Revival by Stephen King

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: 

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.

The Keep by F. Paul Wilson

F. Paul Wilson was a practicing doctor throughout most of his writing career

The Keep by F. Paul Wilson was published in 1981 and became an immediate bestseller. A movie based on the book was released two years later. (We'll come back to that.) It's easy to see why the book hit the bestseller lists. It has all the right elements, including an intriguing premise, spooky supernatural happenings, a passionate romance, and a fast-paced, easy-to-absorb narrative style. Wilson says his inspirations for the novel were the works of Robert Ludlum, Robert E. Howard, and H.P. Lovecraft. As unlikely a mixture as that may sound, all of those influences are clear in the text.

Review

As the story begins, the young Sturmbannführer (Major) Erich Kaempffer, of the SS, has been chosen for an important post in Romania. He'll be in charge of opening a death camp in Ploiești -- a real feather in his cap! But before he can take up his post, the German High Command wants Major Kaempffer to look into (and resolve) a small issue of some concern. Captain Klaus Woermann, of the regular German army, has been posted to a small castle-like structure in the Carpathian Mountains, where he and his men are to guard a strategic pass from the Russians. Woermann's men, however, are being killed, one by one, each night, and he can find no answer to what's causing those deaths. The Captain has, therefore, asked permission to move his men out of the keep. This is unacceptable to High Command, and, therefore, Major Kaempffer has been tasked with investigating the matter and putting an end to the killings.

Kaempffer finds this annoying for two reasons. First, it delays him from taking up his real work, which will advance his position in the party. Second, he has a history with Captain Woermann, whom he dislikes. The two men's distaste for each other adds an extra level of conflict throughout the book.

Back when Woermann arrived at the tiny village in the Dinu Pass, he discovered that the keep was maintained by a caretaker named Alexandru and his two sons. Alexandru warned the Captain that he and his men would not be able to stay in the keep. When asked why, the caretaker told him that bad dreams drive people out. Woermann, of course, found this amusing, dismissed the warnings, and had his men begin setting up electrical lights and generators, weapons emplacements, and barracks in the keep. As for who owns the keep and pays for its maintenance, Woermann could find no answers.

It is at first assumed that some kind of resistance movement must be behind the deaths of the German soldiers in the keep. When Kaempffer arrives, he uses brutal SS tactics to terrorize the villagers into giving up the rebels. But it becomes obvious that something else is in play when Kaempffer is confronted one night by the animated corpses of two of his own men.

Woermann and Kaempffer learn from the local innkeeper Iuliu that a Jewish scholar from the University of Bucharest, Professor Theodor Cuza, is an expert on the history of the region and may be able to help them figure out what's behind the killings. Although Kaempffer is unhappy with relying on a Jew, the dying Professor Cuza and his daughter Magda, who takes of him, are quickly brought to the keep against their will.

Cuza is highly resistant to the idea that he can help the Nazis in any way, but he becomes intrigued despite himself when he is brought a cache of books that had been found hidden in a small chamber in one of the walls. This is one of my favorite parts of the book, though it may pass right by non-fans of H.P. Lovecraft. As an in-joke on the author's part, all of the books and manuscripts that are brought to professor Cuza are directly taken from Lovecraft's work or other writers who participated in the Mythos-related writings. For those who are interested, here's the list:

• The Book of Eibon "du Nord translation" (from Clark Ashton Smith)
• De Vermis Mysteriis by Ludwig Prinn (from Robert Bloch as Mysteries of the Worm)
• Cultes des Goules by the Comte d'Erlette (from Bloch)
• The Pnakotic Manuscripts "in scroll form" (from H.P. Lovecraft)
• The Seven Cryptical Books of Hasan (from Lovecraft)
• Unaussprechlichen Kulten "by von Juntz" (from Robert E. Howard as Nameless Cults)
• Al Azif (from Lovecraft, original Arabic name for the Necronomicon)

The Ludlum influence becomes obvious at this point in the narrative. When Molasar, the evil presence trapped in the keep, reveals himself to Cuza, he asks questions about the Nazis who have invaded his domain and soon proclaims his desire to drive them from Romania and to kill their leader, Hitler, in Germany. Of course, Cuza becomes eager to ally himself with Molasar and to help him escape the keep. F. Paul Wilson does a masterful job of compounding lies with deceits with trickery and then slowly opening the reader's eyes to what's really going on.

Meanwhile, as these events transpire, in Portugal a red-haired man called Glenn has undertaken an arduous journey over land and sea to the Carpathian Mountains. In the course of his journey, it becomes clear that Glenn has not only an implacable will but superhuman strength. When he arrives at the keep, his mission is clouded in secrecy. He forms an uneasy alliance with Magda (who is a scholar in her own right), and eventually the two of them fall in love with each other. Together they will stand against Molasar (and Magda's father) in a battle with the highest stakes possible.

Wilson isn't afraid to make use of some horror movie tropes that may make you shake your head at their cheesiness, but nobody said this was high literature. If you're in the mood for a good thriller with a side helping of the supernatural, this is a fun read. And, spoiler, don't worry, the Nazis in the keep all come to a hideous end. 

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After reading the book, I decided to rent the movie on Amazon Prime because I was curious to see how it made the transition from page to screen. As I watched, I kept thinking F. Paul Wilson must have felt like he'd been stabbed in the heart. Michael Mann, who wrote and directed the film, threw out almost everything that was good about the book and turned it into a disjointed, incomprehensible mess. Avoid it at all costs. 

Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

 

Moreno-Garcia's master's thesis was on women
and eugenics in Lovecraft's works

As I was reading Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the one thought that kept running through my mind was, "My, God! This woman writes beautifully!" She crafts her sentences with such limpid clarity that the book is a pleasure to read on that level alone. That's helpful because the story develops very slowly for fully two thirds of the novel's length, carefully putting each element in place, before the full horror is finally revealed. Review Reviewers often mention Rebecca and Wuthering Heights when reaching for comparisons to Mexican Gothic, and they could also invoke My Cousin Rachel for the plot device that motivates our heroine Noemí Taboada to visit High Place. The real progenitors of this novel aren't so much gothic romances, though, as they are gothic horrors like Bram Stoker's Dracula and Matthew Lewis's The Monk, as well as weird tales like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and H.P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space. For the record, Moreno-Garcia cites the stories of Horacio Quiroga and the horror films of Carlos Enrique Taboada as influences, though I confess to being unfamiliar with them. The evil patriarch of High Place is Howard Doyle, the name being a bit of a tribute to Howard Philips Lovecraft and Conan Doyle. Howard Doyle's "enormous jawline," of course, evokes Lovecraft's unusual appearance. Discredited theories of eugenics play an important role in this novel (a reference to Lovecraft's racist beliefs), as do the legacies of colonialism, racism, and misogyny in Mexico. But the real villain of this piece is Virgil, a Dracula-like seducer if there ever was one. The mounting disquiet that Virgil invokes draws you into the narrative as Noemí finds her mind gradually slipping. The eventual denouement does not disappoint. With suddenly escalating tension, disgusting rituals, and the revelation of a loathsome abomination in the catacombs below, this is gothic horror at its finest.