Thinner, the Auteur, and the Lived Macabre: The Kindness of Bachman/King

Thinner (1984) introduces the Bachman/King narratorial palimpsest and elides the stylistic distinctions between the supernatural realism of “King as King” and the naturalist realism of “King as Bachman.” King thus reflexively complicates the agency and intention of authorship while deconstructing classic conventions. In Thinner, the naturalized combination of (i) otherworldly elements (supernaturalism), (ii) cruel extremes (naturalism), and (iii) unadorned, detailed accuracy (realism) together alter the texture of our lived everyday experiences. The realism we live is Stephen King-inflected “macabre realism”-a lived realism that engages with everyday evil in lieu of dismissing it. King accomplishes this revanchism in Thinner (and his early canon) via italicized interiority interjections, or what David Foster Wallace called King’s “brain voice.” Cruel to be kind, King’s “brain voice” indelibly influences the New Sincerity (as candid corrective to postmodern ironic remove) that Wallace championed beginning in the mid-1990s.