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Comments on Stephen King - fpw - 12-24-2008
Not the man - his work.
Someone somewhere asked for a comment on The Stand and I did this:
I’d become a King fan with Salem’s Lot, and so I snatched up The Stand as soon as it appeared. But here was a different Stephen King—he’d widened his lens and was shooting in Cinemascope now. I was captured by the sweep of the story, but stopped cold when he first described Randall Flagg, the dark man, the distillation of human evil, walking south on US 51. Usually if I’m taken out of a story it’s because of bad writing; but this was so good I had to stop and reread it. I’ve never forgotten that chapter.
Then a guy in France asked for a short piece on my favorite King novel. It appeared in Le Livre des Livres de Stephen King and will most likely never see print in English, so here it is:
’Salem’s Lot: Mutant Makes Good
We were born in the forties in the first wave of the baby boom. We were raised through the fifties by stay-at-home moms and WWII Two vets in family units of 2.3 children, a dog, and two cats. We witnessed the advent of rock ‘n’ roll and our Elvis remains young, slim, and twangy. We went to school with the neighbor kids—where we all learned the duck-and-cover move in the event of nuclear attack—and played with them after school and on weekends.
But we weren’t like them. Not really. Sure, we liked baseball and watching Friday night wrestling on our tiny black-and-white TVs. But somehow it wasn’t enough. We didn’t know what was missing, but we knew we felt incomplete.
Then we got our first glimpse of the cover of a horror comic—for me it was Witches Tales #25—and experienced a galvanizing thrill. But in 1954 Frederick Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent was making waves about horror comics, convincing our parents they’d twist our minds. Ha! We were already twisted. We were born twisted.
So horror comics were banned from many of our houses. No problem. We bought Tales from the Crypt or Vault of Horror and stuck them inside Donald Duck covers, or hid them in the garage.
And then we saw our first monster movie trailer on TV—most likely Beast from 20,000 Fathoms or Godzilla—and it was love at first sight.
Sure, they were popular movies, and millions upon millions of kids went to see them. But they didn’t live for those moments.
We did.
We combed through TV Guide for titles of movies that had horror potential. The Betamax was three decades off, so we couldn’t simply pop in a favorite movie and watch it. If we found an interesting title playing at two A.M., we couldn’t record it. No, we had to set our alarm clock, get up, and sneak downstairs to catch it.
When the first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland hit the stand we snatched it up and read and reread it until the staples fell out.
We celebrated when we found the rare anthology that contained horror stories. Reading our first Lovecraft was almost sexual. And when Universal released its horror library to TV, we were in heaven.
Tom Monteleone has labeled us mutants and it’s as good a handle as any. We were wired in ways that deviated from the norm.
Since then the world has changed. The VCR makes seeing the classic and not-so-classic horror films easy. Monsters and vampires have been mainstreamed. I mean, breakfast cereals named Frankenberry and Count Chocula—can you believe it?
Back then, thanks to Roger Corman and others, we had plenty of low-budget fodder to keep us in the movie houses. But as for horror fiction . . . not much happening.
Sure, we found an occasional collection like Cry Horror or The Macabre Reader, but they were mostly reprints from Weird Tales and the like. Arkham House books cost more and were pretty much the same. We’d hunt down Poe and M.R. James, and classics like Dracula and Frankenstein, but besides occasional publishing aberrations like The Haunting of Hill House, where was the new stuff?
Then, in 1967 . . . Rosemary’s Baby. An oasis in a desert of blah that had its moments, but no sock on the jaw. The imitations that followed were mostly awful.
It took four years for our next fix, a gut punch called The Exorcist.
Then in 1974 came Carrie, a novel about a telekinetic adolescent by a newcomer named Stephen King. I read the paperback in 1975 and it was . . . okay. I dug the pyrotechnics but teenage angst wasn’t my bag.
I liked it enough, though, to order his second novel, ’Salem’s Lot, when I saw it listed in the Literary Guild circular.
