Based on the African proverb “When an old man dies, a library burns down” and the line from Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself “I am large, I contain multitudes”, The Life of Chuck is about the life of Charles “Chuck” Krantz, told backwards from his death to his early childhood, and how his death is causing the death of the universe held inside of him.
Setting aside the contents for a moment, you have to love any book with Tom Hiddleston on the cover. As well as having a flip book of Tom dancing on the pages. I actually enjoyed this story, and understood it better now than when I first read it in If It Bleeds, the collection of short stories “The Life of Chuck” was first published in.
Stephen King is a decent writer in my opinion, at least based on the books of his I’ve read so far (Salem’s Lot, If It Bleeds, The Shining, Joyland, On Writing, Fairy Tale), with a talent for going into the strangeness of the everyday life which is shown to great effect here. The one thing that I thought, that I believe, is not part of what Stephen King was going for, was how truly tragic Chuck’s death was, partially because he was living a dull, pedantic life of quiet desperation. It’s sad that as much as Chuck claims he’s not going to let what he saw in that cupola impact on his life, in some ways he stops living and just starts existing from that day forward. And as someone raised Catholic, I found it amazing how truly accurately King managed to portray the casual racism and homophobia of certain Jewish people of a certain generation. I liked that the thrust of the story boils down to everyone being important, and how each person’s life basically effects the universe (or at least that’s what I took from it); as well as how much of what we see in our day-to-day lives builds the tapestry, or would it be better to say set dressing, of the world inside our heads.
I will say that this book is one of those where if you’ve read the book you’ve basically seen the movie and vice versa; though I recommend you do both.