JOYLAND Journal 1: THE SHINING, DICKENS & CARNEY FROM CARNEY

I've been on a wonderful trip to Joyland these past few days. In fact, it's like a season pass.  As with other books, I'm not reviewing the novel so much as taking notes as I go.  I can say that it's everything Kevin Quigley said it would be.  Check out his review at www.fearnet.com 

WE SELL FUN: What is Joyland -- the amusement park -- all about?  The owner, Mr. Bradley Easterbrook, breaks it down: "you are here to sell fun," he says. As the speech progresses, one character whispers that this guy is the Jesus of fun.  Then, a bit later Easterbrook is just short of preaching as he says, "We don't sell furniture.  We don't sell cars.  We don't sell land or horses  or retirement funds.  We have no political agenda.  We sell fun." (pg.60)

1973: "When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction," declares Devin Jones on page 43 of Joyland. A lot of Joyland is about history and how we remember it.  King does a lot of reflecting about how there is very little truth in the soup of memories.  The new Stephen King novel is set in 1973.  I was born that year.  King does a nice job recreating the world of the 70's.

Joyland belongs to a world with elevator shoes, girdles, Al Jolson, boarding houses and snail mail.  No instant messages, no texting and no facebook.  The scenes in the boarding house remind me of Salem's Lot.

King not only shows locations and gadgets from the past, but the characters actually feel like they belong to the world of the 1970's.  It's not just the way they talk, but the things they don't talk about.  Notice the way Devin resists the temptation to spill all of his emotions on other characters.  This is not so much because he is stoic, but because "I'd been raised  by my parents to believe barfing your feelings on other people was the height of impoliteness. . ." (p.90)  That's both funny and insightful.  I'm not sure people raise their kids that way anymore.  Today when someone doesn't like a customer at their place of business, they barf it all over facebook.

Joyland also belongs to a unusual place immersed in something called "The Talk."  The Talk is Carney language.  King is good at introducing us to terms, without feeding us so much we're ready to gag.  "Carney-from-carney" means that a person comes from a heritage of carnival workers. (Devin is not Carney from carney.)

The Shining: I would be remiss not to mention how much Joyland reminds me of the early pages of The Shining.  Both books really do feel like they belong in the 70's.  Both novels have a girl named Wendy.  Both novels begin with a job interview, which is primarily used to introduce the reader to the sets where the action will later unfold.  Also, in The Shining we have characters who "shine" while in Joyland there are characters who have the "sight."  And, both the hotel and the theme park have a dark secret  that involves Redrum-- murder.

Are these intentional nods to the earlier book?  I suspect not.  There is also a girl named Nadine.  Like from The Stand?  No! So why names of characters that appeared in other books?  Because those were names common to the era.  Katlyn wouldn't work for a book set in 1973.

Also, King takes a small little dig at Kubrick. When King recently discussed in an NPR interview that the only discussion he ever had with Stanley Kubrick concerned ghosts. Kubrick asked King about his belief in the supernatural. Kubrick suggested that belief in ghosts is really optimistic, since it implies an afterlife. "Sure," Kings said, "But what about hell?" Long pause, then he said in very stiff voice, "I don't believe in hell."  King later blamed Kubrick's departure from his book on his view of ghosts.  The movie is more about Jack being crazy than the overlook actually being haunted.  In Joyland, a character named Tom saw a ghost.   Later, as he nears death, he takes comfort in having seen the ghost, because at least it means there's an afterlife. (pg.121)

DICKENS & Co: The narrator, an aged Devin Jones, apparently has a love for Charles Dickens.  He more than once draws comparisons from the work of the famous writer.  "She grinned -- a big wide one that made her almost Dickensian. . ."  Or, consider this:

With a name like Emmalina Shoplaw, it was hard not to picture a rosy-cheeked landlady out of a Charles Dickens novel, one who went everywhere at a bosomy bustle and said things like Lor' save us.  She'd serve tea and scones while a supporting cast of kind-hearted eccentrics looked on approvingly; she might even pinch my hceeks as we sat roasting chestnuts over a crackling fire.  (Joyland, pg.29, Titan Books, 2013)

By the way, there are also kind winks to other writers as well. Page 39 has a reference to George Orwell's classic, 1984 when Mrs. Shoplaw says, "Just like in that science fiction book about the Thought Police."

Sweet Nothings: Joyland is not broken into chapters or in fact any numbering at all.  Each short section is simply headed by a single heart.  Is King hinting that this is really a romance?

Some of the lines in this really do belong to a set of books called "Hard Case Crime."  It's -- well, kinda delightful.

• This is good, "The sun was a hammer" (p.123)
• I like this bit, "I'm not sure men know how to talk about women in any meaningful way." (pg.50)  
• I also like this quote, "a boy with bad thoughts needs to be visiting a hautned house like he needs arsenic in his moutwash." (pg.99)  

I like the writing quite a bit -- and the way this story flows.  The narrator moves easily from past to present, telling about characters fate while still narrating the meat of the story taking place in 1973.  The story moves pretty quickly, without making the reader feel like the characters are just paper cut-outs being moved about on a big canvass.