28, WG11, M13, E28

Stephen King, Misery

Eigentlich wollte ich das Buch schon länger mal wiedergelesen haben, aber scheute dann doch immer wieder davor zurück, weil ich soviele Szenen als zwar nicht un- aber doch schwer erträglich in Erinnerung hatte. Aber da war soviel was mich reizte, vor allem Paul Sheldons Gedankenprozesse rund ums Schreiben, seine Theorie um das Scheherazade-Syndrom und diese Ironie, wie ihn genau das rettet, an dem er vorher fast zugrunde gegangen war. Und ja, ich gebe es zu, die bewußten Stellen hab ich ziemlich schnell gelesen.

There was no ten-second deadline, of course - he'd had no contract for the book, had written it on spec, and hence there was no delivery date to think about. Yet there was always a deadline, a time after which you had to leave the circle, and most writers knew it. If a book remained roadblocked long enough, it began to decay, to fall apart; all the little tricks and illusions started to show.
.
The gotta.
It was something he had been irritated to find he could generate in the Misery books almost at will but in his mainstream fiction erractically or not at all. You didn't know exactly where to find the gotta, but you always knew when you did. It made the needle of some internal Geiger counter swing all the way over to the end of the dial. Even sitting in front of the typewriter slightly hungover, drinking cups of black coffee and crunching a Rolaid or two every couple of hours (knowing he should give up the fucking cigarettes, at least in the morning, but unable to bring himself to the sticking point), months from finishing and lightyears from publication, you knew the gotta when you got it. Having it always made him feel slightly ashamed - manipulative. But it also made him feel vindicated in his labor. Christ, days went by and the hole in the paper was small, the light was dim, the overheard conversations witless. You pushed on because that was all you could do. Confucius said if man want to grow one row of corn, first must shovel one ton of shit. And then one day the hole widened to VistaVision width and the light shone through like a sunray in a Cecil B. DeMille epic and you knew you had the gotta, alive and kicking.
The gotta, as in: 'I think I'll stay up another fifteen-twenty minutes, honey, I gotta see how this chapter comes out.' Even though the guy who says it spent the day at work thinking about getting laid and knows the odds are good his wife is going to be asleep when he finally gets up to the bedroom.
The gotta, as in: 'I know I should be starting supper now - he'll be mad if it's TVdinners again - but I gotta see how this ends.'
I gotta know will she live.
I gotta know will he catch the shitheel who killed his father.
I gotta know if she finds out her best friend's screwing her husband.
The gotta. Nasty as a hand-job in a sleazy bar, fine as a fuck from the world's most talented call-girl. Oh boy it was bad and oh boy it was good and oh boy in the end it didn't matter how rude it was or how crude it was because in the end it was just like the Jacksons said on that record - don't stop til you get enough.

(Stephen King, Misery, 1987)