Just finished. I had read Salem's Lot earlier this year, and after a full decade of being a literary snob, I found it to be quite endearing. King addresses rural, small-town, American life with wit, sarcasm, and at times, admirable sincerity. The shifting perspective allowed the city to be built out more than the characters, which worked because the city had a magnetism about it, even if it was in an advanced state of decay. I specifically remember the TVs, drugs, and alcohol being treated as some invasive species, creeping over the city. I think it even references kudzu at some point. Then there was the fire that wounded the city before the events of the novel, which added depth and a foreboding sense of the cyclical. Though I'm not sure it stuck the landing, I came away from Salem's Lot impressed enough to consider one of his other books, and I settled on this because the King-nerds swore it was the best. What a steaming pile of it. What I didn't know was that the shifting perspective of Salem's Lot is the only way a King novel can work because of how downright poor he is at writing a full character. With each character in Salem's Lot taking up a chapter and the forward momentum of the story not leaving room for character exploration, Salem's Lot is given a chance at success. Pet Sematary absolutely blunders this. Characters clap when happy, they "grin" at each other (count how many times that word is used), they say the dullest thing you can imagine, but the book is full of itself that it treats these platitudes as witty enough that they warrant italics. For Christ's sake, they even speak in unison. The last time I saw that was in Bradbury's The Halloween Tree, a book meant for children. Whereas in SL, the constant references to pop culture can be read as a byproduct of the invasive television, here they just plop out like a turd in the middle of the prose. I don't need every paragraph to reference a forgotten blockbuster, or a candy bar, or the Yankees. In hindsight, I suppose it's worth considering that some of the intrusions are effects from the haunt (intentionally vague as to not spoil the whole thing), but that makes even less sense when you think about what that haunt actually is. This is a frightful book for 300 odd pages before something kicks it in the ass and it takes off running for the finish, which only really ends up at a mediocre quality (barring the last page, which teeters between fine and good). Why King fans claim this as his best when Salem's Lot is right there is beyond me. The themes of the book are dried up by Act 2, and no amount of references to ts Eliot or Lazarus can resurrect them. I would not recommend this to anyone, and it's going to steer me clear of King for a while. Have any of you read this?
No, I generally avoid reading books until they are at least 50 years old.Your description of Salem's Lot was interesting enough that I believe I'll purchase a copy and read it.
>>24819808Hang tight through the first few chapters because it stumbles and almost falls into the Pet Sematary trap wherein King has to write happy, flirting characters. Salem's Lot recovers, thankfully, and pulls out with a pretty good book. It does this by shifting the focus to characters much more interesting, each little vignette almost giving off a Raymond Carver suburban agony.
>>24819801Maybe I should have posted in the horror general
