I caved.
I bought 'The Wind Through the Keyhole.' Yes. Out of order.
On a related note, I am traveling to Australia tomorrow. That is a very long flight.
My logic was that I have read other SK novels before, so this isn't really breaking the rules. Okay, it is. But I still would argue that a flight halfway around the world calls for lots of reading material.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Roadwork
Okay, I will admit it. I needed a SK hiatus. It just got to be too much with the '1970s America is really screwed up and what can be done' vibe. And when I read the blurb for Roadwork, it seemed very much to be about how screwed up 1970s America was and how there was no rational response to what was happening. I feel like if you are going to set a novel around Nixon/fuel crisis, that kind of response is somewhat inevitable. When this is the umpteenth SK book in a row to confront these issues, sometimes you need a hiatus.
However, it turned out that I liked Roadwork more than I thought I would. At its core was less the disintegration of American society and more the disintegration of a man whose life starting unraveling when his son died of a brain tumor. You may be asking, 'What is the deal with all of these brain tumors?' I was too. I think in part they are terrifying because in SK's world, there is nothing that can be done about them. In fact, this novel was particularly explicit in its description of the size of the tumor (a walnut) and how it was so deeply buried in the brain that nothing could be done. So in part they are scary because they are 'inoperable' (a word that came up a lot in SK's description)--which is to say that we are hopeless in the face of such things. But I think that the other scary part is the fact that they alter a person's behavior in ways that cannot be controlled. Now that is a scary thought. Forget vampires overriding your village or clowns in your sewer or pets coming back from the dead. Losing control of your brain, and therefore your behavior, is a terrifying notion.
Of course, there are other recurring themes. For instance, Vegas is evil (why all the Vegas hate, SK?). The story is set in Maine...again, SK, if you don't want people to know that you are writing under an alias, set your story in New Jersey or something!* One of the images that stuck with me the most was the constant dreams that the main character had about his son dying. This reminded me very much of the Dark Tower series, where Roland keeps seeing Jake die and can't save him. Perhaps this is where the idea initially came from. In this case, it was made even more sad by the fact that Barton (main character) simply couldn't move on from this death. He recognized that he should and even commended his wife--in a backhanded way--for managing to do this. But he was unable to get anywhere.
I think that what most resonated with me from this novel was the idea that here was a grown-up acting in completely non-grown up ways. Rather than confronting problems head-on, he came up with drastic responses or drastic non-responses. For instance, he lost his job because of something that he needed to do and didn't. He threw a hammer and broke his TV, even though he liked the TV and there was no rational reason for this response. He wound up in a shoot-out/explosion with local authorities because he should have moved on with his life and didn't. I'm pretty sure that virtually all of us has felt like this sometimes. Probably we just did what we needed to do. Maybe sometimes we let it slide and didn't do something that we should have done. It probably didn't turn out as drastically as this scenario. But I felt that Barton's motivations were surprisingly realistic and down-to-earth. Sometimes we don't want to do things, but because we are grown-ups, we have to.
Perhaps most salient in this novel is the importance of Barton's identity, which he loses piece by piece. He loses his job, which he has had for decades, in part because of a highway extension. He is about to lose his home. His inaction causes him to lose his wife. Before all of this, he has lost his role as a father. What is his identity by the end of this novel? I don't think that even he knows and that is why he takes the extreme action that he did. Throughout the book, we have narrations of the voices in his head, where he refers to himself by different names (it doesn't become clear until later that they are his middle name and the middle name of his son). This composite personality arises because he no longer has a well-defined role to play. In his final conversation with his wife, he feels that she is acting like a paperback novel: newly-divorced woman becoming independent by returning to school. In other words, she has an identity for him, even if it is cliche. But as the book continues, his identity is almost entirely lost. Even when he seeks to make amends--becoming the benefactor of a charity, for instance--he is rebuffed. I think that this is the reason that losing the house becomes such a catastrophic event for him: it is the only trace that he has of his former identities.
