`Salem’s Lot (1975)

Written By:  Stephen King
Published By:  Doubleday

`Salem’s Lot is a novel that asks a simple question: What happens when vampires descend upon a modern American village filled with a bunch of simple-minded idiots?  As such, it is a sort of Americanized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula as well as some considerably more pulpy rags.  It follows the novelist Ben Mears during his pit-stop in the town bearing the novel’s namesake.  He seeks to rent out the nefarious Marsten mansion on the outskirts of town so that his latest novel may be inspired by its evil atmosphere and is surprised to learn that he was already outbid not too long ago by a suspiciously reclusive chap only named Mr. Barlow.  This is a surprising turn of events because the house has stood derelict and abandoned for many decades.  Resigned, he holes up in a local boarding house, meets a girl, and is thrust into some kind of Eldritch horror as the town begins to decay from the inside in conjunction with increased activity at the maleficent mansion that broods over the town.  Did I mention the mansion was evil?

It’s been said that Stephen King regards this, his second novel, as one of his favorites.  I’m inclined to agree.  Unlike his comparatively trashy debut effort Carrie, this novel has been crafted with much more care and restraint.  Characters are given plenty of opportunities and time to carefully develop into a rich and varied cast of unbelievers who are slowly persuaded to take action against phantasmal forces far beyond the borders of modern reasoning, but in a more modern setting.  Even the town gets in on this development, beginning as a little bustling burg that hesitantly degenerates into a dilapidated and sad shadow of its former glory: no doubt a commentary on the ongoing and steady dissolution of the pastoral part of the American Dream.  A bittersweet ending, at best.

However, I still struggle a little with King’s writing.  Throughout the novel, it’s very clear that the talking heads one encounters are just various bodies with Stephen King’s face attached to them.  There are often little throw-away lines that characters say or think, perhaps intended as a natural response to the situation and whatever emotions they may imply to give them some depth; but they don’t feel natural or organic at all.  More like cheesy.  For instance, very early on in the novel when Ben and Susan meet for the first time in the park, he throws out this strange suave remark: “Of such inconsequential beginnings dynasties are begun,” which is a very obvious wink at the reader that shit is going to be thrown down eventually, but at that very moment it feels rushed or shoved in.

Numerous other references to song lyrics and poems and sayings are sprinkled everywhere into the manuscript with only minimally useful context; I presume it’s meant to make things feel deep, to give these characters a sense of gravity and purpose, or even just indignantly shove the reader into the scene.  But most of the time they fall flat and refuse to make any sense.  They also serve to age the novel in as unflattering a way as you could get.  I haven’t heard of any of these pop tunes that were big on the radio in 1975, and auxiliary character’s Vietnam flashbacks are frequent and bothersome, offering very little to what is for all intents and purposes a story about magic and monsters.  The audience of today has moved a little past that, I think.

But these are small qualms I have with ‘Salem’s Lot.  Generally speaking, this is a powerful novel about a bunch of random people who come together to displace an enormous evil that has beset their beloved township and threatens their very souls.  It is a labor of love that takes its time setting up what is an intense and gripping thrill ride, one with a colorful cast of what eventually become compelling [enough] characters who you learn to admire and frustrate over as they work toward liberating the town from a rapidly growing evil not seen since, well since ever.  Two of the best things this novel has going for it: the segues between action sequences where lesser throwaway characters (and to an extent the town as a whole) meet their doom, and one of the most baddass boss boasts I’ve had the pleasure of seeing that is totally befitting to a boss of Barlow’s station.

B+

Choice Passages

“…perhaps in America even a pig can aspire to immortality.”

“That next one now, that was that slutty little Ruthie Crockett, the one who didn’t wear no bra to school and was always elbowing her chums and sniggering when Dud passed on the street. Bang. Good-by, Ruthie.”

“Clyde Corliss broke wind.”

“‘I don’t care who’s tried to stop him before. I don’t care if Attila the Hun played him and lost. I’m going to have my shot. I want you with me. I need you.'”

“‘Here we go, friends, into isolation,’ Matt said. ‘Say the secret word and win a hundred dollars.'”

