Like many, I came to this book already very familiar with Kubrick's film adaptation, which I regard as a masterpiece. It always troubled me that [a:Stephen King|3389|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1362814142p2/3389.jpg] was not a fan of the film himself, so I finally decided to read the book in hopes of understanding why this was the case. Admittedly, while I have enjoyed much of King's work in the past, I expected to conclude that the Kubrick film is superior to the source material.

Having finished the book, however, I am unable to say that I prefer one version over the other. Both are excellent works, perfectly rendered for their respective media.

The book is nearly flawless--what I mistook for a dragging pace in the beginning was merely my own impatience, driven by expectations set by the film's slightly different story arc. The film is more loyal to the book than I expected, but it's ultimately a subset of the details and imagery in the book, distilling the key elements of terror into a visual work that goes as far as it needs to, and no further. In the book, King had carte blanche to create whatever he wanted--as well as the room to fully develop family and hotel history--without the limitations of the screen, and the result is a brilliant story that is legitimately terrifying.

Kubrick was wise to pare down imagery that worked brilliantly on paper, leaving much up to the reader's imagination instead of recreating the book scene for scene, but perhaps some of the liberties he took were what chafed King? After all, his book was already a finished story and didn't need any further editorial revision. I can see this point of view, and I can respect it. But a perfectly true film adaptation of this story would not be as satisfying, and ultimately would not do the book justice.

And that would be far, far less than a masterful book like this one deserves.