Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

STEPHEN KING – DRUNKEN FIREWORKS – TIM SAMPLE – 2015

The story is plain simple indeed. On one side a Yankee family from Maine that got into some money by chance, the mother and her son, and they enjoy six months or more in a cabin by some lake. They are permanent drunks who never see one moment without any alcohol, and yet the son drives to New York or whatever city in Rhode Island or New York state without finding it lucky he never got stopped by some cops or highway “troopers” for Driving Under the Influence (DUI – I am sure it is not DUTI – that should have competed with the DIY quoted once). On the other side of the lake a very rich Italian family from Rhode Island who spends three months or so in their mansion.

For a reason no one will be able to explain, on the Italian side there is a trumpet player and on the Yankee Doodle side there is no trumpet lover and in fact there are two trumpet haters. Don’t ask me why because love and hate have no reason whatsoever. They just are. Add to that the vanity of the two sides and the alcoholism of one side and you have all the ingredients to build a terrorist attack or an anarchistic bomb. Rasputin not very far away indeed. And they sure did blow it up, the peace and quite of that lake.

The story itself does not require to be told. You have to listen to it if you want to know more. Let’s say the only sane people are the American Indians, or Native Americans who are selling the Yankee side the Chinese firecrackers or fireworks or even fire-mongers for the 4^th of July wild celebrations that turn into a yearly competition between the two sides. These Native Americans tell the Yankee side that it is dangerous to play with fire, to be anti-Italian, that Italians in America are Italian Americans hence Americans just like the Yankee Doodle or not Doodle. They are also sane enough to tell them these explosives are absolutely illegal and they should not sell them. They are finally sane enough to tell them not to get arrested on the road with this merchandise on the back seat.

But these Native Americans sure are American since business is business and when someone is ready to pay two thousand dollars for a firecracker of some sort there is no reason why they should not make that profit.

The end is hyper dramatic though not too tragic. It is Prison Break without the prison or Supernatural without Sam and Dean. Listen to Tim Sample reading the story.

Tim Sample is good, a good sample of what a good reader should be. He varies a little bit his voice from the son to the mother and to, rarely, the narrator when he is not the son since the son is telling the story. He is also expressive in the fact that he can vary the intonation and the music of the language. It is quite top level reading and that’s good when we compare with too much of the middle of the way reading generally done for people who listen to stories as if they were prayer mills regurgitating a never ending flow of half-digested words and sounds without any kind of real tonal expressivity.

Try it and you will like it. The second advantage of this recording is the short story is not out yet and will only come out in  the next collection of short fiction by Stephen King that is supposed to come out in three months or so.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU