Revival Journal #5: The Final Stretch

I finished reading Revival tonight, and so I'm going to talk about it.  If you haven't read the book, it goes without saying that you shouldn't read an article about the end of the novel -- right?  Ultimately, I don't care.  I think people who whine about "spoilers" are pretty lame.  But then, I hate surprise parties and always manage to get my wife to tell me my Christmas present early.  Anticipation is better than surprise.  That's why a good novel taste better the second time.

Setting:
I run in the middle of the night; walk really.  And I listen to Stephen King.  Often I can't listen to King, because I have friends with me.  We have started a route that takes us up a steep hill that looms over our town.  Ont he top of the hill is a water tower and a massive red light -- probably to mark the spot so local aircraft don't hit it.  (?)  It is a military town.  It is awesome to stand atop the hill and look down on the desert city.  29 Palms is a lot like Space Mountain.  Awesome with the lights off.

We usually take the paved road up the mountain; the one that winds back and forth until you suddenly peak in front of a water tower.  But there is another path; a friend and I found it the other night.  It's not easily recognizable  because it's dirt, and it's steep.  Really steep.  It's been smoothed out by rushing water, I think.  I only took it once with a friend, who had to crab walk  to keep from tumbling down.

I did something tonight I don't usually do when I'm out alone.  My wife asked me not to take the dangerous path through the gullies (huge rain ditches that are like canyons in the desert), so instead I decided to try the mountain.  Again, I don't do this alone because -- well, who knows what you'll find atop a hill that overlooks the city late at night.  But, remembering the path that goes straight up the mountain, and the moon beaming down bright -- I decided to go for it.

And here's the cool part.  As I was trudging up the side of that mountain, the final chapters of Revival began to play out.  And what happens?  Pastor Charlie and company take a trip up the mountain.

The setting where the final scenes of Revival play out is great.  A mountain cabin in a great storm; lightening cuts the sky up.  On complaint I might lodge about the mid-portion of the novel is that King spends a lot of time telling us things, but he leaves out interesting settings.  He makes up for that in the final chapters as we go to the mountain cabin to raise the dead.

The dead ladies name is Mary.  Most certainly a nod to Mary Shelly.  When Mary is brought to life, bad things happen.  Very bad things.  And I guess it would be nerve wracking to listen to in any situation; the car, in bed or even on a sunny day.  But at 11:30pm on the side of a mountain, the wind blowing, it was pretty freaky!

A Short Analysis:

I like Revival a lot, because the end pays off.  It is dark, reminding me of the tone of 1922 or Pet Sematary.  There is a healthy dose of Science Fiction

My real complaint is that it takes far too long to get there.  There are so many characters, I lose track of whose who.  Some parts are like reading the phone book -- someone who was mentioned on some other page pops up again, but they aren't that important.

I could have used a lot more of what we got at the end.  Not the tail end, where people start dropping like flies.  I mean up on the mountain.  Mary and Charlie are disposed of quite quickly.  There is no real struggle, no wonder in the readers mind if Jamie is going to make it.  (Well, it is first person.)  But not just that, King doesn't give time to develop the story on through.

Mary Shelly gave the monster in Frankenstein some breathing room.  He got to roam about and cause some mischief  -- but our Mary never gets that opportunity.  So we spend a lot of time building up to the creation of a monster that never goes anywhere.  (Yes, gang, I do understand that Charlie is the real monster, bla bla bla.)

The horror in Revival isn't the Mary-Monster anyway; nor is it Charlie -- it's death.  And that nagging question: What lies beyond?  Jamie sees something terrible, and carries that vision of the afterlife with him.  In that sense, things are carried beyond Pet Sematary, as King dares to lay at least a big toe on the other side of the pond.  What we get a glimpse of is the dark side of Sheol.  King doesn't give us doses of hell and fire and brimstone; but ant overlords.  You know, it seems ridiculous looking back on it, but at the time when I was reading it (on a mountain) it was scary.

