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Taking a break from Gordon Wood’s The Idea of America, I wanted something light. What’s lighter than re-reading an old favorite? Nothing. I found The Shining on the shelf and figured that would just about hit the spot.

My first exposure to The Shining was probably in bits and pieces, heavily edited on television, while I was still in high school. It wasn’t until college that I saw the entire film as it was intended to be seen. By that time, I had read my share of Stephen King, but I’d yet to read this particular book. I figured that I’d already seen the story and so had no reason to revisit it again via the book. I was wrong, but that’s the way I figured it at the time.

Over the years, I’ve watched the original movie several more times, the TV mini-series once, and I finally got around to reading the book. I think I’ve read it twice before this current run-through but it may have been only the once.

With this latest read, it hit me as soon as I began. This isn’t a story about the supernatural; it’s a story about a drunk. The horrible thing, the entity, which haunts Jack Torrence and his family is alcoholism.

Now, the reason why this suddenly became so obvious to me is that I’ve recently read Dr. Sleep. In the introduction, King talks about his own trouble with the drink and how that impacted his life while he was writing The Shining. A quick internet search tells me I’m not the only one who put two and two together here. There seems to be a decently-sized bunch of articles, all post-Dr. Sleep by my quick reckoning, commenting on the theme of alcoholism in The Shining (and Dr. Sleep, of course).

As I make my way through, I now focus on how much of the story is specifically the drink and the drunk, rather than the supernatural. In between, as well, there also resides some that is neither here nor there. One part of the book, not included in the Kubrick film at all, is Jack’s discovery of the history of the Overlook. It is written more along the lines of a whodunnit than a horror/supernatural. Who owns the hotel and, more importantly, why? Why do the same names keep coming up? Jack, the writer, sees it as a subject for a book, the meat for a story – assuming he can find the answers in time. Peel that part out and what remains is far less about the supernatural than the all-too-real problems that the addict faces.

In my interwebs perusal, I also came across some commentary on the Kubrick film. It points out that, with the possible exception of Scatman Crothers’ Dick Halloran, there is no “independent” observer, no reliable witness, to any of the supernatural horrors of the film. Does Jack see any ghosts, or is it his addiction talking? Maybe what we see on screen via Danny is the over-active imagination of a little boy? The book is not so dismissive. Danny’s telepathy is demonstrated across multiple characters. At the end, all the survivors, together, witness Jack’s complete possession by the entity of the hotel.

Revisionism, when it comes about, often misrepresents its assertions just as badly as that which it seeks to correct. Despite the obvious connected to alcoholism, including Stephen King’s own explanations along those lines, The Shining is still a story of supernatural horror. Yes, its genesis was in King’s own drinking and his own fears about his ability to be a father to his children – but it is also about ghosts. It is said that King, while staying at a real Colorado hotel (The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park), saw various apparitions. This included having a conversation with a non-existent bartender named Grady and encountering a small child. He has also described a dream involving a fire hose chasing his son. After awaking from that nightmare, he organized the core of the book in the time it took to smoke a cigarette. The Shining was subsequently written in less than four months.

It also happens that I am watching the series Dexter, which was just removed from Netflix. I completed my own run just after the Season 2, Episode 3 where Dexter is forced to go into Narcotics Anonymous. The character makes the connection between his addiction to his homicidal impulses and the drug addiction that he is pretending to need to deal with.

Dexter, as popular and acclaimed as it was, has considerably less depth than The Shining. Nevertheless, set side-by-side with the book, it enhances an overall feeling of disquiet. The feeling of cabin fever induced by a combination of snow and fear-of-the-virus restrictions helps make it all feel very personal. Yet, we don’t live in a world where serial killer after serial killer racks up body counts in Miami. We don’t live in a world where resort hotels wind up, repeatedly, being the scene of cabin-fever-induced slaughter. The horror that we encounter comes, mostly, from inside us. The hurt that we’ve caused over our life can weigh us down while, at the same time, being unable to prevent us from sinning yet again.

So it is to be human, says Mr. King.