Stephen King's "Cell" (with spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Has anyone else read this? I was hardly aware it had come out, until I was cruising Audible.com looking for something to ease the drudgery of doing dishes and folding laundry. (And BTW, yes, an audio book on the mp3 player is the best damn tool I’ve found as a professional mother.) I had been a Constant Reader, but I was really turned off by The Dark Tower VII, and he said he was quitting, so I kind of dismissed him from my mind.

So now, a little padding for the spoilers

OK.

I admit I was drawn in at first. Yeah, it echoed *The Stand * quite a bit, but the zombie angle was interesting, and the speed with which everything went to hell in a handbasket. I liked Clay all right, and I really liked Tom. Though I felt a bit like I was in a Seinfeld episode when I thought, “Heeeeeey, Tom is thin, well-groomed, lives alone, and has a cat - I suppose he’s gay.” Seriously, I kind of liked that King didn’t make a big issue of it.

I thought the “cell phones are evil incarnate (inmachinate?)” theme was tiresome and overdone, but Iwas pretty into the story as they started travelling and observing the weird behavior of the phone crazies during the day.

However, one thing brought most of my involvement in the story crumbling down. The whole theory behind the mechanism and effects of the Pulse is based on the annoying-ass urban legend that we only use a small percentage of our brains. It pissed me off to no end! Then, to make matters worse, the story largely devolved into a Star Trek: TNG episode, with techno-babble (much of it wildly incorrect, if I’m not mistaken) about computers, brains as computers, “hard coding,” worms and viruses, “save to system,” and what boiled down to “reversing the polarity” of the Pulse to cancel out the effects.

All this theorizing also underlines how queerly observant and lucky at guessing the main characters are. If the Pulse happened in real life, I doubt even terrorism experts would figure out it was the cell phones, never mind a traumatized graphic artist making the conclusion within two minutes of the attack. Likewise, every conclusion they jump to (flocking, hive mind, previously untapped psychic powers) miraculously turns out to be right on the money.

Parallel to the technobabble plotting is the “Village of the Damned” story: the phone crazies soon cease to be bestial lunatics, and become a united force with the powers not only of mind reading and levitation, but actually taking over the bodies of the normal people, and/or putting them in a virtual reality unlike their true surroundings. They don’t just take reprisals for the heroes’ actions against them. They talk through the heroes, make people commit suicide, force people to travel where they want them to, and so on. The problem with this is it prevented any engagement in the story. Jeez, if the enemy is all-powerful, and can control the actions of the heroes, what is the point?

Again mirroring The Stand, the heroes are rounded up by a horde of bad guys to be put on display and executed. And of course, in the end, our heroes triumph thanks to a deus ex machina.

I guess it had a certain charm. It was miles better than the self-help literary therapy that King employed in *The Dark Tower * to work out his issues about being run over. But I’m not sure I’ll bother with any more new King. I know I’d much rather read The Stand, The Shining, or hell, even *Salem’s Lot * for the nth time than re-read this retread.

So, if you’ve read it, what did you think?

2

I’ve read it, and I agree with everything you said. Excellent recap, by the way.

I liked the book, despite the flaws. Wonky science doesn’t bother me. Contrived endings – eh, they come with the territory, I think.

My biggest disappointment was the characters. I didn’t get to know them very well – not like I knew Stu and Fran and Harold and Nadine. When Alice died, it was hard to care. That’s King’s strength, and he shorted us this time.

It could have been longer. Some back story on the characters would have been nice, and something from the POV of the Phonies. He could have explored how we might co-exist with telepaths, but he didn’t even consider the possibility. They’re different, some of them are murderous, let’s kill 'em all.

I wonder why he wrote it. Maybe it was just for fun. Cuz I think he did have fun writing it.

3

Maybe the best way to approach a Stephen King book is to immediately rip out the last 25 pages after purchasing it – that way, when you finally make it to the end of the portion that you didn’t rip out, you can say, “Boy, I bet he thought up something COOL!” and leave it at that.

4

The phonies didn’t seem to want to co-exist. Kept attacking the normies and all. Then there was the pesky no-fo conversion zone. I dunno. Maybe they just have a lousy grasp of diplomacy. :stuck_out_tongue:

That said, I enjoyed it. It was a good quickie read.

5

Thank you. :slight_smile:

Despite **Harborwolf’s ** cogent argument, I agree. There was quite some time when the protagonists realized the phone people were no longer madly aggressive, and that they had a certain level of intelligence, but did not yet know of the conversion tents. Yet despite the fact that the phonies had recently been human, and appeared less and less threatening, their only response to the emerging intelligence they saw was to wipe the phonies out.