So I enjoyed the novel a lot.  King is like a cat chasing a mouse.  The mouse is death and the ugly side of resurrection.  But once King catches his mouse, he kills it too quickly.  I'd be happy if he'd played with his dead -- not dead -- mouse a little longer.

Faith:

It's been hinted in some corners that maybe King is taking his digs at people of faith in Revival; or that organized religion is going to take a blow.  Well, if Stephen King can knock it down, it wasn't organized from on-high anyway.  I was ready for some heavy handed preaching in Revival -- some uncomfortable digs at faith.  But I found the opposite -- for the subject matter, King is very reserved in his commentary on faith itself.

People of faith are not attacked in Revival; people who have faith in a single preacher -- or prophet -- or evangelist -- or TV personality -- are laid waste to in Revival.  I don't think the reverend in Revival was ever really a preacher.  I realized early in the book, this guy never had real faith.  So when he turns on God, it's not surprise, because he was already there.

Charlie's god, his Golden Calf, is electricity.  "Secret electricity" is what Alfred Hitchcock would call a Mcguffin.  Something added as a plot device to simply make things work.  Charlie might have once had a passing interest in God, but he's a servant of electricity.  He believes electricity can heal the body, and perhaps bring back the dead.  Hey, why mess with a Pet Sematary when there's good ole electricity?

There is a price to pay, Revival would suggest, for chasing after false prophets hoping for a miracle.  As the old preacher, R.G. Lee, would say, "The devil pays in counterfeit money."

What Charlie does is turn from the legitimate work of pastoring and shepherding a Methodist congregation to churning our miracles at revival meetings for profit.  He goes from pastor to showman.  And we've all met preachers who were more showman than man (or woman) of God.

King plays fair because his keeps the commentary from Jamies perspective.   And Jamie is allowed his doubts and opinions -- he's the narrator.  What would be uncomfortably preachy and heavy handed in the third person, works fine in first person narrative.

While the novel is pessimistic, it's not anti-God.  It's anti-fake-preacher. These fakes are the biggest threat to Christianity itself.  Benny Hinn and the whole TBN crew that like to make Jesus a flashy word before they pass the plate and fake miracles are actually the problem.  They aren't advancing the Gospel, they're advancing their bank accounts.  They embarrass those of us who do believe with their carny like shenanigans.  They make many people of deep faith, who do believe in miracles -- without the aid of electricity -- appear foolish.  But King does people of genuine faith a kindness.   He moves Charlie out of the church house before he begins the real crazy stuff.  Better yet, the church has the gumption to remove him.  So what ole Charlie does, he does on his own, not under the authority of a congregation that could fire him, but can't find the will.

I think King's publishers were overly concerned about him offending people.  They put out warnings that this was a dark novel -- like William Castle having doctors in the theater lobby to check your heart before you went in to see his scary movie.  (Check out "William Castle and Stephen King")

After-Effects

WOW!  Those after effects were no pretty, were they?  I don't have much to say, except that I really didn't see that coming.  I know, many of you did, and you're just sooo smart!  But I didn't.  Suicide is nasty business, and to have just about everyone Jacobs healed take their own life was pretty bold on King's part.

I liked the idea of Jamie being a key of sorts that allowed the door to be unlocked.  It was also pretty cool that he was able to shut that door.  But honestly, it just wasn't hard enough for him to get the door shut.

I like those corny parts where King -- Jamie -- says things like, "I would stop writing, but I have to, if only in the hopes that maybe it will turn someone else back from the horrors I've seen. . ." (that's not a quote from the book.)  Moving toward the final events, King uses heavy shadowing that lets the reader know the book is about to get a lot darker.

Revival is a great book.  Best read in the dark.  Alone.

It's one of those books that leaves me anxious for the movie version.  This is the kind of movie (no one would do this) that would be great in black and white.

