Hello, friends.
Instead of the normal introduction for this week’s newsletter, I’ll start off with a favorite song of mine.
Welcome to the 140th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and my take on two favorite creators. If you’re a reader who subscribes via Substack, my website, or Patreon, your encouragement helps motivate me. I’m not breaking any records but I’m thankful to have any audience.
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I spent most of my writing time this week cleaning up/polishing The Monster in the Closet for publication. I have around 80 pages left to polish. I definitely built a slow-burn kind of story with this but is unfolds in a way that makes you want to keep reading. I’m pretty proud of it. I’m hoping to put my nose to the grindstone and finish this weekend.
I need to learn how to make a cool spreadsheet for my fictional characters and places. In my mind, there’d be a master page that would have all the characters, places, etc. listed, and then tabs for each book or story that cross-references them. A lot of my stories take place in the same world (because growing up reading Stephen King and comic books, of course they do) so having a spreadsheet/database would be helpful. A nice way to keep track of things.
I added round 400 words to Project: Moon, only one night of work on it. Teaching is sapping all my energy this year. The ideas and stories are bouncing around in a maddening way but my ability to get them down has diminished due to lack of energy. This isn’t uncommon for the start of the school year it just is less than ideal right now.
But the words and stories are still there and that’s what counts.
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September 21st is Stephen King’s birthday and September 23rd is Bruce Springsteen’s. Both men are creators whose works have left an indelible mark on me. As I learned about their lives and studied their work, I began to see a lot of similarities between the men and their work. So much so that I’ve been planning on writing a book about them for nearly 20 years. It’s loosely outlined and I keep coming back to it. Someday (soon, I hope) I’ll actually sit down and fully write it. For now, this essay, celebrating King’s 78th birthday and Springsteen’s 76th.
I came to King officially at 13 but actually a little before that through my love of horror movies. Being a child in the 1980s when Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, and others were making annual visits to cineplexes meant lots of exposure to the name Stephen King. Add to that the fact that his books were everywhere. Even if you didn’t read them (or, in my case, my parents didn’t read them) you saw the books at the library and the mall’s bookstore. On my 13th birthday, I bought a copy of The Shining and decided to try my hand at reading a real novel. I read comic books and had read Craig Shaw Gardner’s novelization of Batman but hadn’t really been able to find my groove with other books. The Shining changed that. Before I knew it, I had a typewriter set up on milk crates and was attempting to write. I’ve never stopped.
My first real exposure to Springsteen was probably when “Dancing in the Dark” was released on MTV in 1984. His album Born in the U.S.A. became a cultural phenomenon much like Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Prince’s Purple Rain had. With MTV at its best, the music videos for these artists were in constant rotation. Their songs played on the radio often. I liked a lot of the songs I was exposed to but wasn’t really a fan. Not until my 20s did I really start to listen to the music, and the words. As I went through some hard times, Springsteen’s music really spoke to me.
Both men were born in places that seemed remote from everything and both men had family issues. King’s father left when he was very small and Springsteen’s father dealt with mental health issues that weren’t diagnosed in those days. Both found solace in rock ‘n roll and reading. Both were able to take their love of these things and turn them into art that changed the world.
King’s and Springsteen’s successes, I believe, are based on the fact that they write stories about people everyone knows. King’s fiction is populated with middle-class and lower-middle-class people who are struggling to find their place in the world, the as Springsteen’s songs are. With King, that’s the setup for the monsters and horrific happenings. Not that Springsteen doesn’t introduce horrors in his songs. “Johnny 99” is a song about someone who lost his job and everything that meant anything to him, grabbed a gun, and shot someone. Maybe in a robbery? Either way, Johnny 99 is going to jail and begging the judge to “put him on the execution line.”
Even though both men have hit astronomical success in their chosen fields, both seem to have a firm grasp of where they came from. King still mainly resides in Maine while Springsteen lives near where he grew up in New Jersey. By all accounts, they both remain active members in their communities, which protect them while also honor them.
King’s writing acts as warm, fuzzy slippers (with teeth) for me. It’s sitting down and hearing a story from a favorite uncle (I’d have to assume; King is as close to a favorite uncle that I have). His words flow and bring the reader into the story and entertain them, scare them, and make them think. His style is so natural and so understated that it almost doesn’t seem to exist, but it’s incredibly difficult to replicate.
Springsteen’s writing and music are similar. Whether it’s the pop music of “Hungry Heart” or “Ramrod” or the seriousness of “The Rising” or “Devils and Dust,” Springsteen takes the voices of those around him and translates them into something that moves the listener. When he’s with the E Street Band, the sounds they make are not easily copied. Whether it’s the guitars, piano, saxophone, or the glockenspiel, the sound is unlike any other. It comforts.
But the real reason I love King’s and Springsteen’s works so much is that they make me feel as they entertain me. I run through a gamut of emotions but at the end of the day, I think their work makes me feel hope. And in our world, you really can’t get much better than feeling hope.
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Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 
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