Stephen King y su Mitad Oscura (1)

Empiezo a leer La Mitad Oscura con sumo interés ya que se trata del ajuste de cuentas de su creador con Richard Bachman. O sea, pura y dura introspección de una figura clave (el escritor ficticio) autor de sus mejores obras.

Empieza con una gran frase, auténtica, de escritor:

People's lives — their real lives, as opposed to their simple physical existences — begin at different times.

Y entonces empieza Mr. King a hacer lo que mejor se le da: la referencia pop para construir un personaje. La otra manera es hacer que diga Oh Jesus Christ, Oh My God.

Pritchard — who was now humming the Bonanza theme-song under his breath — worked the wound quickly and almost effortlessly, eferring to the dental-type mirror mounted on the end of the probe only occasionally.

Y esto escribe justo después de la aparición de un cerebro con un ojo. Después alterna citas del seudónimo del protagonista (George Stark) con las reflexiones de su yo real (Thad Beaumont). Y volvemos a los subrayados, a los gritos:

Well, there's a crime writer named Donald E. Westlake,' Beaumont explains.
'And under his real name, Westlake uses the crime novel to write these very funny
social comedies about American life and American mores.
'But from the early sixties until the mid-seventies or so, he wrote a series of novels
under the name of Richard Stark, and those books are very different. They're about
a man named Parker who is a professional thief. He has no past, no future, and in
the best books, no interests other than robbery.
'Anyway, for reasons you'd have to ask Westlake about, he eventually stopped writing novels about Parker, but I never forgot something Westlake said after the pen name was blown. He said he wrote books on sunny days and Stark took over on the rainy ones. I liked that, because those were rainy days for me, between 1973 and early 1975.

Por si no había quedado claro lo de GEORGE STARK. Stephen King lo explica para todos, con una metáfora lamentable y sentimental (aquellos fueron mis días lluviosos) sigue la novela (su novela) sobre la escritura.