Revival Journal #4: The Mystery

Mr. Mercedes is supposed to be a mystery -- and Revival is supposed to be, well, something else.  It's King's new "dark" novel.  It has the tone of King's novella, 1922.  But it also has a great deal of mystery in it.  What's up with Rev. Jacobs?  That is the mystery.  It's what keeps us coming back, wanting to know more.

After we discover he has the power to heal, the reader wants to know how.  I've always been interested in "faith" healers and how they pull their stunts.  Partly because so many people I know, people I love, are easily taken in by religious shysters and shenanigans.  TV preachers and tent revivals with the big sign out front, "HEALING SERVICE" are of great suspicion to me.  In fact, I'd suggest that one of the great wounds to Christianity is the showman preachers who use the Gospel as a platform for making money.  But more about that in later posts.

They mystery at the mid-point and just beyond of Revival is three fold: How is Jacobs healing all those people, why do things sometimes go "bad" for the healed, and what happened to Jacobs?  I don't know the answer to any of those things at the moment, because I'm still plodding.  And here's the thing, I'm interested in the answer to all those things.

King does a great job ruling out early suspicions on the healing service.  No, he is not just using plants.  And yes, he really does seem to be healing these people.  But is he maybe doing more?  Is he actually experimenting on them?  Is something else going on that the reader has not been let in on?  Well, of course!

It is King's ability to turn a good mystery, to keep enough elements up in the air like a great juggler, that has me fascinated.  Now, here's a small confession.  If this were an author I'd not heard of, I'd be concerned that he'd bit off more than he could chew.  There are too many questions to resolve in the number of pages ahead.  Can he do it?  Will the answers be lame?  But this is Stephen King.  And there is a sense in which I keep reading simply because I know he will work some magic when the curtain is pulled back.

In some ways, Revival is a better mystery than Mr. Mercedes.  In Mr. Mercedes, we got a peak in at the criminal mastermind at work.  In Revival, things are more limited.  We don't get Jacobs perspective, so we are kept in suspense.

There is a slight change in writing style for King in Revival.  In the past King built a book scene by scene, the way a television show would progress.  In Revival, and other recent books, King does a lot of narration that skims over scenes, simply pushing the plot forward.  He's "telling" instead of "showing" a writer friend of mine would say.  And that's pretty easy to do when using first person narration.  I like it, because I don't always want to travel scene my scene.

And where's another confession; while King might identify with Jamie, I don't.  In fact, I find Jamie a pretty unlikable character.  Is it his sleeping with a much younger woman?  Maybe it is.  King works pretty hard to make us, the reader, cool with the older man sleeping with the younger woman.  It's a delightful fling for him, and a educational step into the world for her.  But it feels unreal.  I don't think younger woman just throw themselves at older guys and say, "yeah, I have daddy issues."  Maybe.  But I talk to A LOT of people, and that's not the way that goes down.

The bottomline is, I see Jamie as a user.  He uses women, he sues drugs, he uses opportunity to advance himself.  So it makes me suspicious of his desire to hunt down the old reverend and find out what he's really up to.  I don't think our main character is really all that noble.  King is working to show Jamie as someone who doesn't have the wool pulled over his eyes; but what he gives us is a loser.

I'm secretly rooting for King to pull a Christine on us, move from first person to third person and knock Jamie off.

But here's the deal: It's all enough to keep me interested, and that's what matters in a novel, isn't it?  I'm driven back again and again to Revival because I want to know what's up.

I should note why I'm SO SLOW at reading this book.  I only allow myself to listen to it when I go running at night.  It's my motivation.  Sometimes I can do five miles, I just keep choosing longer routes, because I'm hooked.  So it keeps me from skipping too many nights on the road exercising.  It also slows the pace.

Revival Journal #3: Not Vintage King

EDEL RODRIGUEZ FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Journal entries are my thoughts as I read.  This is not a review.

