Hallowe'en Reading 2014 - 'SALEM'S LOT by Stephen King

I have a long association with Stephen King’s fiction, as I may have mentioned in the past. I would say I’ve read about 80% of his novels and many of short stories, but before last week, one of the major oversights of his bibliography for me was his classic vampire novel ’Salem’s Lot. Well, that oversight has been “corrected,” to borrow a term from another of King’s work. In short, I enjoyed the hell out of the novel.

Cover of original US Hardback.
My dad has a copy of this.

As has likely been recounted about this novel, ’Salem’s Lot is King’s mash-up of Peyton Place and Dracula. Both novels are referenced in the text of ’Salem’s Lot: one character (Matt Burke) is remarked to remind the others of Van Helsing and Peyton Place is even called out by another character. After a brief prologue featuring Ben Mears and a young boy after the events of the novel transpire, King introduces the populace of Jerusalem’s Lot in a leisurely fashion. ‘Salem’s Lot (or The Lot), as the inhabitants call it, seem to know each other and each other’s business; the quintessential New England small town. Their everyday life is shaken up when visitors arrive: writer Ben Mears arrives looking to exorcise some past demons through writing a book and Straker & Barlow, two antique salesmen who arrive looking to set up a new shop. Ben and Straker & Barlow are both interested in the old Marsten house which overlooks the Lot to the point that Ben was going to rent it out until he discovered Straker & Barlow have taken up residence in what many feel is a haunted mansion.

Cover of the MMPB I read. I've
had the copy for at least a decade.

While some of the characters can be considered to lean towards cardboard cut-out territory, King gives a lived in, familiar, and quaint feel to the Lot. This is one of the novel’s strengths, its sense of place and initial comfort. The other strength is the subtlety and slow reveal of the terror hiding in the shadows, aside from the dog’s head on the pike early in the novel, of course. The subtlety is when the human characters interact with the vampire; there are more hints than description, allowing the reader to finish the scene with their own imagination. Though King can imagine terrifying things, it is this cooperative horror that proves to be so effective in ’Salem’s Lot.

Where the novel stumbles is two-fold and both of these I’ll generously attribute to the time the novel was published and the fact that it was King’s second published novel. The relative lack of female characters stood out to me. We have one primary female character – Susan Norton – and while it is through her eyes we initially see the novel she’s little more than a romantic entanglement used to drive Ben Mears through the plot and provide him tension and action. The only other truly (and fully) positive female character in the novel is Eva Miller, owner of the boarding house where Ben takes up residence during his time in the Lot. Most of the other women are portrayed in varying degrees from middling to quite negative.

The other stumble is some of the flowery early interaction, between Susan, her family, and Ben. I’ll chalk this up to being a novel of its time in how the characters talk. Susan and Ben fall for each other quite quickly and the language King uses to show them falling for each other reads as a bit put upon by today’s standards.

Some other points to note about ’Salem’s Lot:

• It is the first (of many) Stephen King novels to feature a writer as the protagonist
• King would return to similar themes, specifically small town with a dark cloud of monster(s) hovering: It, Needful Things, The Tommyknockers and to a lesser extent The Dark Half
• Tangentially, like Needful Things, ’Salem’s Lot features a small town disrupted by the arrival of a strange visitor
• Like IT, ’Salem’s Lot features a small town with some historically recurring darkness
• As the King constant reader knows, Father Callahan later shows up in the fifth Dark Tower novel, Wolves of the Calla
• I think part of the reason Needful Things has a lesser reputation in King’s bibliography might be because of how it echoes ’Salem’s Lot (I personally liked Needful Things but it has a special spot for me relating a great deal to when I read it, as I point out in that link at the top of this post).

My colleague (though we’ve never met, and I mean colleague in the sense that some of our writing appears at the same place) Grady Hendrix over at Tor.com wrote about ’Salem’s Lot as part of his Great Stephen King Reread. While he does make some points I can grok even if I don’t agree with them, one interpretive point I can’t agree with is his assessment of the Marsten House. He suggests there’s no real reason for Barlow and Straker to set up residence at the Marsten House. The answer, for me, is right there in the novel. Throughout the novel, characters remark that The Marsten House is a magnet for evil, ever since old Hubie Marsten lived there and committed horrific acts, supposedly demonic sacrifices, killing children, and killing his wife.

