" (quoted in Matthews: 1982)
Gray Matter similarly deals with addiction. However in this case there are two protagonists, one is a victim of addiction and the other may become a victim of this victim. Henry is the person who owns a local store from where Richie's son buys beers for his father. Richie is a recluse who is living on disability funds. He is completely confined to his room and rarely ever comes out. No one has seen him for years. The only person who knows about his current state is his son. The little boy tells Henry how Richie has turned into an abominable blob of flesh consuming beer and dead cats. Once this is known, Henry and other local men decide to deliver beer to Richie themselves. When the reach his apartment, they smell a strong stench. When Richie steps out, everyone gasps in horror as they discover that Richie is no longer a human but has turned into a blob of fungus. In the end as everyone runs away, Henry stays and pulls out his pistol to shoot the creature. However the story ends with the readers not knowing how survived the...
In these stories we witness brutality at its peak as quitters Inc. tries to employ violent tactics to achieve high success rate. In the second story, brutality appears in a more subtle form. It's one man's violent attack on himself and the society through addiction that nearly turned him into a beast. Violence takes a new form in this story. This man is responsible for missing people in the community and Henry realizes that he might be eating them. In both stories the common factor is addiction. This addiction is responsible for violence. However in the two cases, protagonists do not have the same role to perform.
References
Shine of the Times," an interview with Stephen King by Marty Ketchum, Pat Cadigan, and Lewis Shiner. Published in Shayol, Summer 1979, Volume One, Number Three.
Jack Matthews: "Novelist Loves His Nightmares" Published in Detroit Free Press, November 12, 1982.
