The Book ‘All Work and No Play’ from The Shining (1980)

Anyone remotely familiar with The Shining’s lead character Jack Torrance understands the madness that succumbs him. It is a role that is acted with an equal amount of intensity, nuance, and genius, by Jack Nicholson. It seems improbable now in hindsight to view The Shining and to imagine anyone but Nicholson portraying the demented and cracked, Jack Torrance.

Amongst the most iconic scenes within the film features Mr. Torrance manically typing away at his typewriter, at the edge of his mental facilities and increasingly slipping into an abyss. Wendy Torrance, his wife, due to an increasing amount of worry for her husband, discovers exactly what he has been writing. Hundreds of pages containing the same sentence, ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’

The artist Robert Wechsler has conceptualised how a version of Jack Torrance’s words might appear like in novel form.