Last year, I read Misery, Stephen King’s 1987 book about a popular fiction author who gets into a car accident in a remote part of Colorado where he’s then recovered by a former nurse who also happens to be his biggest fan. What initially seems like a strike of luck for the author, Paul Sheldon, quickly reveals itself to be something more sinister. His rescuer, Annie Wilkes, is deranged, dangerous, and determined to keep him in her home, going as far as to *SPOILER* chop off his foot with an axe so that he can’t escape. (In the film version, which stars Kathy Bates and James Caan, Annie instead shatters his ankle with a sledge hammer; it’s still visually horrifying, but potentially recoverable.)
I don’t know if I liked the book, something I find with a lot of King’s writing. I can’t stand the way he constantly categorizes women as fuckable or unfuckable (Annie, for example, isn’t solely repellent to Paul because she’s torturing him — he also is disgusted that a woman could be so void of sexuality). I hate how he writes about race (Mother Abagail in The Stand never fails to remind me of this Onion story, “Ask an Elderly Black Woman as Depicted by a Sophomore Creative Writing Student”). I also hate how boomer-aged men see my reading a Stephen King book as an invitation to talk to me about it in public, but that’s not Stephen King’s fault.
What I readily praise King for, however, is time and time again creating stories so visceral and compelling that I can power through the prose and, a year later, forgive (forget, even!) the schlock. What lingers is the bare bones of the tale, and the claw-at-the-walls panic of isolation. My feet have not been chopped off or broken and I am not being held hostage by woman so unwomanly that I couldn’t imagine having sex with her. But I do keep thinking about the book Misery as I’m stuck inside, my limited window views being the only slice of life I get to see beyond what’s in my apartment or on TV. And I can relate to the dread — waiting for the other shoe (or whole foot) to drop by way of a fever or trouble breathing. We’re living at the whims of virus and there’s nothing to do other than get sick or stay healthy.
While at a bus stop once, a melodramatic friend told me that there was nothing he hated more than waiting. He was impatient and found the unreliability of the bus schedule unbearable. He was being a baby, obviously, though the other day I found myself saying the exact phrase. There’s nothing I hate more than waiting. I’m being a baby, too. I’m insanely lucky to be in this position of relative safety — with food, warmth, and support. But I do think that people are programmed to move forward, which makes staying in place moderately torturous. Not as torturous as, say, unwittingly spreading novel coronavirus to vulnerable populations, or overcrowding hospitals, or breathing off a ventilator. (Please, if you’re not already, stay home!) But the isolation is miserable.
It’s stupid that I keep thinking of Misery when there are other, far better books that our current situation recalls. (Ling Ma’s Severance is another, more recent one I can’t stop thinking about.) There are even more appropriate Stephen King books to suit the times, but Misery is the one that comes to the forefront. I think it’s because, while most people remember the goriest parts of the book or movie, the real horror was waiting to see what Annie would do next. In some cases, her brutality came swiftly, but worse were the weeks that nothing would happen and Paul could only wait.