January 2: The book that stayed with me
What book has stayed with me the most?I’d love to say the Bible. I
probably should say the Bible. Isn’t everyone supposed to say the Bible?
Well, I could say the Bible but then this note will descend into cliché
territory. Yes, I love the Bible and yes, it has had a profound effect
on me. I’m sure I willexplore Biblical themes plenty of times during
note-a-day but for now, let’s lay it aside and talk about something a
bit more obscure.
My apartment is crammed with books. Most of them I haven’t read and never will read. Some of them I’ve read and some of them I adore. The books that are on Shteevie’s beloved list include Slaughterhouse Five, Charlotte’s Web, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels and David Mamet’s Writing in Restaurants (which, coincidentally, I am doing right now.)
But if I had to nominate one book that shaped me, I’d have to give that honour to Christine by Stephen King.
I
read it when I was 15 the summer after I’d graduated from junior high
school. I’d been aware of Stephen King for a number of years and one
time in Grade 7, I brought The Shining home from the Southwood Library.
My father promptly made me take it back. He hadn’t read the book but he
had seen the movie and he didn’t want his impressionable 12-year-old son
to read about a crazy guy trying to kill his family with an ax.
So now it’s the summer of 1988 and we’re on a family vacation in South Dakota. I’m bored and I feel like reading, so I wander into a bookstore and am greeted with a wall of Stephen King novels. The spines are black and they have titles like Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and the newly published It. It was too thick, so I selected Christine instead. I bought it trepidatiously, knowing my dad likely wouldn’t approve of my reading material. Then again, on that trip he’d bought me a T-shirt that said REMEMBER WHEN SEX WAS SAFE AND MOTORCYCLES WERE NOT? He said he was doing against his better judgment. Evidently, he believed his 15-year-oldson was old enough to do stupid things without a parental safety net.
That night, on the hotel room’s balcony, my dad saw me reading Christine. I asked if it was okay and he replied that I was old enough to decide what I wanted to read. Not exactly a blessing but it wasn’t a scolding either. I dug into Christine.
And talk about naïve. Christine was the first book I’d read that had actual swear words in it. There was the F-word and the S-word, even the dreaded C-word (whose uttering would merit a grounding, not just a harsh talking-to.) But behind the bad words there was the story of the love triangle among Arnie Cunningham, Leigh Cabot, and Christine.
I will pause here to give you a story synopsis. Arnie Cunningham is a high school geek whose best friend is the school sports hero, Dennis Guilder. One day, Arnie buys a 1958Plymouth Fury called Christine. The car is haunted. It drives around by itself and kills people. The person it seems interested in killing the most is Arnie’s girlfriend, the beautiful Leigh Cabot. Of the three people in the triangle, only one survives to the end.
The novel is divided into three sections – the first and last sections are narrated by Dennis Guilder. The middle section is omniscient point-of-view, which is a good thing because for most of it, Dennis Guilder is laid up in the hospital with a football injury. He is spared the sight of watching Christine drive around and killing people.
I didn’t like it at first. By the time I’d finished section one, I’d grown to like Dennis Guilder but I was disappointed at the sudden change of tone in part two.Still, I slugged through it and realized that Stephen King couldn’t possibly have adopted the first person point-of-view for that section. It detailed some pretty graphic murders where Dennis was decidedly not present. I read part two and I enjoyed it but the overarching logistics of the story didn’t make sense to me. At the end of the book, Dennis Guilder sort of reveals it to be a memoir. If that were the case, how could he be privy to some of the things that happened in part two? The text made it painstakingly clear that there were no witnesses to the murders of Moochie Welch, Rich Trelawney or Buddy Repperton. So suck on that, King.
