A Word before we continue...

I used to have, what you might call, a book problem. It would be common practice for me to wander around Waldenbooks, or Borders, or Barnes & Noble etc. on payday and drop some hard-earned ducats on some new reading material. Over the years, I've gotten quite the diverse collection of books. I don't do it anymore. I rarely buy books anymore, because of space and money. I have learned to love the library, despite it's limitations in instant gratification.

It's always been one of my life goals to have a fancy library in my home, where I can settle down on a nice leather something with a cup of coffee, or whiskey, and dive into a book. Fancy libraries like this used to fill my nightly dreams.

Reality has boxes of books stored in my basement, because there's no where else for them to go, so while I envision the library, the collection currently sits more like this.

What's the point, you say? The point is this: In digging through said boxes, looking for all the Stephen King books I own, I've become acutely aware of the repercussions of my old habits.

Here's my Stephen King collection, at least, the ones I could readily locate.

If you take a close look, you'll note a few things, as I have. In the past, if a book wasn't readily available to me, I'd simply repurchase it. If I saw a book that I knew I already owned at a yard sale, I'd likely buy it. Because of these character flaws, you can see 2 different copies of Dark Tower II: The Drawing of The Three in the bottom row, two separate editions of The Bachman Books in the middle (I have a good reason for that, I swear, but we'll get to it when the time is right), two copies of the original version of The Stand which are next to a version of The Unabridged version of The Stand (which is above the hardcover special edition of the Unabridged version of The Stand), two copies of Four Past Midnight (I have no good reason for that), and finally the original version of Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger next to two (TWO!) copies of the re-edited re-release of the same book.

Again, this is simply what I found through a cursory dig. I can pick out books that I know I have (somewhere) but I'm missing, such as The Regulators, Full Dark No Stars, and IT. Where the fuck is my copy of IT?

"It's down here with the rest of your books, Jeremy...

They all float down heeeeeeeerrrrrreeeee..."

Now, I'm about to dig into 'The Shining'. Before I do, I wanted to say one last thing. I felt a little bored in the content of the initial entries of this blog, and I wondered why. I think it's because the first few books in Stephen King's career don't really associate to memories for me. That should really start rolling after I get past 'The Shining', because then comes 'Rage', the first book in 'The Bachman Books'. That's when the real memories start to kick in. 

Thanks for sticking with me so far on this rollercoaster. We're still clickety-clacking up that first hill, but the people in line are looking more and more like ants, and we're almost to the top. Don't bother keeping your hands inside the car. It's more fun when you give in, raise'em up, and go along for the ride.

2. 'Salem's Lot: It can't possibly be...?

I attempted to read 'Salem's Lot once as a young man. As a boy, really. Piled in with the rest of my mother's books in the old wooden magazine stand, I went at it and found that I didn't care for it.

I'd read 'Night Shift' and I liked it. A collection of short stories, all scary and mysterious, I'd wanted to read something else by this King fellow, and 'Salem's Lot was available to me.

It's slow narrative, with overly-drawn out descriptions of the Maine countryside and tangential musings into small-town rural life of the 1970's didn't hold my young interest, and I abandoned it, at some point. The way that kids will do when there are other distractions, like Hulk Hogan and BMX jumps and the inevitable call of pick-up baseball at the park. As I wandered off to simply be a boy, the tale of 'Salem's Lot was left behind.

Some 20-odd years later, I made a mental note to go back to it. At the time, I found myself a full-fledged 'Dark Tower' junkie. Stephen King's near-fatal accident had awakened his sense of urgency and responsibility to the Constant Reader, and he set out to finish the tale of Roland the Gunslinger. After scattering the first 4 books over 15 years, King announced that he would finish Roland's tale in one fell swoop, writing the remaining 3 books immediately. 

The first 'new' Dark Tower book, Wolves Of The Calla, hit the shelves in November of 2003. I will save my tales of that book for it's proper entry, but the appearance of a character from 'Salem's Lot triggered my desire to read the book.

After all, if it related to the Tower, I HAD to know all about it. That was the kind of obsession I had.

...But we'll get to that in due time.

I have hundreds of books in the basement, much to the chagrin of my wife. I haven't taken an accurate tally, but I'd say that I own between 60-75% of Stephen King's collected works. 'Salem's Lot, however, is not listed among those in my clutches. (EDIT: I did, in fact, own a copy of the book, but apparently missed it in my cursory search of inventory. As you'll see later, I'm notorious for owning more than one copy of certain books, because I'm terrible at keeping track of them.)

