King's 'Atlantis' exposes Vietnam

Hearts in Atlantis

Scribner

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On the surface, Stephen King's new novel "Hearts in Atlantis" is an ambitious Vietnam epic with elements of fantasy, spanning forty years and the lives of four major characters. Underneath the plot devices, however, lies a deeper, intensely personal statement about tarnished ideals and the naivete of youth. Many of those who were young in the '60s felt that because of their strength, knowledge and clear intentions, they could change the world for the better. But with the Vietnam War and the r

Courtesy of Paramount Pictures Stephen King also has "The Green Mile" to look forward to, the film version of his novella.

est of the turmoil that was the era's reality, they witnessed greater, darker forces overpowering their youthful enthusiasm. They grew old and found that what they once found sacred, their "Atlantis," was rapidly sinking to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again.

"Hearts in Atlantis" is divided into five interconnected parts. The first, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," takes place in 1960 and introduces us to eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield, who lives alone with his hateful, penny-pinching mother. It is summer, and Bobby is content to just hang around with his two best friends, John Sullivan and Carol Gerber, until a man named Ted moves into his apartment building. Bobby and Ted develop a friendship, and Ted reveals an entirely separate world to Bobby, one in which evil beings from another dimension hunt him relentlessly.

In the second part, entitled "Hearts in Atlantis," it is 1966 and we are taken to the University of Maine during the beginnings of the anti-war movement. In the third floor of Chamberlain residence hall, an epidemic of card playing has rendered Peter Riley unable to do anything besides bet on Hearts for a nickel a point. Neglecting his work, he is in danger of failing out of school. This is especially serious considering that with the draft in full force, young men who fail out of school are being shipped to war. However, because of interactions with Carol Gerber, now a University of Maine student, and a crippled anti-war activist named Stokely Jones III, Peter realizes where his priorities should truly lie.

In "Blind Willie," set in 1983, a Vietnam-vet named Willie Shearman, who as a teenager stole Bobby's baseball glove and helped his friend beat Carol with a baseball bat, pays a bizarre form of penance to make up for the horrible things he's done in his life.

"Why We're in Vietnam" follows John Sullivan, another Vietnam vet, as he attends his friend's funeral in 1999. "When someone dies, you think about the past," he muses, and "Sully-John" thinks back on the horrors of the war and the vision of an old woman who has been haunting him ever since he got back from "the green."

The final section, "Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling," sees Bobby Garfield returning to his hometown for Sullivan's funeral. He miraculously finds Carol, whom he thought was dead, and is awestruck by the mystery of his baseball glove: It is on Sully's hand when he is found in his car, victim of a heart attack, and the glove contains a shocking message from Ted on a crumpled piece of paper inside of it.

King's writing in "Hearts in Atlantis" is grand and fantastical, containing direct allusions to his "Dark Tower" series (Ted is "breaker" for the Tower, enslaved by minions of the Crimson King) and a brief reference to "The Regulators," but the tone of this book is more dramatic than anything else. Instead of being grouped into his more well tread genres of horror and fantasy, "Hearts in Atlantis" bears a closer resemblance to "Different Seasons," King's collection of non-horror novellas and a representation of his finest work.

The interweaving and reoccurrence of Bobby, Sully-John and Carol works wonderfully. It is incredible to see the eleven-year-old characters in 1960 growing up through the course of this book, going to school, protesting, fighting and dying. By the end, the reader cares about each one deeply and is heartbroken at their losses. The unifying image of time and the Atlantis metaphor is also quite intriguing. The section "Hearts in Atlantis" best exemplifies the apparent invincibility of youth, as Peter Riley on numerous occasions speaks of the great abundance of time. "I've got plenty of time to waste" he tells Stokely, and "for me, there always had been [time]." Looking back, Peter realizes how foolish these statements were. As Ted tells Bobby in "Low Men in Yellow Coats," time is "the old bald cheater." We are its captives, "the hostages of eternity."

Of course, no novel is perfect, and "Hearts in Atlantis" contains several scenes that could have been eliminated. The crude, scatological humor in "Low Men in Yellow Coats" as Bobby and Ted are eating a hot dog casserole seems needlessly juvenile and purposeless. Also, Lieutenant Dieffenbaker's speech about the death of his generation in "Why We're in Vietnam" was so blatantly heavy-handed in its delivery of "the moral of the story" that it detracted from the importance of what he had to say.

But seen as a whole, "Hearts in Atlantis" is a brilliant, courageous exploration of the effect of a chaotic time period on the lives of those who survived it. It is one of those books that you look back on after reading and feel something. "Hearts in Atlantis" is easily Stephen King's best work of the '90s, and it represents the next step in his career towards the more personal and the more poignant.

- Ben Goldstein

11-30-99