Don't Shout At Me Or I'll Cry! (LT's Theory of Pets (Audio Cassette))

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	LT's Theory of Pets (Audio Cassette)
Date:	22/12/01 (346 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It got the presents wrapped.

Disadvantages: Oh bums, be mean? Eek.

I love audiobooks. I like curling up in my bedroom and listening to them, pretending I'm still young enough for a bedtime story. I like listening to them on long car journeys, after the point when loud music stops seeming to make the miles yet to travel pass more quickly. However, I don't love Stephen King, or the things he writes, or the stories he tells. So, when the little package plopped through the door having fought its way through the Christmas post so valiantly, I opened it feeling fairly intrigued. I'd never heard the voice of Stephen King, that man I so love to despise, and now I have. The children had been taken off by kind parents so that I could wrap up their Christmas presents, Michael was away visiting, so I was all alone in the house, ready for the so-called King of Horror to do his stuff. I sat down at the table to wrap the presents, took LT's Theory of Pets from its case, popped it into the stereo and pressed "play".

Oh dear. It was an inauspicious start. This is a live recording from a reading King gave at the Royal Festival Hall. LT's Theory of Pets hasn't been published in book form, or not here in the UK anyway, and so the audience of King fans were fairly excited. So was the announcer. As he whipped up as much fan enthusiasm as he could in his introduction he sounded like one of those boxing ringwhatsits (typing this the name they go by escapes me. Master of Ceremonies? The one I like is called Jimmy Lennon, anyway) and I really was giggling bitchily and waiting for a cry of "Let's get ready to rummmmmmmble!" I was rather disappointed when it didn't come but satisfied myself with the mental image of a few pairs of knickers being thrown onto the stage a la Barry Manilow or Tom Jones.

Oh, I'm sorry kind lender of tape, I'm being naughty already, aren't I? But it's true. I did giggle. Anyway, along came Mr King, to tumultuous applause, and I settled down wi
th some nice, easy, rectangular presents to wrap, so that I could concentrate good and proper. Perhaps the spooky writings of Mr King would seem so much better than I thought when read by the man who penned them. King had a few words with the audience before he began to read, and I giggled again. Oh dear. Mr King does not have an atmospheric voice. He has a squeaky, yet drawling voice which would sit very well on the kind of casual, laconic stand up comedian who has perfect timing. But King doesn't have perfect timing. It wasn't that his pre-reading, settle-them-down, get-them-in-the-mood, don't-look-behind-you jokes weren't funny, well they weren't very funny but were mildly so, it was the dreadfully theatrical, over-long pauses and magnanimous acceptance of applause that spoiled them. Oh dear again - a nasal twang, poor comic timing, and a spooky story to come. I perservered. On to the story.

LT de Witt is a man who CAN tells stories. His timing is perfect. During lunchbreaks at work he regularly spins a story for his colleagues. His favourite is the one he calls LT's Theory of Pets. LT was married to Lulubelle and at first they were very much in love. And, as young couples in love often do, they bought each other pets. LT bought Lulubelle a Siamese cat, Lucy, and Lulubelle bought LT a Jack Russell terrier, called Frank. But as animals also do, they chose their own loved ones. Frank chose Lulubelle while Lucy chose LT as their respective favourites and their owners grew to return the affection in the same way. Very slowly alliances were made, demarcation lines drawn, and the animals became symbols of the failing relationship between Lulubelle and LT. Frank urinated over LT's clean washing and vomited into his slippers while Lucy purred and rubbed around LT's legs when he fed her but remained aloof and out of the room when Lulubelle did, only deigning to enter and eat when she'd gone.

LT and Lulubelle learn to h
ate their partner's pet before they realise that really they are learning to hate each other. But eventually, Lulubelle does the decent thing, and before the marriage disintegrates any further she leaves, with Frank of course. LT comes home from work one day to find her Dear John note on the fridge. And that is LT's anecdote - its moral is, when you love your pet more than your partner then there's something very, very wrong. It's an unpublished short story Stephen King is reading for his audience here, so there isn't much more to say without giving it away, although of course some more happens. The hairs on the back of your neck aren't standing up yet, are they? But if you were listening carefully to LT's humorous rendition of the break up of his marriage then you might be wondering about the casual reference to the ax man...

So, after the inauspicious start, did I enjoy the story? Hmm... well, it wasn't THAT bad, but (oh, so sorry again missy) it most certainly wasn't that good either. As I said LT's Theory of Pets is a live recording, and to be honest, the echoing, slightly tinny recording, decent quality though it was, didn't add much to King's nasal, flat voice. Someone deeper, fuller, more throaty would have worked better. The observation and detail of the pettiness that the break up of a once good, domestic relationship brings was good though and I smiled at a few pictures in my mind more than once. Daily life, the joys of it and the miseries of it when it starts to go wrong is so amusingly hum drum when its hung out to dry in a story, isn't it? The Bay of Pigs or any other of those famous diplomatic crises has nothing on dog vomit in your slipper, does it? Some of this story was quite funny - not tea-spittingly so, but amusing enough to make wrapping Christmas presents seem less of a chore, if only it weren't for that dreadful voice, playing not to its strength, but to its weakness with its lon
g, drawn-out pauses. By the end of the story I was getting quite annoyed because it felt like King was appreciating himself, not his audience.

Otherwise it was just a little story with a twist in its tail, more amusing than much King stuff, but still a bit spooky. With better delivery and a wee bit more grotesquerie it'd have been very similar to a Dahl Tale of the Unexpected (I like those, but I'm not an enormous fan). And really, that's it. I'd not buy it, I'd not want someone to buy it for me, and for a King fan it'd be a mid-range item for the collection I think.

I'm feeling rather dreadful now. A dooyoo pal went to all the bother of lending me her copy, via post and with a stamped addressed envelope for return (you noodle, there was no need for that) and I've um... well, not been particularly complimentary, have I? Let me try to redress the balance just a wee bit. There are a couple of things listening to LT's Theory of Pets made me think about. One is that King, to my mind not a good writer; terribly inexact but fulsome with his vocabulary, derivative of plot and all the rest of it, is undeniably and almost unbelievably popular. Why is that? Well, I think that he is above all startlingly visual both in description and in the mental images he creates. And so, for many of his fans, who are often horror fans and not book fans, his work translates well from screen to book, book to screen and to the mental images enjoyed by those fans of horror. And there's nothing wrong with that; it's just not my bag. I'd rather have all of my senses appealed to in a book, and I'd rather some room was left for my imagination, rather than be given a visual explosion that simply takes it over, for that I'd rather watch a film. So I think that simply hearing his stories, and so owning this tape is for a King fan, and not a general browser. It's quite expensive too (although it was lent, so I'm not sure
of the precise cost), with only one short story on offer for your money.

The other thing that struck me was that, of the King books I have read, I've wondered if it was just me, or was there some sending-up buried in there somewhere? Amidst the blood and the gore and the spook and the horror I've sometimes had the sense that naughty Mr King is having a little laugh up his sleeve, not really at his readers, but in general at this sometimes silly human condition of ours. And after listening to LT's Theory of Pets I've decided that yes I'm right, and yes he is. And big up to him for that, even though I still don't like his books.

So you see Nikki? It weren't quite all bad! And at least it got the presents wrapped. Thanks for sending it.

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