I wonder if Campbell Scott’s reading helped beef up the weak characterization. I can see what you’re saying, but it didn’t really jump out at me while listening. I thought Scott was really good. But clearly, despite doing some decent Boston accents, Scott has never lived around there - he pronounced “Canobie Lake Park” as “Kenobi Lake Park,” causing me to laugh like hell.

Snooooopy, I think you’re right. And what the hell, isn’t that pretty much what King himself suggested with The Dark Tower? (I know, I’m harping on that book, but Jeez man, waiting almost two decades and then getting what we got, that hurt.)

I should note that I haven’t read *From a Buick 8 * or The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and from reviews I’ve seen, if I had read them, perhaps I’d be more charitable to this novel, which was, after all, fast paced, easy to get through, and fun.

6

When I get around to reading it, I know that this will be the biggest disappointment to me. It used to be that Stephen King could give you years of character in about a paragraph. I would tell non-horror fans that they should try him anyway, strictly for the richness of the characters.

If he’s getting too lazy to use his real strength, then what the hell?

7

Really. Readers who like King’s explicitly gory descriptions were disappointed with Cell, and others (like me) bitch about the lack of character depth. He was somewhere in the middle with this one, I guess. :slight_smile:

Based on this blurb from the publisher, I’m not sure whether or not to be hopeful about King’s next book:

“On October 24, 2006 we publish LISEY’S STORY. Possibly King’s most ambitious and accomplished book ever, it’s a profoundly moving and disturbing novel about a widow coping with the loss of her writer husband. It’s a grand, ambitious and layered book, with unrelenting emotional power. It’s a book for the ages - exploring the dark secrets of the ones we love, and the very wellsprings of creativity.”

The cliches in the blurb set off all sorts of alarms, even for a Constant Reader.

Did anyone read the excerpt of Lisey’s Story in Cell? His handwriting is difficult, and I gave up after a few sentences.

8

I feel kind of sorry for Stephen King these days. A book like Cell is similar to – and not as good as – his earlier novels. (I think of it as a mashup between The Stand and 'Salem’s Lot.) Other books, like The Colorado Kid where he tries to do something different, reveal the limits of his talents. Most of his recent books aren’t bad, but they’re certainly not memorable. I admire him for trying, but…

Cell went by quickly enough. Ditto, ditto, ditto on the sketchy characterization, though – I really didn’t feel like anyone made much of an impression aside from Charles Ardai (the name of the editor of Hard Case Crime, by the way, who published CK). And he’s another one of King’s characters who’s got I AM DOOMED tattooed across his forehead from his first scene.

Alice? Tom? Jordan? Dan? Ray Huizenga (whose sister, by the way, won an auction to have his name included as a character)? None of them really made an impression. As AuntiePam points out, Alice’s death should’ve been an impressive scene, but it just wasn’t.

That said, the ending didn’t bother me all that much – I wasn’t impressed, mind you – but I liked that he didn’t settle the question of what happened to Johnny.

Which reminds me – this is the first book where I noticed the frequent King theme of loved ones turning into people you don’t recognize. Being possessed by evil. 'Salem’s Lot, The Tommyknockers, The Shining, Pet Sematary, Christine, Dreamcatcher – even “The Boogeyman.” Sometimes it pays off for him, sometimes not. (See: Tommyknockers.) It does seem like a primal kind of nightmare.

9

Definitely. I’ve had nightmares of my husband or my mom turning on me, and they’re much worse than the standard monster dreams. Sometimes I’ll imagine something malevolent in a glance from my husband, and I’ll be off kilter all day. (And he’s a sweetie-pie.)

10

Just finished it.

I totally agree. I would have liked 200 more pages with the back story of each character, and some time spent in the settings of the events (the city, the school, the small town, the carnival grounds). I would have liked to linger in those lives and places and the mundane normal trials of life itself for a while, and then have the horror start. That’s what I’ve always liked about his good books–he does really write so well about ordinary peoples’ lives.

I would have cared more about the people in the book if I’d been in their “worlds” longer before the Pulse.

And this is the first King book where I missed what was going on or some of the action–where I had to go back a few paragraphs and re-read to figure out what they were up to, what plans they had, and such. It felt like he skipped along too fast, rushed the story. Things were inferred only.

I think if he’d shown us the lives of the characters before the event, Alice’s death would have been simply devastating to read.

I was a little irritated by how he had different characters refer to it as “the Pulse” when that was Clay’s term for it, without having an explanation of how the term caught on. Little things bugged me throughout the book. Inconsistencies, implausibility.

He could have definitely done something from the point of view of the Phoners. Hell, part of Cujo was from the point of view of the dog, if I recall!

I thought it was a lot like The Stand, too, except… not as good, of course. I’d love to read it again after it’s been re-written, with the proper back story, character development and a slower pace. We could have spent a lot of time at the Gaiten (I think it was) school, for example, and then with Jordan and the Headmaster as they try to show the survivors straggling by that first flock.