I think I’m glad Christine was the first Stephen King book I read. Had I started on The Shining, I would have given up. I was a teenager and I just couldn’t relate to Jack Torrance, the wounded alcoholic middle-aged ex-teacher driven insane by the evil of the Overlook Hotel. I could, however, identify with the pimply outcast Arnie Cunningham, who was a loser at school and had lots of pimples. I did not buy a car in high school but I did write a novel and that led to me getting my first ever girlfriend,but that’s another story altogether. (Side note: when I first saw that girl, she was reading a Stephen King novel – the Tommyknockers.)
Had I never read Stephen King, I probably never would have read Kurt Vonnegut. I first heard about Vonnegut in King’s early novel, Roadwork, which was published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Had I never read those two, I might even today believe that barnyard words never appear in novels and can only be found on the lips of sailors, landscapers, drunk guys in bars, and girls I’ve dated. (Fun fact: Every girl I’ve ever dated, without exception, has cussed more than me.)
I have probably read Christine a dozen times in my life. It was the first audiobook I downloaded on my iPod and I’ve listened to it a good three times already. It makes me feel young again. It’s also – credit where it’s due – a pretty good story. King tends to get dismissed by the literary illuminati but darn it all anyway, I’m just going to come out and say I’m a fan. I don’t like his later work. I like his earlier writing when he was young and hungry and possibly – how tragic this is to say – drunk and stoned.
Here I am, an almost 41-year-old man. I am writing this note after a novel-writing session. I am not drunk. I am not stoned. I am sober. It is cold outside. Next to me is a fountain pen. My brother made it for me. It was a Christmas present.No one but me will ever write with it. It is my favourite pen ever.
When I die, I want to be buried with it.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
My apartment is crammed with books. Most of them I haven’t read and never will read. Some of them I’ve read and some of them I adore. The books that are on Shteevie’s beloved list include Slaughterhouse Five, Charlotte’s Web, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels and David Mamet’s Writing in Restaurants (which, coincidentally, I am doing right now.)
But if I had to nominate one book that shaped me, I’d have to give that honour to Christine by Stephen King.
Vintage, baby. Vintage.
What do you mean I'm going to play the Joker someday? That's crazy talk.
So now it’s the summer of 1988 and we’re on a family vacation in South Dakota. I’m bored and I feel like reading, so I wander into a bookstore and am greeted with a wall of Stephen King novels. The spines are black and they have titles like Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and the newly published It. It was too thick, so I selected Christine instead. I bought it trepidatiously, knowing my dad likely wouldn’t approve of my reading material. Then again, on that trip he’d bought me a T-shirt that said REMEMBER WHEN SEX WAS SAFE AND MOTORCYCLES WERE NOT? He said he was doing against his better judgment. Evidently, he believed his 15-year-oldson was old enough to do stupid things without a parental safety net.
That night, on the hotel room’s balcony, my dad saw me reading Christine. I asked if it was okay and he replied that I was old enough to decide what I wanted to read. Not exactly a blessing but it wasn’t a scolding either. I dug into Christine.
And talk about naïve. Christine was the first book I’d read that had actual swear words in it. There was the F-word and the S-word, even the dreaded C-word (whose uttering would merit a grounding, not just a harsh talking-to.) But behind the bad words there was the story of the love triangle among Arnie Cunningham, Leigh Cabot, and Christine.
I will pause here to give you a story synopsis. Arnie Cunningham is a high school geek whose best friend is the school sports hero, Dennis Guilder. One day, Arnie buys a 1958Plymouth Fury called Christine. The car is haunted. It drives around by itself and kills people. The person it seems interested in killing the most is Arnie’s girlfriend, the beautiful Leigh Cabot. Of the three people in the triangle, only one survives to the end.
The novel is divided into three sections – the first and last sections are narrated by Dennis Guilder. The middle section is omniscient point-of-view, which is a good thing because for most of it, Dennis Guilder is laid up in the hospital with a football injury. He is spared the sight of watching Christine drive around and killing people.
