The End of the Whole Mess: And Other Stories [Audiobook, Ungekürzte Ausgabe] [Englisch] [Audio CD]

EDIT: After a day of using it I knocked it down one star, for the packaging and whatnot. Go to the end of the review for that.

These four stories, from the "Nightmares & Dreamscapes" collection marks the first time I've been able to get my hands on the story "The End of the Whole Mess" on disc. While like much of King's short story collections, N&D is a hit and miss affair (often more miss than hit), I have to say that "The End of the Whole Mess" might very well be his finest story in the book.

I first heard the story read years ago at a public library that had the books on tape. Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Election) read it, and his voice is perfect for this story. He perfectly nails every note, every inflection, every stammer and stutter of the character, as the character slowly loses his mind.

Without ruining the story, it's about a man who along with his brother tried to bring world peace to the planet, with devastatingly horrific results. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. No more is this evident than in this story here. You have people who mean the very best, and their intentions are noble, except as with most everything, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many outcomes you plan for, there's always going to be that one you didn't calculate, which results in disaster.

And that's "The End of the Whole Mess" in a nutshell.

The other short stories on this four disc package are alright, but fall into the "miss" category, at least for me. Other people have enjoyed those short stories, I just didn't get into them. For audio books you have to appreciate the voice of the reader, and for me while Broderick's voice was excellent for "The End of the Whole Mess", I just didn't get into the other three.

"The Doctor's Case" is a spin on the Sherlock Holmes/Doctor Watson type of story, and is read by Tim Curry (Stephen King's "IT", Rocky Horror Picture Show). "The Moving Finger", no doubt will plague those who've had nightmares about what's in your bathroom sink, and is read by experimental musician Eve Beglarian.

And rounding out the four stories (each on it's own disc) is "Home Delivery", which deals with a young pregnant widow who is being attacked by Zombies, which is read by the author himself.

I bought this specifically for "The End of the Whole Mess" so the other three stories I won't listen to very much, if at all.

I kept going back and forth over the last several months on whether or not to get this, and finally I bit the bullet and did, and I'm glad I did.

A few things about the packaging and discs.

It comes in a box that you open up at the top and it acts like a slipcase of sorts, only you can seal it. Inside that is a folded box that unfolds to reveal four discs in little pockets. So they can be scratched if you're not careful, but they are not tightly fitted in there, so it shouldn't be a big problem.

Also, when I inserted the disc into Itunes to rip it to my harddrive, the tracks were not named, nor were there any information to be had via the net (by searching Itunes/Windows Media Player).

So the tracks are simply "The End of the Whole Mess Disc 1 Track 1" and so on. Not a major deal to me, although it would have been nice if there had been names. Although when it's not split by chapters, I guess it might be hard to label a short story split into 18 tracks.

The tracks are NOT split evenly, so it's not like they cheaply just set it to 5 minutes per track or anything. It looks like a regular album, tracks of different lengths. Just no names. The album title is there though, and the artist is listed as "Stephen King".

Hope you enjoy it if you get it! As I said, The End of the Whole Mess itself is worth the price of admission!

EDIT: Okay so after ripping the whole cd of "The End of the Whole Mess" I put it on my Ipod, and then listened to it later. For some unknown reason, the first 14 tracks of the disc is The End of the Whole Mess, while the last four tracks are the beginning of The Doctor's Case read by Tim Curry. There is no rhyme or reason to this, as each disc is labeled as a separate story.

Then when you insert Disc 2 "The Doctor's Case", it picks up where it left off on Disc 1.

The cassettes did this on the Nightmares & Dreamscapes Tape, as many stories were too long for a single cassette, although End of the Whole Mess was on 1 tape by itself.

I don't know why they did this, and didn't even label it as such. Eitherway, I was forced to knock a star off for this.

I am used to Stephen King stories that have me upset when I need to stop to do something else. That is not the case with this one. I found myself questioning whether it was worth returning to. The stories are actually quite boring and nonsensical. I have read/listened to other Nightmares and Dreamscapes stories, and they were typical King short stories. These were horrible at best. I don't know what happened.

I haven't read it yet, but I am sure I will like it. Have not found a novel from him that I don't like yet.