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“[I]t was still a long time before he was finally able to break the dried scum of saliva that had glued his lips together and croak out ‘Where am I?�� to the woman who sat by his bed with a book in her hands. The name of the man who had written the book was Paul Sheldon. He recognized it as his own with no surprise.

‘Sidewinder, Colorado,�� she said when he was finally able to ask the question. ‘My name is Annie Wilkes. And I am �� ��

‘I know,�� he said. ‘You’re my number-one fan.��

‘Yes,�� she said, smiling. ‘That’s just what I am…’��
- Stephen King, Misery

Stephen King’s Misery was published all the way back in 1987. It was later made into a near-classic movie that won Kathy Bates an Academy Award. It has been parodied, referenced on The Simpsons, made into memes, and otherwise entered the bloodstream of pop culture, from which it has never left. For all that, having just read it for the first time, it still feels fresh, surprising, and audacious.

It is also absolutely iconic.

Only the briefest of summaries is in order, not just because of Misery’s ubiquity, but because it is so devilishly simple. This is not a sprawling King epic with extensive world building, intricate supernatural systems, or complex mythologies. This is �� to use television parlance �� a bottle episode, with almost all the action taking place inside a single bedroom.

That bedroom belongs to a former nurse named Annie Wilkes. Annie is a huge fan of a series of historical romance novels featuring a protagonist named Misery Chastain. The author of those books is Paul Sheldon who �� despite his fantastic success �� feels creatively stifled, and has decided to kill off Misery and write a “serious�� novel. Just after finishing this new opus, Paul gets drunk, hops in his car, and ends up in a wreck near Sidewinder, Colorado (a place familiar to fans of The Shining). He is rescued �� in a coincidence that is never dwelled upon �� by superfan Annie. At first Annie seems well meaning. Then she discovers that Paul has killed Misery, a bit of news that she takes poorly. Annie essentially takes Paul hostage and forces him to write a new Misery book, one that brings the character back to life without any narrative cheating.

King tells the story in the third-person, from the limited perspective of Paul. Much has been read into this character, as it contains more than a few autobiographical details. Like King, Paul feels that he had been relegated to a specific genre, and yearns to stretch his literary muscles. Like King (at the time), Paul has some rather serious substance abuse issues. It is impossible not to feel like many of Paul’s beliefs, especially about the nature of fandom, is King talking �� and, frankly, whining �� to his own audience. One is even tempted to say that in making Annie �� unstable, possibly deranged, and degenerating �� the villain, King is borderline insulting the masses who line up to purchase every new title.

Of course, a lot of what gives Misery its punch is the specificity of Paul’s observations about the writing life. Generally, I dislike it when writers focus on writers. It feels too much like navel-gazing. King comes close to that line here, especially when he hammers at the notion that Paul is suffering �� quite literally �� for his craft. Still, I liked King’s venom, especially since Paul is otherwise very much a stock figure from his multiverse: glib; given to lengthy internal monologues; imbued with an encyclopedic knowledge of rock ‘n roll, movies, and television; and prone to laughing out loud at jokes that are simply not funny.

Facing off against Paul is Annie, one of the more memorable baddies of King’s career. Unlike some of King’s other famed antagonists, such as the Overlook in The Shining, the nightmare-shifting clown from It, and the burial ground in Pet Sematary, Annie is a human being, not a mystical entity. She has no extraordinary powers or connection to dark magic. She is not a vampire or werewolf or alien. Aside from some rudimentary surgical abilities, Annie’s main talent is an absolute conviction towards seeing things through to the end. Though we never get inside her head, King does good work in tracing an interesting arc, one in which Annie is given shifting dimensions. That’s not to say that she is nuanced, only that she is not pure evil. If one wanted, one might even find some sympathy for a woman whose crumbling mental state seems beyond her ability to control. In any event, Annie is frightening and unforgettable.

Misery is psychological horror, bounded by the physical reality of the real world. For much of its length, King relies on tension over every other element. Ultimately, though, King is King, and things get gross. Like many of his vintage novels, Misery walks right up to the line of bad taste, pauses for a moment, and then gleefully hops over. Even with foreknowledge of some of the things that happen, I was still surprised at the graphic, forensic detail that King deploys in executing his set pieces. The violence is limited, the body count relatively low, but there are still buckets of blood spilled in these pages.

This is often cited among King’s upper-tier works. While this is a defensible ranking, I’ll admit that Misery is not among my favorites. The main problem is that I simply didn’t like Paul Sheldon all that much. Since the whole project rests on the question of whether Paul escapes or remains captive, lives or dies, that’s sort of an issue. I also had some quibbles with the pacing. Normally �� as many of you know �� I am in the bigger-is-better camp when it comes to novels. But in this instance, the 368-page Misery (trade paperback edition) feels a bit bloated. A lot of this comes from King’s puckish decision to excerpt long sections of Paul’s new Misery entry. This book-within-a-book conceit is funny at first, then quickly outstays its welcome. In short �� pun intended �� Misery might have packed more punch had it been a bit more economical and efficient. Finally, King relies on quite a few cheap tricks and jump scares, especially towards the end, so that the climax of Misery starts to mirror one of the lesser Halloween or Friday the 13th sequels.

These criticisms are rather minor, especially given King’s propensity for creating enduring images. It is not surprising that so many of his novels have been turned into movies, because he is a cinematic writer. Even confining his tapestry to a small room in an isolated farmhouse, with a dramatically pared-down dramatis personae, King effortlessly creates a tableau that is vivid, grotesque, and unforgettable. Misery could have felt like a writing exercise from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, an experiment in minimalist settings and cast lists, something approaching a two-person play. Instead, in King’s assured hands, it is another minor masterpiece.