Every other Saturday, I'll be posting something from the spooky side of life (or unlife) that I've been working on. Today's submission goes back to a very involved endeavor that's going to keep me engaged for quite some time. A while back I decided to read every work of Stephen King in order of publication. I've made significant progress on that journey. Some of my Spooky Saturday posts will be of my reviews of King's works. I'm aware that this is not groundbreaking, and I'm sure I'm not going to stumble across any insights that haven't been discussed before, but for those who enjoy my writing and my takes on the material, here you go.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." ~ Lao-tzu
Here we are. The first in a long line of Stephen King book reviews to come! I have to say, Carrie was a good start to this whole experiment. It read really quickly and I can see a lot of King tropes right from the outset of his work. The first being the trope of the mentally powered main character. I know that we have many more of those in store for us as we move through these books, and it's interesting that Carrie seems to have pretty much all the mental powers. She's mostly thought of as a telekinetic (moves things with her mind), but in the book, she also seems to display some telepathy (mental communication/thought reading), pyrokinesis (starting fires with a thought), and psychometry (learning information about people or items through touch). Another common King-trope that I love starts here in this book as well: king interrupting the flow of thoughts with parentheses that interject some other perspective. This convention is so effective for demonstrating those fleeting thoughts that jump into our heads. It's a trait of his writing that I've always found very impactful and that just screams of King. Lastly, though not revered so much in this reviewer's eyes, are the concept of the greaser villains. This same motif comes up time and again, but I just can't think of the idea of a greaser as being all that threatening. Blame it on Westside Story and Grease. This is especially the case here in Carrie where a person dressed as and acting like a greaser would have been incredibly out of date in the '70s. Fun thought though: John Travolta, who set my expectations for what a greaser was also played the first of Stephen King's greaser villains, Billy Nolan in the Bryan Depalma film based on this book. Although Depalma's Billy is no greaser, the odd connection remains.
Interestingly, Carrie is not exactly a horror book per se, though it has its moments. Carrie reads more like a teen drama, almost a romance for the most part. It is interesting to see though how King used an epistolary structure with this book, that is being told through letters, articles, interviews, journals, etc. That's a style I most associate with Bram Stoker's Dracula which brings up another interesting connection for me since King's next work, 'Salem's Lot, was Stephen King's attempt to tell the story of Dracula coming to America in, what was then, modern times. Even so, the horrific elements really only seem to come once Carrie has her breakdown at the prom. The rest of the book tends to focus on the development of the various relationships through the text and the development of Carrie's powers. There is one other element that really sticks out to me here. There is a lot of detail that is paid to describe Billy Nolan's car throughout the book, and during her rampage, Carrie wrecks the car with Christine Hargensen in it. I'm wondering if this might be the origin for Christine when I get there. Or at least, if this isn't where that idea started for King.
Overall, the book was a great read and an awesome starting point for getting into Stephen King. Now on to 'Salem's Lot.
