Onyx reviews: Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

Reviewed by Bev Vincent
Originally published in the Conroe Courier

When Stephen King announced his new deal with publisher Scribner in 1997, one of the three books mentioned was “a collection of short stories.” Everyone, including King himself, expected this book to be a compilation of previously published stories, with a mix of new stories thrown in for good measure. King even had a title in mind for this collection: One Headlight, inspired by a song by The Wallflowers, with whom he played guitar during their appearance in Bangor last year.

Then, word of a different kind of book began to emerge: a collection of four stories, ranging from short to novel-length. Something more along the lines of Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight. Rumors flitted through the internet. A source claimed that one of the stories was about a grocery store price war in Detroit in the 1960’s. King himself said on more than one occasion that there was a Dark Tower story, of sorts. The only thing that was certain was that the four stories were all influenced in some manner by the Vietnam era, a part of history which King has (consciously or otherwise) skirted in his previous stories. A few of his characters (Rainbird from Firestarter, for example) were Vietnam vets, but the war has never really entered into his published tales. The only story to directly deal with Vietnam, “Squad D,” remains unpublished.

Earlier this year, King celebrated his 25th anniversary in the publishing business, and, as part of the celebration, he issued a Philtrum Press chapbook of a short story called “The New Lieutenant’s Rap.” A reworked chapter from Hearts in Atlantis, this was the first indication of what Hearts in Atlantis might be all about (to those few who had a chance to read the chapbook). The story takes place in an alley outside a funeral parlor where two ‘Nam vets had just attended the funeral of one of their former colleagues. The ‘rap’ was a rant by one of the characters, a denunciation of his generation for selling out—rather for giving away their potential. It was a sweeping condemnation of modern, pop culture, from the internet to Jerry Springer.

Finally, the speculation can end, as Hearts in Atlantis, will be published by Scribner on September 14th, simultaneously in all English language editions. Some of the speculation was accurate, but the book is different from what this reviewer had anticipated. For one thing, a fifth story crept in at the end, to complete the collection’s arc. More importantly, though, this is not just a collection of stories, a fact which is subtly emphasized by the lack of a table of contents. The cover says “new fiction,” another acknowledgment that this is more than just a bundle of tales under one cover. The five stories are all linked; they tell the stories of several different characters, most of whom originate from the fictional town of Harwich, Connecticut.

The book opens with the novel-length “Low Men in Yellow Coats,” the rumored Dark Tower story. It is mid-1960 and school is just letting out for the summer. Eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield, a bright and enthusiastic boy lives with his widowed mother in a small apartment house in Harwich. He loves baseball, reading and has a blossoming crush on class-mate and friend Carol Gerber.

Bobby’s relatively calm life is interrupted when a mysterious man, Ted Brautigan, moves into the building. Bobby’s mother takes an instant dislike to Brautigan, but Bobby is intrigued and strikes up a friendship. Brautigan, in his mid-sixties, has an enigmatic past, which he only reveals in bits and pieces. He becomes a close friend to Bobby and encourages the boy’s love of reading, presenting him with a copy of “The Lord of the Flies,” a story which profoundly moves the young boy.

Bobby also wants a bicycle, which his mother refuses to help finance. “You’re father didn’t exactly leave us well off,” is her familiar litany, so Bobby looks for ways to raise money. Ted offers Bobby a job, which actually turns out to be two jobs. One is a cover—Bobby’s mother’s distrust of Ted must be allayed, and to that end, Bobby is seemingly hired to read to Ted from the daily newspaper. The real job, however, is more mysterious: Ted sends Bobby on a daily sweep of the neighborhood looking for signs of ‘low men.’ Loud and vulgar men in gaudy cars wearing long yellow coats. The kind of men who shoot craps in alleys while passing around a bottle in a brown paper bag. The kinds of men who grease back their hair, whistle at women on the streets, and sweat profusely. These are some of the signs that they are about: missing pet posters on light poles, upside down for-sale ads on the bulletin boards at grocery stores, hopscotch grids with astronomical figures drawn beside them. Bobby begins to suspect that Ted is in hiding from these men and is afraid of what will happen if he reports seeing them or their spoor.

Bobby humors Ted, earning his dollar a week and enjoying the things that an eleven year old would on summer vacation: baseball games, playing with his friends (including his best friend, Sully-John), kissing Carol Gerber at the top of the Ferris wheel, and getting into fights with the guys from the local Catholic school. Afraid that Ted will leave if he reports what he sees, though, he remains quiet as the signs of the low men begin to appear. 

As the story builds towards a fearsome climax, Bobby begins to learn a little about the true natures of Ted and the low men, most of which is beyond his understanding. The low men are as mysterious and ominous as the little bald docs from Insomnia and Ted is a new type of character in the expanding lore of the Dark Tower saga. It is likely that more will be seen of him, the low men, and the one they serve, in future tales. Bobby and Ted must confront the low men and life will never be quite the same for either of them.

