Nowadays, it’s easy to see Stephen King’s name and have a conceived notion of his legacy. He remains well into old age one of the most prolific authors of his generation, producing masterpieces that dig under people’s skin and recontextualizes fears we’ve long taken for granted. In this Short Stop series, I will explore a period before he was the icon we know and love. Even with a handful of bestsellers to his name, his status had yet to cement. That is why I’ve chosen to take a look at his first story collection, “Night Shift,” and hopefully get a glimpse into the writer taking shape, before his style was cemented into a cultural touchstone. Was he always the master of horror, or was there a simpler time when he was as messy and weird as the rest of us? All it takes is turning the page to find out.
Among the fabled stories that I was curious to discover in “Night Shift,” “Lawnmower Man” was high on the list. I have managed to avoid any knowledge of the plot, let alone that the film was so controversially different from the source material that King sued to have his name removed. With all that in mind, I wanted to know if this was going to be a horrifying story of a lawncare accident gone awry, or if there was some weird spin on the pool boy trope by making him murderous. Admittedly, this anthology hasn’t had a lot of great original ideas so far, but there was hope that he’d deliver something so horrifying and unique that he’d make you scared to hire another man to mow your lawn.
The simple truth is that I hate this story so much. Unlike “Trucks,” which at least had a formidable idea, this is the author flexing his muscles as a comedy writer and producing one of the most surreal works imaginable. Everything is crazy-pants from the opening page, and, by the time the central lawnmowerist appears, I’m not totally sure that King has done a commendable job establishing the practicality of this universe. Sure, it’s a short story and uses ambiguity to greater effect, but from the minute the madness began, I had to ask why he’d want to go in this direction. It’s bold and unforgettable, sure, but it’s also painfully strange.
Allegedly, the concept was inspired by an older novella with a similar plot about a Pan god and cultlike behavior. To his credit, this is paid homage with some throwaway references that allow the story to build its own vision of American suburbia. If there’s a difference, it’s that protagonist Harold Parkette is unlikable to a comical degree from the first page. It would be easy to say that he’s a Mr. Wilson type for a Dennis the Menace stand-in who mows his lawn. Only he’s self-entitled, constantly talking in a way meant to boost his status as being above everyone around him. Compared to just about everyone else in “Night Shift” so far, he is the most unabashed asshole next to maybe “The Ledge.” King has the tact to not make him completely repugnant given that we have many more pages with him, but there is a sense that he’s deserving of his demise.
Harold is not a man who knows much of anything. He has a vision for how things should be done, and yet lacks the skills to achieve things. It’s the reason that his comedic skewering of his lawncare boy may cause a few laughs, but King is slowly peeling back his warped vision of the American Dream and the trope of a beautiful home with a well-kept exterior. This is a story about reaching for status while using other people selfishly. There’s no sense of community. If anything, he’s building this ridiculous, unsustainable status for his own ego.
Is the boy a flawed character? What child would not make a few mistakes? They’re inexperienced, entering an adult world that has expectations he could never fully grasp. He is probably told that if he works hard enough, he too can own a house and hire his own lawn boy one day. Ideally, the difference would be that he sympathizes with his employee in ways that Harold doesn’t. At what point does humanity cease to matter? So long as it gets results, chastising lawnmowerists doesn’t matter. They can lie and say it builds character when all it does is keep Harold from finding ways to solve his own problems.
Which is all to say that King’s first red flag in the text is why the boy was fired. He is The Master of Horror for a reason, yet his decision to build this story around an accidental murder of a cat strikes me as odd. It’s a practical morbidity all things considered, but it’s so over the top that the trauma should lead to a dark drama. Everything surrounding this incident is such a dark comedy that it feels disjointed. The only upside is that it gets things to the heart of the conflict. Harold sells his lawnmower and, over the course of the year, never finds a replacement. Not until the real reason that I hate this story.
Anyone who knows comedy writing will know what the author is doing. He reads an ad for a company called Pastoral Greenery and Outdoor Services. Things sound like they’re going okay, but the other shoe has to drop. There needs to be a conflict with the central lawnmower man. The initial conflict has a few hiccups, but not enough to steer Harold down another path. It’s the type of moment that confirms not only is he arrogant, but he’s not very intuitive. There had to be a reason why it took him this long to find a replacement. Surely even a sympathetic passerby would’ve cut the grass down once in the months of growth.
