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{"id":10737,"date":"2017-01-24T12:51:35","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T16:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10737"},"modified":"2017-01-24T12:51:41","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T16:51:41","slug":"country-darkness-read-salems-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2017\/01\/country-darkness-read-salems-lot.html","title":{"rendered":"Country Darkness: I read “‘Salem’s Lot”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

After I finished Alan Moore\u2019s hulking tome Jerusalem<\/em> (of which more presently) I picked up a pulp classic which turned out to have more in common with Moore\u2019s jawbreaker than just the Holy Land reference in the title. I\u2019d actually never read \u2018Salem\u2019s Lot<\/em>, despite loving Stephen King in general and pre-\u20189os King specifically. It\u2019s a great read, a luscious tribute to vampire tales of yore, with all of King\u2019s trademark sadness and determination. Some notes:<\/p>\n

# King returns to many of the images and ideas here later\u2013I caught a lot of snatches of Pet Sematary<\/em><\/strong> floating on the acrid breeze. The empty shoe after a highway accident; the evil laughter of a child; the sudden, terrifying certainty that someone\u2019s upstairs. King always makes you feel the reality of his children: their inner lives and strength as well as their vulnerability. He\u2019s exceptionally good at showing you evil<\/em> fastening on and swallowing a child.<\/p>\n

King is typically great at showing all the little, intelligible decisions and strokes of fortune that make up a disaster. He knows how huge a role bad luck plays in our lives (cf the refrains of The Dead Zone<\/em>\u2013the bad hot dog, the Wheel of Fortune) but he also consistently depicts and honors perseverance, the determination to do battle against evil, to escape or die trying. His characters throw everything they\u2019ve got at evil\u2013ingenuity, book-learnin\u2019, physical courage, sheer willpower\u2013and he shows you the majesty of their effort as well as its insufficiency.<\/p>\n

# When there\u2019s something strange\/In your neighborhood\/Who you gonna call?\/ROMAN CATHOLICS!<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, man, the role of the Church in this novel is so weird! It\u2019s mostly great in its wigged-out way. We get Catholicism just slathered up and down the page starting in the prologue: confession, crucifixes (is\u2026 is it really true that merely owning a crucifix in 1970s rural Maine means that you must be Cat\u2019lick?), Psalm 23, holy water, let\u2019s get all of that up in this joint. Opinions about social justice ministries!<\/p>\n

An aside: The dichotomy between social concern and supernatural battle seems super \u201970s to me, ahistorical and captive to an immediately post-Vatican II worldview. Get you a church that can do both, etc. And note that the current face of social-concern Catholicism, our pontiff, is not shy about airing his views on the Devil.<\/a> (He\u2019s agin\u2019 him. The Pope is not having any Satan today, thanks.)<\/p>\n

Spoilers: In \u2018Salem\u2019s Lot<\/em> Catholicism isn\u2019t actually true, although it seems for a long time like it\u2019s true and it\u2019s definitely truer than most things. There are some sketchy uses of sacraments, and one genuinely bizarre page where a vampire who maybe should\u2019ve had a better CCD teacher seems to think that the Catholic Church holds that sacraments are purely symbolic. I think the novel wavers back and forth, for maximum dramatic impact, on the question of whether the Church\u2019s spiritual power persists independent of our belief in Her.<\/p>\n

But still, Whiskey Priest vs. Dracula is a tale I\u2019ll always settle down for, and King serves it up with all the trimmings.<\/p>\n

# I\u2019ve read a bunch of books lately that are hymns to a place<\/strong>. \u2018Salem\u2019s Lot<\/em> does an incredible job of making you feel the depth and richness of its small town\u2019s life, without any ideological strongarming. We get the secrets, cruelties, and complicities of a small town. But we also get this, one of the very best descriptions I\u2019ve read of what it means for a place to be home<\/em>: \u201cBeing in the town is a daily act of utter intercourse, so complete that it makes what you and your wife do in the squeaky bed look like a handshake. Being in the town is prosaic, sensuous, alcoholic. And in the dark, the town is yours and you are the town\u2019s and together you sleep like the dead, like the very stones in your north field.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are a lot of victims in this novel, and a lot of vulnerable creatures. We watch as characters decide whether they will stand and defend those threatened creatures or whether they will surrender. And the most chilling scene of betrayal\u2013refusal to protect\u2013comes when someone abandons his responsibilities not to a specific individual, but to the town of Jerusalem\u2019s Lot.<\/p>\n

# Love the way King punctuates his transparent prose with sudden swoony rushes of scarlet and black<\/strong>. Love the cinematic descriptions of movement\u2013he does that in Pet Sematary<\/em> too, with the cat bumping into the doorframe, how horrifying it is when a creature moves wrong<\/em>. Love this great image: \u201cThe basis of all human fears, he thought. A closed door, slightly ajar.\u201d<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sLABwwmKdyc<\/a>\n

I think I found this song via a Vampire: The Masquerade playbook. Guess my age.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"