Almost three years after offloading nearly all the books in my personal library, I've decided to re-read every Stephen King book in chronological order. I used to own them all, but not anymore. I still have a few King titles that I simply could not part with, but the majority were sold to the Strand for nickles. I spent years growing my King library, but the more stuff you have, the more you are anchored to the ground. Personal libraries are great--I wouldn't be opposed to having one in some unknown future--but you pay for them many times over, especially if you move a lot. There were many things I used to value above all else (you should have seen my extensive photo album collection), but after recovery I took a good, hard look at all of my Things and found that the majority of it meant very little to me. I got rid of just about everything save a few truly treasured pieces (and yes, I still own a whole damn box of pictures). I've had few regrets since. It is nice to be eely free. I could pack up my car and jet within an hour. Will I? Probably not. But the option is delicious.
I do regret giving up my tattered paperback of The Bachman Books since King has allowed "Rage" to go out of print (for personal reasons, more on that later). Luckily for me, the library has a copy in storage. Here's hoping it is the complete Bachman books and not the revised version currently pissing off Amazon customers, a version that very deliberately omits "Rage." Some trick on Ebay is selling the same exact paperback copy I had for fifty bucks. Ugh.
But I am looking forward to the journey, especially watching as King's craft sharpens, the stories tighten, and his voice becomes stronger, more natural, deeper. There will be some wrecks along the road (o the horrors of his early female characters) but it will be my first sober read-through from start to now, and more than a few are works I've read only once or twice, which is good (I'm looking forward to reading On Writing again) and horrid (O God, 'Salem's Lot). It will be something else to revisit the King works I read to tatters, too, especially the works close to my heart (looking at you, IT). And there's no denying the pleasures of frolicking in good, solid horror during the Halloween season (which will of course continue on through the rest of the holidays, a great distraction from All That Mess).
Let the good times roll...
CARRIE (1974)
Tormented teen unleashes powerful telekinetic vengeance on a bloody "Night to Remember."
Things get a bit muddled after the first few, but I do recall that Carrie was the second Stephen King book I read, and at the very green age of thirteen, right in the middle of my own tornadic maelstrom of pubescent horror. My mother's library--a large, lumbering python sandworming all around the house--consisted largely of sci-fi and fantasy novels: Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, Jordan, Card, Cherryh, on and on. As a typical preteen, I rejected anything that Mother liked, so sci-fi and fantasy were bleh, westerns were phhpt, and soul music was ugh. But in packing and unpacking boxes over the years (we moved a lot), I did have a general sense of the inventory. One deeply bored day in the summer of 1984, I thumbed through her dumb library of space operas and fantasy bodice rippers and found one book that rung a bell. Wasn't this...a horror book? A scary, R-rated movie horror book? I don't recall asking for permission, but I probably did, and set about the breathless endeavor of reading my very first "adult" book full of sex, violence, f-words, and REDRUM. It was wild.
Life in the early teen years being what it was--tortured? pubescent? the difference is?--it took a year for me to figure out that mom had yet another King gem hidden in the copious stacks of pew pew interstellar gang bangs and half horse immortal archers of destiny and whatnot: a slim little novel called Carrie. At the time I knew next to nothing about the movie (and was completely annoyed and grossed out the first time I saw it), so it was an entirely new story to me. And could I relate? Well, yes and no. I could relate just like every preteen girl could relate, but some girls could feel Carrie's pain far more personally and keenly than others. It is a delicate time, transitioning from a kid to a pre-woman, and while there are challenges for both boys and girls, there is something deeply sinister that rides along on the girl's experience, smoking rudely, flicking ashes, and leering without end. Sure, boys are super short for the longest time (cute! smol!), and some even acquire a yodel (adorb! squee!), but imagine being commodified like a car (at best) or meat (at worst), a thing to be treasured on a pedestal (two-dimensional, inauthentic, trapped), or rendered chum to be consumed at will, by eyes, hands, mouths, worse (objectified, cheapened, bound, chewed up, spit out).
