Picking the Bones

[Sigh.]

How could such a masterful novel be turned into such an abysmal miniseries?

The two-night, four-hour television event on A&E is billed as Stephen King's Bag of Bones, but this is really (screenwriter) Matt Venne's Bag of Bones.  Granted, abridgement and alteration is inevitable when trying to translate a 700+ page novel (written in the first-person) into a movie, but King's text has been adapted nearly beyond recognition.  The miniseries lacks the emotional punch of the book; even more damning, this ghost story isn't even remotely frightful.

Where did the miniseries go wrong?  Let my try and count some of the ways:

*Casting Pierce Brosnan as protagonist Mike Noonan.  In the novel, Mike is a Maine man, born and raised.  He's steeped in the local customs and speaks like a resident naturally would; by contrast, Brosnan with his Irish accent seems like an outsider who has been parachuted in.

*The lavish lake house (dubbed Sara Laughs in the novel) proves no haunting abode.  It's architectural features are more admirable than menacing, and the air of dread is further thinned by the fact that most of the scenes set in the house take place during brightly sunny days.

*The sense of an American Gothic community rife with secrets and conspiracies is severely undercut.  One of King's greatest talents is his ability to portray the grotesquerie of everyday people, but the miniseries does little to establish the "Martians" (as Mike sarcastically calls the natives of TR-90 in the novel). 

*The various, interlocking mysteries that drive King's narrative are streamlined and dumbed-down, hampering the pacing of the miniseries.  In particular, the scenes involving the refrigerator-magnet messages just fall flat.  Also, too much key information is given as mere exposition rather than forming the reward of investigative struggle.

*The characters of Maddie and her daughter Kyra receive precious little screen time, and thus the complexity of Mike's relationship to the two (so central to the novel) is never really established.  Kyra, so adorably precocious yet vulnerable in the book, is reduced to a crying-child cipher.

*The special effects are laughable.  Brosnan getting slapped around by the tree-branch limbs of the Green Lady in the climax plays out like an unintentional bit of slapstick.

Ultimately, watching the miniseries is like experiencing a Cliff Notes version of the book.  Elaborate scenes from the novel (Kyra in the "crossmock,"  Mike's stoning, Maddie's shooting) are glossed over and leeched of their dramatic effect.  All the best meat of King's story has been stripped away, leaving nothing but a disjointed skeleton.  Given the high quality of the source material, this just might be the worst adaptation of a Stephen King work ever made.

Haunting on Audio

It's telling that Bag of Bones is the only one of his novels for which King himself has done the reading on the audiobook version.  The decision is a testament to King's fondness for this particular book; the fact that Bag of Bones is presented as the first-person narration of a Maine writer of best-selling genre fiction also suggests a close affinity between King and his protagonist.  No doubt King would be the first to admit that he is no Olivier, but he does a fine job here of bringing his cast of characters to life (I love the raspy croak he employs to deliver the villain Max Devore's dialogue).

The audiobook uses subtle sound effects to reinforce the tension and terror of select scenes; even more hauntingly, it interpolates performances of the songs and lyrics of Sara and the Red-Tops (the fictional group so central to the plot of the novel).  Perhaps the most delightful element of the 20-CD set, though, is the lengthy interview with King at the end.  In this segment, the author recounts how he came up with the idea for his ghost story, and also shares his thoughts on Gothic fiction, succinctly positing that "the basis of the Gothic is secrets that are kept combined with appearances that deceive."

I encourage both longstanding fans of Bag of Bones as well as those new to the book to double their pleasure by listening to the audiobook while reading the text of the novel.  I've done so twice already within the past few years, and each time I've come away with a deeper appreciation of just what a deftly structured and beautifully written narrative this is.

Dark Passages: Bag of Bones

Bag of Bones is rightfully revered as one of Stephen King's finest novels.  The narrative succeeds on many levels (ghost story, love story, domestic drama, Northeastern Gothic), but perhaps King's most impressive accomplishment here is the crafting of utterly terrifying dream sequences.  Consider the following (annotated) passage, which plunges readers into protagonist Mike Noonan's recurring nightmare:

Now Sara Laughs is [use of present tense heightens the sense of immediacy] only a dark hulk down below [phrasing that foreshadows that late Sara Tidwell's earthly location?] and I realize I don't want to go down there, anyway.  I am a man who has trained his mind to misbehave [a perfectly paradoxical account of the writer's creative process], and I can imagine too many things waiting for me inside.  A rabid raccoon crouched in a corner of the kitchen.  Bats in the bathroom [alliteration abounds]--if disturbed they'll crowd the air around my cringing face, squeaking and fluttering against my face with their dusty wings [multisensory details make the nightmare figures seem even more real].  Even one of William Denbrough's famous Creatures From Beyond the Universe [intimations of Lovecraft, plus an echo of Creature from the Black Lagoon], now hiding under the porch and watching me approach with glittering, pus-rimmed eyes [my, what disgusting features IT has].

"Well, I can't stay up here," I say, but my legs won't move [classic paralysis of the dreamer], and it seems I will be staying up here, where the driveway meets the lane, that I will be staying up here [repetition reinforces the idea of being stuck in place], like it or not.

Now the rustling in the woods behind me sounds not like small animals (most of them would by then be nested or burrowed for the night, anyway) [rationalization provides little comfort in this case] but approaching footsteps [the suspense of imminence].  I try to turn and see, but I can't even do that...  (54-55)

Work Cited

King, Stephen.  Bag of Bones.  New York: Pocket Books, 1998.

Celebrating Bag of Bones Weekend

In honor of the premiere (Sunday night at 9 on A&E) of the the two-part miniseries based on Stephen King's bestselling novel, I'll be doing Bag-of-Bones-themed posts all weekend.  To start things off, here's a little game--a combination of a crossword puzzle and a word jumble--for those who've already read the book.  The letters comprising the answers to the four numbered clues are drawn from the pool below; it might help to jot down the letters on scrap paper and then cross them off as you go (each successful answer will improve your chances of coming up with the correct responses to the other clues).  Those letters contained in brackets ([  ]) can then be unscrambled to form the answer to the Bonus question.  

The letter pool:

N   R   D   S   F   B   E   Y

H   L   H   I   D   E   U   B

N   T   D   M   R   L   D   O

I   D   A   Y   O   T   I   E

E   C   O   D   L   R   U   S



1.What Max Devore stole as a child:

Scooter Larribee's  [ __ ]   __   [ __ ]   __


2.Where Jo has hidden the plastic owls:

__   __   [ __ ]   __   __       the       __   __   [ __ ]   __   __   __


3.Title of the novel Mike starts drafting while at Sara Laughs:

__   __         __   __   __   __   __   __   [ __ ]   __   __

__   __   [ __ ]   __   __   __


4.Melville character repeatedly referenced in the novel (including the closing lines):

__   __   [ __ ]   [ __ ]   __   __   __   __


BONUS.  Supernatural entity for which Sara Tidwell forms a conduit:

The   __   __   __   __   __   __   __   __


Answers appear in the Comments section of this post.