While 1984’sThinneris best known for revealing Stephen King’s secret alter ego to the public, the novel has aged pretty odiously outside this curious controversy. Out ofStephen King’s 66 books, there were always bound to be some true duds. No author can be that prolific without occasionally penning a critical failure, and King is no exception.
That being said, the author is still the mind behindIt’s Pennywise,The Shining’s Jack Torrance, and the title character ofCarrie. For all of his faults, King is one of the foremost authors of American horror in the last century. The writer helped shape the genre in the minds of the reading public over the last five decades.
For better or worse, King’s output is synonymous with American horror as a literary genre, and this is no accident. Early on in his career, King opted to publish some of his books under a pseudonym so he could avoid saturating the market with more than one King book per year. Thus, his literary alter ego “Richard Bachman” was born.
1984’s Thinner Proved That Richard Bachman Was Stephen King
The Author’s Alias Was Exposed After The Novel’s Release
Between 1977 and 2007, King penned seven books as Bachman, as well as releasing the 1985 collectionThe Bachman Books, which anthologized the first five of these efforts. However, King didn’t publicize the fact that he was Bachman, and the secret remained unknown for the first seven years of Bachman’s career as an author.
Between 1977 and 1984, King releasedclassic novels likeThe Stand,The Dead Zone,Firestarter,Christine,Pet Sematary, andCujounder his own name. Meanwhile, his alter ego Bachman producedRage,The Long Walk,Roadwork, andThinnerduring the same prolific period. This ensured King kept his brand undiluted while publishing more books than the average reader could consume.
Shortly before the release ofThinner, bookstore clerk and longtime King fan Steve Brown noticed some striking similarities between the advance copy ofThinnerand King’s writing.
This ruse could have lasted a lot longer if it weren’t for the canniness of King’s fans. In 1984, shortly before the release ofThinner, bookstore clerk and longtime King fan Steve Brown noticed some striking similarities between the advance copy ofThinnerand King’s writing. This sent the superfan to the Library of Congress.
There, he verified that all of Bachman’s books were registered by King’s agent, Kirby McCauley. This was suspicious enough, but a little more digging revealed that Bachman’s debut,Rage, was registered by King himself. Soon, King himself called Brown and admitted his suspicions were justified, andKing was soon outed as Bachmanshortly after the publication ofThinner.
This resulted in a jump inThinner’s sales, but it didn’t do the book’s reviews any favors. While a few critics found something to like in the mean-spirited supernatural thriller, many were underwhelmed by the work of King’s alter ego. RevisitingThinner, I was struck by the realization that King was likely right to distance himself from the novel.
Thinner Has Aged Terribly (Even For A Stephen King Book)
The Novel’s Racism and Fatphobia Are Tough To Stomach
Thinneris the story of Billy, a morbidly obese lawyer who accidentally kills an elderly Roma woman while he and his wife are enjoying an illicit tryst behind the wheel of his car. Since Billy is rich, powerful, and well-connected, he immediately gets away with this atrocious crime by exploiting all manner of legal loopholes and calling in some favors.
Soon, Billy begins rapidly losing weight without any medical explanation after the woman’s father curses him. His accomplices in covering up his crime meet similarly grotesque fates and, as Billy fades into skeletal thinness, they take their own lives due to their gruesome disfigurements. Desperate, Billy calls upon mob associates to threaten the Roma community and make them lift this curse.
InThinner’s blackly comic ending, the victim’s father relents and bakes Billy a pie containing his own blood, which passes the curse onto whoever is unlucky enough to eat a slice. Billy plans to serve the pie to his wife, but, waking up to discover that both his wife and daughter have already eaten some, he dejectedly cuts himself a slice.
Published in 1979 under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman,The Long Walkwas the first novel King wrote, but not the first to be published.
That absurdly downbeat ending might sound like the definition of a shaggy dog story, but King’s novel is somehow worse than that.Thinneris arguably the Stephen King novel that has aged the worst, which is quite an achievement considering the author disowned his earlier Bachman effort, 1977’s school shooting story,Rage.
The villains are, depending on the reader’s perspective, a morbidly obese lawyer whose weight is repeatedly tied to his gluttony and amorality, or a group of Roma stereotypes who curse him. The depiction of Roma people is appallingly one-dimensional and patronizing towards a historically disenfranchised group, reducing an entire population to ludicrous caricatures.
Moreover, the novel’s entire premise is predicated on readers directly linking a person’s weight with their moral integrity. This shows up often in King’s writing, but it is never more objectionable than when Billy’s body is described in dehumanizing terms designed to leave the reader disgusted less by his crimes and callous cruelty, and more by his outward appearance.
Thinner’s Movie Adaptation Didn’t Improve The Stephen King Story
Director Tom Holland’s Movie Failed To Mine Scares From The Source Story
Thinneris a bad book from top to bottom, even lacking the sharp prose or occasional scares that crop up even in many of King’s lesser novels. However,Thinner’s movie adaptation could have salvaged the story, amping up the campy comedy, playing the entire story with tongue firmly in cheek, and reveling in the poor taste of the premise.
Sadly, the firstmovie adaptation of one of King’s Bachman booksfailed to pull this off. Despite competent direction fromFright Night/Child’s Playmastermind Tom Holland, 1996’sThinneris a scare-free bore that placidly replays the source novel’s worst hits. Thus, Stephen King/Richard Bachman’sThinnerhas nothing to recommend, outside finally exposing the author’s alter ego.
