Stephen King Talks 'Shining' Sequel
The luckiest audience in the world last night could be found at the Canon Theatre in Toronto, where a crowd of fortunate souls got to watch, for a full hour, two titans of terror in conversation -- Stephen King and hometown hero David Cronenberg (who, of course, brought King's The Dead Zone to the big screen in a first-rate adaptation back in 1983). Apparently so relaxed to be in the company of another horror god, King casually dropped the bombshell that he's considering a sequel to what is arguably his finest novel, The Shining.
According to Books.Torontoist.com, King is interested enough in what happened to Jack Torrance's son Danny after Torrance unleashed Holy Hell on the kid in King's fever dream of a masterpiece that he's thinking about continuing the story with Danny now a 40-year-old orderly at a hospice for the terminally ill. But his "real job is to visit with with patients who are just about to pass on to the other side, and to help them make that journey with the aid of his mysterious powers."
I'm a little torn by this news. On the one hand, there's certainly fertile ground for a sequel (over the years, I've even found myself wondering what would become of an abused kid with paranormal abilities). But on the other hand, I regard The Shining as not only one of the finest horror novels ever written, but one of the finest American novels ever written. Something that, in its own way, can stand toe to toe with the work of Mark Twain or Ernest Hemingway. As such, it'd be pretty damn hard for any sequel to measure up, however remotely.
What do you guys think? Should King go for it, or consider that lightning rarely strikes twice?
