THE WORDS OF HELL
About Word processor of the Gods by Stephen King.
I had forgotten Stephen King for a long time. My wife and I loved him, but twenty years ago, we stopped reading his books. We didn’t like his recents novels. In spite of that, I still reread two of his stories: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption and Dolan’s Cadillac, and The Stand, of course, his biggest novel. The first one is more famous because of the movie, Cadena Perpetua in Spanish and Les évadés in French.
But six years ago I found a very amusing story: Word processor of the Gods. It was published in Playboy in January 1983 and later in the short story collection, Skeleton crew.
Can you think that what you wrote on the screen will arrive in the real’s life too? Can you imagine if you write my English teacher is Imma (or Amalia) and later you tape delete the words vanished on the screen… and the teacher too? No?
So… He is Stephen King himself. The very king of screams and the heartbeat out of control. This story is very hard and it has a lot of surprises and terrific events.
It’s written in American English and has a lot of informal vocabulary, which are quite hard to understand for me. For example:
pooped (= very tired, "crevé", “esgotat”)
bodice-ripper (a romantic and erotic historical novel, from bodice (= "corsage") and ripper (= "déchirer", “esquinçar”))
helluva (= "hell of a," meaning "very," e.g., "sacrément", “fotimer”)
screw up (= a big mistake, "merdier")
yellow dog (= a coward, "salopard", “porc”)
shitty (= very bad, "merdique")
For Christ’s sake! (= "Pour l’amour de Dieu!")
rug-monkey or rug-rat (= a kid, "chiard", “un mocós”)
buck (= a dollar).
I have a bilingual edition in English and French. If that suits you…
Mario Candela
(With collaboration of Chat GPT in the revision and correction)
EOI Alcoi - English Cours 1B1 January 2025.