The other point on which Grady is also flat out wrong is the character of Mark Petrie; Grady makes Mark out to be something like Harold Emery Lauter when in fact, Mark is fairly well-adjusted and manages to take out the school bully early in the novel. This sort of informs us that Mark, coupled with his love and knowledge of horror/monster movies, is as well-equipped as any character in the novel to take out Barlow. Mark’s calculative methods prove very useful to the plot and if he were nerdy and off-putting, the two other kids we see in the novel (the Glick Brothers) would have been more hesitant to visit him. (Admittedly, Grady recants some of his thoughts on Mark).

I’ll split the hairs regarding Grady’s take on the one-dimensional hillbilly characterization of the ‘Lot’s inhabitants. Most of them don’t really stretch beyond their cliches, like that of a cheating spouse or an abusive mother, but those folks don’t need much more attention than their archetypes in this particular story for me. Again, I see Grady’s point here and can agree with it to an extent.

As for the adaptations of the novel, I watched the old TV miniseries once years and years ago. I hadn’t been aware of who James Mason was at the time, but now I want to rewatch it just for James Mason. I did not see the 2004 remake with the stellar cast of Rob Lowe, James Cromwell and Rutger Hauer but that interests me now, too.

’Salem’s Lot was an incredibly addictive read and I can understand why this helped to set King on the path of superstardom. I’m not sure exactly where it ranks against the other King novels I’ve read only because the later books I read were after he became a more polished writer and storyteller. All told, I really enjoyed the novel despite some of its flaws.

A post-script: Any and all King fans and Constant Readers should check out Grady’s reread project, there’s some good insight to the books in his articles and I’ve reexamined my own thoughts on some of King’s work.

Lost Neverland

I posted the review of the second Douglas Clegg book I read yesterday, Neverland , which I enjoyed a great deal:

Clegg employs an easy-going first-person narrative in Neverland, with Beau as our storyteller. His voice is extremely effective, having lulled me into the story with a sense of comfort. The style is, for the most part, matter of fact, but Clegg manages to balance that element with the horrific things Beau and his cousins experience in Neverland. The tension is ratcheted up as Sumter’s ‘god’ begins to hold more sway over Sumter, and it seems to have an adverse affect on the adults as well. When the adults drink and argue, the children inevitably seek out Neverland as something of a twisted haven creating a cycle of discord.

There’s a timeless nature to Clegg’s depiction of the children, Beau in particular as our protagonist is very relatable and that fact (and its effectiveness) cannot be underestimated. In many ways, the loss of childhood innocence here in Neverland is very comparable to the same type of loss of innocence the boys in Stephen King’s masterful short novel The Body (basis for the film Stand by Me) experience. Though Beau’s tale is much more ostensibly supernatural, the similarity in the way he and Gordon Lachance lament the episodes featured in their respective stories is very similar.

A small television program ended on Sunday, one that a few people may have heard of - Lost. I’ve touched on the show here at the o’ Stuff in the past but never really gone too deep into analyzing the show. There are already quite a few folks on the intarwebs doing a spectacular job of this, the best of whom is the venerable Doc Jensen, although Alan Sepinwal covers things nicely, as do Doc Artz and whole slew of other folks.

I really enjoyed the finale and think Darlton did a helluva job bringing closure to these characters. Granted we didn’t see what happened to Kate, Sawyer, (and perhaps most potentially interestingly, Alpert) once they escaped The Island that Houses the Soul of the World, but that’s not important. As Christian Shepherd said, what happened on the island was real and was the most important part of these character’s lives. After all, do we want to see Frodo’s daily chores in the years before he gains possession of the One Ring?

I will admit, I was getting a bit scared towards the end when everybody was converging on the Church of All Holy Symbols. My fear was that we would get a reveal much like that of the film Identity wherein all the characters are actually one of multiple personalities in a character’s head, either Hurley or Jack, take your pick. What we got instead was the reveal that the Side-Flash was the way station before ascending to Heaven. I can buy that, I like that. These characters went through the most emotionally powerful time of their lives on the Island. I think the Island’s power allowed them to create the way station so they could meet each other one last time anew and whole in a manner they wanted themselves to be, the way they always sought to become.

The stuff on the Island worked great as well. The uncorking of the Golden Light, which made Smokey Locke vulnerable was a necessary step in the progress of the characters and towards The End. O’Quinn’s fear when he was in pain and bleeding from the mouth was played superbly and showed that the magic leaving the island allowed for mortality and other bad things. I see The Heart of the Island as a repository for all the souls of the world – as Jacob’s “mother” said, a little bit of the same light that is in the cave is inside every man but that people always want more … while the other people can't take the light, they might try and if the light goes out here it goes out everywhere.