For me, puberty was a thoroughly upsetting experience, often terrifying, completely gross. I came to hate every square inch of my body, this thing that had somehow beckoned unwanted advances from boys my own age to men old enough to know better. Walking down the sidewalk, out of convenience stores, grocery stores, shopping at the mall, the cheap shots came from any direction: wet kissing noises, whistles, various catcalls, indecent proposals, groping, massaging, and even assault. All of which were experienced under the age of fourteen. I may not have had a religiously deranged mother, but I knew the hot poison of Attention; the unkind gaze, drilling assessment, the snorts and giggles, endless whispers. And we all knew some real-life version of Carrie, too. Girls who were duly commodified and deemed unworthy, to be terminally teased, tormented, and devalued sexually. Where all women are expected to at least pass, break even, find some equal to weather the storm of conformity and tribalism, these lowly Carries wandered the clanging halls of public education alone, marked, stinking of rejection and suffering. I don't remember the target of this unrelenting cruelty at the junior high stage--I was frankly under siege in a very real sense, on a daily basis, and had little time to extend a thought or compassion to anyone else. But I remember the high school Carrie. She mostly tried to keep low and as far from the barking, dogging, flogging, sneers and jeers as she could, but the anger in her face was clear. She was trapped in enemy territory. No matter what she did, how she dressed, styled her hair, walked this way or that, it was wrong. And there was always someone ready to tell her exactly what a piece of shit she was.
Why are people like this? Lots of reasons. Preteens and teens, though, are the worst of the worst when it comes to othering. They pull no punches, hit below the belt, scratch and blind. Reading Carrie for the first time was a balm on my spirit in so many ways. King got it so right. Are kids really that cruel? Yes, they are. In many different, highly inventive, deeply hateful, infinitely cruel ways. Are all kids like this? Of course not. Not all kids and not all the time. So many play the Sue Snell, at least laughing along in the moment, flushing with embarrassment in reflection. Is it because we are more like apes when in groups of like-minded individuals, flinging shit and screeching incoherently? Adults are literally doing this now in the in realm of politics so yeah, of course kids are capable of the same and worse. The mob rules.
But this is why Carrie's murderous revenge is so glorious, especially to a preteen reader living under one or many thumbs. I was too scared to fight back and didn't have telekinesis to launch my foes into the sun, but I did have my mighty pen. While it is no coincidence that I started writing the same summer I read The Shining, my foray into vengeance writing is the direct bi-product of reading Carrie for the first time. These mean little stories were short, unflinching, and brutally violent. Eventually I ended up tearing those stories up and setting them on fire. In the moment, though, furiously pouring my own rage and terror onto the page, it felt profoundly uplifting, even godlike. I used their real names. Unspeakable crimes were committed. For a bitter minute, there was some glimmering ghost of justice. A little time passed, I read and reread what I wrote, and grew frightened for my soul. I was still very young, incredibly impressionable, and ninety percent certain I was evil (remember, the self-hatred was fully formed by then), so that fact that such thoughts had come out of my head was too disturbing to bear. So adorable. I wish I could hug 13-year-old me, but she'd probably say NO HUGGING and I'd have to respect her prickly wishes.
I wonder what my grandparents would have thought had they read one of those stories instead of the sexy song I composed during church and directed most heavingly toward a boy in the first pew. They were livid about the sexy song (there was touching and kissing and "knowing" in it, pant, wheeze) so I imagine they might have been apoplectic about the murder story. I was well into adulthood before I realized it was me who should have been mad as hell for having my privacy violated. Parents, don't do this. Because here's what: Throughout my teen years I was writing constantly: songs, poems, stories, journaling. I had many notebooks and always had one on me if the urge to write struck. I wrote some predictable shit, crazy shit, sexy sexy songs and poems, songs about witches and damnation and storms of justice and comeuppance and what have you, rhymed "love" with "up above," "glove," "dove," and so on...and I wrote straight up torture porn that scared even me. But in reality I was a good girl. I toed the line, I rarely talked back, and I was a people pleaser. Moody? Yes. Whiny? Sometimes. Smoked secretly for years? Sure. But I was a "good," "nice" girl. Your kids' writing might tell you something or nothing at all. But reading it and yelling at them about it (or having a third party yell at them because you are too much of a coward to confront the child yourself) is not helpful, ever. It destroys trust. And I must say, to be perfectly clear, that my mother never violated this trust. Ever. What a mensch.
