A Novel Critique

The myth surrounding Blaze is so well documented among King fans that it threatens to overwhelm the actual story. I first heard about the book nearly seventeen years ago, when I was fifteen and just cutting my first King eyeteeth. It was mentioned in King’s “afterword” in Different Seasons. The story went that, after the publication of Carrie, King presented his editor with two new manuscripts – Second Coming (which would eventually become ’Salem’s Lot) and Blaze, the story of a mentally-challenged giant who decides to kidnap a child for ransom money. The first was a new kind of vampire novel, the second an Of Mice and Men pastiche. King’s editor sighed and allowed as to how the vampire book was the better of the two, lamenting that King was going to get “typed” as a horror writer. King didn’t seem to mind much, ’Salem’s Lot was published, and Blaze got stuck in a trunk.

As King’s career marched on, interest in all things King grew. There developed a cottage industry of books about King, and several – including my now-battered first copy of The Stephen King Companion – discussed Blaze in greater detail. Much later, Stephen Spignesi’s masterful The Lost Work of Stephen King devoted a whole chapter to Blaze, further whetting my – and my fellow King enthusiasts – appetite for this long-unpublished book. It had become clear, somewhere in the long years following my first read of Different Seasons, that Blaze was never going to be published. Like other early King novels, The Aftermath and Sword in the Darkness, Blaze was going to be relegated to mythic, unread status forever.

All of which held true until two years ago, when King suddenly and surprisingly let it slip that Blaze, after thirty-five years, was going to be published. The King community cheered. (Well, at least I cheered. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’ve got a hunch.) Spiking the interest level even higher, King revealed that Blaze would be published under the Richard Bachman name. (My highly professional critical response was something along the lines of, “How cool is that?!”)

Some King fans grumbled goodnaturedly about the decision: everyone knows King is Bachman (although, after being a bookseller for over a decade, I can tell you that everyone most assuredly does not know), so why release it under that name? It made sense, actually. Most of the Bachman books had been written in King’s very early career, two – Rage and The Long Walk – before Carrie. Therefore, Blaze would have the feel of the early Bachmans, a similar style, a familiar structure. It’s not necessarily a cozy experience, but it is a fascinating and often thrilling one. The Bachman books are dark, dirty, and disturbing ... and Blaze is no exception.

So, what of the story? Does it hold up, after all these years? The answer is a great sighing yes. In his illuminating foreword (King’s essays about the Bachman experience have always been minor masterpieces), King reveals that he punched up the old manuscript, attempting to keep the tone of the original while slicing out some of the chaff. As it stands now, the story is unrelenting. The front story – involving the nearly-retarded Blaze and the kidnapping of a rich family’s baby – brings the suspense; the back story – involving Blaze’s abusive and terrifying childhood – brings the pathos. There’s a horrifying scene near the beginning of the book that talks about Blaze as a quiet, bookish child, before his father throws him down the stairs three times for interrupting him watching TV.

It’s that kind of tragedy; there’s little actual hope to be found in these pages, so what we are left with is a suspicious sort of compassion. For all his misdeeds, Blaze isn’t really a bad person. He was born into his large, unwieldy frame, and he was forced into a cramped, tormented life ... but inside that life, Blaze still finds the capacity for good. Some flashback scenes during which Blaze and a friend run away from their horrific boarding school for the weekend and take a trip to Boston are nearly heartbreaking. Seeing the world through Blaze’s eyes is fascinating, because so often they are the eyes of the child. There’s a later scene involving Blaze’s stay at a working farm for the summer. Here, there are actual glimmers of hope for awhile, before a coincidental tragedy in the tradition of Cujo befalls him. The gist of it all is that Blaze believes – and it probably right – that he has mostly run out of options before he turns to a life of crime. And that might be the biggest heartbreak of all.

