Several years back, Camestros Felapton reviewed Stephen King’s Fairy Tale and liked it, with one reservation, “the extent to which King makes a young (17) contemporary (2010s) protagonist into a template that would work for a character in the 1970s. Charlie has an iPhone and a laptop and looks things up on the internet but for plausible background reasons has watched lots of classic movies and read lots of relevant books and has an interest in fairy tales. Physical newspapers even play a role in the story. Partly I think this is King trying to emphasise that smaller American towns have changed slowly — I’ll take his word for it because my only experience of small American towns is via fantasy-horror. Less artistically, I suspect it is also a convenience to have a just slightly updated setting.”
I have not read the King book but this is one reason I prefer writing books set in the last century (e.g., 19-Infinity, above): I simply don’t know contemporary popular culture as well as, say, the 1980s. Even if I did, I write slow enough that it would probably change by the time any book of mine came out. Three years from now, will Taylor Swift fans still be calling themselves Swifties? A few years ago I’d have thought nothing about a reference to CBS News doing serious journalism, but now that Bari Weiss is turning it into Pravda?
As Camestros notes, one way around this is to give someone old-fashioned taste — and in today’s world, that’s not implausible. If someone wants to read Bronze Age comic, 1930s pulp horror or listen to old-time radio, it’s easier than ever before. In my previous draft of Impossible Takes a Little Longer, protagonist KC Rogers read a Silver Age Supergirl TPB in her pre-teen days and decided she was the coolest hero ever. It’s easier to find those stories now than it would have been in the last 30 years of the 20th century. In the new draft it’s the early 1980s and KC’s old enough to have read the issue when it was new.
However there’s also a degree of hand-waving in that. In my first draft of Let No Man Put Asunder, my protagonist Paul was a film buff with a particular fondness for the Golden Age of Hollywood. Plausible as I was writing in the 1980s and I knew plenty of college students who’d gotten into old movies. When I started rewriting in the 21st century, it felt more of a strain — pop culture had 30 more years of film under its collective belt and it’s not like Paul saying “the old movies were better” was entirely convincing (as you know if you follow my movie review posts, I watch a lot of more recent stuff).
My current version of the book is set in 1976 so that’s not a problem. Mandy, who so to speak inherited Paul’s passion for movies, is the right age to have grown up with Universal’s horror films in syndication. She caught B-movies on the late show. She also enjoys new films but it’s not implausible she’s seriously into the old films.
I’m not fool enough to argue with Stephen King’s creative choices (except The Stand, which was a terrible, terrible book) but I think I’m happier with mine.
Covers by Kemp Ward (top) and Curt Swan, all rights to images remain with current holders.
