Wow. At this rate, there’s no way I’m going to get this done in a year…
So after years of short stories and one slightly longer one, Stephen King finally delivers his first real god-amighty novel. ‘Salem’s Lot is more than 600 pages long (in paperback), and for the first time, King’s prose is allowed to breathe. The results are pretty impressive, even if he’s still feeling his way around the tricks of his trade.
So many of King’s career-long obsessions first rear their heads here. In Ben Mears, he has created his first archetypal King hero. For one thing, Mears is a writer, a novelist in search of inspiration. I expect from this point forward I’ll be able to keep count of how many King heroes fit that description. I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head. If nothing else, King’s career has been about the exploration of author to the fiction he creates, and to the readers of that fiction. Think Misery, think The Dark Half, think the Dark Tower series.
Also, we get King’s first use of a small Maine town as not only setting, but major character. For hundreds of pages, ‘Salem’s Lot is about the town itself, and King introduces more than a dozen of its inhabitants, each adding to the world he’s spinning. It’s well-written stuff, and in later chapters, it enables him to tell his story from many different points of view. The Lot lives and breathes – it has a history, one that becomes important in the final pages, and it has a soul. In some ways, the book is about how the souls of these small towns are snuffed out by time and neglect. King just gives those forces physical form.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The book opens with a man and a boy, whom we later learn are Ben Mears and Mark Petrie. They are on the run from something, but a news story about Jerusalem’s Lot (the town’s full and proper name) convinces them to go back. I criticized King for using news clippings and flash-forwards in Carrie, since I felt it ruined the suspense. But it works here. We’re immediately intrigued.
The book proper details Ben Mears’ arrival in the Lot months before, and we get to know the town through him. We meet Sheriff Parkins Gillespie, and teacher Matt Burke, and landlord Eva Miller, and drunken tenant Weasel Craig (who shares a history with Eva), and town busybody Mabel Wertz. Early on, there’s a remarkable chapter in which King details one day in the life of the town, jumping from character to character, giving us the big picture by showing us smaller ones. He obviously cares about these characters, and we end up feeling the same way.
Ben strikes up a romance with young Susan Norton, and the scenes with her family are nicely done. Susan’s mother is another King cliché, overbearing and unreasonable, but King creates a nice character in her father Bill. Ben, as it turns out, grew up in ‘Salem’s Lot, and has returned to write a book about the Marsten House, a supposedly haunted mansion on the hill. When Ben was younger, he found the body of Hubert Marsten – a suicide, hanging from the rafters. Sharing this story brings Ben and Susan closer.
What’s surprising about this book is how naturally it shifts from an American small town tale to a story about vampires. And make no mistake, this is a story about vampires. Richard Straker is King’s Count Dracula, setting up shop in a haunted house and slowly taking over the town. The shift comes about halfway through – for a while, King teases you, and you’re not sure whether he’s really going to bring out the vamps, but he does.
And at that point, the book kind of sinks a little for me. There are some fantastic scenes in the latter half, including the death and resurrection of Susan Norton, and Ben’s breakdown after he stakes her. But these characters we’ve come to know and respect are having conversations about vampires, and accepting the idea that their town has been overrun by creatures out of Bram Stoker. It strains credulity somewhat, but because the second half of ‘Salem’s Lot is such a ride, it’s forgivable.
In the final analysis, ‘Salem’s Lot is about the death of a small town. Ben and Mark, a plucky kid who instantly believes in the bloodsuckers, return to the Lot and set it on fire, recalling a similar blaze that nearly wiped the town out in 1951. It’s a striking ending, but a fitting one – you can all but see the wide-angle shot of Ben and Mark as the camera fades to black and the credits roll.
King will go on to examine many more small Maine towns (most notably Castle Rock, which he will return to again and again). He’ll also give us many more tortured, heroic writers. But Ben Mears and Jerusalem’s Lot are fine first stabs, and they anchor a decent second book. It sets the tone and template for a lot of what’s to come.
Next: Rage.
