If Dracula is Catholic...

...how did people defend themselves before the Church? Vampires just shy away from garlic (leaves a strange taste in their mouths for days!), seems difficult to incapacitate them enough with garlic to then stake them and decapitate them. Christ seems to be a pivotal point in the war against vampires.

I find it interesting that we have all agreed that Christ is the weapon that destroys vampires. However, I must acknowledge that there is a growing trend in the literature that this is not the case, i.e. Ture Blood/Sookie Stackhouse, Twilight, etc. But at the time this book was published, 1975, I think it was generally acknowledge that all vampires were Catholic.

Kudos to King, though, he begins to throw this idea on its head! From the first encounter with the vampires in this book, I began to struggle with this idea of Vampires being Catholic. Like a man after my heart, King addresses this when Father Callahan's cross stops working as his faith fails him. He even acknowledges, through the characters, that it is the belief in the symbol which repels, not the object itself. So it is conceivable that any object could repel a vampire if one placed enough faith in said object.

My bigger question is how do people so readily abandon their beliefs, or disbeliefs as the case may be? Does the existence of a vampire mean the existence of God? This is not a knock against 'Salems Lot, just a curiosity that arose while reading this book. I guess it has always been at the back of my mind. In my nighttime notes, I mused that perhaps one needs to witness something so evil to finally believe in the existence of God. Thoughts?

Up next, The Shining

Halfway...

Halfway through 'Salems Lot. Now it is getting really good. So good that I woke up in the middle of the night, knowing that I had just had a nightmare, but unable to remember anything.
What seemed a chore, now seems brilliant. The narrative jumping from character to character; the lengthy descriptions; the depth of information about the goings on of the town. I find that I look forward to curling up with this book each night.

My book has become dogeared, not something I am known to do. There are these passages that feel like pure descriptive train of thought ramblings, yet they are so coherent and could be my own internal musings. I find myself, reading and re-reading them. For example:

"But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the mid-point of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since he last saw you." (123)

I find myself nodding yes, as though I have an old friend that comes by with his pipe and whittles away my afternoon with stories. But the picture is painted and I do understand that feeling when fall first comes bringing with it cool air and I find myself wishing that I had the afternoon free so that I lie out on a blanket at the park and just be.

'Salems Lot

King has said a couple of times that this is his favorite book - I cannot say the same. I thought this book was terrifying; so scary that all I remember is some scene in a kitchen. But then, this is a vampire book, and I read it back when vampires were frightening creatures that only wanted your blood and had little to no self-control. In fact, I had terrible vampire nightmares. That was until vampires got really cute and grew a conscious (Anne Rice) and then they got cute, sparkly and became vegetarians (Twilight).
I am already 50 pages in and I am remembering why this one was a little more of a challenge than Carrie. There is a lot of exposition on the characters and the town, which he has not pulled off as masterfully as in his other books. King does give a little hint to the terror that is to come by way of a flashback. But other than that, I feel like I am slogging through character development to get to the goods - not something that I really enjoy in a novel. 

Tampons & Dirtypillows

Tampons and dirtypillows - these are the two things that stick out most prominently when I think about Carrie. The first comes from the one of the opening scenes in the book - Carrie gets her first period in the locker room shower, in front of all the girls. Because of the town's general dislike for her (due to how different she is) her peers begin to throw tampons at her in a terrible scene of bullying.
The second, dirtypillows (to be said with distaste), is Carrie's mother's name for breasts. I always found it clever, and disturbing.

Carrie has grown up with a christian zealot for a mother. Her mother punishes Carrie by locking her into her 'prayer closet' to beg for forgiveness under "Derrault's conception of Jonathan Edwards' famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." [Perhaps this painting] As the story progresses, even as King peppers the narration with 'flash forwards' of Carrie's terrifying powers that leave over 400 people dead, he paints a picture of Carrie as a victim struggling to find her way out of that role. She is unwanted by her mother, her father is dead, and she is the butt of all the jokes. In the end, she discovers a power that is too much for her to handle and she becomes consumed by revenge, hatred, self-hatred, and ultimately her own power.
This is quintessential King - a narrative that plays in time, the anti-hero hero, the supernatural at play, and an ending based in reality (in the sense that life is not always pretty or fun and we would all do well to remember that).

