Discussing The Shining at this point feels a bit like discussing the books for The Godfather or Jaws, it's a case where the movie eclipsed the book to such an extent that even the creator got a little bent out of shape about the whole thing. It's hard to reach adulthood without at least getting a cursory understanding of the plot of The Shining.

I've been going back and rereading the King books that I never got around to, which I realize mostly consists of his horror novels, and it's odd to chart the movement of King from a fun but trashy pulp novelist into the weird beast of the publishing world that he's become. The Shining marks a sort of turning point:

This may be the most Stephen-King-ass Stephen King book ever written. It's got it all:

Weird slang and folksy sayings I'm not sure anyone ever uses.
Psychic Kid
Magical Black Person
Ghosts
Random Menacing Objects
Another world bleeding into ours.
Dialogue that no human being should ever attempt to replicate out loud.
Entire chapters that are effectively weird short stories.

All it's missing is a gifted mentally disabled boy, though that gets into a weird Stephen King cross-section: You can have a magical kid, a magical black man, or a magical mentally disabled person. Sometimes you can have two, or a combination of two (Green Mile), but to my knowledge Stephen King has never pulled off the hat-trick of a magical, mentally disabled black child.

And having completed this, I think I'm going to stick with the movie in future. There's a few elements here that I just found disconcerting compared to the film. In the movie Jack Torrance is merely creepy, but in the novel he's an absolute drunken garbage man-child, and I felt uncomfortable with his presence even before I felt the author wanted me to. The bit about him snapping his small child's arm nearly put me off the book, and he's an asshole without much cause.

And as mentioned previously, this may be one of the worst Stephen King books I've read for needless tangents. There's entire chapters that mostly seem to exist to expand what's otherwise a really straightforward tale. Having Danny get menaced by a hose for a dozen page was ridiculous, as was the multiple chapters that involved characters being threatened by topiary animals.

This is perhaps why I've felt more comfortable with King's more fantasy-oriented books. Some of these asides would make more sense in an adventure, but when it comes to something that's supposed to maintain tension it's more distracting than compelling.

I don't regret reading it, but Stanley Kubrick seemed to have the right idea about what needed cutting.