The Shining was published in 1977, King’s fourth book (this includes Rage, the first book written under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, 1976). While Carrie was dedicated to Tabitha, his wife, and ‘Salem’s Lot to Naomi, his daughter, The Shining is dedicated to Joseph Hillstrom King, his first son, “This is for Joe Hill, who shines on.” Not the last time the name Joe Hill will be used in regards to literature. The 700+ page book was written in only four months and the setting was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, one of America’s most beautiful and haunted places. This book would of course be made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick (1980) and a miniseries (1997).

I read both Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot in high school (late 90s) and this reread project was my first time returning to them. But I read The Shining in 1998, again in 2005, and again ahead of reading the sequel, Doctor Sleep, in 2014, so this was my fourth read through. I also have seen the Kubrick film more than a dozen times, I own and love it. Going from ‘Salem’s Lot into The Shining felt very interesting. The book is both expansive, in setting and scope – the hotel, the Rocky Mountains, the depth of the human experience/memory; and equally claustrophobic – the pressure cooker of this unraveling family trapped together in the big empty hotel in winter. There is a sense of space and grandeur, and a sense of the walls closing in, two modes that play and fight with each other as the suspense builds. And that is what this book really does best, it ratchets up, beat by beat, until the tension is nearly unbearable, like the pressure building in the boiler in the basement. Jack’s descent into insanity is really beautifully written, and triggering. I’ve been Jack, I’ve dated Jacks, I know this man, and from the very beginning of the book, before they even get to the hotel, you know that Jack is a problem, and that Jack is dangerous. This is translated perfectly in the film, with the opening shot of Jack Nicholson’s face. Nothing has happened yet, we know nothing, but when his face comes on the screen, you know that he is deranged. You’re terrified of him. And you should be. Before we get into it I’ll run through the (much shorter than The Lot’s) cast of characters. And please be warned (as I’ve gotten some static about it) that these blogs contain spoilers! If you haven’t read this book and want to go in fresh stop here.

• Jack Torrance – 14 months sober, writer, teacher (recently fired for violently attacking a student), husband, and father to Danny (who he also violently attacked, breaking the 3 year olds arm).
• Winnifred “Wendy” Torrance – wife of Jack, mother of Danny, hates her own Mother (and that’s her entire personality, we’ll get into it, but I struggle with Wendy.)
• Danny Torrance – Jack and Wendy’s 5 year old son, born with a caul and he has the shine.
• Tony – Danny’s imaginary friend.
• Stuart Ullman – Hotel manager who hires Jack as the winter caretaker (with much misgivings).
• Watson – Summer groundskeeper
• Dick Hallorann – Cook at the hotel, has the shine.
• Al Shockley – Jack’s teacher friend, drinking buddy and then sober buddy, who gets him the job as caretaker.
• Delbert Grady – previous winter caretaker, and now long time (permanent) resident of the Overlook.

“Knock the press down a couple of times a day. She creeps.”

The Torrance family are down on their luck. Daddy Jack has been fired, and disgraced. He is newly sober, out of work, and in need of cash (their VW Bug’s fuel pump is on its last legs and they’re living in a shit-hole apartment). So Jack calls in a favor to his old buddy Al Shockley, and lands a gig as off season caretaker at a resort hotel high in the mountains of Colorado. The Overlook is grand, decadent, and remote. The family will live alone at the hotel October-March (6 months, folks), and once the snow falls they will be locked in, as the road up to the hotel is not cleared all winter long. Jack has a few responsibilities, reroofing part of the hotel, setting mouse traps, heating different wings different days, closing shutters, but mostly babysitting the massive boiler in the basement, which needs to be “knocked down” several times a day to release pressure in the system (you turn a knob that releases steam, keeping the gauge below 180). Fail to do that and the boiler will blow up. Jack thinks this will be good. He’ll do the job, get paid, have a place to stay, work on his writing (which has been fully stalled) and reconnect with his son and wife. But also he feels like he has no choice. He is out of options.

