It would be easy to casually remark that Stephen King’s 2006 Lisey’s Story is the long version of the old adage, “behind every great man is an even greater woman.” But the surface telling of a widow obsessively remembering life with her late husband is also a vessel used to explore the lives we live in public, versus those we choose to share only with our dearest confidants. Anyone voluntarily subscribing to a celebrity Twitter-feed should understand the difference between Knowing someone, and knowing of someone. Lisey’s unfolding memories underscore this gap, which King refers to as the difference between love and curiosity.
“When you look at me, you see me holistically,” remarks writer Scott Landon to his wife in a memory. She cares for his person, and his personal well-being. As a couple surrounded by followers and fanatics, she cares for the person Scott Landon, not the beloved bestselling writer. As King brings her to life through his first person account, it’s difficult to know when he is simply providing her character’s voice, and when he’s using her to voice his viewpoint on fame and all that accompanies it. Both voices proclaim that truly Knowing a person comes from intimacy, and the other, a sense of knowing-of, is depth-less and trivial.
When we know-of someone in the public eye, what really can we say of them? We know-of those things a publicist crafts while engineering their persona. We know-of those things which spill out from tabloids, based on secondhand observations of decisions made in private. We know-of their image, crafted to make us believe they are our dear and trusted allies. The relationship is one-sided at its best, and unhealthy at its worst.
Truly Knowing a person is being let in behind their daily defenses. Knowing is having the key to the little door they live behind, to the room where they think, and feel, hurt and heal...and lock when they head outside to face each day in public. “I was lost, and you found me, I was burning, and you gave me ice,” Scott recalls to Lisey gently in recalled exchange, sitting together in a hospital room after he has been deeply wounded by an obsessed and unbalanced fan. This is a couple with full access to each other’s hidden places--not only married, but caring and devoted friends.
As with every man and woman who has left their mother and father behind as boys and girls, they bear with one another’s sometimes literally crazy family histories. The very burdens which can dig in and hurt us as individuals are lighter when shared between two people. King uses his couple to illustrate the “leaving and cleaving” aspect of married life--leaving behind parents, families, and all other past histories, and cleaving to one another as supportive friends through all endeavors.
The tightness of Scott and Lisey’s relationship is one I can see in only a handful of marriages around me; two, maybe three. I’m pretty sure that it’s the product of a unique mindset, and of a unique pairing of people set aside for one another by design. I don’t believe there is only one person “right” for another, but I have witnessed that there are “perfect” matches, and not just the ones found on the bestseller’s list.
“When you look at me, you see me holistically,” remarks writer Scott Landon to his wife in a memory. She cares for his person, and his personal well-being. As a couple surrounded by followers and fanatics, she cares for the person Scott Landon, not the beloved bestselling writer. As King brings her to life through his first person account, it’s difficult to know when he is simply providing her character’s voice, and when he’s using her to voice his viewpoint on fame and all that accompanies it. Both voices proclaim that truly Knowing a person comes from intimacy, and the other, a sense of knowing-of, is depth-less and trivial.
When we know-of someone in the public eye, what really can we say of them? We know-of those things a publicist crafts while engineering their persona. We know-of those things which spill out from tabloids, based on secondhand observations of decisions made in private. We know-of their image, crafted to make us believe they are our dear and trusted allies. The relationship is one-sided at its best, and unhealthy at its worst.
Truly Knowing a person is being let in behind their daily defenses. Knowing is having the key to the little door they live behind, to the room where they think, and feel, hurt and heal...and lock when they head outside to face each day in public. “I was lost, and you found me, I was burning, and you gave me ice,” Scott recalls to Lisey gently in recalled exchange, sitting together in a hospital room after he has been deeply wounded by an obsessed and unbalanced fan. This is a couple with full access to each other’s hidden places--not only married, but caring and devoted friends.
As with every man and woman who has left their mother and father behind as boys and girls, they bear with one another’s sometimes literally crazy family histories. The very burdens which can dig in and hurt us as individuals are lighter when shared between two people. King uses his couple to illustrate the “leaving and cleaving” aspect of married life--leaving behind parents, families, and all other past histories, and cleaving to one another as supportive friends through all endeavors.
The tightness of Scott and Lisey’s relationship is one I can see in only a handful of marriages around me; two, maybe three. I’m pretty sure that it’s the product of a unique mindset, and of a unique pairing of people set aside for one another by design. I don’t believe there is only one person “right” for another, but I have witnessed that there are “perfect” matches, and not just the ones found on the bestseller’s list.
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