Laura Miller’s 2013 Salon.com article “What Stanley Kubrick Got Wrong About ‘The Shining'” came up in my Facebook feed this morning and reading it just made me happy. Seems I get Stephen King a lot better than Kubrick did and this article vindicates my rants on the subject, which my friends will tell you have been pretty rabid. 

I’ve got a warm spot in my heart for Stephen King and his books. When I was in college I went through an unusual reading dry spell. It was a little disturbing for someone who’d been the poster boy for book-loving nerds all through school, but I couldn’t get interested in anything. I tried classics, best sellers, mysteries, adventures. I even flirted with romance novels. Nothing.

Finally I joined a book club. The first thing they sent me was “The Dead Zone.” I’d never heard of Stephen King and I thought horror novels were kind of hokey, but I had the damned thing, so I took the plunge.

I literally could not put it down. I was totally captivated by the characters and the concept. I remember being struck by the small details like Johnny’s fascination with his doctor’s Flair pen, which hadn’t existed when he’d gone into his coma.

As I finished “The Dead Zone,” “The Shining” was roaring through the University of Washington campus. Everyone was reading it . . . and not sleeping. “It was 3:00 in the morning and I was afraid to keep reading, but I couldn’t stop,” I’d hear people say.

The experience was the same for me. The subtlety of the story, the overriding sense of foreboding and the sheer terror King could evoke in an 18-year-old alone in his room kept me going. I loved it. It’s still my favorite of all of his books.

So naturally, I was excited when I heard that a movie was being made. And when it came out, I dragged my pal Sam, who hadn’t read the book, to the theater with me. I’m sure I yammered on ahead of time about Jack Torrance, this sad guy trying to make good, the scary Overlook Hotel and the terrifying topiary animals. I might even have slipped and told him about the scene where Danny barely escapes the conduit pipe in the playground, a scene that still puts me on edge when I think of it.

Then we watched the movie. Oy!

I wasn’t disappointed the way you are when a filmmaker leaves your favorite section out of the screen version of your favorite childhood novel. I knew there would be changes. There are always changes. I was pissed because this really great genre novel had been so deconstructed that it was nearly unrecognizable.

Poor Sam had to suffer through a whole new tirade when we left the theater.

“What the hell was that?” I wanted to know. Except for the marketing benefits, I honestly didn’t know why Kubrick had even bothered to buy the rights to the novel. He changed so much – right down to the basic intent of the story, I didn’t know why he didn’t go all the way. He could have gone just a little further and wouldn’t have even been vulnerable to a plagiarism charge.

In the book, Jack Torrance is a tortured dried-out alcoholic who is honestly trying to do right by his wife and son. In the movie, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Jack Nicholson had gleefully hacked them up or driven their VW Bug off a cliff in the first 20 minutes. He was crazy and he wasn’t trying too hard to fight it. This Jack was only too happy to join the dark forces of the Overlook.

There were other problems – lots of them. Shelley Duvall’s Wendy was a screaming idiot who you’d almost like to see get taken out. The subtly terrifying topiary animals became a completely conventional hedge maze. “Redrum” became a one-finger exercise in absurdity. The classic Overlook had interiors that look better suited to a Motel 6. And they killed off Dick Hallorann!

The main thing, though is that without any humanity, the story falls flat. The tension and the tragedy of this – as with a lot of King’s books – comes in the struggle to do good against the forces of evil, both outside and inside of us. Kubrick’s film is cold and distant and has no soul.

Some people like that. Sam did. I don’t know why. And I don’t know why the TV version wasn’t better received. I thought it was great. It had the heart Kubrick’s movie didn’t. I cared whether the characters lived or died.

As yourself this: What parts of Kubrick’s version do people remember? A kid running around with a crooked forefinger, blood pouring out of an elevator and Jack Nicholson shoving his wild-eyed face through a hole he’s just put in a bathroom door and growling, “Here’s Johnny.”

I wanted so much more – and Stephen King did, too.