Joyland Vacation

Joyland Journal#7

Vacations are great because you can do a lot of reading.  I'm listening through Joyland a second time, but have to slip away a lot when the kids aren't in the car because -- they don't get to read gobs of Stephen King.  Don't argue with my parenting on this one!  A great drive is really about the book, and Joyland is a fantastic summer read.

Some observations I might have missed the first time through:

1. King is really good at bring back the flavor of first love.  First love is different.  It's special.  First love involves all those firsts.  First time holding hands romantically; first kiss; first argument; first make up; first time heart broken.  Devin is certainly in the throws of young (first?) love and the pain involved in the realization that it's not to be.  He's going to get dumped.  What's amazing is how brilliantly King captures this period of life.  King does more than just describe Dev's feelings, it's the way the breakup transpires.  First the distance, then the growing coldness, un-returned calls matched with the growing unease that something has changed.  Of course, Wizard and Glass had plenty of young love, but that was in another world.  There is something special about the summer of 1973.  It's close -- very close -- to our world.

2. Was there a mistake?  Here's something I didn't catch the first time through -- the Heimlich maneuver.  In 1973, it hadn't been published yet.  However, Devin saves a girl at Joyland using the Heimlich.  He then explains that of course --as we all would know when we ran to google to check -- the maneuver's publication was yet forthcoming.  But, Devin chalks it up to good training and the obvious thing to do.  I wonder (I'm just wondering here) if King originally used the term directly and it was spotted in editing as a problem.  King does a nice job digging his away of that small problem.

3. There are references in Joyland to Hitchcock (the carousel), Lovecraft, and Dickens.  It seems Mr. Jones is well read; and his choice in movies is just fine, too.

4. That Joyland is on the brink of financial disaster is more than hinted at throughout the novel.  It's a tight operation, and small theme parks don't stand a chance against the Disney giants.  (Include in there Six Flags and Universal.)  However, that isn't quite true.  The small theme park has actually held its own over time.  Of course, they have to be well run and grow with the times.  A good theme park, even the small ones, are able to expand and offer new rides and attractions each season.  Parks like Knotts Berry Farm, a local Anaheim amusement park right down the street from Disneyland is a wonderful smaller park.  Why didn't Joyland make it?  It probably had  more to do with it's own lack of innovation and less to do with Disney than the management would want to admit.  Though the park has heart, it is also apparent that it does not have a lot of new rides.

5. King doesn't drop too much on the reader at once.  A fault of young writers is to introduce everything early on, wanting to foreshadow and build everything.  But King tends to focus on different aspects of the story, like a painter working on a specific part of the canvas.  He mentions the boy on the beach early in the novel, but says little more about them until the books midpoint.  The early novel is focused on young love, what the theme park is like and who the various characters are who work the park.  Even more surprising, King gives little more than a few hints at the "mystery" that's afoot.  He tells the story of the murdered woman, which the reader knows upfront will be a major plot piece, but he doesn't play with those details too early.  That's left for the late part of the novel.

Returning To Joyland

Joyland Journal #6

Warm weather often brings me back to familiar Stephen King books.  I just finished reading a small pile of John Grisham books.  Good stuff.  And as I await the new books by King, I decided to return to a book I loved the first time through; Joyland.

I return a little hesitant.  Often when I really look forward to something, I come away disappointed.  Will I enjoy it as much as I did the first time through?  Here's what I've discovered in just the first few pages:

It's been long enough since I read Joyland, that the little twists, turns and even characters are not familiar to me.  So while I know the main thrust of the plot, the details are still vague enough to surprise and delight me again.  Devin's first visit to Joyland, meeting various characters -- all feel fresh and new, even though I've been here before.

Knowing the plot puts my mind to ease a bit.  I'm free to watch for other things and not just try to keep up with the mystery elements.

Returning to Joyland is a return to the 1970's.  I realized as I drove, listening as I went, that Joyland is special to me because I grew up int he 70's.  King perfectly captures the flavor of the era in his narration.  And in many ways, this book doesn't "feel" like a Stephen King book.  At least, not a modern King book.  This feels like something written by the kid who wrote The Stand, and Carrie.  But -- better.

Even with just the first few pages down, I can't believe how much I love this book.  Because it wasn't a big hardcover release, I'm afraid many readers will tend to overlook this little treasure.  Unlike Blockade Billy, which was a great read, but difficult to read over and over because once the surprise is sprung, it can't be unsprung -- Joyland has more staying power with the reader.

Will Joyland ever be a movie?  I hope so.  And I hope it correctly captures the sweet flavor of the book.

So, here I go on an old adventure down trails I love to travel.

Joyland Journal 5: On The Bright Side

I finished reading Joyland the other day.  Some short notes, none of them giving any deep spoilers -- I don't think.   However, I will simply remind you that the blog is generally dedicated to those who READ Mr. King and want to discuss what they read -- so the comments section can be a free for all.

