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| King pays tribute to the Weird Tales writers |
There are some mild spoilers in this review. I'll touch on a several major events in the novel, though I won't go into detail.
Review
Early in the novel, a shadow falls across a boy named Jamie who is playing in the dirt with his toy soldiers. The boy looks up to discover that the shadow belongs to a young minister named Charles Jacobs who has come to town to serve at the First Methodist Church of Harlow, replacing the retiring lay preacher Bill Latour. Charlie, as he likes to be called, is the sort of friendly adult who gets down in the dirt to help out with the fortifications.
Charlie Jacobs has a lovely wife named Patsy and a sweet young son named Morrie. The Jacobs fit right into the community and are liked by everyone. Charlie and Patsy start a Methodist youth group that Jamie and his brothers and sister join, along with several other kids in their small town. Besides the Bible lessons, they sing songs with Patsy on piano, and Charlie wows them with electrical experiments he has devised. (Reverend Jacobs is obsessed with electricity.) The reverend even heals Jamie's older brother Conrad of a case of laryngitis using electricity, though he confides to Jamie later that the cure was mostly psychological -- the power of suggestion.
But soon enough, something terrible happens. Patsy and Morrie are maimed and killed in a horrifying automobile accident. In the aftermath, Reverend Jacobs loses his faith. This is, of course, a grim reality that anyone who is raised in a religious faith and believes in a just and merciful God must face. How can it be that such a God can allow innocent people, even little children, to be maimed and killed, even abused and tortured in some cases. After taking several Sundays off, Reverend Jacobs returns to his church and preaches a final sermon, which comes to be known by his parishioners as the "Terrible Sermon," in which he rubs their faces in the meaningless evil and injustice of the world, finishing with, "Believe what you want, but I tell you... there is nothing but a lie."
Unsurprisingly, Reverend Jacobs is asked to leave. Jamie assumes this is the last he'll ever see of the reverend. Many years later, however, Jamie crosses paths with Jacobs again. Jamie has reached a low point in his life -- broke, homeless, jobless, and addicted to heroin. He wanders into a carnival looking to score, but what he finds instead is a sideshow in which Charlie Jacobs, now known as Dan Jacobs, is amazing the rubes with his electrical magic. Jamie is so wasted he passes out and next awakens in Jacobs' trailer. Jacobs cures him of his heroin addiction using what he calls "secret electricity" and hires Jamie as an assistant for a while. He even helps Jamie back on his feet by getting him a job that turns out to be Jamie's long-term calling in life.
Many years go by, and the next time Jamie becomes aware of Jacobs he's a television and tent-show evangelist who specializes in healing. Jamie knows it's a grift because Jacobs lost his faith in God a long time ago and remained cynical about religion. Through research, Jamie learns that many of the people who are healed by Pastor Danny have severe "after effects." Some go crazy. Some commit suicide. Jamie confronts Pastor Danny with this, but Jacobs shrugs it off. After all, he points out, even doctors and surgeons have a certain percentage of failures.
Eventually Jacobs gives up the faith healing racket and retires to an estate where he continues to work on his so-called secret electricity experiments in private. He asks Jamie to be his assistant, but Jamie refuses. Jamie knows there's something off about Jacobs' secret electricity and he wants no part of it. But, eventually, Jacobs gains a hold over Jamie that forces him to become a part of his ultimate experiment. While Jacobs no longer believes in the Bible, he's sure there's something beyond death -- and he's determined to find out for certain where Patsy and Morrie are now. And we slowly realize the title of the book has nothing to do with religious services calling sinners to repent.
The novel meanders along for nearly five hundred pages and touches on all aspects of its protagonist Jamie's life, from childhood to old age. That's all fine: as any reader of Stephen King knows, there's often more fun in the journey than in arriving at the destination. The novel is somewhat elegiac in tone as it devotes a lot of space to ruminating on the experiences of growing old. You really don't know where Revival is going until close to the end, and, unfortunately, it felt as if King were trying to graft on a part that really didn't fit. I was surprised by how very Lovecraftian the story becomes in the finale, though the early mention in the story of the forbidden book De Vermis Mysteriis (a fictional grimoire created by Robert Bloch and incorporated by H. P. Lovecraft into the the Cthulhu Mythos) gives the astute reader a clue as to what is afoot.
