MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY
SPECIAL ART CONNECTION SECTIONS
GROUP OF SEVEN ⎔ SNOW WHITE ⎔ CAESAR ⎔ COLVILLE ⎔ VESUVIUS
COME OUT, COME OUT ⎔ VICTORIA HOLT ⎔ GRADY PAINTINGS ⎔ WALL RUGS
ART OF THE LOBBY ⎔ LESSON KEY BIRDS ⎔ SHARED LIBRARY
Just to get it out of the way, here’s a graphic that shows all the books that repeat between the Boulder and Miami apartments. The only one I’ve ID’d so far is The Door, which I’ll discuss in a moment.
The book under Hallorann’s The Door is in the style of something like an Everyman’s Library release, where all the spines look the same, so it would probably be impossible to ever ID, but the Torrances have two working almost like horns above the doctor (one of which goes missing in the closer shot, and one of which falls sideways, partly hiding behind a curtain). I’m not sure if this was meant to suggest the twin-ness between the two The Door copies, but if it was by chance from the Everyman’s Library, that could be a cute joke about the crossover.
Finally, there’s a book with “Europe” in the title twice, from Hallorann’s nightstand and at the bottom of a stack on the Torrance coffee table. You can only imagine the lengths I’ve gone to over the past year to ID this one, and to no avail. My best guess is (if it’s not a made-up book) that the title is Europe Open Europe Closed, since both Europes are followed by a much harder to see word in a faded pinkish script font, both of which start with a large looping letter like O or C or Q. Another possibility is that the second word is part of the title, and the fourth word is the author’s last name(?). In any event, the obvious conclusion is that this book is connected to WWII (like two of the other books in this pile). We’ll discuss the significance of that in a bit.
I’m also noticing now that the book beside Hallorann’s Europe book looks a bit like the Torrance maybe-Good News Bible, which would be apt, but it’s hard to tell.
Oh, and one last thing before we tackle the most (visibly) book-heavy sequence of the film: in the Torrance apartment, between shots, there’s a fair bit of books moving around between shelves, and in the shot with the most visible titles, the lamp between the speakers has completely vanished so that even more titles could squeeze in. I would gather from this alone that Kubrick was doing a bit of an Orgy of Evidence on us.
MAIN PAGE ⎔ SECTION PAGE ⎔ SITE MAP ⎔ GLOSSARY
OTHER MAIN PAGES FOR SHINING ANALYSIS
THE MIRRORFORM ⎔ THE BEATLES ⎔ THE RUM AND THE RED
BACKGROUND ART ⎔ OVERLOOK PHOTOGRAPHS ⎔ GOLDEN SPIRALS
PHI GRIDS ⎔ PATTERNS ⎔ VIOLENCE AND INDIGENA ⎔ ABSURDITIES
THE STORY ROOM ⎔ ANIMAL SYMBOLS ⎔ THE ANNOTATED SHINING
EYE SCREAM 