To start this year’s Writer’s Book Club, I’ve selected Stephen King’s novella The Life of Chuck. At only 109 pages, $20 seems pricey for the slim, small hardcover, but it includes images in the lower-right-hand corner of a man dancing. It’s a flipbook. Pretty cool.

First, a digression

When I was a kid, I reasoned that reality comprised only those things my senses perceived. If I sat at my desk in my bedroom, the furniture, the clean smell of my bedspread, and the rain beating against my window all existed. But because I couldn’t see the hallway, was it truly there?

Of course, I knew it was—my memory of it and my ability to imagine it proved that. And even though I couldn’t hear her, I knew my mom was downstairs. I also knew my neighbors were in their houses and that people lived all over the world. There were oceans, mountains, cities, and farmland. Or was all that just my imagination and memories of what I’d read or experienced?

This led me to think in a purely egotistical way: What if the room I inhabited was created just for me, and as I moved into the hallway or onto the street, someone created those places the instant I perceived them?

Years later, the movie “The Truman Show” captured my egotistical thinking, minus the television audience watching my every move. Thank God I didn’t think of that.

The Life of Chuck

In a similar fashion, The Life of Chuck portrays the world as Charles “Chuck” Krantz’s perception and experiences. The book quotes Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” – “I am large, I contain multitudes.” This begs the question: what happens when the container of multitudes dies? Do those multitudes die with him?

The book is told in three acts, beginning with the end of the world and ending with Chuck as a boy living with his grandparents in a Victorian house with a haunted cupola.

What I liked about the book

Obviously, the premise of Chuck being the container of the world hit home. And I liked the optimistic slant at the end when Charles says, “I am wonderful, I deserve to be wonderful, and I contain multitudes.” It hints at the “It’s a Wonderful Life” moral, but doesn’t spell it out, letting the reader do that.

The characters were well-developed, likeable but charmingly flawed. The antagonist in the story isn’t a character but the clock running out for Chuck and, therefore, everyone else.

There are unsettling things in the book, too, like the beginning, but nothing of the typical King horror. While I like his horror, I also appreciate his gentler stories. And at the beginning of a new year, it’s fun to reflect on what it means to be human.

What I didn’t like about The Life of Chuck

In the first act, we meet Marty Anderson and others who don’t know who Chuck Krantz is and why billboards and signs around the city are thanking him for 39 great years. I would’ve liked to know their connection to Chuck. They must have one, right? Otherwise, they wouldn’t in his world.

And what of Chuck’s family by his deathbed? Do they simply blink out like the rest of the world once he passes away? Or, is it Chuck’s perception of the world that is lost? If so, that still begs the question—what is his relationship to Marty Anderson?

I’m also not sure I like King’s telling this story backward. It was hard to have empathy and worry for a dying Chuck, a character I hadn’t met yet. On the other hand, starting with the end of the world is a great opener.

I wanted more (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing)

I wanted more explanation and was excited to learn The Life of Chuck is now an award-winning movie written and directed by Mike Flannagan and starring Tom Hiddleston and Chiwetel Ejiofor, with Nick Offerman narrating. So, I watched it last night. It follows the book fairly well, and the dance scenes are amazing.

The movie also adds connections between Chuck, Marty, and the others. But it also confuses things. For instance, Marty doesn’t know who the adult Chuck is in the third act, but Marty appears as a teacher in the first act who congratulates young Chuck on his dancing. Even more bizarre, Marty never ages despite Chuck aging twenty-six or more years after the dance.

How this has affected my writing

The idea of each of us containing multitudes and what happens to those multitudes when we die is a fascinating one I’d like to explore more, possibly in short story form. And maybe Tom Hiddleston will dance his way through that movie version, too.

The Life of Chuck gets 👍🏻  👍🏻 👍🏻  + 1/2 for being a fun, thought-provoking tale.