Jamie's journey is entertaining and often moving, but, overall, the story was a bit shaggier than it needed to be; and the Lovecraftian ending didn't really work for me.
Postscript:
But soon enough, something terrible happens. Patsy and Morrie are maimed and killed in a horrifying automobile accident. In the aftermath, Reverend Jacobs loses his faith. This is, of course, a grim reality that anyone who is raised in a religious faith and believes in a just and merciful God must face. How can it be that such a God can allow innocent people, even little children, to be maimed and killed, even abused and tortured in some cases. After taking several Sundays off, Reverend Jacobs returns to his church and preaches a final sermon, which comes to be known by his parishioners as the "Terrible Sermon," in which he rubs their faces in the meaningless evil and injustice of the world, finishing with, "Believe what you want, but I tell you... there is nothing but a lie."
Unsurprisingly, Reverend Jacobs is asked to leave. Jamie assumes this is the last he'll ever see of the reverend. Many years later, however, Jamie crosses paths with Jacobs again. Jamie has reached a low point in his life -- broke, homeless, jobless, and addicted to heroin. He wanders into a carnival looking to score, but what he finds instead is a sideshow in which Charlie Jacobs, now known as Dan Jacobs, is amazing the rubes with his electrical magic. Jamie is so wasted he passes out and next awakens in Jacobs' trailer. Jacobs cures him of his heroin addiction using what he calls "secret electricity" and hires Jamie as an assistant for a while. He even helps Jamie back on his feet by getting him a job that turns out to be Jamie's long-term calling in life.
Many years go by, and the next time Jamie becomes aware of Jacobs he's a television and tent-show evangelist who specializes in healing. Jamie knows it's a grift because Jacobs lost his faith in God a long time ago and remained cynical about religion. Through research, Jamie learns that many of the people who are healed by Pastor Danny have severe "after effects." Some go crazy. Some commit suicide. Jamie confronts Pastor Danny with this, but Jacobs shrugs it off. After all, he points out, even doctors and surgeons have a certain percentage of failures.
Eventually Jacobs gives up the faith healing racket and retires to an estate where he continues to work on his so-called secret electricity experiments in private. He asks Jamie to be his assistant, but Jamie refuses. Jamie knows there's something off about Jacobs' secret electricity and he wants no part of it. But, eventually, Jacobs gains a hold over Jamie that forces him to become a part of his ultimate experiment. While Jacobs no longer believes in the Bible, he's sure there's something beyond death -- and he's determined to find out for certain where Patsy and Morrie are now. And we slowly realize the title of the book has nothing to do with religious services calling sinners to repent.
The novel meanders along for nearly five hundred pages and touches on all aspects of its protagonist Jamie's life, from childhood to old age. That's all fine: as any reader of Stephen King knows, there's often more fun in the journey than in arriving at the destination. The novel is somewhat elegiac in tone as it devotes a lot of space to ruminating on the experiences of growing old. You really don't know where Revival is going until close to the end, and, unfortunately, it felt as if King were trying to graft on a part that really didn't fit. I was surprised by how very Lovecraftian the story becomes in the finale, though the early mention in the story of the forbidden book De Vermis Mysteriis (a fictional grimoire created by Robert Bloch and incorporated by H. P. Lovecraft into the the Cthulhu Mythos) gives the astute reader a clue as to what is afoot.
Jamie's journey is entertaining and often moving, but, overall, the story was a bit shaggier than it needed to be; and the Lovecraftian ending didn't really work for me.
Postscript:
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| Total ripoff! |
Those toy soldiers Jamie is playing with at the beginning of the novel are from a comic book ad that was very common in my childhood (and King's) for 100 Toy Soldiers "Packed in This Footlocker!" all for roughly a buck and a quarter. Jamie loves these toy soldiers and plays with them all the time. I'm here to tell you that I was one of the kids who sent in his five quarters. What I got were one hundred tiny, barely three-dimensional soldiers packed in a cardboard box that was slightly smaller than a typical kitchen matchbox. You couldn't get them to stand up, and they were utterly useless -- a total ripoff! I quickly tossed them into a corner of the closet and never played with them again, as I suspect most other kids also did. We certainly didn't play with them for months like Jamie. I assume Stephen King couldn't con his parents out of the buck and a quarter and always longed for that footlocker of soldiers. You were better off without them, Stevie. Trust me. I know.
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