Gather ’round the Bonfire, dipshits. Today I tackle Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis, a novel rife with mirth, mayhem, and miraculous mysteries. A coming-of-age tale that will surely have you nostalgic for the Vietnam War era even if you were born in 1987 like I was!

I read Hearts in Atlantis once before during the summer after college ended. That was already over 13 years ago, but man do I remember it making an impact. I devoured that book like it was a giant bowl of delicious ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s, of course. None of that Breyer’s shit. Consisting of two novellas and three short stories spanning the course of 39 years, each story is linked by a girl/young woman named Carol Gerber who impacted each story’s main character in one way or another. Let me just go through each one, why not?

“Low Men in Yellow Coats”
Stephen King knows how to write about prepubescent kids from the ’60s! The story follows main protagonist Bobby Garfield during the summer of 1960, his friends Sully-John and Carol, and Bobby’s strange (and, yes, appropriate, which I can’t stress enough) relationship with his new middle-aged apartment neighbor Ted Brautigan. At the heart of the story the father-son bond that develops between Ted and Bobby over the course of the summer and how it changed Bobby’s life… for the worse, actually, since Ted ended up leaving Bobby’s life forever and indirectly caused Bobby to eventually turn to delinquency and truancy. He didn’t have a present father and his mother sucked ass.

Apparently, Ted Brautigan has a connection to King’s Dark Tower series, of which I have only read the first book and am thus far completely underwhelmed by. There’s a whole sequence at the end of the story where Ted has a confrontation with these low men in yellow coats and starts talking about Breakers and shit, and it went so far above my head that it slammed into a airplane and crashed into the side of a fucking mountain. Other than that whole bit of complete nonsense, the rest of the story was fantastic. A bit of Americana through the eyes of a child growing up in a simpler time. Bobby’s little-kid romantic relationship with Carol was cute. Sully-John sounded just like a friend I had back in elementary school who just happened to grow up to become a gold medal Olympic athlete instead of, you know, drafted into a war in Vietnam. I hated Bobby’s mother with a passion, which means she was a really well-written character. And Ted was as fine an older gentleman as I ever saw!

This story for me served no other purpose other than to make me nostalgic for childhood. I loved it for that reason. Moving on.

“Hearts in Atlantis”
This was my favorite story. I’m no stranger to heavy procrastination during college. I’ll be the first to tell you that I was spending my Sunday evenings watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia DVDs and playing fuckin’ Halo in the dorms instead of studying for my Monday exams. These kids were obsessing themselves over games of Hearts in the commons rooms for months, which sounds like a situation I would’ve befallen in 1966 while I was supposed to be studying whatever it is people studied in 1966. Phonograph repair?

Vietnam war-related shenanigans is not something I can relate to, since I did not go to college during Vietnam war-related shenanigans. I cannot fathom the pressure of staying deferred from the draft under a scholarship, one that I’m supposed to keep under any circumstances or I’ll end up getting my testicles blown off in Da Nang. I’d get my shit together, though, if keeping my grades would keep me alive. I’m pretty sure I’d really BONE UP on my studies for that.

The romantic tryst between Pete Riley and Carol Gerber was nice, EVEN IF THEY BOTH HAD RELATIONSHIPS BACK HOME. And made the all the more bittersweet by Carol’s decision to leave without first saying goodbye. With respect to Carol’s political activism, I can’t imagine caring enough about any political cause to get involved in protesting, let alone help make bombs for fuck’s sake. I’m all for radical liberal ideas, don’t get me wrong. But Carol was a lunatic.

Why did that crippled kid Stokely Jones keep saying “rip-rip”? Was it some kind of Tourette’s thing? That was stupid! King should’ve left that part out!

“Blind Willie”
My least favorite of the five stories is still pretty good. Willie Sherman helped his friends beat the shit out of Carol Gerber when they were kids and now he thinks he needs to atone for it on a daily basis as an adult. He also goes blind for a few hours a day for what he thinks is karma, so he uses that time to beg on the street! Can’t do anything else while you’re blind, I always say.