Danny is the most lovable character in this book, by many a mile. Sweet, sensitive, and special, Danny has extrasensory abilities, he can read minds, and he can see the future a bit, through Tony, his imaginary friend (or so he is framed in the beginning, we learn who Tony is later). Danny will go into a light trance, and Tony will come to him, a vague figure off in the distance, calling his name. Then Tony will show him things. When Danny was a tiny guy these things were good – future trips to the zoo, where missing objects were, fun things. But once the family is Overlook bound, Tony’s vibes shift big time. Before they even get there Tony shows Danny a montage of horror and violence, connected to The Overlook, and is explicit – do not go there, absolute annihilation awaits you. But Danny is only five years old (which is wild to keep reminding yourself as you read) and he doesn’t get a say in this. His special abilities are a secret. His parents suspect, but don’t examine his occasional bouts of knowing, and he avoids speaking on it directly as it upsets them. Danny loves his parents and he trusts them, like all little children do.

Wendy, Wendy, oh sweet summer child, Wendy. (Hard for me to connect with this character but she does sort of get her shit together in the final hour.) Wendy and Jack married young, and she has been raising a young (and tender) little baby, and caring for Jack who is also a tender little baby. Her role as caretaker centers others constantly, and she is traumatized by Jack’s alcoholism. As Jack began to drink more and more he became mean, absent, cruel, and eventually violent. This culminates in Jack breaking Danny’s arm when Danny is three. Jack is drunk and Danny messes up some of his papers. Wendy almost opens her mouth and says divorce at this point, almost, but Jack cuts her off, interrupts her, and asks for yet another chance, which she gives him, and he gets sober. Ostensibly. He doesn’t talk about his drinking, or his mental health, or his abusive childhood, he doesn’t join AA, or go to counseling, instead he goes and plays cards all night every night with Al, the man he used to drink with. And if you’re wondering if that is a shallow bit of sobriety, white knuckling it, you won’t be shocked to learn that Jack violently assaults one of his high school students while stone cold sober. So the foundation is shaky to say the least. Wendy doesn’t really want to go the hotel, but she also feels they have no choice. Jack needs this, and managing Jack’s needs and moods is her main concern. Jack is Wendy’s boiler in the basement.

The Overlook Hotel is a glorious character in its own right. The air is cold and pristine, the Rocky Mountain range surrounds you, the building is lush and decadent, and for the Torrance family, seemingly empty. But the history of the Overlook is packed into those echoing halls, layered, saturated, and aware. The amount of signs this family gets that they should not stay here are almost comical, but Jack is nothing if not determined to do things the hard way, his knuckles are white, his grip is hard, and he is going to power through, dragging his shell shocked family with him.

The writing in this book is notably different. Denser. We get a lot of interiority, especially of Jack, but every family member gets some air time. Steve dips into stream of consciousness in big thick paragraphs, revealing past, present, and future in a medley. Steve is very good at this, and it is something we will see a lot in his future books. He can toggle between present, memory, and even layered dream states in a very elegant and effecting way. Jack is already unbolted, and it takes nary a few days in the hotel before he is doing things that are troubling. The basement is a place of danger, baited by the Overlook to lure him down its twisting corridors. He finds a scrapbook down there, and decides he must write about the Overlook in a big juicy novel that will save him artistically and save his family financially. The hotel has a history of violence, mob connections, murders, suicides, family annihilators, and despite its beauty and popularity it has lost money for most of its investors. Some might say it’s cursed. The idea of this novel, this book he could write, becomes an obsession. And it is down in the basement pouring over these papers that he begins wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. This was a habit from his drinking days and he does it the rest of the book, rubbing the area raw, and sometimes bleeding. Then he calls Ullman, the manager that hired him, on the phone, and for reasons that can only be labeled “insanity” he mocks and baits the man with details about the hotel’s sordid past and his intentions to write about it all, revealing it to the world. Jack felt embarrassed by Ullman earlier so I guess this petulant rage is his healthy and grounded response. This almost gets him fired and Al ends up calling him and saying no book, hard stop. But it’s too late for that, Jack’s selfish and paranoid psyche has already cracked, and he is all in the Overlook. This is where he starts chewing aspirin constantly (another drinking days habit reemerging) and actively sabotaging ways for his family to safely leave the hotel while lying about it.