Carrie's mother, on the other hand, what a wench. King loves a crazy mama, and clearly relishes a big crazy mama blowout showdown, rumble in the jungle type thing, though it's usually in a parlor of some sort. I can think of three straight off: Eddie Kaspbrak's mom in IT, Frannie Goldsmith's mom in The Stand (you have to read the unabridged version for that showdown, though), and of course Carrie's mom, who is a living confrontation, ready with her tracts and bible, screeching damnation at pretty much anyone anywhere. Imagine being harangued and threatened both at school and at home, no safe spaces, toeing a line that is forever in motion, especially during the formative years of childhood. You'd set fire to the whole town with your mind if someone dumped a bucket of pig's blood on your head, too. Especially if you were a teen still under the thumb.
Carrie was never one of my favorites as much as I enjoyed it the first time around. Once I got into the larger catalog that existed by 1985 (some thirteen novels under his own name, five novel(lla)s under Richard Bachman but recently attributed to King at that time), there were far meatier meals on the table and his universe was expanding exponentially. At first reading, it seemed breathless and fast-paced, jumping from third-person narrative, to news reports, to testimony, to first-person autobiography, and back again, whipping from the present to the past and a colorful array of voices and tones. At this most recent reading (an estimated fifth since 1985) the cracks in storytelling are evident, but understandable. The first half of Carrie is more fleshed out and evenly paced, but as the narrative flips from one source to another as the events of prom night unspool, the pace becomes more and more frenetic. It's funny that it read so much more naturally when I was thirteen, almost as if the book was paced like the mind of a hormone-soaked teen girl under fire. Reading Carrie now reminded me of another King character, a writer of course, remembering coming out of his first novel "scarred and shaking" (or similar). I'll have to tag back to that once I come across it since I can't remember who said it in which novel or story (but I will!).
This is why reading Carrie is so important to me right in this moment of my life. I don't know if it was the first novel King ever wrote, but I know it was the first novel he published. I am currently deep in the pages of my own first novel, feeling a bit bruised and a lot scared, but still invested, still digging the story, and wanting desperately to do right by it. Carrie has its flaws, but it's still a compelling story and a genuine page-turner. I hope that my own efforts will be even half as good.
Grade: B
Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 3, so not really. Unless you have no sense of what teenagers can be like. I give it a three for the suspense factor, which is very high. Even though you know what's going to happen, it builds.
Warnings: Dirty birdy words, n-word, casual bigotry, Aunt Flo, ohuh, lots and lots o'death, general human shittiness.
Artifact: Beautiful early edition (print number unknown). Hardcover, red paper casing, glossy stamping, no headbands, rough cut, white endpapers, medium white stock. I always half loved, half hated the jacket: the type and artwork are very "70s-80s Stevie Nicks, white witch, watercolor"...but the woman featured is frankly too striking and objectively beautiful to be Carrie. This is the first King novel to jacket disconnect...and is unfortunately not the last. There have been some truly terrible misfires over the years. Overall, it is a lovely, very well-made edition.
But I am looking forward to the journey, especially watching as King's craft sharpens, the stories tighten, and his voice becomes stronger, more natural, deeper. There will be some wrecks along the road (o the horrors of his early female characters) but it will be my first sober read-through from start to now, and more than a few are works I've read only once or twice, which is good (I'm looking forward to reading On Writing again) and horrid (O God, 'Salem's Lot). It will be something else to revisit the King works I read to tatters, too, especially the works close to my heart (looking at you, IT). And there's no denying the pleasures of frolicking in good, solid horror during the Halloween season (which will of course continue on through the rest of the holidays, a great distraction from All That Mess).
Let the good times roll...
CARRIE (1974)
Tormented teen unleashes powerful telekinetic vengeance on a bloody "Night to Remember."