I thought King took some cheap shortcuts with pop culture references instead of working a bit harder for an analogy or a description.

It could have been a lot longer, and he could have worked a little harder with some symbolism of inhumanity/technology/civilisation, and so on (or maybe I’m reading too much into King’s work–I once proclaimed, quite loudly, that ‘IT’ is “about the death of childhood, not a killer clown!”). Three hundred more pages of Classic King and it would have been a nice echo of The Stand, but not this weak replay.

And this is the first book of his that I actually found a bit too gory. I mean, when the man came out of the park chomping on the dog’s ear, I was only on page two! I liked his books best when he writes about reality so well and lulls you with that, and then, and only then, begins to turn on the spooky… This was a gore-fest from the start.

Sigh. Now I want to re-read something old, like 'Salem’s Lot.

Yes. He used the phrase “well-known” twice in the same paragraph to describe a person and then a magazine. That’s repetitive, and lazy.

And I couldn’t follow who each “she” or “her” was–there were mainly two female characters in the excerpt, and it was hard to tell who he was referring to. I had to stop, re-read, puzzle it over. Stories shouldn’t be like that—they should slide into your head like sleep, then dreams.

These niggling glitches are pretty basic stuff for any writer–if one has to work and go back and ponder as to who the writer’s talking about, the writer isn’t doing his job. And not finding another phrase for “well-known”? Come on, is anyone editing him these days, or is becoming Anne Rice?

It was an excerpt. I hope they mean a draft.

Still. I’ll probably buy the book as soon as I see it. :slight_smile:

11

What Savannah said.

Eh, I enjoy hearing King’s familiar voice. I’m just glad these days when he publishes anything that doesn’t blow dead rats.

I’ll be in line to buy Lisey’s Story, and just about anything else he may publish (I admit I skipped the recent non-fiction about baseball.)

12

I read it about two weeks ago and I have to say, I think all you guys were expecting a bit much for what is basically a King does Romero work. When looked at as Zombie story it works much better than when read as King novel (you know great well fleshed out characters). In my opinion the only way this differed form say Dawn of the Dead was a possible technical explanation with more people having a basic idea of what may have caused the problem. In Romero’s world you’re never sure what happened except maybe a quasi-religious explanation, which is neither confirmed nor affirmed.

On the lack of character development, again this was more like a traditional Zombie story. What for instance do we know about the characters in Dawn of the dead other than one is a nurse of some kind and another is a police officer? Shawn of the Dead is the only Zombie story I can think of where any of the characters have any true depth, and in that case it’s merely for comedic effect. I suspect the only reason Clay is fleshed out is for a vehicle as a POV for the reader. This I suspect helps the death of Alice be less traumatic for the reader, and Clay’s his later break with Tom and the kid more acceptable. In a zombie story most of the survivors get killed or transformed.

I also kind of liked the flocking and hive mind scenario. That just gave the zombies a King touch. Sort of a slow zombie vs. fast zombie feel, distinguishing King’s zombie’s from Romero’s. That said the ending was too reminiscent of the Stand. It would have been better if he’d stuck to the Romero formula with a bleak ending. I tend to forgive that; King is just not capable of writing a good ending.

13

I read 20 pages of this book and then threw it across the room. I used to like Stephen King but his recent stuff (anything after, say, 1983) is just unreadable. I think he’s totally run out of ideas. His early books were suspenseful and compelling but now they’ve become boring and flat.

The thing in this most recent book that I just couldn’t get past was this: in the opening pages the hero witnesses an all-out attack on Boston. Cars and planes crashing into each other, people turning into cannibals before his eyes and folks jumping off of buildings. King is asking me to believe that because this guy was watching two people on their cell-phones when all this started happening, he was somehow able to make the connection between the phones and what was happening? You’ve gotta be kidding. That’s when I lost all interest and chucked the thing.

14

You mean the

A. three people that were acting completely normal
B. Then used their cell phones
C. Then turned in to murderous psychopaths before any of that other stuff even happened?

That was too hard to believe?

15

I just read in Entertainment Weekly that Eli Roth (of Cabin Fever and Hostel fame) is directing the movie version of Cell.

I didn’t really like Cabin Fever (and I never saw Hostel), but a movie version of Cell could freakin’ rock. Especially with someone who loves the gore like Roth does.

16

I liked the first part of Cell. I actually like how you just went right into the horror straight away. For me, it made the terror the main characters felt all the more real. To them, suddenly, in one second, with no warning the world went to hell. Going straight into it gave me a similar feeling.

However, I was disappointed with the last part of the book. It seemed like King set up this great, scarey scenario, and then couldn’t resolve it so he threw some stuff together (I had the same problem with It and The Stand). I like the idea of throwing away the last 25 pages! Maybe I’ll do that next time.