Thankfully, Amazon had the book on sale through their Kindle store. The library was out of stock, and I couldn't find a copy at my local used-book store. I downloaded 'Salem's Lot onto my iPad and dove in. The slow narrative that pushed me away as a child, instead embraced me as an adult. Coming rather quickly off of the experience of reading 'Carrie' with it's disjointed writing, interspersed with faux-clinical/scientific excerpts, the 'Lot' was much more soothing and steady. King takes his time setting the pace and letting you get a feel for his characters... well, he does eventually.

See, the book doesn't open in the town of 'Salem's Lot. It opens with a nameless man and a boy, living a fugitive life making their way across America. It doesn't really say what they're on the run from, only that the man makes sure to keep tabs on Jerusalem's Lot in the news from a distance.

Who are these people? A Man and a boy, on the cusp of his teenage years, but somehow so much older in wisdom and experience?

From there, King takes us back to 'Salem's Lot. Back to 'before', if you will. Our main man, Ben Mears, is a mildly successful author (modeled after who, I wonder?), who spent a few years living in 'Salem's Lot as a young man. He's returned to the town to work on his next book and to exorcise some personal demons.

King's knack of writing, his familiar voice that seems to weave through all of his works, really makes it's first appearance here. It may have been faintly there in 'Carrie', but here, he really employs that device of omnipotence in flight. He takes you along as a tour guide as he flies through, peeks in on character's lives, tells your their thoughts and secrets, then swiftly moves on to the next. It's like a blitz of introductions at a cocktail party while he whispers everyone's details and gossip in your ear.

Ben meets a girl, Ben falls in love. Something strange is afoot. Tragedies and mysteries begin to sprout like mold. Evidence begins to pile up to those who have difficulty accepting what's REALLY happening to their town.

One thing I consciously noticed in the book is the observation that human nature's inability to believe in the irrational is precisely what gives it the ability to do it's damage.

After all, who would really want to admit that they think vampires are taking out people in their quiet little town?

Let me say this: King does a wonderful job of painting 'Salem's Lot in a microcosmic small-town USA, kind of way. Hard working people drink at the town bar next to the lazy drunks that people just kind of accept as part of their community. Kids still go to the drugstore for a hand-drawn soda or some ice cream at the marble counter top. People gossip on one another using the party line telephone.

(Which brings me to an aside: When my children read this book, they may not be aware of what a home telephone is, much less the party line phone system.)

Eventually, Ben and his merry group of believers have to face the vampires. Classic good vs evil. No spoilers, but King doesn't always write the happily ever after fairy tales that you want in your heart. Sometimes, the good guys win, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes, they don't all come out on the other side.

'Salem's Lot made me want to read it. I wanted to read 'Carrie' because I was anxious to get into the heart of this project. With 'Salem's Lot, I was compelled to rejoin the story at every opportunity. I found that I had to force myself to slow my reading down to really absorb EVERY word. (I have a tendency to turn into a fast reader/skimmer at times. It's a technique I learned in school about reading down the middle of paragraphs and how the peripherals of your eyes catch enough on either side to allow your brain to construct the context.)

There's a soothing simplicity in the book's setting, and in it's characters. It's as if the town is remote enough that only the BIG worries of the world (Nuclear tension with Russia, Energy Crisis, The Boston Red Sox) had enough strength to ripple out to the Lot. Otherwise, the world just kind of rolled on by and people went about their business. We certainly don't have that today. Granted, I live in a pretty small town, and if a vampire starting picking off the citizens subtly (as in the book), I'd find myself none the wiser, until it was probably too late. That's what I get for not talking to people and gossiping at the local bar with all of the other people who I graduated high school with. We never had the energy or the smarts to break free of this town, so we foster and reinvest our love/hate relationship with it.

I live here. I support my town, the schools that raised me for better or worse, and the local volunteer fire department. There are good people that live here, just as there are in any town. I don't go to the local bar and relive our overinflated high school glory days with old classmates who haven't accomplished much else in their days since. I have no interest in that. So, I wouldn't know when my old classmates stopped coming around or showing their faces in the daytime. I only know this:

If someone comes to my door after dark to talk to me about a class reunion with dark, hypnotic eyes, I'm not inviting them in. You never invite them in. ;-)

Knock Knock

1. Carrie: How much of a bully am I, really?

It is said that, if you see a movie after you read the book, you'll inevitably be disappointed. There are few exceptions to that general rule.