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| "Just like the white winged dove / Sings a song / Sounds like she's singin..." unintentional Stevie Nicks-inspired design. Dust jacket is doing what dust jackets do--see the scarring? |
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| Back of the dust jacket, nice and chewed up from too many moves across cities and states. |
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| Trashed jacket edges and a faded spine. In my days, the most common (and cheapest) stamping was gold or silver metallic, so it is possible that this started out as a shiny gold, but it's a simple, ghostly yellow now. |
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| I love a good design ethic, taking the same fonts and flourishes from the front cover and putting them on the spine stamping and title pages. It is a truly lovely edition. |
Why are people like this? Lots of reasons. Preteens and teens, though, are the worst of the worst when it comes to othering. They pull no punches, hit below the belt, scratch and blind. Reading Carrie for the first time was a balm on my spirit in so many ways. King got it so right. Are kids really that cruel? Yes, they are. In many different, highly inventive, deeply hateful, infinitely cruel ways. Are all kids like this? Of course not. Not all kids and not all the time. So many play the Sue Snell, at least laughing along in the moment, flushing with embarrassment in reflection. Is it because we are more like apes when in groups of like-minded individuals, flinging shit and screeching incoherently? Adults are literally doing this now in the in realm of politics so yeah, of course kids are capable of the same and worse. The mob rules.But this is why Carrie's murderous revenge is so glorious, especially to a preteen reader living under one or many thumbs. I was too scared to fight back and didn't have telekinesis to launch my foes into the sun, but I did have my mighty pen. While it is no coincidence that I started writing the same summer I read The Shining, my foray into vengeance writing is the direct bi-product of reading Carrie for the first time. These mean little stories were short, unflinching, and brutally violent. Eventually I ended up tearing those stories up and setting them on fire. In the moment, though, furiously pouring my own rage and terror onto the page, it felt profoundly uplifting, even godlike. I used their real names. Unspeakable crimes were committed. For a bitter minute, there was some glimmering ghost of justice. A little time passed, I read and reread what I wrote, and grew frightened for my soul. I was still very young, incredibly impressionable, and ninety percent certain I was evil (remember, the self-hatred was fully formed by then), so that fact that such thoughts had come out of my head was too disturbing to bear. So adorable. I wish I could hug 13-year-old me, but she'd probably say NO HUGGING and I'd have to respect her prickly wishes.
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| No headbands but that's predictable for a first novel, first print. I can't tell you when headbands transformed from an integral part of the binding to a mere decorative flair, but I do know that publishers will skip them as an unnecessary (if not utterly whimsical and fun) expense. |
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| Rough cut pages, super sexy trade level flair. |
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| Gorgeous full title page. |
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| And totally see-through copyright page. This may be a first print, but I honestly can't tell. This may be the most scant copyright page I've ever seen. No cip data, no publisher data, and no edition or printing data. So I'll just pretend it's a first edition, first print! |
Carrie was never one of my favorites as much as I enjoyed it the first time around. Once I got into the larger catalog that existed by 1985 (some thirteen novels under his own name, five novel(lla)s under Richard Bachman but recently attributed to King at that time), there were far meatier meals on the table and his universe was expanding exponentially. At first reading, it seemed breathless and fast-paced, jumping from third-person narrative, to news reports, to testimony, to first-person autobiography, and back again, whipping from the present to the past and a colorful array of voices and tones. At this most recent reading (an estimated fifth since 1985) the cracks in storytelling are evident, but understandable. The first half of Carrie is more fleshed out and evenly paced, but as the narrative flips from one source to another as the events of prom night unspool, the pace becomes more and more frenetic. It's funny that it read so much more naturally when I was thirteen, almost as if the book was paced like the mind of a hormone-soaked teen girl under fire. Reading Carrie now reminded me of another King character, a writer of course, remembering coming out of his first novel "scarred and shaking" (or similar). I'll have to tag back to that once I come across it since I can't remember who said it in which novel or story (but I will!).
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| The "Book Club Edition" stamped in the lower right hand corner of the front flap is the only real clue I have that this might not be a first edition and is very likely not a first print, either, but I'll live in denial until someone tells me otherwise. |
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| I nearly fall dead every time I see this author photo. It is just...everything. The white jacket. The print oxford. The Cool Dude Stance. The Bob Seger Werewolf styling. That one lush, wild, gorgeous eyebrow. It is transcendent. Why is this not always his author photo for every work forever?? (Author photo and cover design by Alex Gotfryd.) |
Grade: B
Scary? (0-nope to 10-you will die): 3, so not really. Unless you have no sense of what teenagers can be like. I give it a three for the suspense factor, which is very high. Even though you know what's going to happen, it builds.
Warnings: Dirty birdy words, n-word, casual bigotry, Aunt Flo, ohuh, lots and lots o'death, general human shittiness.