Nothing in the book club blurb or the flap copy hinted at vampires. Maybe because, with no such thing as a horror genre back then, Doubleday thought the word “vampire” on the jacket would hurt sales. Looking back I feel fortunate that I was able to come to ’Salem’s Lot with no idea of what I’d find.
Though the flap copy mentioned a stranger “with a secret as old as evil,” it took a while before what might be supernatural evil revealed itself. Oh, there were hints when Straker bought the Marsten house, and portents with the dog spiked on the cemetery fence, but the early parts seemed more concerned with human evil—I still remember the sick jolt of reading about Sandy punching her ten-month-old baby.
King told us about the junkyard man, detailed Bonnie’s affair, the Glick family dynamics, Crockett’s wheeling and dealing . . . all these characters. Was this going to turn out to be some kind of dark soap opera?
Then “darkness enfolded” Danny Glick . . . followed by the “unspeakable” scene in the cemetery.
Now I was into it. This wasn’t your mother’s Peyton Place.
The anemic Danny Glick dies in his hospital room . . . and the epitaph on Hubert Marsten’s tombstone: God Grant He Lie Still.
Ooooh, is this going where I hope it’s going?
And then the epiphanic scene.
I knew nothing of this Stephen King guy except that the flap said he lived in Maine with his wife and kids. No jacket photo, so for all I knew he could have been fifty-sixty-whatever years of age.
King was a stranger until I came to section 5 of Chapter Six: The Lot (II) where we find Mark Petrie gluing the arms on an Aurora glow-in-the-dark Frankenstein monster. He has a whole table of the models, including Dracula, the Mad Doctor, and Mr. Hyde.
Just like I had when I was Mark’s age.
With a sudden burst of joy I knew all about Stephen King. I remember thinking, THIS GUY IS ONE OF US!
If joy seems an inappropriate response, let me explain.
Rosemary’s Baby had been written by a guy born in the 1920s, a playwright best known for “No Time for Sergeants”—a comedy.
William Peter Blatty was also a child of the 1920s. A mundane novelist and comedic screenwriter—A Shot in the Dark, for chrissake.
But here was someone from my generation referencing a shared mutant past. A bestselling author—and he was a member of the club.
Stephen King was a fellow mutant.
I’d just sold my first novel—sf because no horror market existed then—and the idea that one of us was already making it big was more than heartening and inspiring, it was goddamn electrifying.
And I knew right then that he wasn’t going to let me down by jimmying up a real-world explanation of all the weirdness he’d been describing. My fellow mutant would deliver.
And deliver he did. ’Salem’s Lot is a classic not just of vampire fiction, but of the whole horror genre. I gobbled every word. There are so many reasons to love this book, but the mutant epiphany in Chapter Six cast it in stone as my favorite King novel.
Mutants rule!
Comments on Stephen King - Wapitikev - 12-24-2008
Sadly, the mutant gene in Mr. King appears to have been suppressed with copious doses of life, the universe and everything. Seldom does it shine, today.
You, on the other hand, Paul; you keep your ODNA on-tap.
Thank you.
-Wapitikev
Comments on Stephen King - Bluesman Mike Lindner - 12-25-2008
Nice tribute, Paul. But I believe those of us who were entranced by FRANKENSTEIN and his fetching BRIDE (both of which I insist are sf), THE INVISIBLE MAN, THE MYSTERIANS, et al, are members of the proud Mutant tribe too.
Trade you a MWHA-HA-HA-HA-HA for an "At last...my forbidden experiment has come to fruition!"
Comments on Stephen King - KRW - 12-26-2008
I liked it. Nice tribute Paul. Wouldn't it be something if he's asked to do one on you someday?
Comments on Stephen King - XiaoYu - 01-02-2009
Salem's Lot is one of the few King novels I tried to but still haven't read yet. Maybe it's time to give it another shot...
