same person.