I have also found, in reverse, if you read a book AFTER you see a movie, you'll almost certainly find yourself disappointed in the movie.

Such is the case with 'Carrie'.

I'd never actually sat down and read the book 'Carrie' before. Of course, everyone has at least a passing cultural reference point to the 1976 movie starring Sissy Spacek. I'd also recently sat down with the wife to watch the re-boot starring Chloe Moretz. The 2013 remake was slightly closer to the original in that they could CGI special effects to achieve a bigger wrath of destruction in the third act, but the social updates to bring it to present day changed the feel to me. Although, in a way, Carrie's isolation is heightened in a world where everyone is constantly connected with Facebook and text messages and the internet, and Carrie is still locked in a closet with her bible thanks to Momma.

In the interest of this project/self-challenge, I purchased the book through iTunes and sat down to it. In trying to figure out how I was going to address the book for this entry, I realized a couple of things, so I'm going off on a side note here/adding to those ground rules.

If I'm reading a book for the first time, I typically don't have any historical or personal reference points. As always, there are exceptions to that. (I actively resisted reading any 'Harry Potter' books until the fifth book came out, but I was certainly aware of them.) What I mean to say is that, even though this is supposed to be about King's books, it's inevitable that there will be comparisons to the films made from those books. Those films shaped my impression and awareness of SK even if I hadn't read the source material. 'Carrie' is a prime example of that.

Released in 1974, 'Carrie' was King's first published novel. The popular story, told by King himself, is that he began writing the book as a young struggling author, found himself displeased with it, crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. His wife Tabitha rescued the crumpled pages from the wastebasket, read them, and demanded that he continue. Continue he did, and all the stars aligned etc.

The book is set in small town Chamberlain Maine, in the 'near future' of Spring 1979. Young awkward outcast protagonist Carrie White is bullied by her female classmates, overwhelmed emotionally and physically by her religiously fervent mother, and unable to explain her sudden ability to make objects move with only her will.

Bullying and the ideal of a social hierarchy and preying on the weak is a concept as old as the Earth itself. King's opening scene, with uneducated Carrie (who is a SENIOR in High School), getting her first menstrual period in the gym shower, and the subsequent gang harassment by the other students, set the tone and introduced the characters. Characters I was already familiar with, in a way, but my familiarity with the movie gave me the opportunity to look for differences in the characters or more in-depth development than what I knew from the screen.

Impossibly stuck with the faces and mannerisms of the actors who played them in the movie, my mind made it's own movie starring Amy Irving, Sissy Spacek, William Katt, and P.J. Soles as I continued reading.

(Sidebar: Did P.J. wear the same red hat in more than one movie? I'm obviously aware of her presence in Halloween and Stripes, but for some reason, that goofy red ballcap is the look I will always associate with her.)

I'm ashamed, at myself more than anything, to admit that it took me until reading the book to understand the book-end symbolism of Carrie, covered in blood, mocked by her classmates. Until now, I'd never consciously connected the Prom blood catalyst with the opening menstrual blood catalyst. Was that because I simply treated the movie as a horror movie, and I wasn't actively looking for symbolism? Or, is it testament to the power of King's words, and his ability to craft a story? Blood is the trigger to her ridicule, the representation of her naivety and her social separation from the crowd. She doesn't understand her own menstrual blood in the beginning and she is mocked for it. She is covered in blood by a prank, and she becomes the laughing stock of the prom. The ultimate joke at her expense. The book highlights her mental processing of what's happening to her as the blood falls and the crowd turns on her. It's marvelous writing, and it made me see the whole story differently.

There are certainly things about this book that I didn't like. The book shifts narrative style by dropping in the occasional excerpt from Congressional hearings by The White Commission, Sue Snell's autobiography, and another book investigating Telekinesis in the aftermath of the destruction of Chamberlain. While I thought it gave too much away, I realized that it was kind of a 'Rashomon'-esque device. You knew that Carrie would get her revenge and that the wicked would be punished. From the start, that was always laid bare. The suspense was in getting to that point. Just because you know it's coming doesn't make it any less anxious.

