‘Salem’s Lot (Stephen King) Chapters 1-4

As I understand it, Stephen King’s first “hit,” the breakthrough book that put him on the popular literary map was Carrie and this book is his follow-up.  In that kind of a situation, just like a rock band with a hit debut album, a lot hinges on the follow-up work; will it live up to the first one, initiating a wave of popularity that will last a long time, or will there be a letdown?  Carrie, of course, is still huge, with a recent re-make of the movie and continued huge sales.  But King couldn’t have given us a better follow-up book; ‘Salem’s Lot is legendary.

A lot of people have probably been thrown off like I was by the title, thinking it must have something to do with the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts.  No, the fictitious town in which this story takes place is actually named “Jerusalem’s Lot” and the name got shortened by the locals.  There was originally a pig farm there with a particularly mean hog named Jerusalem, and people were warned to “stay away from his lot.”  If this sounds too strange to be fiction (following the adage that truth is stranger than fiction) well, it is Stephen King, who is widely known to be a master at making the unbelievable seem plausible!

Is Stephen King my favorite author?  Almost.  I do believe that he will be one of the handful of authors remembered from this era two hundred years from now.  Is he the favorite author of more readers than any other author?  Quite possibly.  Does he sometimes over-write, resulting in books that are much, much longer than they need to be, or reasonably should have been?  In my opinion, yes, sometimes he does.  (I think I’m in the minority on that.)  The book It is the example that comes immediately to mind; I struggled to finish It and couldn’t wait for It to be over.  ‘Salem’s Lot is long; the paperback I’m reading weighs in at 653 pages.  But so far, the reading is a breeze and I finished the first four chapters (170 pages) without feeling like the author wasted any words.  King is known for “lots of back-story” even skipping around in time to fill in a character’s history.  This book has more “side-story,” giving us a somewhat panoramic view of life in this small town as seen through the eyes of a variety of its inhabitants.  As long as King keeps it interesting – at which he is usually adept – we don’t lose patience.  With most longwinded authors, I begin to sigh and squirm, eager to get on with the main story.

In describing the physical town, King gives us a nice mental map, foregoing the need for an actual map at the front of the book.  “The Lot” is essentially divided into convenient quadrants divided by the two main streets “like the crosshairs in a rifle scope.”  Each quadrant is unique, with the Marsten House sitting up on a ridge to the northwest, visible from almost every part of the town.  This house is the centerpiece of the story, with its horrible past, described in King’s trademark gruesomeness.

But there is one passage in particular that struck me as being more Koontz-like in style: ‘The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this.  If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep in the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.’  This even harks back to Ray Bradbury, whose prose was even more colorful and poetic.  All three authors are master wordsmiths, perhaps even further predated by Thomas Hardy, of whom it was said, ‘. . . at any given point in the narrative, some brilliant passage of description or metaphor may burst out like a firework.’  To someone like me, whose first love is music, this is an important feature of any great writer; and Stephen King is absolutely brilliant at it!




Next Week:  Chapters 5-9

Week 3:  Chapters 10-13
Week 4:  Chapters 14-Epilogue