I don’t have much to comment upon for this one other than I hope that police officer does follow Willie back to the hotel bathroom and then beat the shit out of him with a baton. That would be justice, idiot. Poetic fucking justice.

“Why We’re in Vietnam”
Nice catching up with Sully-John after he basically got disemboweled during the war. We find out that he was involved in a helicopter crash rescue mission that almost escalated into a massacre of civilians by the soldiers. We find out that he thinks the now-dead (but not really) Carol Gerber, whom he has been keeping up with in the newspapers, is a crazy, radical anti-war cunt. He has a conversation with his old commanding officer, Dieffenbaker, during another veteran’s funeral about how their generation sold out to consumerism, which is absolutely fucking true.

I suppose the objects raining from the sky during Sully-John’s highway heart attack, while a metaphor for his generation’s obsession with material goods, is also supposed to be related to the Dark Tower series again? Again, way over my head. Maybe this Stephen King guy should spend less time jerking himself off over the Dark Tower series and more time just jerking himself off in general.

“Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling”
A nice end to the book if I’ve ever read one, and I’ve read many endings to many books! We’ve come full circle: Bobby Garfield returns to Harwich, Connecticut after what I assume is 30+ years of gambling, debauchery, sin, and eating no vegetables. He pays his respects to his old buddy Sully-John and noticed how much the town has changed since he was a wee lad. He gets to catch up with the decidedly-not-dead Carol Gerber! She goes by Denise now for what I imagine to be protection reasons. They have a nice little moment.

While I was pretty happy that Carol was still alive and was able to catch up a little bit with Bobby, I can’t help but wonder if it would have been just as powerful if she actually died at a young age. Then you would have Willie Sherman, Sully-John, and Bobby reminiscing about the dead girl/woman who changed their lives in one way or another, and maybe a little bit of Pete Riley sad off-camera about the dead girl that he fucked in college! Thoughts, anyone?!

BOOK BONFIRE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS!

Hearts in Atlantis traces several characters from childhood through college and into adulthood. How does King explore the maturation process?
AH, THE CLASSIC COMING-OF-AGE STORY! King explores the maturation process through the loss of innocence and the disillusionment of LIFE IN GENERAL. Bobby Garfield never really liked his mother, and a great father figure like Ted Brautigan really highlighted her shittiness. The day Willie Sherman and his buddies beat the fuck out of Carol Gerber, and then Bobby carried her all the way to Ted, and then Liz Garfield thought Ted was a child molester… well, sir, that really sent ol’ Bobby over the edge! There are intermittent mentions of Bobby’s delinquent near-future, probably because Ted leaves and Liz sucks. Plus, after avenging Carol’s injury by beating the fuck out of one of the kids who beat the fuck out of her, he moves away and leaves her forever. Speaking of which…

Pete Riley loves and loses, so to speak. Carol Gerber walks away from him knowing that it’s for both of their own good, which is very mature for a young woman who is going to help make protest bombs in the not too distant future. Plus, after finding himself laughing along with his friends at Stokely Jones, the crippled kid who almost dies in the rain, he learns that people in a group tend to bring the worst out of their individual selves. Speaking of which…

Willie Sherman, having helped beat the fuck out of Carol Gerber, spends his adult life understanding that people in a group tend to bring the worst out of their individual selves. And he intends to repent for his sins. And he does. Writing an apology to Carol 500 times a day in a notebook is a little over the top, though, but what do you expect from a shell-shocked Vietnam War veteran? Speaking of which…

Sully-John gets fucked up in the war and, embittered by the experience anyway, feels that his generation cares more about newfangled salad shooters and HBO instead of what matters. And what matters exactly? I dunno. Love?

That’s all I have to say about that.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I really enjoyed this book. I’ve read about 15 Stephen King books and Hearts in Atlantis has the most coherent theme and the most touching moments. Plus a good ending, which means he was really in rare form! I mean, goddamn. How often are you going to hear that?

I wrote too many words about this book! See you next time when I write approximately 35 words about that piece of shit Moby Dick.