Casual Shorts: Stephen King, Here There Be Tygers

King, Stephen. "Here There Be Tygers." Ubris, Spring 1968.

______. Skeleton Crew. NY: Putnam's, June 1985.

For a concise bibliography, please visit the ISFdb.

Be There any Tigers, in "Here There Be Tygers"?

(In which I argue that there is no actual tiger in the story.)

In Stephen King's early short story, "Here There Be Tygers," third-grader Charles must brave a trip to the school's basement washroom. There he encounters a large, hungry-looking tiger, and is forced to decide between risking his life in order to urinate, or face social stigma through any other option, such as wetting himself or using the girls' washroom. Sprinkled with light humour and soft suspense, the story is a reflection of pre-teen angst, and the titular feline is a hallucinatory manifestation of those complex emotions.

King provides the reader with many clues as to the nature of this beast. He employs a hyper-realist narrative to contrast with Charles's hallucination, as Charles's powerful emotions, his fear of humiliation and public shame, heighten the details of this brief encounter. The logo of the hand dryer stands out, the sensation of the empty tacks on the bulletin board, the details of the school notices, etc. This heightened detail informs us that Charles is not in a dream, that his experience is not surreal or internal, but that these events are taking place in the concrete world. It is important also to note that these experiences, and Charles's casual observations, are very much those of a third grader. Important because the angst too is that of a pre-teen.

The realism is heightened by Charles's perceptions, and his experiences are elevated by his anxiety. What he sees and what he experiences externally are consistently interspersed with what he is experiencing internally. King even slips in a number of parenthetical comments and italics to allow the outside world to intermingle with Charles's internal one ("(urinate she'll say urinate she always does)"). The walk from his desk to the classroom door is lengthened to a football field as his anxiety increases, with all eyes on him, amid snickering and the embarrassment of his teacher, Mrs. Bird, using the word "urinate."

The most obvious clue to the fact that the tiger lives only in Charles's imagination, is found in the story's title. The title may be an allusion to William Blake's "The Tyger," (1794) borrowing its original spelling. This too would be appropriate as Blake's poem focuses on loss of innocence and influence of a corrupt society (though in a religious context). Blake's earlier, innocent lamb is threatened by the awakening of the ambiguous tyger, a beautiful yet threatening beast, just as Charles's own innocence is being replaced by a more self-aware tiger, a self dangerously aware of the social world in which he lives.

In addition, there is a level of irony in the title. The statement with its awkward wording claims there are tigers (plural) in this story, and yet there aren't any, or at least no "tigers" in its appropriate spelling. The "tygers" are instead the metaphors for Charles's angst. The awkward wording is an allusion to the signs of old, used to warn travellers of dangers ahead. And any third-grader will have many dangers ahead, as he or she navigates their social environment.

Yet what of the tiger's two victims, classmate Kenny Griffen and teacher Mrs. Bird? Though they appear to encounter the tiger, there is no evidence of their demise, nor even of an encounter. When Kenny enters the washroom and heads around the corner to where the lion should be, Charles waits for the scream, and yet "[t]here was no scream." And while she is aptly named for a victim of a feline, Mrs. Bird also does not scream. The only apparent evidence is something blue which Charles spots in the tigers claw, after Kenny has entered the washroom, but we are never even told of the colour of the classmates clothing. Furthermore, there are no sounds whatsoever, no growls or leaps or tearing of clothes and fresh. Though Charles anticipates vocal drama, he is instead met with silence. For a story, and a protagonist, so steeped in minutiae, in the details of waking realism, the major detail of the story, the titular tiger's attack, is entirely mute.

Finally, to address the most obvious question: How did the tiger get into the washroom? Very simply,  as mentioned the tiger is a manifestation, or perhaps even a physical materialization, of third grade anxieties, and appears as a result of the emphasis the children place on the washroom ("the basement!"). It is as though the children, and not just Charles, make up a pre-pubescent cabal that summons the tyger to this dreadful space, made sacred and terrible at once. Just as in Blake's poem, the purpose of the tiger lies in its fearful symmetry, in its terrifyingly powerful presence.

For more Wednesday short stories, please visit Patti Abbot's blog.

Stephen King, The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson (1984)

King, Stephen. "The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson." Rolling Stone #426/427, 19 July & 2 August 1984.
______. I Shudder at Your Touch, Michele Slung, ed. New York: New American Library, May 1991.

The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson at ISFdb

Rating:     7/10

Published during his extraordinary commercial peak in the 1980s, "The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson" is an as yet uncollected short story by Stephen King. First published in a special double summer issue of Rolling Stone magazine, The story was later incorporated into the novel The Tommyknockers (1987), in which Rebecca Paulson was a secondary character (or perhaps tertiary; I have not read the novel). Outside of a limited edition Skeleton Crew by Scream Press, it has not yet appeared in a Stephen King collection, and has only been anthologized in the highly readable Michele Slung-edited I Shudder at Your Touch. As an adapted screenplay, it was produced as an above average episode of The Outer Limits.