To this point, the story may be a bit rocky, but the mystery is still there. If the reveal carries enough weight, it can go a long way to redemption. And yet, things slowly fall apart from there. It fits into the world of broad humor where the idea is to be as gross and unpleasant as possible. The lawnmower man says that he is forced to mow in very unorthodox ways. A smart man would’ve felt some hesitation at this point, but Harold lets him go, desperate to have the beauty he once possessed. As a desperate man, he’s settled for a complete cartoon character of a response.
In a book full of dated stories, few things feel as archaic as the lawnmower man himself. King writes him as an obese man who is very unhygienic. He must perform his operations while naked, and in the biggest left turn, is seen eating grass. He has become one with nature to the point his body is producing green substances. It’s a memorable image, but the punchline feels painfully simple. This is what the horror is based around? It feels like making fun of a mentally ill man without taking account of why he’s causing havoc. The commitment to the bit is admirable for King, but there’s not a lot there beyond attacking a character who may be in a cult, but is deeply damaged.
The greater intention redeems the arc only mildly. Harold is a man who has been written in a way deserving of this fate. He was unable to negotiate a better offer when people liked him. Even so, the shorthand takes too many jumps for me to feel like the lawnmower man is plausible. There’s no contrast to suggest that he should exist in this world. He’s merely an ugly character made for the sake of cruel irony.
Long story short, the lawnmower man gets results. The story ends with the punchline that this madman did his job perfectly. However, it came at the expense of supreme discomfort and Harold’s demise. By calling the police, the lawnmower man decides to murder him and bury his remains in the bird bath. The story ends by sounding closer to a familiar true crime case. It’s a nice glimpse of where King’s career will go in the decades to come, but I think the contrast of brutal deaths with the wacky comedy never fully lands. It’s pushing an era of slapstick and visual comedy into a grotesque horror story without caring to craft something sensible around it.
There’s a good chance that King has written the ultimate lawnmower horror story, unfortunately. It’s not an evergreen topic that offers many opportunities. Sometimes it takes a giant leap like a grass-eating fatso in a cult. Even so, this is far from a nuanced character study that makes the payoff feel rewarding. It’s mostly confusing, erratic, and some of the author’s worst tendencies. The only upside is that it fascinates me why this is his sense of humor. Admittedly, he wrote that in May 1975 for Cavalier in a time when ribald comedy was less concerned with realism. Given that he also wrote “Battleground” as a story about a child envisioning his toys in a violent aftermath of war, it makes sense that he’s subverting the innocent suburbia with imagery that might’ve been relevant from The Vietnam War. Add in that Charles Manson was in recent memory, it’s easy to assume that violent cults were on the public’s mind in a way that makes a grass-eating nutjob easy to buy. There was paranoia of who you let into your private quarters, and that’s maybe the only horror that excels.
Despite my belief this is among the worst short stories he’s written here, “The Lawnmower Man” would go on to have one of the most prominent legacies. It would be adapted by Walt Simonson for Bizarre Adventures in comic form. There was an additional Dollar Baby version in 1987 directed by future noteworthy filmmaker Michael De Luca. Even so, anybody who knows about “The Lawnmower Man” knows about it most likely from the film adaptation by New Line Cinema. The Lawnmower Man (1992) is so notoriously not a faithful telling that it inspired the author to have his name removed from the project. The story was so antithetical to the vision that it focused on people being manipulated by computer experiments. It should also be noted that it was based on an unrelated screenplay called “Cyber God.” Despite the notoriety, it would have a sequel in 1996. Ironically, it’s not the only short story adaptation to be maligned by King. The only difference between this and Graveyard Shift (1990) is that there wasn’t a lawsuit.
Those who appreciate this one may be responding more to the dark comedy elements that are so over the top and strange that it’s hard to not have some visceral opinion. Even if I hate this one, it’s still presenting something singular, so left field that it could only come from one person. The most it does is ask me why King would ever think this was interesting. For a man who is capable of looking at a lake and forming a narrative around the eerie solitude, why was he unable to look into his backyard and find a better idea? This is a misfire that still managed to prove how beloved King was by horror fans. In another world, this story would’ve disappeared without any greater legacy. Instead, he was seen as the new genius in town that everyone needed to get their hands on. Pity the person who was stuck having to adapt this clunker.
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