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Different Seasons (Signet)
by Authors:
Stephen King
Mass Market Paperback Description: Different Seasons (1982) is a collection of four novellas, markedly different in tone and subject, each on the theme of a journey. The first is a rich, satisfying, nonhorrific tale about an innocent man who carefully nurtures hope and devises a wily scheme to escape from prison. The second concerns a boy who discards his innocence by enticing an old man to travel with him into a reawakening of long-buried evil. In the third story, a writer looks back on the trek he took with three friends on the brink of adolescence to find another boy's corpse. The trip becomes a character-rich rite of passage from youth to maturity.
These first three novellas have been made into well-received movies: "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" into Frank Darabont's 1994 The Shawshank Redemption (available as a screenplay, a DVD film, and an audiocassette), "Apt Pupil" into Bryan Singer's 1998 film Apt Pupil (also released in 1998 on audiocassette), and "The Body" into Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986).
The final novella, "Breathing Lessons," is a horror yarn told by a doctor, about a patient whose indomitable spirit keeps her baby alive under extraordinary circumstances. It's the tightest, most polished tale in the collection. --Fiona Webster
Different Seasons (1982) is a collection of four novellas, markedly different in tone and subject, each on the theme of a journey. The first is a rich, satisfying, nonhorrific tale about an innocent man who carefully nurtures hope and devises a wily scheme to escape from prison. The second concerns a boy who discards his innocence by enticing an old man to travel with him into a reawakening of long-buried evil. In the third story, a writer looks back on the trek he took with three friends on the brink of adolescence to find another boy's corpse. The trip becomes a character-rich rite of passage from youth to maturity.
These first three novellas have been made into well-received movies: "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" into Frank Darabont's 1994 The Shawshank Redemption (available as a screenplay, a DVD film, and an audiocassette), "Apt Pupil" into Bryan Singer's 1998 film Apt Pupil (also released in 1998 on audiocassette), and "The Body" into Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986).
The final novella, "Breathing Lessons," is a horror yarn told by a doctor, about a patient whose indomitable spirit keeps her baby alive under extraordinary circumstances. It's the tightest, most polished tale in the collection.
Average Customer Rating:
A healthy Combo of heart and description.
No wonder this guy can write so well. He's probably seen it all.
This is a must have collection for all stephen king fans. Even if you wanted to own only on book by stephen king; this would be it. It's the perfect compilation of short stories.
Apt pupil - Powerfully driven to the point of parnoid danger.
The Body - Gripping story of four friends who find out more about themselves on the road to life.
Rita Hayworth and the shawshank redemption - It is undescribable to be able to put down in words just how good this one story is. The rare gem that we've all been searching for. It's almost like finding a peice of history and sharing it with the world. The narrative character, Red, is so rich with his words that he is one of the greatest narrators of all time. You''l just melt with compassion for andy defrense. He's the regular joe that is the main point of the story. You'll probably read this one over and over again. I know it's one of my favorites.
The Breathing method - although shrouded in vague descriptions; it does have it's perks. It's another weird tale to tell your friends gatthered around the fire place on halloween night.
Enjoy!
Scattering King To The Four Winds: Different Seasons Absolutely Rocks!
I can say this without a trace of guilt: three out of Different Seasons' four novellas are the best work Stephen King has ever produced. I should know, I've read almost every word he has ever written.
Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption: Obviously the blueprint for the film, this novella is a story of prison life and one man's journey through the years enduring the fact that he was wrongly accused of his wife's murder. Endearing and clever.
Apt Pupil: What happens when a suburban kid with a fascination for Nazi attrocities finds a war-criminal hiding in his own neighborhood? Apt Pupil will tell you. The darkest of the four Different Seasons' novellas, Apt Pupil takes a grim look at the reality of Halocaust and the terrible curiosities that might lurk in all of us.
The Body: The blueprint for Stand By Me, this is the story of childhood adventures and tragedies. Four friends head off on a trip to find the body of a kid hit by a train so that they can bring him back to town as heroes. Has a kind of Ray Bradbury feel to it. Definitely one of my favorites.
The Breathing Method: Every perfect chain has to have the weakest link, and here it is. Written in the same fashion (about the same gentelmen's club) from The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands (see Night Shift) we have the strange story of a woman and her determination to give birth to her child, even in death. Not a real barn-burner here, just sort of puzzling and odd and very reminiscent of Peter Straub's Ghost Story in its tired flamboyance.
