Stephen King Out-Thurbers Thurber

Stephen King in the New Yorker? The Nov. 2 issue features his story "Premium Harmony," which is simply a hoot from beginning to end. The story contains significant echoes of "A Couple of Hamburgers," the James Thurber story in which an unhappy couple rehashes one old tired argument after another during a road trip through Connecticut. King's story includes more serious disaster but still remains more lighthearted and even gleeful than Thurber's bitter tale. And King's metaphors are fresh and telling:

"He sometimes thinks marriage is like a football game and he's quarterbacking the underdog team. He has to pick his spots. Make short passes."

"Now they argue quite a lot. It's really all the same argument. It has circularity. It is, Ray thinks, like a dog track. When they argue, they're like greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit. You go past the same scenery time after time, but you don't see it. You see the rabbit."

The scenery in King's story is provided by a small Maine town suffering from economic decline, but, like Thurber's story, the entire plot takes place first within a car and then within a small, struggling business. Thurber breaks his story up by taking his couple inside a diner in search of a couple of hamburgers, but the change in location only pushes the eternal argument underground, where it festers for a while before breaking out again back in the car.

King similarly breaks up the road trip with a visit to a small business, and, as in Thurber's story, the husband's appetite is assuaged while the wife's most definitely is not. Thurber ends the story with the wife's self-satisfied knowledge that she will soon win a small victory that will cause pain for both of them, while King's story ends with a scene evoking pain and suffering but also suffused with radiant joy.

James Thurber's writing once defined what was meant by a typical New Yorker story, ranging from the madcap adventure to the gently nostalgic memoir to the sour anatomy of the failing relationship that we see in "A Couple of Hamburgers." Stephen King's thrillers seem as far from typical New Yorker fiction as any prose could possibly be; nevertheless, with "Premium Harmony," King evokes the madcap end of Thurber's range, joyously transforming one of Thurber's bitter relationship tales into raucous good fun. Thurber must be rolling over in his grave--rolling on the floor laughing, that is.