The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (Stephen King)
OVERVIEW
Recently I was perusing a curated list of the top books on death. To my surprise, Stephen King’s The Bazaar of Bad Dreams made the list. Constant Reader, I am a massive Stephen King fan. I mean, I flew all the way to Bangor, Maine just to go on the official Stephen King tour. So yeah, I dropped everything I was doing to re-read these short stories. Even better? I started the week before Halloween (my favourite holiday, it should surprise no one to learn).
I read once that Stephen King likes to take ordinary people and put them in extraordinary “imagine if” scenarios. Imagine if you discovered a tiny island where occasionally you’d find names written in the sand… and those people always died within a month. Imagine if you could kill people by writing their obituaries. Imagine if you owned a Kindle that could access literature from alternate realities. This makes for wildly entertaining stories.
But what I love most is when “imagine if” becomes “what would I do if”?
In the short story Afterlife, a man named Bill dies. He finds himself in an “inbetween” and is told that he has the option to live his life over again, exactly as before. Or, he can wink out of existence forever. Bill briefly contemplates some of the wrongs he could right, some of the mistakes he would undo. But that’s not what’s on offer. What’s on offer is the exact same life. All those people you hurt? You’ll hurt them again. No do-overs, only do-agains. Would choosing to live our life again be selfish? Would it be immoral? After all, you would be choosing to hurt those people. You’d be choosing their suffering. It’s sort of like Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence thought experiment, but back-loaded. Would you opt for non-existence, or would you replay the reel?
In Mister Yummy, Ollie and Dave have become friends, both living in an assisted living facility. Ollie unexpectedly gifts Dave with an old family heirloom, a watch that Ollie doesn’t want his brother to inherit when he dies… and he knows he’ll die soon, because he’s been getting visits from “Mister Yummy,” an attractive man he met in his young clubbing days. Ollie reckons others may have different “avatars” that visit them when the end is near, strangers from their youth or adolescence that only they can see. It makes me wonder, who I’d want it to be for me? If I had to pick a stranger that would show up at the end, which stranger would I pick? Would I be scared? Would I be less scared, grateful for the warning?
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams finishes off with a short story called Summer Thunder. Specifics aren’t given, but we can gather that the world is about to experience a catastrophic nuclear winter. Everyone is dying of radiation. It’s taking Robinson longer than others because when the nuke detonated he was up at his cottage. But the nuclear fallout is blowing his way, the sky is strange hues, and he’s starting to bleed from his nose and gums. He takes his motorcycle on one last joy ride. If the nuclear apocalypse happened, and my family was in another city and unreachable, and I had maybe 24 hours to live… what would I do? Would I journal, or record a video? Would I simply enjoy the sunset? Would I cry, be wracked with anxiety? Would anything matter? What would it feel like to die alone during humanity’s greatest existential reckoning? Would there be any thoughts that could comfort me?
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams will give you plenty to chew on (but beware, the stories bite back). Obits and Under the Weather sent cold chills down my spine. Herman Wouk is Still Alive and Summer Thunder made me think about suicide and the threshold for living. Premium Harmony was perfect misdirection. Dune and Blockade Billy were sinister fun, while Mile 81 was just classic King horror.
I recommend this book to every Constant Reader.