The entire story turns, sharply, when Danny goes into room 217. Tony and Hallorann told Danny not to get near that room, but like father like son, Danny steals the key and takes a peak. What happens to him in there terrifies him, and he is emotionally broken and physically bruised (on his neck) as a result. Jack and Wendy are both upset about this (though Jack is like, why did that little shit break the rules; while Wendy is like, who strangled my boy (was it Jack?!)) Things begin to ramp, the clockwork is wound and the hotel is awake, baby. Wendy sees that Jack is insane, and she sees that Danny needs to leave, but it’s too damn late. Not long after this Danny is attacked by the hedge animals and when he tells his parents Jack patronizes him and says it isn’t real. Danny shines on Jack and realizes Jack knows he’s telling the truth because Jack also saw the hedge animals move. So Danny calls him out and Jack smacks him right across the face (a lá Carrie, remember all the face smacks?), and Wendy is standing right there. As a reader the fact that she didn’t pick up an ax and kill Jack right then feels to me like a real failing on her part. Jack is gonzo, and he is violent, baby girl, you in danger!

Danny sends out a psychic SOS to Hallorann who is just trying to enjoy his life in Florida, and the poor old man starts treking back to the hotel (cars and planes and snowmobiles, it’s an ordeal to say the least). Jack is fully attending imaginary balls, getting imaginary drunk, and has decided he wants to live here forever. The Overlook has him and they want his family too, especially Danny. The tension in the last part of this book is brutal. As the hotel fully wakes up we get vivid and disturbing imagery of what the folk get up to in the off season, and the violent encounters escalate. And guess who was too imaginary drunk to do his one damn job and dump that boiler a few times a day? Dad of the year, Jacky boy.

Now if you ignored my spoiler warning earlier please head it now cause I want to lay out the ending as it differs from the movie in important ways. Wendy and Jack have a violent encounter where she stabs Jack with a knife (which will be sticking out of his back for the rest of the time) and he beats her with a roque mallet breaking her ribs and choking her. Jack and Danny have a violent encounter up on the third floor where Danny figures out that Tony is him, Danny, and that he is stronger than the ghosts that live there and he can escape, but hat his father cannot. This culminates in the real Jack popping in for just long enough to tell Danny to run, and then Jack mallets himself in the face till he’s just a bloody hole, a gory conduit for the deranged Overlook. Hey Dad, the boiler is gonna blow, Danny says, as he runs away from the lumbering monster who is no longer his father. Hallorann arrives and scoops of Wendy and Danny and they flee into a snowstorm on a snowmobile as the Overlook explodes and burns to the ground. Jack is exploded with the boiler. We then get a brief afterward where Danny and Wendy are visiting Hallorann in Maine (of course) and they are off to start a new life, but are both traumatized husks of humans. Thanks alcoholism.

Did I enjoy reread number four of The Shining? Yes, absolutely, it is phenomenal storytelling, rich and cinematic in scope, and a fascinating way to frame addiction. Was it a bit bloated in sections, a tad overwritten? Yeah, I think so, but sometimes you just have to let Steve roll, you know, let him cook, let the language and the writing wash over you, take you away. I trust Steve, and if he feels the need to drive something home over and over, to really emphasize it, I’m here for that, feel your feelings buddy, make it clear. The imagery in this book is timeless and truly scary, and so many of the images and characters created here have become cornerstones of literary horror writ large. A truly terrifying book.

Up next I’ll be reading The Dead Zone, 1979. I’m choosing to skip The Stand for now, since I’ve already read it four times – most recently in 2021 – and plan to return to it at the end of the King Reread Project. As mentioned earlier I am also skipping the short story and novella collections, the Bachman books, and the Dark Tower series for this pass, focusing instead on the major novels in order of publication. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey, and I can’t wait to get into The Dead Zone, an extremely timely revisit in this political climate.