Desmond popping the cork began sucking the souls away, leaving all people with just their physical shells and no inner power. It happened to Smokey and the islanders first since he was so close to the source. If Jack never put the cork back in its place, the effect would have spread. Of course, Jack (and the viewers by extension) had to take that with a leap of faith and the power of the series’s narrative in the previous 100+ episodes made that leap of faith, for me, possible.

With Jack’s last act before his heroic sacrifice, he anoints Hurley as the guardian of the island, recreating the circle which gave Jacob the reins in a way – that is both are initially reluctant guardians. Although much of the entire series focused on Jack as the protagonist and “Hero” much of the surrounding elements focused on Hurley – in the flash-forwards he helped to bring people together, he brought Jacob’s message to Dogen, his soul and uplifting attitude made him the Heart of the Losties. With him so connected to the numbers, it made logical sense that he would become the new Island Guardian. The scene outside the Church of All Holy Symbols between Hurley and a humble Ben was bittersweet and touching as was the scene between Ben and Locke.

Many things were seemingly unanswered –

The Polar Bears – Nothing was really explicitly stated why they were on the Island, but many things can be deduced. They are big and strong, the donkey wheel was difficult to push and was in a ice-cave when Ben pushed the wheel. It isn’t a stretch to believe they could have been used by the Dharma Initiative for pushing the wheel, amongst other things.

The Dharma Initiative fizzling out of relevance – Again nothing explicit, but their connection to the Hanso family, who owned the Black Rock, and their tampering with the Island’s properties could be a cautionary tale that maybe Man just wasn’t ready to understand the heart of the island.

The Island itself – I think I covered my theory on just what the Island was supposed to be.

Walt and his powers – Was he a potential candidate for Island guardianship? Maybe, but more likely that the character grew to be a nine-foot tall kid and just couldn’t be worked back into the story.

Widmore’s quick death and seemingly unsatisfying end at Ben’s hands. – The creators are big fans of King’s Dark Tower and his death, and role as a Big Bad in previous seasons, mirrors the role and fall of King’s mainstay baddie Randal Flagg. I was quite annoyed with how King disposed of one of his signature characters. Was it frustrating that we didn’t get a knock-down, drag-out confrontation similar to Jack and Flocke? Of course, Widmore was built up so long as a relatively mysterious, power player that his final moment and quick death were unsatisfying and a bit frustrating. What did Widmore do to be exiled from the Island? Was it because he left the Island when he shouldn’t have? We’ll never know. This is probably the one element of the series with which I have the most issues.

The Pregnancy Thing - This is likely some kind of mythological side-effect of Jacob’s fake mother braining his real mother.

In the end, these seemingly unanswered elements don’t add up to much in the larger picture. If Darlton had told us, through perhaps Pierre Chang, that the Polar Bears were brought to the island to use in experiments to determine bear shit makes good fertilizer how would that add to the overall story or its ending? Leaving such things for the viewer to ponder works for me.

The finale was a great ride, and will leave me and many of the show’s fans thinking and debating for a long time. I’ll be saving this on my DVR for quite a while.

Tigerhearts, Malazans, and Battlestars Oh My!

My review of Peter David’s Tigerheart went up last night, I’ve been holding it until the publication date. I’m an admitted fan of David’s writing in the majority of its forms and really enjoyed Tigerheart. David used a different style here and I think he pulled off really well. In fact, I'd love to see more from him in this vein/style. His trademark ironic humor is laced throughout the book, though with a slightly different flavor. Good stuff all around, nor am I the only one to think so.

I feel like I just swam up the entire coast of New Jersey a couple of times, metaphorically speaking. In other words, I just finished The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson – a good experience and at the end rewarding, but damn if it wasn’t long and intense. There was a lot going on in this sixth Malazan novel, maybe too much. I liked all the stuff with Icarium and Karsa, as a result, I was very pleased with the tease in the epilogue. I’ve always envisioned Karsa to be something like the Incredible Hulk, and specifically, the way the Hulk was portrayed in the Planet Hulk storyline. I’m not entirely sure how I’d picture Icarium, but something along the same lines, with a hint of Stephen King’s Roland the Gunslinger (in terms of the vagaries of his past) thrown into the mix. I’ve said before how much I enjoy Karsa’s storyline so while I enjoyed Erikson’s further exploration of it here, I would have like to seen more.

What also worked extremely well for me in The Bonehunters was the ‘return’ of Quick Ben to the storyline and his bantering with Kalam. Ben’s interaction with the Ascendants also provided some good scenes and passages. I really like what Erikson is doing with Ben Adaephon Delat: making him more powerful with Ben seemingly none the wiser. I also was pleased to see Paran brought back into the fold. Essentially, I like how Erikson juxtaposes confusion and control in his characters., especially with the Bridgeburners.