Overall, Different Seasons is awesome! If you haven't read King, this would be a great place to start. Four different kinds of stories in the same book, all showing some new facet of brilliance on King's behalf. If you have read King, you already know about it! Right? One of the best.
Dig it!
How do you silence a King critic? Give him Different Seasons
For all those who doubt the fact that Stephen King is one of the all-time great masters at the craft of writing, there is Different Seasons. If nothing else, the doubters should at least acknowledge King's important contribution to reviving the lost art of the novella. King has always said he would write, whether he ever sold a single book - and I think that is completely true. He didn't write these four novellas with publication in mind; each one was written immediately after the completion of a best-selling novel - and each one just sort of sat there after it was finished. What, after all, can a modern author really do with manuscripts too long to be short stories and too short to be novels? Eventually, the idea came to King to just publish them together, with a title that speaks to the fact that these are not the author's usual blood-dripping, creepy-crawling horror stories. In doing so, he not only gave us four of his most captivating works of fiction, he showed a whole new generation of readers the vast, inherent power of the novella.
Three of these four novellas are even better-known than many of King's best-selling novels - due in no small part to the movie adaptations that followed in their wake. It all started with the film Stand By Me - which was not marketed as an adaptation of a Stephen King work of fiction. This was a smart move, considering some of the weak adaptations of earlier King novels. I can only guess how many impressed moviegoers were shocked to learn that Stand By Me was adapted from King's novella The Body. It's a story of four boys who set off to see a dead body, that of another kid hit by a train; their adventure makes for an extraordinary coming-of-age story. It is, in fact, a story about childhood, founded upon a mysterious event in King's own early days (he supposedly saw a friend hit by a train when he was four years old - but there has always been some question as to whether or not this is true); The Body feels autobiographical, and it truly does recapture the essence of childhood and the maturing process into adolescence. I like to think of The Body as a fantastic warm-up to King's later novel It, which captures the essence of childhood almost perfectly.
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption gave birth to Shawshank Redemption, the most critically acclaimed and popular of all King movie adaptations. I think the movie is even better than the novella (largely due to Morgan Freeman), but everything that shines in the movie is here in the novella. An innocent man, convicted of killing his wife and her lover, gives new meaning to the term patient resolve - and has a profound effect on some of his fellow prisoners. I think it's the ultimate prison story, as it shows us the good and the bad of prison life and imbues its characters with a humanity rarely seen in prison-based stories. It's just a stellar piece of writing.
Apt Pupil is my favorite, though, and it finally, after years of fits and starts and rumors, was made into a film in 1998. The movie did make some changes to the original storyline, but it was a vastly underrated film that truly embodied the spirit of King's original novella. The most horrible things can oftentimes be the most fascinating. I know I've always been fascinated by everything that took place in the Third Reich. The teenager in the story, though, is obsessed with those atrocities, and that obsession turns into something increasingly disquieting and dangerous when he discovers a former Nazi living under another name in his neighborhood and blackmails him into telling him all the "gooshy" details of his part in the Holocaust. Apt Pupil is one of the most impressive psychological studies of evil I've ever read.
The Breathing Method sort of gets lost in the shuffle. It's shorter than the other novellas and has never been adapted for film. I really like this story, though. It has a classic fireside story feel to it, hearkening back to the likes of Poe, with its mysterious gentlemen's "club" and emphasis on story-telling. The particular story we are privileged to hear about is in some ways rather ridiculous and certainly quite melodramatic - yet it works extremely well. The novella was dedicated to Peter and Susan Straub, and I think it shows the obvious influence of horror maestro Straub from top to bottom (which, to my mind, is a good thing).
The Breathing Method supplies the theme that serves as a sort of mantra for the entire collection: It is the tale, not he who tells it. The story is everything, and the author is sort of a literary midwife who helps the birthing process along. I heartily believe that many a King critic would fawn over Different Seasons if they read it without knowing who wrote it. This book is a perfect introduction for those yet to experience King for themselves - these are, for the most part, mainstream works of fiction that reveal a master storyteller at work.
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A healthy Combo of heart and description. 