Comments on Stephen King - lorezone - 01-02-2009
king is awesome. 'it' is still one of the few books that has the power to make me afraid to turn the lights out after reading it. the first interlude of that book is absolutely terrifying. and randall flagg is the only other re-occuring antagonist other than rasalom to seem like a truly awful being.
Comments on Stephen King - wdg3rd - 01-02-2009
Jeez Eye Cry, am I the only person around here who absolutely can't stand King? I tried, honest. Way back when, I read Carrie. It sucked, I'd read better along the same line. (Saw the movie, it sucked too). A few years later, my co-husband insisted that Salem's Lot was worth a shot. It wasn't. (Nor was the mini-series starring Starsky or Hutch, I couldn't tell them apart, not into cop shows). A decade and some later La Esposa (well, she wasn't yet, we were still just living in sin) pushed the "unabridged" version of The Stand on me. And a bit later that miniseries. I'm sorry. I'd rather read a bar tab from Heinlein (if one showed up on eBay) or a bar tab of my own (if any bartender would stupidly let me run one again) than anything King inflicts on previously innocent paper. I'm sure King is a great guy (never met anybody from Maine that wasn't) but I can't read or watch his crap. La Esposa loves it. But on "literature" and cuisine we we have a few differences. We're both fans of FPW, though she's into the medical thrillers (well, she's an RN) and I prefer the LaNague stuff (SF geek and anarchist) and we're both into Jack. (Let's not discuss the cuisine part -- her immediate ancestry is Baltic so the chili I make at home is bland compared to what I make for normal people and let's not discuss what I do to my own few living taste buds, though I live in Jersey I grew up in Los Angeles).
Comments on Stephen King - Scott Miller - 01-02-2009
You're not alone; I've never finished a book by him, but I figure he's been good for the field and not everyone likes the same things so I just let him be.
wdg3rd Wrote:Jeez Eye Cry, am I the only person around here who absolutely can't stand King? I tried, honest. Way back when, I read Carrie. It sucked, I'd read better along the same line. (Saw the movie, it sucked too). A few years later, my co-husband insisted that Salem's Lot was worth a shot. It wasn't. (Nor was the mini-series starring Starsky or Hutch, I couldn't tell them apart, not into cop shows). A decade and some later La Esposa (well, she wasn't yet, we were still just living in sin) pushed the "unabridged" version of The Stand on me. And a bit later that miniseries. I'm sorry. I'd rather read a bar tab from Heinlein (if one showed up on eBay) or a bar tab of my own (if any bartender would stupidly let me run one again) than anything King inflicts on previously innocent paper. I'm sure King is a great guy (never met anybody from Maine that wasn't) but I can't read or watch his crap. La Esposa loves it. But on "literature" and cuisine we we have a few differences. We're both fans of FPW, though she's into the medical thrillers (well, she's an RN) and I prefer the LaNague stuff (SF geek and anarchist) and we're both into Jack. (Let's not discuss the cuisine part -- her immediate ancestry is Baltic so the chili I make at home is bland compared to what I make for normal people and let's not discuss what I do to my own few living taste buds, though I live in Jersey I grew up in Los Angeles).
Comments on Stephen King - cobalt - 01-02-2009
King's earlier works were good. Of late, he loses me in the first few chapters. I tried Duma Key and it lost me several times, but I did finish it. The Stand, It and The Dark Tower series are my favorites. I had received his newest book for Christmas. I believe the book is a collection of short stories. Years ago there was another collection that had The Mangler as one of the stories....that one was good. We'll see about the new one.....eventually.
Comments on Stephen King - Silverfish - 01-02-2009
Like Scott, I could never finish a book by him. I never got into one enough to care about the outcome of the book (even though I was 50 pages in, for example.) Just not my thing. Paul's piece was very well written and even though I did not "get" any of the references, I understood the sentiment of the article.
Stephanie
Scott Miller Wrote:You're not alone; I've never finished a book by him, but I figure he's been good for the field and not everyone likes the same things so I just let him be.