King has said previously that a novel has to answer the question, "Why not just call the police?"  King tackles that issue head  on, and does it quite nicely.

Not so dark!

I've read some reviews that would make you think the book is almost an emotional black hole.  I disagree.  The novel has a somber tone, is full of heart break, death and betrayal -- but the sheer energy of the story being told drives it forward with a certain exhilaration.  The plot doesn't get lost in an emotional pit.  While Devin is given space to explore his feelings, the plot is never far away.  Who killed Linda Grey?  

That is to say -- while Joyland is dark, I did not find its darkness to be contagious.  I think John Knowles A Separate Peace has a similar dark tone, and I found myself depressed the entire time I read it!  Not so with Joyland.  The story isn't just about boarding school or friendship -- it is driven by a question, WHO KILLED LINDA GREY?! -- and is therefore driven by more than just the emotions of the characters.

There were moments when the tone  of the novel reminded me very much of Duma Key.  Running up and down the shore, meeting and waving at strangers just reminded me of those early pages of Duma Key -- which was also a dark heavy novel told in the first person. But Duma Key took us almost too deep inside the minds of the characters.  It rambled a bit, while Joyland stays more focused.

Mystery: King spares the reader the typical "who done it" -- even though that is a central part of the book.  There is no running around, room to room trying to put clues together.  When the end came, I really was surprised by who the killer turned out to be.  Was this because King did not give me enough clues to put it together myself?  Yes.  But I didn't want those clues anyway.  I was happy letting the story unfold under King's guiding hand instead of me getting ahead of the novel.  At no point did I say, "AH!  I know who the killer is!"  I had some ideas -- but was wrong.

I lot of the mystery novel's I've read play out like a game of Clue.  King doesn't play that game!  There is mystery, there are suspects and there are clues. . . but there is no bouncing about from room to room and suspect to suspect to lay out the evidence.

ROMANCE: The novel focuses on first love -- and next love.  The love we find in the midst of a broken heart.  Can that love be trusted?  Is it real?  Can we really love when we're on the rebound?  This is actually a pretty complex emotional equation King sets up for a short book.  Kings skill at depicting relationships is superb.  He is able to take me back to feelings I had forgotten I once had.

There are moments in King's writing that I feel  like I am meeting my younger self -- a self I had almost forgotten.  After years of the sweet safe love found in marriage, we can forget the pain that first love brought us.

Sharon holding Joyland
Summer, 2013

I Liked:

• Annie's line, 'My son isn't goods in a trading post" when speaking of the need to forgive her father.  I lot of parents -- especially in a custody battle -- would do well to heed that note form Mr. King.  
• The theme park setting. 
• The new little language King lets the readers in on is a lot of fun!  
• The return trip to the 1970's.
• The narration.
• The length.  The story is a quick read -- but it's not a lightweight novel.  King jumps in to the story without wasting much time.  The novel can be broken into two parts: Summer and Fall.
• I liked the Tolkien references.  Because Tolkein was popular then and now it makes a connection to a reader years away. 
• The ghost in the novel -- all of them -- are just wonderful.
• I loved the climax at the theme park.  And I liked Devin's quick thinking to keep Annie out of trouble.

What I didn't like:

Some short whining, and then I'll move on.  I don't think King portrays religious characters well -- and in particular preachers.  Talk about typecast.  King typically presents these men (be they Rev. Coggins in Under The Dome or Annie's pop in Joyland) as hardshell, mean, unbending cruel, unforgiving, self righteous hypocrites.  I'm certainly well aware that there are plenty of preachers who fall right in that bulls eye, but someday it would nice to see a little more depth when dealing with men of the cloth.

Is Joyland Like Vintage King?
No.  Joyland is not like Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Dead Zone or any other King novel.  It's stronger.  Much stronger.  The characters are deeper and the story is told with a depth of maturity King could not bring to earlier novels.  So it may have elements we saw in King's younger work, this is ultimately the work of a seasoned writer.

Joyland Journal 4: Darkness

I am well into the second half of Joyland.  Yes, it breaks  neatly into two parts, though no outlined as such by King.  As Summer ends and Fall sweeps over the theme park, the novel itself darkens with the changing season.  With Summer gone, the park attendance drops the summer workers go on to college and new characters enter  the story.  In many ways this is where the novel really begins.  The early chapters set the scene tone and backdrop for what will happen in later chapters.

By the way, King does a lot of highlighting and hinting throughout the beginning of the book.  He likes to tease readers.  I know this gets under some peoples skin, but I really like it!  He likes to say things like, "I asked her to do me a favor, and she said she would."  Of course, this leaves the reader in the dark as to what the favor is!  It is King's gentle nudging to stay with him, and a reminder that ultimately he's in charge of the flow of information.

At the second half of the book, characters who were just in the shadows step forward as the primary cast trickles back into the darkness.  The focus is now on a crippled boy who is dying.  He wants to visit Joyland.  The boys beautiful mother is bitter at life, the only thing bringing her any kind of joy is her ailing son.  Her father is a religious zealot -- a hell fire and brimstone preacher.

