Stephen King is one of my favorite writers, which is odd because I usually can’t bring myself to read more than one or two of his books in a year, and I honestly didn’t think I would read anymore of him this year. The problem is that I am too affected by his words. The horror that he writes upsets me more than in scares me. In many of the stories, I feel as if something bad has happened to someone I know. Not someone I know as well as the important people in my life, but like hearing about a long-term acquaintance. There is more than enough of that in 2020 without a book adding to it. But when I saw Elevation I was interested enough to check it out and when I saw that the audio-book was only four hours and the description talked about an upbeat tale I gave it a chance. I’m glad I did.

What is Elevation About?

Being a short story Elevation is a simple premise. Scott Carey lives in Castle Rock, and while he isn’t changing in how he looks, he is losing weight. He first notices something is wrong when he discovers that he weighs the same whether he steps on the scale clothed or unclothed. This is enough to get him to visit his friend and retired doctor Bob Ellis. Bob is as confused as Scott as he establishes that no matter how much weight he is holding he always weighs the same and even though he looks exactly the same, he is actually growing lighter every day and he only has about a year before he reaches zero pounds.

The other major part of the story is his low grade conflict with his lesbian neighbors. Their dogs have been pooping in his yard and when he asks them to pick it up, she takes it as another insult on top of the many that the two have suffered after moving to the small town to open a restaurant. They are near going out of business because of the prejudice and having a neighbor who hasn’t talked to them since they moved in except to tell them to clean up after their dogs is assumed to be part of the same problem.

Scott probably could have ignored this but for a visit from the nicer of the two women who explains this and the knowledge that he doesn’t have long to live since once he gets too low in weight he won’t be able to survive. But for now the lack of weight is actually making him feel almost superhuman since his body, for a reason that is never explained, still acts as if it weighs 270 pounds even though it is a hundred pounds lighter.

So he decides to enter the turkey race. A half marathon that one of the two restaurateur is expected to win while he looks like a middle-aged overweight man who won’t finish. He makes a bet with her before the race. If she wins, he’ll leave them alone entirely. But if he wins, they have to come over for dinner. She is so incredulous that she almost refuses, but he goads her into accepting and because he is half his previous weight with the same strength, he had he is able to keep up.

In the last mile of the race it rains and shocked that he is keeping up with her the Deirdre glances back at him and trips in the rain. He stops to pick her up because the race to him was never really about winning. She crosses the finish line first, though he could have beat her.

This is enough to break through her shell and she access his invitation to dinner so long as he explains the strange feeling of weightlessness she felt when he picked her up. He invites the doctor and explains what is happening.

The rest of the book goes along quickly as they become friends and Scott continues to lose several pounds a day and as he nears weightlessness, life gets more difficult. He can’t easily walk downstairs for fear that he will accidentally jump down the entire flight, and it’s hard to judge his own strength.

What I liked about this Elevation by Stephen King

The basic idea of this story isn’t the weightlessness as most people might assume. And it’s not a white man saving a couple, as people have claimed. The first is people bringing their assumptions about Stephen King into the story, and the second is them forcing their politics onto it. Scott helps them in a minor way, but they weren’t and didn’t need to be saved. The worst thing that would have happened to the young couple is that they had to sell their business and move somewhere a bit more progressive. This is about people paying a bit more attention to the people around them. Seeing them as people instead of politics. Something that is just as needed by the people who can’t see past Scott helping them in some small way need just as much as the people who can’t see past the idea that two of the characters are lesbians. This should be made clear because they help him far more than he helps them because while they are having minor financial trouble he is literally dying and they’re the ones who are with him when the end comes.

What I liked less about Elevation by Stephen King

While many people seem to misunderstand this story, there are things to dislike. The characters are a bit overly stereotypical at the beginning. This is clearly intentional, as the story is about moving past those stereotypes to see people, but it weakens the story some. The other major problem is that there really isn’t a lot of conflict in this story and almost none at the climax. The misunderstanding and conflicts between Scott and Deidre are minor and solved about halfway through, and while the way the town is acting is a problem, it’s never more than a background part of the story.

Beyond that, the lack of any real explanation of what is happening and Scott’s disinterest in his own death makes the mystical element of the story fall flat. More than that, it really isn’t particularly connected to the themes of the story. Him loosing weight doesn’t tie into the prejudice of Castle Rock in any way or link the two separate parts of the story anymore than any sickness would have. I also wish that the story had gone on longer as I think it would have been interesting to see what happened once he reached zero and began to either go into negative weight or staying the same.

Last, this is clearly a political story. There is nothing really wrong with that and I agree with the message, but I feel that the weight of that message would be carried better by a story that was less political so that the people who might need to hear the message would be more likely to actually listen.

Conclusion

This is a short story, and one that I really enjoyed. The weight loss aspect, while not important in any specific way to the rest of the story, was interesting and well described as it became more like someone in the space station. And while the characters are stereotypes, at least on the surface a necessary weakness of the story because one of points this story is making is about moving past stereotypes. So, while if this was a novel I would n