Jump ahead six years to the University of Maine for “Hearts in Atlantis,” a novella firmly grounded in the reality of our universe during the Vietnam era. Peter Riley is a scholarship student living on the third floor of Chamberlain dormitory. A Hearts epidemic is sweeping the floor and the residents are dropping like flies. Goaded on by single-minded Ronnie Malenfent and his marathon sessions of the card game, a nickel a point, the denizens of the third floor have abandoned virtually everything in their lives to play. Scholarships and subsidies fall victim as grade point averages plummet. But the ongoing card games symbolize the war which is raging on thousands of miles away. The ultimate penalty for losing at hearts is to leave college in disgrace only to find oneself on the next plane to Asia, where the game continues for much higher stakes.

The link between “Low Men” and “Hearts in Atlantis” is Carol Gerber. Now also of university age, she has left a boyfriend back in Connecticut (Bobby Garfield’s best friend, Sully-John) but her life becomes intertwined with Pete’s as they discover each other and learn what the 1960’s are becoming. The students grow into awareness of Vietnam as a few of Pete’s more socially active friends take part in protests against the war. Peter Riley sees his first peace sign and his diffident political views are shaken up as he learns what it represents and is forced to confront a social issue which now has personal significance to him.

“Blind Willie” first appeared in a literary magazine a few years ago in a substantially different form. While the main outline of the story is intact, King has done a skillful job of weaving in details to put this story into the frame work of the collection. It is Christmas, 1983 and Bill (Willie) Shearman has come a long way from Catholic school in Harwich, Connecticut. Back in those days, he was a brutal tormentor and he still carries the emotional scars from one of his youthful confrontations. He is also a Vietnam vet, and he bears psychological scars from that conflict. The short story is a day in his strange life. He undergoes a daily transformation from seemingly respectable businessman Bill Shearman to Blind Willie, a seeing-impaired panhandler who stands on Fifth Avenue. His blindness is only partly a sham—as the days progress his Vietnam trauma emerges and the part he is playing becomes more real. To the outside world rushing past, he is a symbol of that forgotten era, someone who might have been a hero in another era. But they do not rush past him without dropping money into his tin can. A great deal of money.

As it turns out, Bill Shearman is a decorated hero, who received his honors for saving the life of one John Sullivan, formerly known as Sully-John of Harwich, during the final days of the pull-out from Vietnam. In the 1999 short story, “Why We’re in Vietnam,” Sully-John, minus some vital parts of human anatomy but happy to be alive in the age of Viagra, is attending the funeral of one of his war buddy, “Pags” Pagano. He and his former lieutenant Dieffenbaker have drifted out of the funeral parlor into an alley to swap cigarettes and war stories. Dieffenbaker goes on his rap about the losses and failures of their generation and they part ways.

For some people, the war has never really ended; this couldn’t be truer for Sully-John, who picked up a traveling companion in the jungle who reappears in his life on a regular basis. On his drive back home after the funeral, his eerie companion joins him and, in a full-stop traffic jam, Sully-John learns what important things in everyone’s lives he and his friends fought for in Vietnam.

It is difficult to discuss “Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling” without giving away too much of the overall story of Hearts in Atlantis. We meet Bobby Gerber again, forty years after he was last seen at the end of “Low Men in Yellow Coats” and he is reunited with his past as he attends another funeral. Suffice to say that the story resolves some of the threads of this collection-cum-novel while others are left to the readers’ dreams.

In a letter appended to the paperback release of Bag of Bones, King discusses his difficulty in writing about the Vietnam era. So much of what is memorable about that time is laughable—disco and gold chains, but he found himself writing the novella “Hearts in Atlantis” as a way of trying to explain that part of his life to his children. Perhaps becoming a grandfather has made King more reflective about his late adolescence.

And just what is Hearts in Atlantis? That great sunken city of mythology, immortalized in song by Donovan Leitch, is Pete Riley’s analogy for the Vietnam generation, and the ‘hearts’ of the book’s title do not represent just a card game. “Hearts are tough,” Carol had told him. “Most times hearts don’t break.” But sometimes they do. Much of the book is about love, and the object of love of three of the main characters is Carol Gerber. While she fades from active duty late in the novella “Hearts in Atlantis,” her impact on the individuals who loved her—and even some who did not—lives on. Blind Willie is still doing penance over her each day, seventeen years after he last saw her. She is still on Sully-John’s mind over thirty years after he last saw her as he drives home from Pags’ funeral. And she is very much on Bobby Garfield’s mind as he returns to Harwich nearly forty years after he received his last letter from her.

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