Revival has the feeling of returning the constant reader to some home turf.  With Castle Rock near by and characters who have a special place in their heart for drugs -- the hard kind -- it has traces of novels offered long ago.  But the story is no rehash.  It's new, and written by a much more cynical man than penned The Green Mile.  Are the dark musings in Revival a phase he is passing through, or a final resting place he's stepped onto?  I don't know.  King does what most people do; he wrestles with the issues of life.  Only, King does it in public while most people work issues through in the privacy of their heart.

It is King's ability to work things through while all eyes are on him that make his stories so engaging.  We enjoy the ride because we're taking it with a man who's not quite sure of the road ahead himself.  Thought he novel is tight and moves quickly, King has said more than once that he does not write with an outline in hand.  That is to say, he doesn't always know where he'll end up when he starts the journey.

After the terrible accident that takes pastor Charles Jacob’s wife and son, and the terrible sermon, the novel follows Jamie Morton as he bounces about as a rock musician and sinks deeper into drugs.  I found this portion of the novel difficult to get into, because I was so interested in what would happen with the preacher.  As with Christine, the story is not told from the position of someone who would always be in the “know.”  This makes some scenes a little awkward, as Jamie drops us in on scenes he had no way of being there for.  How does he know?  Well, he listens a lot.  In Christine, when the narrator broke his leg at a football game, King ran into a problem and switched to third person.  No third person in Revival.  Instead, we continue to travel life’s road with Jamie.

Revival is as much about Jamie’s coming of age as it is the evil preacher.  It seems the older King gets, the better he is at reviving the flavor of first love.  His recent novel Joyland had a wonderful story of first love.  But unlike Joyland, Revival is about two young people coming of age together.  There is no one to guide Jamie in the way of love – he and his girl must explore that path together.  And the scenes are rather tender.

It is amazing how King can take us back there.  Back to another time and era.  More than that, back to young love and young thinking.  For instance, Jamie discusses how easy it is to make a promise about life when your fourteen.  That's true -- but most of us forgot that.

The rock band Jamie joins was originally called the Gunslingers.  They dropped that name, and the new name – I’ll let you find it – combined with the old name is almost a direct nod to Guns n Roses.

It seems obvious that in many ways, King lives through his characters.  Of course, he has had a taste of the rock star life; but that was always overshadowed by the fact he's a famous author.  That is, the question of could he have made it onto the stage just on his music powers, had he not first been the author of some super-duper novels -- is really in doubt.  There is a sense that Jamie is a shadow, an alter ego, of what King might have been.  Not what King was, or was ever in danger of actually becoming -- but in some other dark tower  world, King mixes bits of his own personality and experience with his fictional characters.

It is funny when people ask him if these characters are based on himself.  Of course.  That was true of Devon and Stu and even Jamie Mortion.  But, it's also true of Pennywise and Mr. Mercedes.  GASP!  Because they are all coming out of the same guys head.

I’m reading a lot of people who say this is “vintage” King.  I disagree with that entire line of thought.  Even when it comes from King and his publisher.  There is no vintage King.  Vintage King is Salems’ Lot.  And the author who wrote that has moved on with life.  He can’t dull his skills back to that age.  In other words, while Revival and Joyland might contain themes and flavors of the old dark novels, these are written by a man who has traveled much further in life and has a better grasp of his artwork.  While I don’t enjoy every Stephen King book, I enjoy books from every era.

Revival Journal #2: Darkness Descends

The journal  entries are my thoughts as I read.   There are spoilers, because I'm talking about the book, and issues raised by the book.

Darkness descends quickly in Stephen King's latest novel, Revival.  We meet the preacher; he's awesome; his wife is pretty and everyone loves his little boy.  Then there is a terrible accident (was she drinking?) and the preacher, Charles Jacobs, is out of commission for a few weeks.  When he returns to the pulpit, he is bitter and has lost every bit of faith.