*Wikipedia says it is set in the Midwest. Bollocks. From the chapter set on December 31, 1973: 'He wondered what Olivia was doing now. She hadn't tried to call back, although if she had he would probably have weakened and taken the call. Maybe she had stayed in Vegas just long enough to get the money and had then caught a bus for...where? Maine? Did anyone leave Las Vegas for Maine in the middle of winter? Surely not.' (467 in The Bachman Books). This doesn't definitively place the story in Maine, but after reading it, that was my assumption.
However, it turned out that I liked Roadwork more than I thought I would. At its core was less the disintegration of American society and more the disintegration of a man whose life starting unraveling when his son died of a brain tumor. You may be asking, 'What is the deal with all of these brain tumors?' I was too. I think in part they are terrifying because in SK's world, there is nothing that can be done about them. In fact, this novel was particularly explicit in its description of the size of the tumor (a walnut) and how it was so deeply buried in the brain that nothing could be done. So in part they are scary because they are 'inoperable' (a word that came up a lot in SK's description)--which is to say that we are hopeless in the face of such things. But I think that the other scary part is the fact that they alter a person's behavior in ways that cannot be controlled. Now that is a scary thought. Forget vampires overriding your village or clowns in your sewer or pets coming back from the dead. Losing control of your brain, and therefore your behavior, is a terrifying notion.
Of course, there are other recurring themes. For instance, Vegas is evil (why all the Vegas hate, SK?). The story is set in Maine...again, SK, if you don't want people to know that you are writing under an alias, set your story in New Jersey or something!* One of the images that stuck with me the most was the constant dreams that the main character had about his son dying. This reminded me very much of the Dark Tower series, where Roland keeps seeing Jake die and can't save him. Perhaps this is where the idea initially came from. In this case, it was made even more sad by the fact that Barton (main character) simply couldn't move on from this death. He recognized that he should and even commended his wife--in a backhanded way--for managing to do this. But he was unable to get anywhere.
I think that what most resonated with me from this novel was the idea that here was a grown-up acting in completely non-grown up ways. Rather than confronting problems head-on, he came up with drastic responses or drastic non-responses. For instance, he lost his job because of something that he needed to do and didn't. He threw a hammer and broke his TV, even though he liked the TV and there was no rational reason for this response. He wound up in a shoot-out/explosion with local authorities because he should have moved on with his life and didn't. I'm pretty sure that virtually all of us has felt like this sometimes. Probably we just did what we needed to do. Maybe sometimes we let it slide and didn't do something that we should have done. It probably didn't turn out as drastically as this scenario. But I felt that Barton's motivations were surprisingly realistic and down-to-earth. Sometimes we don't want to do things, but because we are grown-ups, we have to.
Perhaps most salient in this novel is the importance of Barton's identity, which he loses piece by piece. He loses his job, which he has had for decades, in part because of a highway extension. He is about to lose his home. His inaction causes him to lose his wife. Before all of this, he has lost his role as a father. What is his identity by the end of this novel? I don't think that even he knows and that is why he takes the extreme action that he did. Throughout the book, we have narrations of the voices in his head, where he refers to himself by different names (it doesn't become clear until later that they are his middle name and the middle name of his son). This composite personality arises because he no longer has a well-defined role to play. In his final conversation with his wife, he feels that she is acting like a paperback novel: newly-divorced woman becoming independent by returning to school. In other words, she has an identity for him, even if it is cliche. But as the book continues, his identity is almost entirely lost. Even when he seeks to make amends--becoming the benefactor of a charity, for instance--he is rebuffed. I think that this is the reason that losing the house becomes such a catastrophic event for him: it is the only trace that he has of his former identities.
*Wikipedia says it is set in the Midwest. Bollocks. From the chapter set on December 31, 1973: 'He wondered what Olivia was doing now. She hadn't tried to call back, although if she had he would probably have weakened and taken the call. Maybe she had stayed in Vegas just long enough to get the money and had then caught a bus for...where? Maine? Did anyone leave Las Vegas for Maine in the middle of winter? Surely not.' (467 in The Bachman Books). This doesn't definitively place the story in Maine, but after reading it, that was my assumption.
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