Drunken Fireworks

You need to listen to the short story "Drunken Fireworks" by Stephen King. Don't worry - No blood. Back in 2016 it was rumored James Franco would star in a motion picture based on the short story, but there's been no news since then. Franco starred in the big screen adaptation of King's 11-22-63, as the time traveler going back to prevent the Kennedy Assassination. Here's a review of Drunken Fireworks…

 

Stephen King's "Drunken Fireworks" is, for the time being, an audio-only short piece of fiction. The eighty-minute yarn is narrated by Tim Sample and feels as if King could have penned it with Sample, the king of Maine comedy, in mind.

It tells the story of Alden McCausland and his mother, who live in a three-room cabin on the edge of Lake Abenaki, and how they got caught up in an escalating pyrotechnic battle of the Fourth of July night sky with the Massimos clan. The Massimos are people from away who summer on the far shore in their 20-room spread, with guesthouse, tennis and badminton courts.

REVIEW

"Drunken Fireworks." By Stephen King; Audiobook read by Tim Sample. Simon & Schuster audio download: $9.99. June 2015.

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McCausland recounts from jail the morning of July 5th how the fireworks arms race got out of hand over the years. Alden and "Ma" felt compelled to go bigger and more spectacular with each successive year, trying to outdo the moneyed Massimos, who — being from Rhode Island — surely must have crime connections where the size of firepower is no object. What started out with sparklers and firecrackers ramped up to include M80s, then fireworks known as the Declaration of Independence, and ultimately — smuggled in from China via Canada — something known as a CE4.

The last battle has locals and people from away ringing Lake Abenaki to see what the rival camps will throw up in a grand attempt to top one another. It is spectacular, with the finale being wildly beyond what anyone could have foreseen.

"Drunken Fireworks" will be included in "The Bazaar of Bad Dreams," a collection of new King short stories, to be released in early November. In audio form, it echoes — in King fashion — the kind of oral stories that no doubt have been told on Maine porches in the dim light of a summer's evening for generations. It strikes me, however, as a better format for Sample than King. Just the same, King must have had a blast writing it.