Spoilers and Opinions for Stephen King's The Institute
Or: why didn’t Stephen King do more research on Minnesota before writing a book partially set in Minnesota?
This is not a conventional book review of Stephen King’s The Institute. This is my reflection on the things I liked about the book and the things I didn’t like and, specifically, the things Stephen King got right and wrong about Minnesota in his 2019 novel The Institute.
I’m writing this because after I finished reading The Institute, I went to Google—like I usually do after I finish reading a book—and looked up the thing about it that nagged at me the most. I looked up variants of it:
The institute stephen king minnesota
What stephen king got wrong about minnesota in the institute
Did stephen king research minnesota before writing the institute
Stephen king minnesota
Minnesota the institute
The results varied, but suffice it to say that the only thing I found from these searches was pages encouraging me to buy The Institute, reviews of the Institute and, in the case of the last search term above, information about art institutes in Minnesota.
Which means I had to do what I do when I google something and don’t find the thing I’m looking for. I had to write about it.
Art Imitates Art Imitates Art
The five words above are the best summary I can give for The Institute. Here’s a longer one:
A novel set in a secret facility, where superpowered kids with telekinesis and telepathy are put in dunk tanks and used for clandestine assassinations. Stephen King’s apparent homage to Stranger Things—which one could call ironic, considering Stranger Things is an homage to various Stephen King books, especially Firestarter and The Body and Carrie and The Shining.
Here’s a shorter one:
Stephen King writes Stranger Things fan fiction (which, if you forgot, is Stephen King fan fiction.)
Now, let’s talk about the Minnesota stuff.
The things that King got wrong about Minnesota begin before you even open the book:
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV.
That’s the first sentence of the book’s summary. You’ll find that on Amazon, the back of the book, etc. But it’s wrong: Falcon Heights is not a suburb of Minneapolis, to begin with. It’s a suburb of St. Paul, which is not the same city as Minneapolis.
That’s not the only issue. I had a notes app on my phone of the things Stephen King got wrong about Minnesota in The Institute, although I also did take some notes about things I did like about the book or that he got right.
Why did Stephen King set the book in a place he knows nothing about?
I think King set parts of the book in Minneapolis because he’s been here three or four times and he thinks it resembles Maine enough that he can fake his way through setting parts of the book here.
To be fair, very little of the book takes place in Minnesota—but the protagonist hails from our great state and, well, I had a hard time suspending disbelief because of all the things King gets wrong about it.
King did the same thing with Duma Key—opened the novel in Minnesota, had the protagonist hail from there, and then took the action to a place he seemed to know better.
Before I go on, the only example I can find of anyone writing about what King got right and wrong about Minnesota in The Institute is this excerpt from a review in The Star Tribune:
It appears that when Stephen King was in town this year for the inaugural Wordplay book festival, he did a little studying up on us. One of the protagonists in this gripping story is from Minneapolis. Only a few pages of the action take place here, but there are repeated nods to the city throughout. And not just obvious ones, such as the Mall of America. King includes references to neighborhoods and even the streets that run through them.
There’s no mention of what he got wrong. Although the Star Tribune is also mentioned frequently throughout the novel, so it’s possible they didn’t want to bite the hand that feeds. (More on this below.)
Now, let’s go in order through the other things King got wrong about Minnesota that bothered me the most:
The Star Tribune
Throughout the novel, the protagonist goes to the Star Tribune website on his computer at The Institute to try to figure out if his parents were murdered. (Spoilers: they were, as mentioned above.)
While it’s cool that Stephen King did enough research to know the Star Tribune exists, what bothered me about the running references to the Star Tribune is that:
He never mentions the pretty strict paywall the Star Tribune uses, while mentioning the New York Times paywall every time that’s mentioned
Luke also thinks of the Star Tribune as “the Trib”, something I’ve never heard anyone do ever. It’s called the Strib., the Star Tribune, or in his case he might just think of it as “the news”.
Also, it’s weird that he constantly references it, when The Pioneer Press, while being the inferior newspaper, is the newspaper for the St. Paul side of the river traditionally and would be just as likely to cover Falcon Heights murders, with a less strict paywall.
Next up, the thing that really bothered me that started early in the book and never stopped. (Yes, I mentioned this above.)
Falcon Heights is not a suburb of Minneapolis
Luke constantly thinks of himself as being “from Minneapolis”, something a person from Falcon Heights would not do, because a) Falcon Heights is not Minneapolis and b) it’s not even a suburb of Minneapolis.
It’s not that he tells people he’s from Minneapolis. In the moments we are inside his thoughts, Luke thinks of himself as being from Minneapolis. That might happen in other places, but that’s not something people do in the Twin Cities—especially when they’re from a suburb of St. Paul.
I have never heard anyone in or from Minnesota say “bug dope”
He keeps calling bug spray “bug dope.” That must be a Maine thing. People from Minnesota do not say “bug dope.”
Why would someone who lives in Falcon Heights go to AMC Southdale?
He obviously meant Rosedale. Did no one fact check anything in this book? Why would someone drive across town from Falcon Heights to the AMC Southdale, regularly (he refers to Southdale as his regular theater), when there is an AMC in Rosedale, minutes from Falcon Heights?
Things Stephen King Got Right About Minnesota
Then there are some things I liked about King’s use of Minnesota:
Falcon Heights. It’s cool he took the time to choose a real place, even if he got all the details wrong.
His paternal grandfather was from Mankato. I bought that.
“He was a city boy, but Minnesota was the land of ten thousand lakes.” Cheesy line, but I kinda liked it.
Buzzin’ 102. It’s a real radio station.
“His grandfather’s little aluminum fishing skiff”. Realistic detail.
So should you read Stephen King’s The Institute?
The Stephen King completionist should. Most others don’t need to bother.
One last thought: King does something with The Institute that he also did with his 2008Duma Key—opened the novel in Minnesota, had the protagonist hail from there, and then took the action to a place he seemed to know better.