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Ray Rexer's "RAY - VINGS" |
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Ray Rexer's "RAY - VINGS" |
Interviews from Within #1: Brent Norton
Ask a King fan what he or she likes best about the Great Bearded One's writing and chances are fairly good you'll receive a oneword answer: characterization. Readers love King's characters (even the ones they hate). He writes them alive. Ink for blood, paper for skin, his characters breathe when he's done with them. They're alive. If you hold a King book up to your ear like a conch shell, sometimes you can even hear a heartbeat.
Why? What makes his characters seem so alive, so real? Simple. They are real.
It's true. I should know, I've met them. I mean physically met them. I've actually entered their worlds, broken right into a specific scene from a specific book and talked with the King characters within that scene.
Kinda strange, huh? I guess. But I've gotten some pretty interesting interviews that way. Exclusives, you could say. And it's really not that hard to do. The procedure's not unlike the process Jack Sawyer used when he wanted to "flip" into the Territories - except that you have to use caffeine-free Diet Coke instead of Speedy Juice. Just sit in a quiet room with a King book in your lap opened to the specific scene want to enter. Sip your Coke. Close your eyes. Think hard of the scene and say to yourself, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home."
Crazy, but it works. at least for me. Presented here, as proof of sorts, is the first in a series of exclusive interviews with the characters of Stephen King. Interviews from within.
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I caught up with Brent Norton shortly after five-thirty on the afternoon of July 20th, inside the Federal Foods Supermarket in Bridgeton, Maine. He was taller than I expected and his voice was almost an exact duplicate of newscaster Sam Donaldson's. There was a tear in the seam of his shirt, under his left arm, that I don't think he was aware of. His undershirt peeked through the opening like a white tongue. His gray hair was slightly ruffled, and he seemed to be in a hurry. There were four people following him.
Ray Rexer: Excuse me, Mr. Norton? A few questions.
Brent Norton: Let us pass, please! Let us pass.
RR: Just a few questions.
BN: There is nothing to talk about. Certainly not to you.
RR: Oooh, a little stuffy in here. Maybe we should open some windows. (Voice from behind: And bring all the fiends of Hell down our heads!)
BN: Do what you want, but we're going out. We'll send help back for you.
RR: You're not going anywhere until I get an interview. (Ray brandishes a caffeine-free Diet Coke bottle to emphasize his point.)
BN: Just who the hell are you?
RR: I'm a roving King correspondent, that's who. I've come to interview you. I'd like to know what you think of the mist.
BN: Mist? Why, it's just some kind of temperature inversion, that's all.
RR: That's not what David Drayton thinks. He says ...
BN: He's a hick! They're all hicks!
RR: Okay, then tell me this: Why wouldn't you go into the storage room with him to examine that chunk of tentacle on the floor? Some readers believe it was because you were afraid... afraid that what he said was true.
BN: That's a lie! Drayton and his drunken friends were having me on, trying to pull one over on the out-of-towner. But it didn't work. And I'm glad. I'll tell you another thing: I'm glad that tree fell on his boathouse. Stove it in pretty well, didn't it? Fantastic.
RR: Right. I read that on page 71. You were glad. But you weren't too happy when your T-bird got bashed, were you?
BN: (his mouth quivers and emits little clicking sounds, but he doesn't answer)
RR: I understand that you and "your people" - as you call them - plan to leave the Federal very shortly and venture outside.
BN: That's right. Will you try and stop us?
RR: No, King won't let me. But Dan Miller says you're as good as murdering those other people. Mrs Carmody says, and I quote, "It's death out there." How do you respond to that?
BN: That witch! That crazy witch!
RR: But aren't you afraid of the things in the mist?
BN: That ground has been covered and covered. We're going out. It may not be fun...
RR: Oh, I bet you have a scream.
BN: ...But we are going!
RR: Yeah, I know you are. But I should tell you, I have it on good authority that you won't even make it three hundred feet.
BN: (haughtily) Oh, really? Whose authority?
RR: Stephen King's.
BN: (something in his eyes flicker - but only momentarily) Well, he don't know half as much as he thinks he does.
And with that, Brent Norton pushed by me and led his followers outside into the mist, effectively ending this interview.
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NEXT TIME: A VISIT WITH JACK SAWYER AND WOLF AT THE DALEVILLE, INDIANA, BURGER KING!
Horrorfest Press Ray Rexer - Contributing Editor |
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