D.B.Tarpley's Amazing Ass Blog-4/14/18

(What follows is a reprint of an article I wrote for Gruemonkey. This will account for any discrepancies in the time/space continuum you may experience whil

e reading it. I hope you enjoy.)

Greetings and Salutations people and peoplettes,

My name is D.B.Tarpley and I am a writer. At present I have 5 books published. Let me begin by saying that this piece is primarily a writer’s opinion and nothing more. Most journalism is slanted towards one end of the spectrum or the other, pure objectivity being almost impossible to achieve as a human being. That being said this piece is more one sided than most, a simple opinion; and like all such things one you can take or leave at will. Feel free to disagree… I heartily encourage it. Just do me a favor and disagree on the merits of the counter argument and not because you are a bloody star-fucker. It is often hard to separate the art from the artist, or the work from the personal decisions the artist makes. You can enjoy the work and hate the artist, or vice versa. So many people have a problem with this, especially if the artist is a personal hero or idol of theirs.

O.K.

I have prefaced my piece thusly because today I am taking on the publishing juggernaut which is Stephen King. Not all things King of course because let’s face it, we would be here until the last elastic strands of gravity left from the big bang dissipated into the nether and relinquished control over all reality as we know it. No I am simply going to discuss the author’s decision to remove his novel ‘Rage’ from publication.

As many of you know King wrote under a pseudonym early on in his career. Fearing market saturation and perhaps public rejection of a different voice King published several novels in the late seventies and early eighties under the name Richard Bachman. Four of these novels were later republished as the collection, ‘The Bachman Books.’ This includes the poorly adapted ‘The Running Man’ which is begging for a hard core true to the book remake (The book is ten times better than the movie.) But my favorite novella in this collection by far is ‘Rage’. It falls in my top ten books of all time.

The plot involves a teenage high-school student who has a ‘falling down’ moment and brings a gun to school. He shoots several faculty members and is then stuck in a hostage situation with the police and the remainder of the students in the class. I will not tell you what happens but the meat of the tale involves the society which develops amongst the hostages as they discover a certain amount of freedom in their situation.

There is often no telling what specifically resonates from one reader to another in any given piece of work but the voice of this novel speaks to me like no other. Writers often struggle relating the angst and frustration of the high school experience but in ‘Rage’ King perfectly realizes the voice of the teenage wasteland in a way seldom matched. This book is his ‘Catcher in the Rye’. The narrative is engaging and moving, taking a horrifying situation and not making light of it while at the same time finding darkest humor amidst the blood and pain. I would love to see every high school student in America discover ‘Rage’ in their curriculum as its themes warrant open discussion. It is an important piece of work.

In 2006 Stephen King pulled ‘Rage’ from publication, both as a stand-alone novel and as part of ‘The Bachman Books.’ His reason was the spat of very public school shootings, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, etc… He acknowledged that while his book did not break the individuals involved in these incidents, (they were already broken,) it did perhaps act as an accelerant. He has gone on to say that he feels the book is poorly written and that he is glad it is no longer available.

This begs the question what is the responsibility of the artist in regards to how their art affects people? Certainly scores of other pop-culture figures and works have been implicated in relation to these incidents – Marilyn Manson, The Basketball Diaries, The Matrix, Doom, ICP, Celine Dion.

Are we supposed to throw the baby out with the Titanic?

Censorship has its place and time. The place is ABC Family and the time is 7PM Central Standard Time. Pieces of art, especially pieces of fiction, should be open for interpretation. Anyone not old enough to make their own decisions should have parental safeguards influencing what is available to them. We can’t change the world to make up for the mistakes made in the life of one damaged individual. Blaming external influences has no end. If not this then that… if not that then t’other. To offer an analogy, King’s decision to remove his book as an effort to curb school shootings is akin to Uncle Alex taking his .22 and throwing it in the trash, then saying “There, that’s one step closer to Nuclear Disarmament.”

Bullshit.

All King has done is made it harder for new people to experience the excellence of his first novel (He wrote ‘Rage’ before ‘Carrie’). That is it. Once an artist puts their art out into the world and people have been exposed to it – the art is no longer completely theirs. It belongs to the audience as well. As a writer I can tell you that every book you release is like having a child. Once it is finished it is finished, and then it grows up as it finds an audience. Once you have the child you can’t then grab it by its hair and try to stuff it back up into the vagina. Well you can but my money’s on mommy needing some serious stitches afterward.

King’s decision to pull his novel from publication is just another example of another celebrity thinking the world revolves around them. He is shouting, “Hey, look at me! See, I care!” Meanwhile, the world with all its foibles and day to day drama existed long before him or his words came along and it will continue to do so long after he has gone to that great worm-ridden hole in the ground he will eventually come to call home.

In a way I understand it. You are surrounded by scores of adulating fans hanging on your

every word and soon you begin to think, ‘My words mean something… I CAN make a difference.’ And in a way you are right, your words do mean something – in your art. That is where you put your message; that is where you say everything you feel the need to say. King pulling his book is akin to Sean Penn gripping an Academy Award in one meaty hook and a microphone in the other as he endlessly drools and spouts about the plight of monks in Tibet. Don’t kid yourself people… it’s never about the monks.

Currently, ‘Rage’ by Stephen King is no longer in publication. If you haven’t read it do yourself a favor, go to a local used book store and look for an old copy of ‘The Bachman Books.’ You are less likely to find the original English language novel as copies regularly pop up on Amazon for over seven hundred dollars. I don’t hate King and I will still occasionally pick up whichever thousand page opus he recently released. But I will always feel he self-censored his greatest work of all for nothing more than basic human vanity. And as an artist, a little part of me can’t forgive him for that.

I would have to say there’s a lesson in all this somewhere. It just makes me mad I can’t quite put my finger on it. It fills me with, I don’t know… something.

Have an amazing ass day.