Artifact: Beautiful early edition (print number unknown). Hardcover, red paper casing, glossy stamping, no headbands, rough cut, white endpapers, medium white stock. I always half loved, half hated the jacket: the type and artwork are very "70s-80s Stevie Nicks, white witch, watercolor"...but the woman featured is frankly too striking and objectively beautiful to be Carrie. This is the first King novel to jacket disconnect...and is unfortunately not the last. There have been some truly terrible misfires over the years. Overall, it is a lovely, very well-made edition.
'SALEM'S LOT (1975)
Wildly uninteresting windbag gets the girl, loses the girl, speaks in long monologues about Stuff. Also there are vampires.
Woof.
If I were to make a list of every Stephen King book from very favorite to biggest butt barnacle, 'Salem's Lot would win the worst prize.
I have now read 'Salem's Lot three times. My first read-through was between 1985 and 1990, or between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. I hated it. It stayed pristine and untouched in my library, moving from one place to another, bookcase to bookcase, duly dusted but uncracked, making it all the way to New York City before I decided to pick it up again. Maybe I hadn't given it a fair shake? After all, I had only ever read it once and could not remember a thing about it, save that it was about (yawn) vampires. Maybe it's actually good! But no. Second reading completed (est. 2005, mid-thirties, still not into it) and back on the shelf it went. Ultimately it got sent off to the Strand with the rest of the library. I'm not even sure I got money for it.
Look, I LOVE an irreverent vampire story. There was a spate of silly vampire movies and books that dappled my teenhood with bloody glee: lots of whimsy, humor, gore, and cheap scares...bring it on! We all read at least the first two Anne Rice "Lestat" novels (I gave up after the second, but most didn't), laughed at the goofy idiocy of Once Bitten (I can still remember the chorus from the dance scene song, "Hands Off," God help me do not watch it unless you want to die of secondhand embarrassment but definitely watch it's so terrible), screamed and howled and immediately rewatched Fright Night (more vampire dance trance silliness here), and swooned hardcore over those sessy sessy Lost Boys (seriously, what's with all the dance/music scenes in the vampire movies, like literally all of them? Though I must admit "I Still Believe" has been on my permanent playlist since 1987). But there's a limit, ay? I can't really watch the Twilight movies, though I like the part where Edward looks like he's going to vomit the first time he sees/smells Bella. That's high comedy, son. But standard vamp? Yawwwwwn. (Oh, but we loved Grace Jones in Vamp, another funny, totally irreverent, terrible but memorable 80s stripper vampire movie.) But Dracula in a cape? Vampires in general? Vampires living in haunted houses on a hill? Meh. It's just not my thing.
Before proceeding, I must state that 'Salem's Lot still kicks the shit out of many, many bestsellers over the decades up until now. Easily. It isn't a bad book. It's a fledgling novel from a very talented, megastar writer. You can actually see him flexing his skills throughout, sometimes nailing it (so to speak), but frequently sweating out those metaphors and similes like he's trying to meet a minimum imagery requirement. It is very much a second novel sort of work. Not bad, not great, just is. In addition, if I am completely fair, I'd already read other blockbuster, titan titles by King by the time I read 'Salem's Lot. It didn't stand a chance in vampire Hell.
What did strike me this read around (where again, I did not remember any of it, other than the fact there would be vampires, including a baby vampire) was the world building. It is one of the things I love so much in King's strongest writing: He can create whole, real worlds that you can smell and taste, places that you grow fond of, think about, wish to visit at least once if not forever. There is a real effort to create a place called Jerusalem's Lot, to render it real off the page. It is not as successful as later creations, but the work is evident.
Wildly uninteresting windbag gets the girl, loses the girl, speaks in long monologues about Stuff. Also there are vampires.
If I were to make a list of every Stephen King book from very favorite to biggest butt barnacle, 'Salem's Lot would win the worst prize.
I have now read 'Salem's Lot three times. My first read-through was between 1985 and 1990, or between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. I hated it. It stayed pristine and untouched in my library, moving from one place to another, bookcase to bookcase, duly dusted but uncracked, making it all the way to New York City before I decided to pick it up again. Maybe I hadn't given it a fair shake? After all, I had only ever read it once and could not remember a thing about it, save that it was about (yawn) vampires. Maybe it's actually good! But no. Second reading completed (est. 2005, mid-thirties, still not into it) and back on the shelf it went. Ultimately it got sent off to the Strand with the rest of the library. I'm not even sure I got money for it.
