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
No comments:
Post a Comment