In the short story, a neglected and isolated housewife accidentally shoots herself in the head, and consequentially receives odd visions and, as per the title, revelations. As visions and memory begin to bind. disrupting her daily routine, her fate will certainly be locked in to how she handles this new perspective.

With all the story's quirkiness, King focuses primarily on character, to the story's benefit. 'Becka's life is controlled by a dominating masculine trinity, made up of Jesus Christ, her husband Joe, and her late father. Interestingly, her connection to all three is via some form of insurmountable distance. Her connection to Jesus is through her devotion to her religion, and she communicates with him through a photograph of Jesus as shepherd that has become animated. Her connection to her father is through her memory of his domineering ways, as he passed away years before but continues to deploy a daily influence. Finally, her husband Joe is at work during the day, and entirely absent to her when at home, preferring to play poker with his buddies or sleeping with a new co-worker. In addition, their house is located in a desolate rural setting, so that 'Becka has no immediate neighbours, and Joe must drive a ways for his job.

This is an indication that it is not only her stagnancy she is attempting to escape, but also the grasp of faulty masculine influence. She is essentially the sheep that animated Jesus bats away within the photo frame. Jesus tells her he is her saviour, and this is the point at which she listens. Through her revelations, 'Becka becomes aware of her actual situation, the unhappiness of her unfulfilling life, and as she does not have the capability for change, she opts to simply put a halt to the status quo. Without revealing the ending, it is appropriate to the story and her character, since 'Becka is not one to just pack up for the big city for fame and fortune.


The episode adapted for The Outer Limits is quite good, with a strong performance by talented Catherine O'Hara as Rebecca, who received a Gemini nomination. The episode captures the story's essence and keeps quite consistent with the source material, though replaces Jesus with a photograph of a model (portrayed by episode director Steven Weber, who also portrayed Jack Torrance in the 1997 television adaptation of King's The Shining). This change is most likely not to offend sponsors, and though it helps to eliminate that element of male dominance in her life, as a model is less effective than one's religion and its central figure, much of King's story is intact.

Stephen King, Insomnia (1994)

Signet, 1995

King, Stephen, Insomnia, NY: Viking, 15 September 1994
___________, Insomnia, NY: Signet, September 1995 (my copy)

Insomnia at Goodreads
Insomnia at ISFdb
Insomnia at IBList

Rating: 4/10

For more Friday's Forgotten Books, please visit Patti Abbott's blog.

Preparing for a trip to India, one offering plenty of reading time due to extended commutes, I was searching for a lengthy yet quick read, something I don't need to think about and simply doze through. During my last trip to India I was pleasantly accompanied by Peter Straub's 1982 novel Floating Dragon, and decided that this time around I would carry something similar. I hemmed and hawed over stuff I had in a box of horror novels, and considered Straub's Mr. X (1999), Robert McCammon's Stinger (1988) and a couple of others I can't now recall. Settling on Insomnia was due partly on the fact that I hadn't read a King novel in a long time, and partly on the fact that my edition, found in a book sale reject pile, is completely battered, and I knew whatever I lugged around with me would receive a bit of a beating. Mr. X, also found in a reject pile, is quite pristine, and I am anal about my books. Even the cheapo paperbacks.

Insomnia is a lesser-known, little read and mostly neglected Stephen King novel. And for good reason. The novel is a plodding, generally uninteresting and often silly, over-sentimental fantasy. I often like a slow, plodding tale, but this one is padded with details that do little to serve the whole of the novel and nothing to build suspense.

Hodder & Stoughton, 1995

We are served up tension with the idea that our senior citizen heroes, Ralph Roberts and Lois Chasse, must save the world (or at least the Derry Civic Centre) within a matter of hours! (This urgency after a few hundred pages.) Pressed for time, at their wits' end, our swift heroes decide quickly to take a lovely meandering stroll through Derry toward their destination while thoughts are leisurely focused on their new abilities, like floating and becoming semi-visible, and their local haunts, like the neighbouring park where old friends play chess and argue about social matters which are related in so much detail that we forget what our purpose is and all tension is sucked dry.

(Yes, our elderly heroes develop powers as a trade-off to their sleeplessness. I won't discuss plot points so if you wish to for more story-line info, please see the myriad reviews on Goodreads.)

Characters abound by the thousands, and many are needless, barely mentioned, while some are arbitrarily done away with. One seemingly major character (I will avoid a direct spoiler here) is done away almost as an aside fairly early on, in such a way that I'm left with the impression the author just didn't know what to do with him and couldn't be bothered to re-write the first few hundred pages. Maybe he was also too bored with the work to invest in a re-read. (King has, since the book's publication, claimed not to have plotted the novel, and has also stated that a novel that is not properly plotted ends up lacking. Insomnia is in need not only of proper plotting, but some severe editing.)