Look, I LOVE an irreverent vampire story. There was a spate of silly vampire movies and books that dappled my teenhood with bloody glee: lots of whimsy, humor, gore, and cheap scares...bring it on! We all read at least the first two Anne Rice "Lestat" novels (I gave up after the second, but most didn't), laughed at the goofy idiocy of Once Bitten (I can still remember the chorus from the dance scene song, "Hands Off," God help me do not watch it unless you want to die of secondhand embarrassment but definitely watch it's so terrible), screamed and howled and immediately rewatched Fright Night (more vampire dance trance silliness here), and swooned hardcore over those sessy sessy Lost Boys (seriously, what's with all the dance/music scenes in the vampire movies, like literally all of them? Though I must admit "I Still Believe" has been on my permanent playlist since 1987). But there's a limit, ay? I can't really watch the Twilight movies, though I like the part where Edward looks like he's going to vomit the first time he sees/smells Bella. That's high comedy, son. But standard vamp? Yawwwwwn. (Oh, but we loved Grace Jones in Vamp, another funny, totally irreverent, terrible but memorable 80s stripper vampire movie.) But Dracula in a cape? Vampires in general? Vampires living in haunted houses on a hill? Meh. It's just not my thing. |
| On Point. Jacket photo collage copyright 1993 by Thomas Holdorf. Jacket hand lettering by Craig De Camp. Jacket design by Peter R. Kruzan. |
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| All the fancy endpapers. |
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| Ad page (or, Previous Works) updated to c. 1990. |
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| Now this is a copyright page. I was a reprint manager eons ago. If memory serves, the bottom line indicates this was the 28th printing. At the next reprint, they would remove the 29, and so on. Most mere mortal titles feature a simple 10 count (eg. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1). |
I have never seen Nosferatu in its entirety. I probably never will. At this point, I'm not sure why I'd need to except to check it off some nonexistent list, a.k.a. "100 Classic Horror Movies to See before You Die (Of! Fright!)". But I'll tell you what: Nothing in the vampire genre has ever scared me as badly as those flickering frames of Max Schrek as Orlock, especially when he's just STANDING THERE being a terrifying, otherworldly WEIRDO. I've always been a sucker for the Slow Chase (see Halloween, It Follows, so many others) and Max Schrek is like the Originator (Ain't No Imitators) of that creepy shit. To this day, it freaks me the hell out. If I'd seen Ol' Orlock as a kid, I would have had legit, yelling for mama nightmares. It would have imprinted.
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| 80s Buzzcut King (Photo by Tabitha King). |
Grade: C
Scary (0-nope to 10-you will die): Solid 6. Others have claimed it's the "scariest Stephen King book everrrr" but it isn't. Very little vampire action and a "hero" who is very hard to like. If you don't much care what happens to the main characters, it's hard to get worked up about what happens to them.
Warnings: casual bigotry, homophobia, dead babies, undead babies, misogyny gone wild, sex scene where a certain someone says "Oh Susan."
Artifact: Library Book! According to the copyright page, this is the 28th printing of an edition put out sometime around 1993 (based specifically on the cover art credit cited above). It is a mighty hunk compared to my slight little Carrie volume and could easily knock a vampire into next week if you chucked it just so. Hardcover, black paper casing, metallic red stamping, red headbands, flat cut, red endpapers, heavy cream stock. It's hard to tell through the heavy plastic film that protects the book from unsavory elements (patrons! o susan!), but the cover appears to be 5-color, CMYK plus metallic. I am probably remembering that wrong, but either way, super fancy for what comes out looking more sepia than anything. In any case, the cover art itself is truly inspired, spooky and beautiful, with the back cover imagery clearly evoking the Catholic Church juxtaposed against the front cover's haunted Marsten house, both ensnared in deep thickets. A lovely and fitting artifact, indeed.
Up Next: Come play with us, Danneeeeeeeeee...
But seriously. This Guy.
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| Gah. |
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| GAAAHHH. |
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| Nope. No. |
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| [dead] [un] |