The sermon that follows the tragedy, the bad sermon, is really built up.  I was pretty hyped,  thinking something truly inspired was going to drip from the pulpit.  Unfortunately, the preacher didn't have anything really new to say.  I would have outlined his sermon with these points:

The bad sermon:
1. There is a lot of bad things that happen to good people.
2. There are a lot of bad things done in the name of God.
3. There are a lot of people claiming to follow God, but they send mixed messages.
4. There is no proof that there's an afterlife.

This would be interesting, if I sensed it was true to life.  Since I actually do deal with people often when they slam into life's worst storms, I feel it fair to say that I have  some understanding of the way people of faith respond to storms.

What is more likely if a person who once held a deeply rooted, even a trained faith, were to walk away is that they will do so in gradual stages.  They begin to question, struggle through terrible, dark nights, and the bitterness begins to grow.  It doesn't strike like lightening.  Tragedy does.  Tragedy hits and we are swept away in grief.  But for a genuine believer to drop into unbelief usually takes some time.

Here's the thing: There are people who hold one or all those views.  (The views presented in the bad sermon.)  But they don't stumble into them over a three week process.  World views don't usually change to the negative that quickly.  More likely, if a person with a relatively robust faith experiences a sudden tragedy, their initial response is not to say, "There's no proof of an afterlife."  At that moment, people reach for their core convictions.  This isn't the point where most walk away.

Reverend Jacobs never preached an Easter sermon?  Or he preached it with no application point?  These are pretty straightforward messages.  1. Jesus physically died.  He was put to death by trained executioners.  Dead people usually stay dead.  That's how the world works.  2. On the Sunday after his death, his tomb was found empty.  3. Over a forty day period his disciples encountered him in a variety of situations in which he proved to them he was still alive.  4. All of those he appeared to (of the Apostles) would go to their deaths, one by one, saying they had encountered the risen Jesus.  APPLICATION: If God could  raise Jesus from the dead, then the other things discussed in the Bible are not so far fetched.  As Gary Habermass says, "The resurrection is a rock that can bear the weight of Christianity."

Why does  this matter?  Well, if Jacobs is a farmer who just lost his wife, the four point "bad sermon" is pretty normal.  But if Jacobs is a preacher, he should have already dealt with some of these issues.

So here's what strange about the novel: All of the points of the "bad sermon" are things any person with a strong faith has thought seriously about.  What's more, they are things anyone who has been theologically trained at a seminary has been forced to wrestle with.

Pre-Doubt and the building blocks of faith:

A guy who's been to seminary doesn't say, "There's no proof."  A writer in Maine might.  But someone who has given their life to pastoral ministry doesn't do so without some pre-doubt.  That is: Before the storms in life smack us, we've already  had some restless  nights where we've asked these very questions.  How do I know this is true?  Why is there suffering?  And for those who continued on, there were answers they were able to accept at the core of their being.

This isn't void lofty talk for me this week.  I'll be doing the funeral of a three month old.  What do you think a mothers asks the preacher in that situation?  "Why did this happen to me?"  My core isn't rocked by this, because I've already had some storms before  this one where I asked those same questions.  The questions, the doubt, was healthy for my faith because it forced me to seek answers.   Am I an idiot to believe?  Is faith foolishness?

So, here's a simple problem: Has our dear minister never previously wrestled with these issues?  He never took Apologetics in seminary?  While preachers might be emotional, and some do walk away and leave the faith -- they don't do it three weeks after a crisis.  It takes more time to break down the emotional/spiritual fortress that's been built up.  One tsunami doesn't usually wipe it out.

Doubts force us to move either form a childish faith to a mature faith, or to walk away.  But Jacobs responds to tragedy like someone who has never ever experienced doubt at all.

It's hard to believe Jacobs loses his wife and son, and then suddenly goes, "Well if that's the way life works, I'm out!"  Give him a year, and he might end up there.  But he isn't going to start there.

