‘In many ways the world is nothing but a pile of shit. But it can also be very beautiful…’
Stephen King initially created the alter ego Richard Bachman because his publishers would only put out one novel a year, and he is so prolific that he wanted to get more work out there. That being said, Bachman is more than just King under a different alias. The books published under the name Bachman (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man, Thinner, The Regulators and Blaze) are also stylistically different from much of King’s work. They are typically characterised by a focus on the protagonist rather than on an ensemble and also by their bitter, cynical themes and downbeat endings. Thinner, the final Bachman book to be published before his real identity was discovered, is a wild ride culminating in a typically bleak conclusion…
After accidentally running over an old gypsy woman (to use the book’s parlance), Billy Halleck, an overweight Connecticut lawyer, is cursed by the woman’s ancient Romani father to always lose weight no matter how much he eats. As the weight falls off, Halleck becomes more and more desperate, alienating his colleagues, his doctor and eventually his wife.
One of the issues with the Bachman books is that, aside from The Long Walk, the protagonists are often intensely dislikable. This needn’t be a problem if they are at least interesting, but invariably, they aren’t. And we spend so much time with them. In books such as Roadwork, this bug is terminal. In The Running Man, it’s a little more forgivable as the world around the protagonist is so interesting. In Thinner, Halleck certainly isn’t a likeable character, but he is, at least, nuanced and layered. We know everything we need to know about Barton Dawes from Roadwork and Ben Richards from The Running Man within the first 50 pages of each novel. Halleck’s true nature is only revealed to us piecemeal, a technique which is much more satisfying and much more successful. I will also admit that I have a soft spot for the character of Richard “The Hammer” Ginelli here. He is the most cliched Italian-American mobster character imaginable, but he’s also a lot of fun. I found it impossible to read his dialogue within the novel without thinking of Fat Tony from The Simpsons (I have subsequently discovered that Ginelli is played in the film adaptation of Thinner by Joe Mantegna, who does indeed also voice Fat Tony from The Simpsons – lovely stuff).
Thinner is undoubtedly one of the better Bachman books; in fact, it’s probably my favourite after The Long Walk. It’s an easy, breezy read despite the dark subject matter and King clearly relishes describing Halleck’s horrifying weight loss in great detail. Sure, its portrayal of the Romani community is… well… racist, and the book delights in the description of its overweight characters, but 1984 was a very different time. Put all that aside and there’s a genuinely entertaining page turner here.