Okay, not that many people are, if anyone will, going to read this, but I’ll try my best to make this post as good as I can. I haven’t been tending to this blog as much as I should, considering that I know that in the modern publishing industry, having at least a fairly substantial following on social media is a major factor in an agent even considering looking at a novel-length manuscript. I realize that I have to tend to this blog on a more regular basis.
With that said…
–Originally published in STARTLING MYSTERY STORIES (Fall 1967), reprinted in WEIRD TALES (1990), reprinted again in CEMETERY DANCE (2012); never collected–
Now-legendary writer Stephen King had been submitting stories voraciously to various magazines throughout the 60’s, having started at age 12. Around 60 to a hundred rejection slips and two nails in his bedroom wall to hold them (one fell out because it filled up) later, editor Robert A.W. Lowndes accepted the 2,700-word story “The Glass Floor” for publication in his fairly-long-running quarterly pulp publication STARTLING MYSTERY STORIES (1966-1971), specifically the Fall 1967 issue. At 20 years old, young King had made his first professional sale, for which he was awarded a substantial-for-1967 thirty-five dollars.
In short, it’s not a very good story, with clumsy prose and lack of any real character development. As has been said by other “scholars” or “historians” of Stephen King across the Internet, while not unreadably bad, it’s at best a product of a young storyteller who didn’t have a very good handle of how to tell a story.
Speaking of story, however, it’s neat in the clearly Gothic style and tone for which the piece is going. It also has a Lovecraftian feel about it (H.P. Lovecraft being King’s earliest literary idol, like most horror authors of his generation), but Lovecraft’s ghost is not as clearly present as are the ghosts of others like Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley. Considering how very short this story is, especially by King standards, I’m not going too far into it, because I couldn’t without basically reuttering the whole story here, as funny as that may sound. Without further rambling, Charles Wharton visits the Victorian mansion in which his sister Janice and brother-in-law Anthony Reynard lived—for how long is unspecified. He’s greeted by Anthony’s servant who’s literally described as “hideously old,” which not only is a clear indication that this is coming from the pen of a college student, but also one of the fact of how resentful King likely was of the established order in the U.S., King being quite the hippie in college. That’s not reading into it too much. To describe a character as “hideously old” is so bizarre that there really does have to be something to that. Moving on, though, Charles meets with his brother-in-law and discusses Janice’s untimely and quite frightening death, particularly the surrounding circumstances. After some persuasion to a very reluctant Anthony, Charles finally gets the info out that she fell off a latter while stocking books in the mansion’s huge library room, which does indeed have a mirror-like glass floor. It’s clear that the reflectiveness of the room disoriented her and that’s how she lost her bearings and fell to her death.
After more persuasion from an Anthony who more and more clearly has something to hide, Charles is led to the room where it happened, which has been plastered off. Anthony leaves Charles, as he had “washed his hands of it,” and Charles proceeds to break down the plaster with all the strength he can to break into the room, where he himself becomes immediately disoriented by the floor, and soon gets the physical feeling of falling—“I’m falling!”—as the floor makes it look like he’s suspended in midair since the ceiling is also glass, and he’s only connected by the reflection of his feet. The writing at this point makes it hard to really tell exactly how Charles dies (I’m quite possibly not catching it, having to read between the lines sometimes with King), but it ends with Anthony using a long poll to drag Charles’s body out of the room.
Again, not an awful story, but not good. It does have interesting aspects, the highlight of the story clearly being, as indicated in King’s intro to the WEIRD TALES reprint–the version I have (he makes it clear it’s the same story)–the friction between the two protagonists. To his credit, it is interesting to see the albeit quick development of the hostile relationship between them, which likely existed before the events of the story.
It’s a decent first sale.
David's Solace of Scares 