It taken me longer to finish ‘Salem’s Lot than it should have. About 8-9 days and even longer to get around to writing about it.
This was another reread, and I could feel the time period of this book. This was written when vampires were a dark and frightful thing before the more recent wave of sparkly niminy-piminy ones that girls seem to fall in love with. This is the real deal.
Overall this was a nice revisit. Not one of the most amazing of his books for me, but still undeniably good.
As a side note when I got to this excerpt from The Haunting of Hill House it meant more to me now than it did before.
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolite relaity; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane stood by itself against its hills holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
The first few times I read this book I was unfamiliar with that story. There’s a lot more exposition than I remember. The picture of this town and its people is painted as vividly as possible, after all the entire story is about the Lot, not the vampire, who doesn’t make as much of a presence as you’d think he would be.
There’s so much subtly going on in this story, morality, question of belief, religion, and even just the cost of being overtly rational when there are times when you just shouldn’t. It was all captured briefly.
How does he do it? I’m not afraid of horror movies or books. The concept of horror in general doesn’t scare me.
I make fun of scary movies and laugh at other people when they’re scared. I have no belief in the supernatural. I just don’t buy into the existence of ghosts or spirits or demons or whatever. So it’s not the things that go bump in the night or the things that go bump in the books that scare me. It’s definitely not the vampires.
In a way that’s one of the main themes of this book. Disbelief. Unwillingness to believe in something so comically impossible, even when it’s staring you in the face. A lot of it is people refusing to believe until it’s too late. Vampires? You’ve gotta be kidding me. So the scepticism I have naturally is kind of similar to what’s mentioned in the book. And as per usual me being the observer in the form of a reader thinks, why are they being so thick headed and stubborn? If they listened and believed they’d be safe. And yet in real life I KNOW without a doubt I would be the last to believe in anything preternatural. Considering how many people died in this story because they took too long to believe, doesn’t bode well for me does it?
All that aside I have only felt proper fear while I read King. Maybe that’s why I love this writer more than any other. He doesn’t just mention fear, he defines it. He makes me identify with it, makes me feel what the character feels. And he knows how to describe being scared in ways It wouldn’t have occurred to me to think of. And yet when I read about it I know exactly what he’s talking about and I feel it.
And it’s that elucidation of the fear that gets me. The portrayal of it, the way it consumes the mind when walking up to a closed door with a dead body on the other side and the black terror that overtakes the thoughts. That’s how King always gets me. And that’s what I love. Stephen King’s books are the only time I feel close to scared of horror. He feeds a dark need within me. And I love him for it
I liked my time in ‘Salem’s Lot but since it has been burnt to the ground now, I’m going to check into this place called the Overlook Hotel.
Until next time non-existent reader.