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.