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| Annie, trying to be scared of a book she never read |
This involves what some might consider whining. Be assured, it is not whining, it is sulking.
Why is she holding a copy of Doctor Sleep in Walmart? Let's just say I have to visit Walmart to see a real print edition of this book right now. I guess part of buying a super-duper copy of Doctor Sleep is the joyful experience of waiting for it. So, my joy and anticipation increases each day. Waiting. waiting. waiting.
What Stephen King Said To Me
One of the things I really love about King's writing is that he is not locked into a single, robotic form or style. He is very free in his narration. The reader can tell when he feels light hearted, or when he just wants to scare us somethin' fierce.
In chapter 5 King speaks directly to the reader. I'm listening to the novel, so it's like he's there -- in my headphones, talking right to me. Here are a couple of examples (I'm choosing quotes I've heard King publically read)
--How many times have you found yourself behind a lumbering RV, eating exhaust and waiting impatiently for your chance to pass? Creeping along at forty when you could be doing a perfectly legal sixty-five or even seventy?
--Or maybe you’ve encountered them in the turnpike rest areas, when you stop to stretch your legs and maybe drop a few quarters into one of the vending machines.King goes on like this for quite a few pages, talking to us about those RV's that seem like such a normal part of America. It's a shared common experience.
Is this style normal? I don't think so. Usually writers feel compelled to be a little more -- serious. But King has no problem removing the wall between himself and the reader and speaking directly to us. The narrative tone is conversational, easy going and even kind of gentle. But don't be fooled! King is laying a trap for the reader. He is speaking gently right to us, drawing us in so that he can do crazy stuff to our brains and scare us so bad we scream like little girls.
I like the conversational narration a lot. It makes it clear that this is not happening in a fantasy world; this isn't mid-world or OZ; This is happening in our world. Does that matter? YES! King is not really telling a story set in in our world. He is telling a story about vampires and decaying women who come out of your bathtub. To help you with this -- that doesn't happen in our world! But by speaking to me, suddenly my world feels like it is indeed that world. I have been drawn in to King's story, and my entire world with it. Suddenly my world is one where nasty dead bodies could rise up out of the bathtub. My children are in danger of the True Knot.
Shared experiences are important to this book. King not only uses things we are familiar with -- RV's -- but events we all experienced together. Things like the events surrounding 9/11 are given subthemes in the novel, causing the reader to quickly identify. By the way, it says something for our national healing as 9/11 is now beginning to appear in literature as a fictional theme without people feeling traumatized. (Yes, I do remember the towers had a role in the Dark Tower)
So what did Stephen King say to me? (and you, if you'll read it) He said that RV's might seem like a normal part of American life. We all experience some of the same frustrations when we get stuck behind them, but we really don't pay them any mind. However, we should not be so quick to just think of them as part of the landscape of America. It is the perfect place for evil to camouflage itself.
Scraps: Stuff That Caught My Eye:
1. Jerusalem's Lot
2. Hello Tony.
3. I like this quote
America is a living body, the highways are its arteries, and the True Knot slips along them like a silent virus.The True Knot -- Evil or Not?
King is so good at putting us in the mind and body of his characters that he can actually get the reader to identify with some pretty naughty people. Crazy as it sounds, as the True Knot took "steam" from a young boy, they so perfectly explained their morale that I understood it. They are so incredibly evil! And they know they are evil. But, as they see it, they have to eat. We don't think much of eating a cow. Well, they just happen to eat. . . steam.
One of the things I loved about the novel is that the True Knot are, in a way, very understandable, practical creatures. It makes them more monstrous, I think.
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