Why would faith disappear in such a short period like that?  
1. Faith was shallow an immature.  That happens all the times!  Someone starts out great, but their faith is lost during a great crisis.  The truth is, their own faith never matured, so when the crisis comes they fall away.
2. Their faith relied on another person.  The removal of that other person causes personal faith to collapse.
3. They never really had personal faith.  The faith is full of fakes.   Crisis exposes fakery.

But I don't get the feeling King was building toward either of those caricatures with reverend Jacobs. Yet, when tragedy strikes, he drops  out pretty quickly.  His "bad sermon" isn't really that bad for anyone who's heard people in pain talk for very long.  He doesn't bring anything new to the table.  Nothing that makes others go, "oh my goodness!  There's suffering in this world!  And many denominations with different views?  I'm done with God."

What Jacobs does have is something of his own idol; electricity.  Perhaps it was electricity he really worshiped all along.  Tragedy struck, and he turned his back  on God and leaned into the lightening.

REVIVAL journal #1: Electricity Is In The Air

I started through revival tonight.

About the Journal entries:

Here’s the deal: Journal entries are my thoughts as I read through a book.  There are lots of spoilers because – gasp – I’m talking about the book!  If you don’t want to discuss the book yet, don’t read the journal entries.  Sorry that sounds grouchy.

I’m not offering reviews.  I decided years ago that there are great sites that do reviews of King’s books; my favorite is Lilja’s Library.  Reviews are usually written after the book has been read at least once, sometimes multiple times.  A brief overview of the book is given and usually a final verdict, declaring if the novel is top grade meat or a second edition of The Tommyknockers. I decided instead to journal through the books.  That is: To talk as I read, not knowing as I write each portion how the book will end.  It also allows me to include much more personal notes.

The Old Stephen King Is Back! – not really

The book is being pushed as King back to his old self.  The Stephen King who gave us Pet Sematary and The Shining is “back.”  Whatever.  He never left, ya know?  I understand that the publisher and writer want us to know up front that the novel will be dark; maybe really bleak.  It’s as if everyone has forgotten a set of short novels in Full Dark, No Stars.  Remember 1922?  That was pretty bleak.  And there were rats.

The “old Stephen King” (which makes no sense, because we now HAVE the OLD Stephen King!) won’t be coming back.  Why?  Because even if things have a similar tone to his earlier novels, King himself is a better writer.  The writing is crisper, in many ways even more energetic.  King dives into the story itself with more vigor.  The young Stephen King eased his way into a dark novel – the old guy dives in.  Yeah, there’s character development and stories that build toward the main story; but there are not the long sidebars that King used to offer up.  I can’t think of another way to put it, but his writer is crisper.  That sounds like potato chips.

Army Men

A strange thing happened as I read the opening scene in Revival – I became suspicious that Stephen King had somehow spied on a childhood event.  In the novel, a boy named Jamie meets the new preacher, a man named Charles Jacobs.  The boy, six I think, is playing his army men in front of his house when the shadow of a man disturbs his play.

When I was a boy, I had a huge collection of army men.  Our family lived next to the church.  One day while I was playing, a big ethnic church event was taking place.  (Korean, I think.)  As I played a shadow fell across my army men.  I looked up, and an Asian man had come up to the house.  At first I thought he was going to ask for my parents; but instead he began to speak to me.  “I want one,” He said.  Huh?  He held up a single finger. “Just one.”  Then, rather boldly, he reached down into the grass where I had sat up my army men and plucked up one of the troops.  “Just one,” he said.  I did not protest – I had a billion and my parents had taught me to “share,” (something Jamie’s parents have also taught him to do with his army men.)

I have wondered sometimes what that man anted with my single green soldier.  Was there something unique about mine? Was he an Asian preacher who used that toy to hold up in church and condemn American kids for playing war?  Was it personal for him? I don’t know.  I was too young to look at an adult and say, “You can have it, but what do you want it for.”

