All Work And No Play Makes Jack A Dull Boy

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, immortalised 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!