At the real center -- I think -- of this novel is the mystery of Linda Gray.  Is this a romance novel?  Is Dev falling in love with an older woman?  Is this a coming of age tale?  I'm actually not sure!  What I can say is that the book rightly bears the logo of Hard Case Crime.  It is dark -- but not unbearably so.  I like the fall season and the heavier tone the book takes.  I like the new characters, and I really like the deepening mystery.

Joyland Journal 3: Dead Body In The House Of Horror -- FOR REAL!

The mystery in Joyland regards a woman who was murdered in the House of Horrors.   Her body was only discovered  later.  

This plot theme reminded me of a conversation I had with my mother some time back.  She related total terror she had going through a funhouse at a local California theme park.  She described what she felt sure was a dead body in the funhouse.  Later I saw a program called Autopsy in which they discussed a case where a dead body was discovered in a California house of horrors.  I called my mom, and she was stunned.  "I saw that body!" She said.

Turns out the ride was Laff in the Dark and the park was The Pike.

She wrote me this:

When I was a kid, my cousin and I rode Laff in the Dark at The Pike, an amusement zone in Long Beach.

We were absolutely terrorized.  We felt spider webs.  A green monster popped out of the wall, almost hitting us.  We vowed to NEVER go again.

The following year, we thought we were too mature to be frightened.  When the ride was over, I had my hands over my eyes and my cousin had his arms over his head in my lap.

One of the things that scared me the most was a hanging body.  I thought, "What if it's real and no one knows!  I should tell someone!"  But I was just a kid and thought surely they knew if it was real or not.

Decades later I saw a report on tv ... the body was real!  

www.sideshowworld.com has a great article on the Laff in the Dark ride at The Pike.  It says in part:

It seems that McCurdy's body popped up everywhere after that, in places such as an amusement park near Mount Rushmore, lying in an open casket in a Los Angeles wax museum, and in a few low-budget films. He continued to tour with carnivals until 1976 when he was finally discovered by mistake hanging in a California fun house as a wax dummy. The Six Million Dollar Man crew discovered this prop to be a corpse, McCurdy had been hanging in a Long Beach fun house for four years. 

In 1976, Laff in the Dark, a dark attraction located in Long Beach California, leased their location to Universal Studios to film an episode of the Six Million Dollar Man. While making adjustments to the set, one of the workers attempted to move a "prop," a mummified man that had been painted several times with phosphorous paint and was suspended from the ceiling by a noose around it's neck. Grabbing the hanging figure by the arm in an attempt to loosen the noose, the prop man was startled when the lower portion of the man's arm hit the floor! 

Long Beach police were called in, and the following is an excerpt from the police report filed December 8, 1976. "The Laff in the Dark located at 210-A-A-A West Pike Avenue was entered, and their attention was drawn to the human-like display, which was hanging from a rope. Criminologist E. Williams and filing officer examined the display, and noted beneath the outer covering there appeared to be bone-type structure having bone like joints. There was also noted to be a small trace of hair on the back of a leg. The display remarkably resembled a human cadaver in size and proportion."

The website goes on to say that the corpse was taken to the Medical Examiner's office, where an autopsy revealed that it was indeed human remains -- A DEAD BODY!  And not just a dead body -- the body of a murdered man.  The body was identified as Elmer McCurdy.

Check out the full article at www.sideshowworld.com

JOYLAND JOURNAL 2: I Wish Someone Would Ask Mr. King

People have asked me more than once if I want to interview Stephen King.  I always answer no.  Because his writing alone answers most of my questions.  It seems everything important has already been asked.  The last thing I would want to ask King would be "so what scares you?"

On the "what scares you" question -- I think Stephen King scares himself.  We've all done it, I assume.  Let our mind work and work over a subject (rats) until we're totally psyched out.  He just does it while sitting at a keyboard and takes us along for the ride.

As I read Joyland, there are things I wish someone would ask him.  Most of them are about relationships, and his insights on people.  For a kid who was raised by his mother, this guy has a lot of insights about dads.  I know he is a dad!  King also has the ability to transport a male reader back to young adulthood.  Memories, feelings we thought we'd forgotten until he comes and stirs them up.

I work with people all the time.  Often when King says something about people, I find myself agreeing with that insight.  For instance, at one point he notes that people who find themselves late in life are a little insecure.  That's so true!  Yet, I'm not sure I ever put it together quite the way King does in Joyland.

My wife and mother each told me once that they find it interesting how skilled King is at describing how a woman feels.  How's he do that?!  Or how does he so brilliantly discuss what a young man feels and thinks about?  He doesn't just give us sketchy glimpses back, in Joyland he recreates the experience of being a young man.

Joyland is about memories.  But somehow I don't think Joyland is built solely on King's personal memories of being young.  He doesn't always develop characters based on his own experiences (or he wouldn't describe being a woman!)  

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.