After a great deal of bouncing back and forth between the many, many characters / plotlines, the conclusion of the novel was just fantastic. I also thought it was very good to see Laseen in the storyline, after having spent much of the saga spoken about rather than seen. The timing on this was pretty funny – I was reading through the Laseen scenes at what was probably the same time that a poster at SFFWorld happened to bring up how little Laseen is actually ‘on screen’ in the storyline.

The continuing juxtaposition of the Gods squabbles with human squabbles is one of the more overriding themes of the series and comes together even more so in this installment. The Gods don’t deal with humans very much, but when they do Erikson manages to really imbue those scenes with something very cool and an air of “whoa.”

All told, The Bonehunters was another solid entry in the Malazan saga, though not without its flaws. The character of Iskaral Pust is slowly growing on me and the scenes involving him reminded me a bit of the old couple at the Oracle from The NeverEnding Story or The Princess Bride. As I said, it thought there were just one or two too many different plotlines woven together, but as this novel ties together so much I don’t know that it could have been threaded any differently. I also would have like to see more of Karsa and Kruppe, but in the end I was left breathless with both accomplishment at reading a 1200+ page book and eager to read Reapers Gale. It’s sitting on my “To Read” shelf, but as I’ve intimated before, I need to pace myself with these Malazan books. Erikson (wait for the revolutionary statement, wait for it…) is staking his claim as the King of Epic fantasy with this series. Each cog of a book is part of the greater whole and The Bonehunters was like a keystone that holds much of the series together. As such, it might the most ambitious, audacious and impressive book in the series up to this point.

Reading these Malazan books, for me at least, I really feel like I’m truly experiencing what Erikson is trying to do with these books – something special. There’s almost a sense of community in reading each book with the book itself and others who read the books. In my personal ranking of the series, it probably falls somewhere in the middle – House of Chains is still the one I like the most.

I haven’t blogged about it in a while, but Battlestar Galactica’s season-half finale was really good on Friday. It was both a satisfying conclusion to the one of the largest themes of the series and a great cliffhanger, thank god there were no hovercycles when they landed. Many of the same questions on the mythology of the series are still there, but can be viewed in a different shade of light. Specifically, how is the civilization of the humanity we see on the show related to our civilization? The episode brought this home in a dark way and you wonder if Moore and company are ever going to give these characters more than a fleeting moment’s taste of happiness and satisfaction.

Lun Dun Tower

I posted my newest review to SFFWorld yesterday, China Miéville's Un Lun Dun. I won't be the first to say this about the book, but Un Lun Dun has the chance to be his biggest book yet, and that is saying a lot. Of his published work, this definitely has the broadest appeal. I liked it very much, as I've liked most of his stuff. This reminded me most of King Rat, which I thought was about his strongest novel, just a notch under The Scar.

I also really liked issue one of Stephen King's The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born. No I didn't go to a midnight release, but I picked it up yesterday. I thought Jae Lee's art was great and Marvel really did pack quite a bit into the first issue. The Spotlight issue from the week before was pretty much a waste, but for now, I'm happy with the first issue. I will be re-reading it again.

Not much else right now, except that yes winter does exist. After what felt like a non-existent winter in December and part of January, Winter has reared its icy head in ful effect.

Orphans, Gunslinger and Brew

I published a new review to SFFWorld yesterday, John C. Wright’s Orphans of Chaos, which I thought was OK, if a bit frustrating. It felt a bit slow at times, though Wright did put forth some interesting ideas in what was a neat postulation of gods and hard science.

The Gunslinger draws even closer. With less than a month away I’m really excited about seeing Roland's younger days brought to illustrated life. Jae Lee’s art looks great and I have a lot of faith that Peter David can help to deliver a comic King fans will enjoy.

In the matter of a week here in NJ we went from 70 degrees to 29 degrees and it is supposed to be in the 60s this Saturday. I’ve been hearing winds outside my house like I can never remember hearing in my life, this with an extra layer on the house. Mrs. O’ Stuff and I had the house vinyl-sided last year, so I can only imagine what it would sound like without the added layer & insulation. But our environment is OK, there’s no global warming.

I’ve got two really good beers in the fridge right now. Well, the remnants of two six-packs of beer. Stoudt’s Big Dog Oatmeal Stout and Anchor Porter. Wow, great stuff there. I've had some of Stoudt's beers in the past, and I think even this one. Not sure about Anchor, though I will be having this one again.

Mrs. O’ Stuff likes to surprise me sometimes with the beer and these were both winners. I have to say, I'm a pretty lucky guy.