Late nights

20 pages turned into 75 pages. When SK gets cooking, it is hard to put the book down. Just when things seem like they might be slowing, Donna has a lap full of a rabid dog and bites on her. She has rabies and all I can think of is the episode of The Office where Meredith gets hospitalized with rabies and Michael puts together a 5k to cure rabies.

Whew, good thing I don't have to get up early.

Memory Loss

Stephen King is an alcoholic - I wonder how you could not be with all of his horrors running around in his head all the time. He admits that Jack Torrence (from The Shining) is him. Trapped in an hold hotel with your addiction raging up and down the halls and controlling your life. King says that the creative part of him knew in 1975 that he was an alcoholic, but he did not come to the realization until the early 80s.

"There's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all. I don't say that with pride or shame, only a vague sense of sorrow and loss. I like that book. I wish I could remember enjoying the good parts as I put them down on the page."  -- On Writing, p99

Scary dreams

Reading Stephen King at night, before bed always makes me feel like I am on the verge of a nightmare.
Scary thing in the closet with yellow eyes? Yep, says my brain, we cam do that.
Closet door creaking open? Yep, that too.
Rabid dog trying to attack. Oh yes, that sounds like a fantastic dream!
So before I get in bed, I check the closet door. No need to worry about boogie men under the bed. I took care of that years ago by placing my bed on the floor.

Cujo

Everyone remembers this movie. If it was remade today, they would probably use a Pitt Bull - since those are the dogs of the hour. But I like the idea of a Saint Bernard. They are big dogs, but my only experience with them is from some cartoon with a Bernard coming to rescue people with some sort of alcohol in the little barrel at its throat.

I have a tendency to dislike stories in which animals play a heavy role. You just know that they animal is going to get it in the end and that never sits well with me. Even in this case, where Cujo is mad with rabies, there is still a part of me that does not want him to meet his end.

"In the spring of 1977 Stephen took his motorcycle to a mechanic who lived outside of Bridgton, Maine, "in the middle of nowhere". "I took the bike out there, and I just barely made it. And this huge Saint Bernard came out of the barn, growling. Then this guy came out and, I mean, he was Joe Camber-he looked almost like one of those guys out of Deliverance. And I was retreating, and wishing that I was not on my motorcycle, when the guy said, 'Don't worry. He don't bite.' And so I reached out to pet him, and the dog started to go for me. And the guy walked over and said, 'Down Gonzo,' or whatever the dog's name was and gave him this huge whack on the rump, and the dog yelped and sat down. The guy said, 'Gonzo never done that before. I guess he don't like your face.' And that became the central situation of the book, mixed with those old "Movies of the Week," the made-for-television movies that they used to have on ABC. I thought to myself, what if you could have a situation that was an extension of one scene. It would be the ultimate TV movie. There would be one set, there would be one room. You'd never even have to change the camera angle. So there was one very small place, and it became Donna's Pinto--and everything just flowed from that situation--the big dog and the Pinto."
http://www.stephenking.com/library/novel/cujo_inspiration.html

Realization and Danse Macabre

I think it goes without saying, but I enjoy fiction. There is something about getting lost in the story, falling in love with characters, and living in another world where some of the conventions of this world do not apply. I could be living in a world with hobbits, elves, dragons, telekinesis, magic, levitation, zombies, vampires, you name it. Whatever the case, I just get lost. My eyes fly over the page and I have been known to stay awake until 4am without getting tired or even know that it is 4am. 

I love non-fiction. In fact, I spend more time reading non-fiction than fiction. In reading Danse Macabre, I realized that I labor over every word of non-fiction and that it takes forever. The layout of every sentence is important to the ideas presented in a work of non-fiction. Whereas, in a fiction novel, an author could write in comfortable run-ons and fragments and you could still follow the story. 

Danse Macabre, was both wonderful and painstaking at the same time - around 10,000 minutes of reading. This is King's overview of the horror genre, written in 1980, although I read the 2010 revision.

I am also a person that loves to know what makes people tick. Stories are nice, but I prefer to know why a person decides to hack someone to bits, or turn to drugs, or alienate the people around them. In essence, this study is an ode to what makes the horror genre tick. If you are not a person that enjoys horror and you wonder why someone who spends most of their time practicing yoga and helping others to heal, then I think King answers that question. 

"We take refuge in make-believe terrors so the real ones don't overwhelm us, freezing us in place an making it impossible for us to function in our day-to-day lives. We go into the darkness of a movie theater hoping to dream badly, because the world of our normal lives looks ever so much better when the bad dream ends...Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or window willingly because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or not...and not just to look, but to be pushed through. Forever."

And this works as an explanation for me. It is not that my life is horrible but in comparison to Rick from "The Walking Dead" my life is a walk down easy street. 

The horror genre also provides an escape for the over active imagination. The mind that can dream up zombies, haunted houses, or as was the case last night, ghostly beings that take over the bodies of friends at night as we live in a home in the middle of nowhere, can find freedom in the terror on a page or movie screen where the main character lives and the "bad guy" dies. Knowing that Stephen King is an adult who sometimes turns the light on at night and snuggles up to his wife because he has woken up from a nightmare and is still afraid of the dark, makes me feel a certain kinship to him. It also dissolves the shame I once had for doing the same thing. In the overactive imagination wonderful art is produced, but there is always something lurking in the shadows.

Triumphant Return & Roadwork

Whew...months of slogging through rather difficult and somewhat depressing reads, time spent relaxing, but I am finally through!

In order to be 100% transparent, inaction / stagnation are traits that I can't abide. Characters (and people) that stagnate hold no interest for me. They are one dimensional, and dare I say it, boring. I live for growth, realization, epiphany, and painful awareness of one's motivations in life. With that in mind, I have no problem telling you that it was with resentment that I pushed my way through Roadwork.

Roadwork is another of King's works written as Richard Bachman. This work is about a man, Barton Dawes, who is going to lose his home to a freeway. Rather than allow the state to buy his house and look for a better home, he is paralyzed by depression. Barton destroys his marriage, his career and his life with his inability to move forward.

The saving grace for Roadwork and Barton are the references to a son that died - which are the only parts of the book that I really enjoyed. The reader is led to believe that his motivations for wanting to remain are that all memories of a happier time, with his son and wife, are alive in this house. We are led to believe that perhaps Barton Dawes believes that outside his home he loses his child. But it is just an allusion and Barton does not come to realize this, as far as we are aware. Instead, we are left to read pages and pages of painful stagnation and action without motivation.