I have to say that I was not super excited to read The Cycle of the Werewolf. This book had many features that do not appeal to me. For instance, the plot felt very gimmacky: every month, during a full moon that has a great deal of artistic license regarding when it actually occurs, a werewolf attacks a person in a small Maine town. Meh. This project supposedly originated as a calendar, which was meant to have illustrations and a quick vignette from SK. This is one of the weirdest projects I have ever heard of. Who dreamed this up?
Another reason I was not excited about this: illustrated books. I am not huge on illustrated books. The whole graphic novel thing has passed me by. Maybe someday I will find out what makes these so popular, but right now they are not my thing. Yes, I am old.
(I want to point out that this is not the reason that I left Creepshow out of the blog. I left it out because I could not find a reasonably priced copy of it. If I ever do, then I will add it later. And yes, I will add it out of sequence and we will just all have to live with that).
A third reason I was not excited about this: werewolves. Meh. I guess I don't find werewolves that scary. Still better than haunted cars.
However, I liked it. I liked it more than I thought I would. Perhaps the fact that it was under 200 pages (with pictures!) helped. But I also liked that this was very clearly the precursor for It. There can't even be any debate on this point:
1) Small town terrorized by supernatural creature
2) Young boy places himself in danger and saves town
3) Young boy is somehow disabled--in this case, physically
That, in a nutshell, is the plot of It. Just add six more kids to #2 and you're good to go. And around 1000 more pages.
I also liked that SK came awfully close to admitting that his books would be much scarier without the supernatural element. When the constable is talking about the fact that this probably isn't a werewolf but some kind of psychopath, that seemed very close to an admission of the fact that what is really terrifying about these books is the events that take place and the fact that such horrific events can take place without the supernatural. In fact, the constable believes that Marty, the child who saves the town, interpreted his first encounter with the monster as a 'werewolf' to protect himself from the truth--that he saw a person from the town but was too traumatized to remember who it was. Nope. It was really a werewolf.
I will say that I did not like the name of our hero in this story: Marty Coslaw. I kept reading it as 'Marty Coleslaw.' And that sounded weird. Perhaps if you crank out as much prose as SK, sometimes your choice of names suffers as a result (TAD. That is all).
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Pet Sematary
If you have been following this blog at all, I probably do not even need to tell you that when I read this book as a teenager, it scared the living bejeezus out of me--if fact, you should just take for granted that the scary books scared me. This one had much to recommend it from a scary standpoint. There are ghosts, zombie cats, the dead resurrected, small children communicating with the dead from afar (King is big on this) and, of course, Sister Zelda. And Sister Zelda was not even a supernatural creature! Plus back then, it wasn't so easy to look up the symptoms of spinal meningitis through the power of the internet (in fact, it was impossible), so I actually thought that you mutated into a horrible monster with claw hands if you got meningitis.
Spoiler alert: you don't (thanks, internet!). I kept trying to figure out if maybe you did back in the 1960s or something, like when people used to have to live in iron lungs because they had polio and this is not a scenario that we are familiar with any more due to medical advances, but no, really. People do not mutate into monsters with claw hands from spinal meningitis. Here is what the Mayo Clinic has to say on the matter:
Now I realize that this version of events is totally from Rachel's point of view, so perhaps she just misunderstood things. But still. