Stephen King's The Shining, book and film

I’m a big fan of The Shining, book and film. Both work really well, for slightly different reasons.

My grandfather owned this edition.

I encountered the book first, discovering it along with many other horror and men’s adventure titles through my grandfather. He used to keep a few shelves of well-worn paperbacks behind his easy chair and down in his basement, and when my parents would visit or drop us off for a night of babysitting I’d inevitably find something good to read.

Among the titles that stand out from this time are Whitley Striber’s The Wolfen and Stephen King’s The Shining.

I “read” both as a kid, skimming here and there for the good parts. Both scared the shit out me. My grandfather’s edition of The Shining had the added bonus of stills from the movie, so I had a visual representation of Jack Torrance, Wendy and Danny.

Eventually I would view the film, which also scared the shit out of me as a kid and later bring me great artistic pleasure as an adult. But the film has been so successful and vivid in the public imagination that it has in many ways surpassed the book and become the definitive version of the story. So, I decided to revisit the novel, deep as I am in the Halloween season and struck as usual by the need to indulge my horror sensibilities.

There are many similarities between film and book. The deep isolation of The Overlook, its history. Danny’s ability to “shine,” his precognition as well as knowledge of things that have passed. Jack’s instability. The major plot points and beats of the book are there in the film, too. The endings differ greatly, though people make a little too much of this. Both Danny and Wendy escape, and Jack does not, even if the “how” is quite different.

The book however departs from the film in other interesting and important ways, perhaps principally in that it’s a character study of Jack Torrance. He’s not the sole POV character (Wendy and Danny, and minor characters including Dick Halloran get their turns, too), but it’s mostly Jack’s story. A man battling his demons—career frustration, artistic failures, domestic chafing including resentment for his wife--all fueled by the demon of alcohol. Danny’s “shining” gets a much deeper, fuller treatment in the book. He can detect not only moods but whole thoughts in the heads of others. The motivation for the Overlook wanting him is therefore much stronger in book than film.

I’ve mentioned before that films and books have their unique strengths. 

The film does some things better than the book. Stanley Kubrick’s long, panoramic shots of the approach of the Torrance family in their VW bug, and the hotel interior, empty hallways and ballrooms and kitchens, lend the film a sense of physical isolation that the book cannot quite match. The iconic shots of the murdered twin girls and the tsunami of blood from the elevator are so strikingly rendered in film that they surpass the book, too.

But the book gets us inside Jack’s head in a way no film can. I found myself understanding and even sympathizing with book Jack on a much deeper level than Jack Nicholson’s portrayal. I love Nicholson in the film (his work approaching Wendy on the staircase--“Wendy, gimme the bat”) and later crashing through the bathroom door with an axe (“here’s Johnny!”) are fantastic, but he’s pretty much unhinged from the get-go, a veneer of normalcy papered over an unstable lunatic that needs very little psychic urging from the hotel to erupt. In the book we get much more of the why behind Jack’s vulnerabilities, including his childhood traumas with an abusive father, creative frustrations, self-loathing and guilt, and his deep struggles with alcohol.

In short, I love both versions, but the book serves as another example of why I appreciate both mediums and don’t privilege one above the other.