The most interesting part of my experience with the book is being acutely aware of the differences in how the climax played out in the original story vs. the movie.

The bloody buckets prank was pulled off by two people, yet the majority of the school laughed and mocked in the immediate aftermath, sealing their fate. The book details Carrie's exit from the prom, her destruction of downtown, and her ultimate showdown with her mother in much greater detail than the movie. 

The scene I found most important, and critically missing from the film, is Carrie's visit to the church as she's covered in blood. King does a wonderful job of laying out her internal struggle for divine forgiveness against embracing her power and capability to exact vengeance against 'the wicked', the 'Angel with the Sword'. Carrie wrestles with good vs evil in a religious sense, and in a naive-teenage sense. King writes in a way that the mind's eye can visualize the two parallel debates raging. A young girl who wants to be accepted, yet left alone, and a woman who ultimately fulfills her mother's prophecy while being rejected by that mother as evil incarnate.

I can understand why the film changed the showdown with Carrie and her mother from the book version. The book ends in a way that is easy to describe in words and provide satisfaction to the reader, but has no effective visual translation. Besides, with 'Carrie' being a horror movie, having Margaret White, the ultimate antagonist, impaled with knives and implements by Carrie's telekinesis makes for a more intense ending.

In the book, Carrie dies after sparing Sue Snell from joining the long list of dead at the end of 'Prom Night'. Carrie reads Sue's mind and accepts her regret, her shame, and her genuine concern for Carrie. This happens in a parking lot by the freeway. Carrie doesn't die in the self-inflicted apocryphal hell-fire and brimstone destruction of her home as in the movie. There is no last-twist hand rising from the ashes for shock value. Instead, King included summations from The White Commission, arguing that Carrie's circumstances were the result of an isolated scenario, and that a person with psychic powers of that magnitude was unlikely to be born again. Dry science talk about the TK 'gene', and how it's rare and recessive and through a freak set of circumstances, it became dominant in Carrie, but the chain of genealogical events that would have to happen to replicate it in someone else were astronomically unlikely...and then text from a letter from one cousin to another in the Southeast US, written in 1988 (almost 10 years after Carrie's wrath) that hints at a two-year old that could move marbles without touching them. The author of the letter couldn't make sense of it, but that's King's version of the wink and nod to us that, despite all the jargon and evidence laid out on how rare Carrie's circumstances were and were never to be seen again, there are clouds for humanity way out on the horizon.

I liked the book for the most part. I made my peace with the narrative style, and in the historical and chronological context of King's career, I can sense the popularity in this book. It's scary, but it's relatable. In a way, we all find ourselves identifying with Sue Snell. How guilty are we, personally, when it comes to bullying and dealing with social outcasts? I'm honest enough to admit that I've been a bully to some, even as I'd been bullied by others. I'm not proud of it, but I think it's an aspect of human nature that's common. It's a mechanism for us, almost like a default. The separation lies in the lengths at which we go to shame others, and the regret, or lack of, we feel for what we've done. There are so many things that play into bullying in this day and age, and it has subcategories: Cyberbullying, Fat-shaming, Slut-shaming, Racism, etc. I know that I've treated people in a manner below what I should've in the past. I know that I continue to do it on occasion. I'd like to think that I'm better than that, but I'm not. It is a poor tendency of my personality that sometimes happens. I think a lot of people do it, and I'm not alone. That doesn't excuse it, but it's an opinion I have. We all judge each other and ourselves. Some people manifest it better than others, but to paraphrase Margaret White, 'no one is without sin'.

Bullying is a theme that repeats itself throughout King's bibliography. We'll certainly address the topic again, and I'm extremely excited to get overly verbose about a particular subject and novel in the future. However, I must exercise patience and not get ahead of myself. There's a reason I'm doing this in chronological order.

As a footnote: A name popped out to me during the reading. Reference is made to Teddy Duchamp's gas station. It's been a long time since I've read 'Different Seasons', so I'm unable to confirm if King is referencing THE Teddy Duchamp from 'The Body' (made into the movie Stand By Me) or if it's simply a case of name recycling. A mental note is made to check that out. However, it'll be a while before I get to it.

Next up: 'Salem's Lot. A book I read as a young man and failed to find interest in, only to return to it later once it factored into my obsession with 'The Dark Tower'.