The lengthy conversations between characters and the genuinely uninteresting reflections of protagonist Ralph Roberts are among the easily expendable portions, and a pared down version of Insomnia might actually have been an above average read. There are some interesting elements that could have contributed to a half-decent novel, such as the idea that the elaborate emphasis on abortion is merely a ploy for something entirely different, and though his prose falters with alarming frequency, King manages nonetheless to create a mostly vivid geography.

Speaking of abortion, the subject is approached via many points of view, and in no way objectively. It is clear who the bad guys are on the abortion issue (though personally I have no qualms for this and I doubt King cares if he's potentially alienating any anti-abortionists). He does attempt late in the novel to present us with a semi-sympathetic anti-abortionist in the form of a diner waitress, in another needless scene. It is, however, too little and too late to generate any equality among the figures on either side of the debate. Besides, she quickly falters to become a less than likable caricature. If anything, however, King is genuinely sympathetic with the plight of battered women, and I think it is important for that reality to be presented in mainstream fiction.

Hodder, 2008

There is a cautionary lesson less than subtly embedded into King's arguments on spousal abuse and its consequences. Throughout the novel women ill-treated by men have an instinctive trust of other women and an instinctive distrust of all men. Our male hero Roberts reflects on this several times, again slowing the work, and is disapproving of this trust/mistrust issue. Roberts comes across here as naive, since of course battered women would instinctively mistrust all men they do not know, just as a battered animal would mistrust all humans as a result of being battered by one, just as all men would instinctively distrust women (or relationships with women) if in any severely way wronged by one. Any major traumatic event leads to fear, regardless of gender, race or one's role in the animal kingdom. Despite this logic King pursues his argument, and the women's shelter is infiltrated by a women as a result of the natural trust they share with all women. This character is mentioned shortly before the infiltration scene as a danger to Roberts, and then brings about the downfall of the shelter; she is clearly mentioned only to bring about this scene and only to bring about the argument that battered women should not have instinctive responses to strangers as a result of their gender. Perhaps that is so, but King is being punitive, less interested in exploring the nature of the mistrust, that the base human survival instinct is to protect oneself in areas where one has experienced danger, particularly when that danger is life-threatening.

Tossed into this mish-mash of a novel are some glaring errors. In 1992 Ed Deepnau is thirty-two years old while his wife Helen is thirty (p. 169), yet they kept all the vinyl records they purchased back in the 1960s (p. 84). What a thing for toddlers to do with their allowance. Later, Roberts receives a visual of May Locher's death, and there is a "companion" stabbed to death beside the old lady's death. What of this? Are we deliberately being misled to believe the culprits are cold-blooded killers by the visual aid of a bloodied corpse, a corpse that does not actually exist? Or is this part of King's lack of plotting, and he forgot about this moment entirely as he continued winging the novel on a whim. Shame on you Mr. King!

Luitingh-Sijthoff, 1994

Insomnia does appear to serve a minor purpose: to thread the ties of King's fictional universe. References to both the Dark Tower series and his far better lengthy novel It are splattered throughout. I haven't read any of the Dark Tower books but I get the gist of some of what it going on. On the other hand I have read and enjoyed It. I do not believe Insomnia is in any way improved by these references, nor do I believe these references improve the other works. It has been argued that some of King's obviously weaker works are artificially inseminated with references to his superior works, and I would not be surprised to learn that this is the case, at least with Insomnia . I haven't read enough of his novels to have a full understanding of his mythos, and (because life is short) I have stuck to those works that have received general praise, such as It, Misery, 'Salem's Lot, The Stand and The Shining. Reading Insomnia was a fluke travel decision, as was the unbearably awful Dean R. Koontz novel, Twilight Eyes.


For covers, that first Viking edition at the bottom is mirrored by two opposing coloured prints. I'm not sure if the two flip-coloured prints were released simultaneously, the way those for Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell were ten years later in 2004. I also don't see a significance to the two versions the way I assume there is one for the black and white of Clarke's work. I do like the first paperback edition, that of Signet (1995) at the top; with more detail and colour, this one evokes more mystery. There have been many covers and reprints, a surprising amount (but I guess it is Stephen King), and many of them quite good. The ghostly and full of implication Hodder & Stoughton pillow corpse and the simplistic death referential Hodder reprint from 2008 are both vastly different and quite good, though the second having a different significance to one who has read it, and is hence exclusive of the non-reader. But I'm partial to the cartoonish Dutch version on the left, from Luitingh-Sijthoff, translated by Eny van Gelder (1994).

Viking, 1994 (?)

Viking, 1994