Friday, May 27, 2016

Carrie (1974)

(Program note: I've been on vacation and finished this book a couple weeks ago and only now am I getting my thoughts together.)

Appropriately enough I finished the first book of this insane project just a few minutes before midnight.


The moral of Carrie is that should not be a bully because you can never be sure if the kid you're picking on has insane telekinetic powers capable of killing you, most of your friends, and burning your school to the ground. And effectively sucking the life from your hometown. In Maine. Although it's a relatively short book, it demonstrates Stephen King pouring on the fear factor right out the gates. Although King would explore other genres of popular fiction, his success with Carrie established horror as his wheelhouse, the genre he would quickly become the "master" of within a few years.

First books (and albums, too, but not so much movies) can be tricky. Often a lot of work to "get noticed", not to mention the inevitable rejects that came before, impact the delivery of a debut work. This results in the debut being substantially different than the rest of the author's oeuvre. Especially in music this can end up being a disastrous trap where no future album can ever live up to the debut, usually resulting in a very short lifespan for the band or artist's career. In other cases, usually more common with books, the debut is strong but uncharacteristic of anything else the author will write. The second book may be weaker, but it establishes the tone for most or all future works. In this particular case I think of popular mystery authors who usually write in series, like Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and so forth.

To apply this to Stephen King is a little dicey in that this is not the first book in the adventures of Carrie White. I don't think anybody finished the book thinking "when's the sequel coming out?" On the other hand, from the little I know that lies ahead, I'm pretty sure King wasn't planning on using the structure or tone of Carrie in his future books. Carrie had a unique challenge in that King had no fan base or name recognition at this point in his career. If he had written a lame book, assuming it even made it past the publisher, this probably would have been it for his writing career. Thankfully, this was not the case, and the book opened the door for King to go more in-depth. Just for comparison, 'Salem's Lot is twice the length, and It is something like five times longer.

The book isn't perfect. In most lists attempting to rank all of Stephen King's books it usually lands in the upper part of the middle, and rarely/never makes a top 10 or 20 list. The length makes the book feel a bit lightweight, but again this goes back to "first book" issues. A lot of publishers aren't going to clear cut a forest to produce a book written by an unknown. Also, toward the end the suspension of disbelief gets harder to maintain. People somehow seem to just "know" about Carrie, even those that have never met her before. It feels like a punt, but who knows what the reasons were for some of the shortcuts. We'll explore this further with the screen adaptations yet to come, but the inclusion of fake book segments and articles may not be to everybody's taste. I thought it was particularly interesting that King would effectively insert spoilers into these bits. Anyone genuinely shocked by Carrie's rampage at the prom obviously did not read these.

Overall, I was pleased with the book and I can see why a movie would be released so quickly as well as understand how this essentially made the rest of Stephen King's career possible. I am looking forward to reading the novels ahead, many of which, unlike this one, rank very highly with the diehard fans.

Saturday, May 7, 2016

In progress: Carrie

I'm trying something out here, which may not be worthwhile in the long run, but what the heck. As I read through the book, I'll post some thoughts here and update as I go. I imagine this will be fairly spoiler-intensive, so you may not want to read this if you have never read the book or seen any of the movies.

May 7 (page 10): So I started this last night, so let's call May 6 the "birthdate" of the project. So what is the first line of the first Stephen King novel ever? "News item from the Westover (Me.) weekly Enterprise, August 19, 1966:" Humble! I've been fairly shielded from Carrie, so about all I knew going in was that a girl has her period in the shower and gets tampons thrown at her. And she has superpowers. That's already happened, so let's see what happens next. Other observations: the book's main scenes take place in 1979, which would be 5 years in the future from the publication of the book. Also, key in helping pinpoint the year, are interspersed excerpts from books and articles, giving the novel a semi-epistolary structure. I did not  know this going in, but so far it's fitting enough.

May 8 (page 37): Given the gravity of some of the "secondary sources" used in the narrative, I'm pretty sure the worst is yet to come. To King's credit, none of the characters, except perhaps Carrie's mother, come off as purely good or evil. The "hyper-religious family making someone deranged" trope is a bit too familiar, but I see this as the problem of the reader in 2016 and not the author dredging up a cliche. I have to keep in mind this was published in 1974 and Stephen King was twelve years younger than I am now!

May 9 (page 87): Wrapped up Part 1 (Blood Sport) last night, right to the gory conclusion with the pigs. Between the opaque scheming of the "regular" narrative and the increasingly grim accounts of the fabricated "secondary sources" I can only assume that "Prom Night" is going to be a disaster of epic proportions. While I have yet to identify anyone as overtly good (although Carrie herself is an increasingly sympathetic figure), the number of overtly evil characters is growing.

May 10 (page 107): Everyone is going to die...they even said so!!!

May 11 (page 165): Damn, I expected that something bad was going to happen, but oh lordy. At this point just about everyone is awful, so I don't feel too shattered. In fact, it's a little thrilling, like watching those punk kids in the Final Destination movies find their dates with destiny. Sue Snell (who we know from the "sources" survives), however, has been fairly sympathetic for most of the book and even Carrie's mom, as twisted as she is, might actually have a kind bone in her body, even if it may only be a tiny ear bone.

Friday, May 6, 2016

Starting Book: Carrie

Now it gets real. Reading has commenced on Carrie. This is the version I'm reading, obviously a hardcover reprint from around 1990, but the pagination all looks like a direct lift from the original. As this is a fairly short book, I imagine a completion report will be just around the corner, and then I'll get ready for three (three!!) adaptations for the screen. Whether it is your first time with the book, returning to an old favorite, or perhaps holding your nose until we get to better books, I invite you to jump in.