Jack Torrance never won any father of the year
awards. 
Torrance, as you may recall, was the author in Stephen
King's "The Shining," who, having moved his family to a deserted
hotel to write the great American novel, loses his mind and, ultimately, his
life.
The fate of his son, Danny, varies from book to movie, but
let's just say that papa Jack won't be getting any "World's Greatest
Dad" coffee cups.
Ever wonder what happened to Torrance's novel, immortalized
in the book/novel as page after page of, "All work and no play makes Jack
a dull boy," repeated ad infinitum?
Probably not. But now an obsessive fan has
published--posthumously, of course--Jack Torrance's epic tome.
Okay, maybe not epic. Measuring at just 80 pages, the book,
by Stephen King uber-fan Phil Buehler, consists of page after page of,
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," in various
configurations possible on the old-fashioned typewriter Torrance uses in the
book.
Buehler is selling the book on the website Blurb.com for
$24.95, complete with a hysterical review by Matthew Belinkie at
Overthinkingit.com:
All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy is nothing short of a
complete rethinking of what a novel can and should be. It's true that, taken on
its own, All Work is plotless. But like the best of Beckett, the lack of
forward momentum is precisely the point. If it's nearly impossible to read, let
us take a moment to consider how difficult it must have been to write. One is
forced to consider the author, heroically pitting himself against the
Sisyphusean sentence. It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that
gives this book its spellbinding power. Some will dismiss it as simplistic;
that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint.
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!