I didn’t like it at first. By the time I’d finished section one, I’d grown to like Dennis Guilder but I was disappointed at the sudden change of tone in part two.Still, I slugged through it and realized that Stephen King couldn’t possibly have adopted the first person point-of-view for that section. It detailed some pretty graphic murders where Dennis was decidedly not present. I read part two and I enjoyed it but the overarching logistics of the story didn’t make sense to me. At the end of the book, Dennis Guilder sort of reveals it to be a memoir. If that were the case, how could he be privy to some of the things that happened in part two? The text made it painstakingly clear that there were no witnesses to the murders of Moochie Welch, Rich Trelawney or Buddy Repperton. So suck on that, King.
I think I’m glad Christine was the first Stephen King book I read. Had I started on The Shining, I would have given up. I was a teenager and I just couldn’t relate to Jack Torrance, the wounded alcoholic middle-aged ex-teacher driven insane by the evil of the Overlook Hotel. I could, however, identify with the pimply outcast Arnie Cunningham, who was a loser at school and had lots of pimples. I did not buy a car in high school but I did write a novel and that led to me getting my first ever girlfriend,but that’s another story altogether. (Side note: when I first saw that girl, she was reading a Stephen King novel – the Tommyknockers.)
Yah! We're in a Stephen King movie. That'll make us superstars for sure.
Had I never read Stephen King, I probably never would have read Kurt Vonnegut. I first heard about Vonnegut in King’s early novel, Roadwork, which was published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Had I never read those two, I might even today believe that barnyard words never appear in novels and can only be found on the lips of sailors, landscapers, drunk guys in bars, and girls I’ve dated. (Fun fact: Every girl I’ve ever dated, without exception, has cussed more than me.)
I have probably read Christine a dozen times in my life. It was the first audiobook I downloaded on my iPod and I’ve listened to it a good three times already. It makes me feel young again. It’s also – credit where it’s due – a pretty good story. King tends to get dismissed by the literary illuminati but darn it all anyway, I’m just going to come out and say I’m a fan. I don’t like his later work. I like his earlier writing when he was young and hungry and possibly – how tragic this is to say – drunk and stoned.
Here I am, an almost 41-year-old man. I am writing this note after a novel-writing session. I am not drunk. I am not stoned. I am sober. It is cold outside. Next to me is a fountain pen. My brother made it for me. It was a Christmas present.No one but me will ever write with it. It is my favourite pen ever.
When I die, I want to be buried with it.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
PL: Santa brought me a copy of Dr. Sleep. I'm only 75 pages in; so far it's pretty good.
ReplyDeleteDeb: I love Stephen King's The Stand, one of my favourite books ever.
MEW: When I saw the title I knew you would write about a Stephen King book. Curious: what do you think are the best and worst movies based on Stephen King's books? I haven't read or seen a lot of them, but I thought that The Shining and The Green Mile were pretty terrific. And Stand by Me.
BL: I read and re-read many Stephen King novels in the 70's and 80's: Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, Night Shift, The Stand, The Dead Zone, Danse Macabre, Cujo, The Running Man, The Gunslinger, Christine, Pet Semetary, The Talisman, Thinner,
Jeff: I too am presently reading Doctor Sleep. I always wondered if King would follow up The Shining with a story about an older Danny Torrence. Jack Nicholson aside, the movie was brutal compared to the novel. No depth of character development whatsoever. What about Pet Semetary as a movie, Steve?
Shteevie: Pet Sematary hasn't aged well. I remember kind of liking it when I first saw it. Caught it again a few years ago on Scream TV and found it nothing more than cheesy 80s slasher fare,
Mama: Even my Book Club read (after much persuasion from Steve) and liked the Steven King novel Steve suggested.
Deb: I liked the film adaptation of The Shining. I LOVED the t.v. miniseries of The Stand. The Dark Tower books were great, although the last couple got pretty weird and I wasn't fond of the ending.
Char: Shawshank Redemption - best ever story/movie. Best King cheeze = Maximum Overdrive
Camille: My favorite was always Eyes of the Dragon, then the Mist.
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