The main narrative of the book – the story of the kidnapping – pales a little bit in relation to Blaze’s history. Most interesting are Blaze’s relationship with the baby himself – whom Blaze comes to love too much to want to give up – and his relationship with his partner in crime, George Rackley. The problem is that George has been dead for over three months when the book starts; we know that, but Blaze himself often forgets. George’s voice is actually one of the more interesting devices of the book. King hints without really saying that George represents a part of Blaze that wasn’t damaged in those long-ago falls, that somewhere underneath his mangled synapses, real intelligence is simmering. (Later, there’s a vague hint that George actually might be a ghost, and that he and Blaze may have had some tenuous psychic connection ... but Blaze isn’t a supernatural tale at its heart, and those vague hints are better left vague.)

Sadly, I was never able to view the original manuscript, so I can’t give a detailed report on all the changes. The little I know, though, is interesting: both Blaze’s and George’s names have been changed (Claiborne Blaisdell, Jr. – Blaze – became Clayton Blaisdell, Jr, likely to avoid comparisons to Dolores Claiborne; George Rockley is now George Rackley.) Many of the early reports of Blaze from those who had read it stated that the details of the kidnapping – including leaving an infant alone for extended periods of time – were a bit far-fetched. I can’t tell how much of that was tightened up here, but it certainly seemed believable to me.

Of course, this being a Bachman book, a happy ending isn’t really in the offing. (The most hopeful of the Bachman novels, The Regulators, ends up with half its main cast gunned down.) That’s not really the point. Against the reader’s better judgment, Blaze is a sympathetic, compassionate, and ultimately tragic character. By the time you reach the end, you’re actually rooting for the guy to get away, even though you know in your heart that he never will. And that’s the beauty of Blaze: from page one, you know you’re reading about a doomed man ... but because both the character and the story surrounding him are so compelling, you just can’t stop reading.

Early News

Okay, okay. According to both Bev Vincent and Hans-Ake Lilja (and CH fan Ben Smith), King announced that a "new" Bachman book had been "discovered." As it turns out, this novel is Blaze an early novel King wrote in the 1970s, and offered to Doubleday at the same time as 'Salem's Lot. Doubleday chose 'Salem's Lot, and as the story goes, that was the better of the two choices.

However, the lore around Blaze has been swirling ever since fans first learned of King's early unpublished novels (The Aftermath and Sword in the Darkness among them.) As Blaze stood, it was deemed unworthy ... but that doesn't mean that King (with Bachman's help) hasn't tinkered with it. It's obviously not lost his thoughts in all this time, and now to hear news of it ... this is just amazing.

The plot is well-known amongst Stephen King experts, but a refresher: Blaze is the story of a giant, mentally challenged man (Claiborne Blaisdell, Jr.) who decides to kidnap a baby and hold it for a $1 million ransom. The novel flips back and forth between the current story of Blaze's kidnapping and flight from the law to stories of his abusive past. There's another character named George, Blaze's best friend; it is George who actually convinces Blaze to kidnap the baby. The only problem is, George may or may not be dead, and thus be a psychological manifestation ... or perhaps a ghost.

Interestingly enough, Stephen Spignesi described Blaze in his terrific book The Lost Work of Stephen King as "...more of a Richard Bachman-like crime novel than a Stephen Kingish tale of vampires and other demonic creatures."

Nothing at all is known about the publication of this old and much sought-after novel. King made the announcement that the book had been "discovered" at the recent reading of Lisey's Story at Battersea Park, in the UK. Whether it will be published, and when, and under what circumstances, is right now entirely speculation. Still, one can't help but be thrilled at this. If Blaze really is going to make an appearance as a Bachman book, who's to say Sword in the Darkness won't? Or, perhaps, George D.X. McCardle? Or, please please please, Steel Machine, first excerpted in The Dark Half and discussed as a possible Bachman novel in 1989 with W*B, the Waldenbooks newsletter. Maybe? Please? Can you tell I'm excited? (Note: I wonder if this is why Michael Collings's Stephen King is Richard Bachman has been delayed...?)