The weekly “Le 1 des libraires” publishes Thursday a prologue rarely published in English, unpublished in French, to the novel by Stephen King “Shining”, made famous by Stanley Kubrick’s film. This chapter had been left out of the book when it was published in 1977. “Shining, the child of light”, the third book by the prolific American novelist, recounts the madness that seizes Jack Torrance, a failed writer who takes a job as a caretaker in a huge hotel lost in the mountains of Colorado, the Overlook, closed in winter.
In this five-scene prologue, instead of beginning with the story of Jack, his wife Wendy, and their son Danny, King revisits earlier events at this same hotel. “Le 1 des libraires” publishes one of these scenes, which takes place in August 1929, “Une chambre au petit matin”. Like Jack Torrance, the Overlook didn’t sit well with Lottie Kilgallon Pillsbury, a New York bride who insisted on spending her honeymoon in the Rockies rather than Italy.
Novel and cult film
In English, this prologue was published in 1982 in a specialized magazine, then in 2017 in a luxury reissue of the novel, which is now out of print. “The Shining”, masterpiece of the horror novel, is one of Stephen King’s greatest hits, selling millions of copies worldwide.
The prologue in five “scenes” is entitled in English “Before the play”. King indeed conceived his book as a tragedy with unity of time, place and action. The publisher, Doubleday, however, felt that the story, already long with its 450 pages, might do without these chapters, as well as an epilogue entitled “After the play” (“After the play”).
In 2013, press information had mentioned the project of an adaptation of this prologue to the cinema. Stephen King was hostile to it, he who never liked Stanley Kubrick’s “Shining” either.