Electricity

Revival is a book about electricity. The power of electricity to heal a boys voice.  Electricity as a picture of the Gospel.  Electricity to light a miniature town.  As I was walking/running (mostly walking) and listening to the novel, I was loving all the electricity talk.  But at points, buzzing over me in the quiet desert was that sound of electricity.  It burns in the air at spots, humming a steady reminder that it’s there.

Over the town was a pretty bright moon tonight.  I ran down a long hill beside the highway coming into town, and then looked back.  Overhead the electric lines hummed.  The moon hung over the hill, and the nights sky was absolutely huge.

The promise of something Frankenstein-like – something with electricity – has me excited.

Haunted Religion

Remember that short novel of King’s, Secret Window?  The writer is accused of stealing a story.  Part of me keeps doing a slap to the head.  For years I’ve been thinking that an evil preacher would be the perfect set up for a novel.  What if a preacher fame to town with the power to heal – maybe raise the dead – but his powers were not from God?

Some church’s are spooky places.  Send the crowd away and walk through long corridors, and you might be surprised.

No real fears about losing the novel I’ve got tied up inside.  Just real pleasure at reading King do his magic.

Why Revival Makes Me Uneasy:

I approach Revival with some hesitation.  I’m not sure I’m going to like this.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I won’t.  I downloaded the book to my ipod last night, but waited all day to even start listening.  In fact, I put off walking tonight because – why?  A new Stephen King book should propel me into the dark desert.  I realized that I was dreading this book.  A new Stephen King book about a preacher who loses his faith?  I wasn’t sure I was totally game. This one promised to strike home a little closer than I was totally comfortable with.

The book is quite addicting.  And here’s what I appreciate so far; what makes it less painful. Thus far, the people of faith are painted as genuine believers.  They aren’t nasty hypocrites – though I’m sure there are plenty of those.  The church goers have arguments with their spouses, financial and health problems, and suspicions about the preacher.  They’re very real; and King doesn’t mock their faith.  Why am I on edge about this?  Two words: Needful Things.  In Needful Things in particular, and several other novels as well, it has seemed King painted Christians – Baptist and Methodist in particular – with a pretty wide brush.   “Self righteous worms,” would seem to be words that would appropriately describe some of the people who inhabit Castle Rock.

Now King has written some great stuff about religion – and Christianity in general.  And I’ve documented that pretty carefully in Stephen King, A Face Among The Masters.  The Green Mile in particular was almost a parable of Christianity.  But there is a stark difference in a book like The Green Mile and Needful Things; organized religion.  In The Green Mile, King gives an enthusiastic retelling of some central aspects of the Gospel.  What the novel does not have is any real hint of church.  After all, they’re on death row.  But when we get to Needful Things, we have Baptist and Catholics calling names, fighting and getting pretty nasty – in Jesus name.

Of course, I’m well aware that happens.  But the people who do those things are all a little deeper than King has previously shown the ability to explore.  It seemed that the religious church goers were simply sprinkled into Needful Things when King needed bias, ignorant wide-eyed idiots spoiling for a fight.  And there are certainly folk like that!  But most people in church aren’t; and many in church are the salt of the earth type.

The question I approach the book with is: Are you going to play fair, Mr. King?  Or are you going to use your big paint brush and cast everyone who loves the church in the same hues?

King’s own views on church, religion and God seem to be evolving as he moves further away form the Methodist faith he grew up with.  Some of this thinking is really digging at a question: can King deal with characters who he might personally disagree with -- politically or spiritually?  Will be draw a literary straw-man and use them as a kind of punching bag, or will he show them as truly three dimensional characters?  So the question seems valid.  Is everyone going to be Carrie White’s mama, or Mother Carmody, or reverend Rose?

In the early pages of Revival, we are given people of genuine faith living out very real lives.  They are not fanatics or nuts.