Carrie (1974)

Written By: Stephen King
Published By: Doubleday/Signet

Carrie is a story of a 16 year-old smalltown girl whose telekinetic powers are awakened when she has her first period.  In the shower.  Of the ladies’ locker room.  After the other ladies assailed her with tampons while she bleeds all over the place.  Her condition is no doubt exacerbated by her religious wingnut-off-the-rails mom who believes that she is the embodiment of the unholiest of sins.  Essentially, Carrie spends every waking moment of her life perpetually tortured by stupid small-town hicks during the day and being stuffed in a closet by her mom to pray to God for the sin of merely existing by night.  Eventually, some horrible things happen and Carrie snaps, costing a good number of high school students and townsfolk their lives.  It is written in an epistolary fashion, which means that the narrative segments where the plot progresses are mixed in with some faux newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and investigative reports that ostensibly aim to explain what happens in the narrative and why.  Incidentally, Child Protective Services is never mentioned (although I can give that a pass since the agency was fairly new) in spite of all the blatant and obvious signs that Carrie is subjected to an enormous amount of abuse during and even before her high school career.  Things that make you go ‘hmmmm.’

Quick aside: do girls actually bully one another using tampons?  That’s pretty fucked up.

This novel set the standard for a lot of horror fiction and solidified Stephen King’s place in the literary lexicon, for better or worse.  It plays mainly in extremes when it comes to developing characters and approaches the topics of bullying, religion, and paranormal activity with dubious rancor.  The religious references in particular are especially painful in scenes featuring Carrie’s mom, where heavy Christian and Biblical symbolism abounds; the mom gets very heavy handed quoting scripture at Carrie for her perceived slights.  I suppose if you’re overtly religious this kind of thing could be super effective, but Margaret White is so far off the deep end that I find it hard to fathom her degree of fanaticism could even be possible.  Other characters are unquestionably flawed, yet are cut so thin that they might as well be transparent–the worst of these would have to be Billy Nolan, who’s just kind of shoe’d in because there needs to be an asshole to instigate things I guess and whats-her-face couldn’t think but for a man.  In the end, hardly anyone is likable, even Carrie herself.  Which sucks, because Carrie is the one who really needs to succeed the most.

King fans probably won’t have issues with the book’s construction.  But as a seemingly normal guy trying to approach this material in an objective way, his writing style certainly takes some getting used to.  It’s quite fascinating, actually, to see how Stephen King’s upbringing and experiences have informed his writing ability.  Characters are defined by a sort of pastoral bigotry that leads to passages so profound in their idiocy that one might wonder how they were given the greenlight at all.  Odd details are also given away in character soliloquies that make bizarre references to pop-songs of the time or some guy’s business up the street, or a clumsy simile involving a car.  Manliness permeates every page–a tractor-trailer kind of manliness despite the fact that this is a novel about a 16 year-old smalltown girl forced to confront this testosterone-fueled bravado.  It suggests the intended audience for this book consists of those farming types that live in the Bible Belt of contemporary America; but don’t make the mistake that these people are treated with any sort of reverence or respect.  From top to bottom, they definitely aren’t.  Maybe that’s why this schlock has the appeal that it does since it appeals more to the smalltown folk than the ‘educated elite’, or maybe it was just a sign of the times at the time.

Carrie is a book that is easy to pick up burn through in a weekend.   I don’t think you’ll emerge a brighter person for reading it, but if you want some cheap thrills and good old fashioned revenge sttory, this book will see you through the day rather briskly and not all that seriously.

B-

Choice Passages:

“It was becoming a chant, an incantation. Someone in the background (perhaps Hargensen again, Sue couldn’t tell in the jungle of echoes) was yelling, “Plug it up!” with hoarse, uninhibited abandon.
‘PER-iod, PER-iod, PER-iod!”
‘You’re bleeding!’ Sue yelled suddenly, furiously. ‘You’re bleeding, you big dumb pudding!'”

“Estelle Horan has lived in the neat San Diego suburb of Parrish for twelve years, and outwardly she is typical Ms. California:
She wears bright print shifts and smoked amber sunglasses; her hair is black-streaked blonde; she drives a neat maroon Volkswagen Formula Vee with a smile decal on the gas cap and a green-flag ecology sticker on the back window. Her husband is an executive at the Parrish branch of the Bank of America; her son and daughter are certified members of the Southern California Sun ‘n Fun Crowd, burnished-brown beach creatures. There is a hibachi in the small, beautifully kept back yard, and the door chimes play a tinkly phrase from the refrain of ‘Hey, Jude.'”

“When they had finished making love, as she slowly put her clothes in order in the back seat of Tommy Ross’s 1963 Ford, Sue Snell found her thoughts turning back to Carrie White.”

“The first time had hurt like hell. Her girl friends, Helen Shyres and Jeanne Gault, had both done It, and they both assured her that it only hurt for a minute-like getting a shot of penicillin-and then it was roses. But for Sue, the first time had been like being reamed out with a hoe handle. Tommy had confessed to her since, with a grin, that he had gotten the rubber on wrong, too.”