Next up, vampires...'Salems Lot.

Halfway through Carrie

Well, halfway through Carrie. So much better than how I remembered. Of course it has been at least 15 years since I read it. Still, I am trying to pace myself so that I can really enjoy what I am reading; pausing to savor the nuances.

I also have to confess that after reading this book (the first time), I renewed my efforts to try and pick things up with my mind. Darn it! I do not have the dominant TK gene - thanks mom and dad.

I love that Stephen King has a great website with a lot of information about his work. For information on Carrie: www.stephenking.com/library/novel/carrie.html

What Stephen has to say on the inspiration of this book:
The story is largely about how women find their own channels of power, and what men fear about women and women's sexuality. "Carrie White is a sadly mis-used teenager, an example of the sort of person whose spirit is so often broken for good in that pit of man- and woman-eaters that is your normal suburban high school. But she's also Woman, feeling her powers for the first time and, like Samson, pulling down the temple on everyone in sight at the end of the book."

Follow Along

For those of you that would like to follow along, below is the list that I will be using. I should point out that I am reading books, in the order that they were published, not the order that they were written.

Title	Year	Type	Pages
Carrie	1974	novel	199
'Salem's Lot	1975	novel	439
The Shining	1977	novel	447
Rage	1977	novel	211
Night Shift	1978	collection	336
The Stand	1978	novel	823
The Long Walk	1979	novel	384
The Dead Zone	1979	novel	428
Firestarter	1980	novel	426
Roadwork	1981	novel	274
Danse Macabre	1981	non-fiction	400
Cujo	1981	novel	319
The Running Man	1982	novel	219
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger	1982	novel	224
Creepshow	1982	comic	64
Different Seasons	1982	collection	527
Christine	1983	novel	526
Pet Sematary	1983	novel	416
Cycle of the Werewolf	1983	novelette	127
The Talisman	1984	novel	646
Thinner	1984	novel	309
Skeleton Crew	1985	collection	512
The Bachman Books	1985	collection	692
It	1986	novel	1142
The Eyes of the Dragon	1987	novel	326
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three	1987	novel	400
Misery	1987	novel	320
The Tommyknockers	1987	novel	558
Nightmares in the Sky	1988	non-fiction	128
The Dark Half	1989	novel	431
The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition	1990	novel	1152
Four Past Midnight	1990	collection	763
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands	1991	novel	512
Needful Things	1991	novel	690
Gerald's Game	1992	novel	352
Dolores Claiborne	1992	novel	305
Nightmares & Dreamscapes	1993	collection	816
Insomnia	1994	novel	832
Rose Madder	1995	novel	432
The Green Mile	1996	novel	400
Desperation	1996	novel	704
The Regulators	1996	novel	480
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass	1997	novel	787
Bag of Bones	1998	novel	529
Storm of the Century	1999	screenplay	400
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon	1999	novel	224
Hearts in Atlantis	1999	collection	528
On Writing	2000	non-fiction	288
Secret Windows	2000	collection	433
Dreamcatcher	2001	novel	620
Black House	2001	novel	625
Everything's Eventual	2002	collection	464
From a Buick 8	2002	novel	368
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger: Revised and Expanded Edition	2003	novel	256
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla	2003	novel	714
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah	2004	novel	432
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower	2004	novel	845
Faithful	2004	non-fiction	432
The Colorado Kid	2005	novel	184
'Salem's Lot: Illustrated Edition	2005	novel	600
Cell	2006	novel	355
Lisey's Story	2006	novel	528
Blaze	2007	novel	304
Duma Key	2008	novel	611
Just After Sunset	2008	collection	367
Stephen King Goes to the Movies	2009	collection	592
Under the Dome	2009	novel	1074
Blockade Billy	2010	novella	112
Full Dark, No Stars	2010	collection	368
Mile 81	2011	e-book	80
11/22/63	2011	novel	849
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole	2012	novel
Dr. Sleep	2012	novel

I have not decided if I am going to read both versions of the Stand (abridged and unabridged). But it seems as though I probably will. Yes, I will also read the nonfiction ones.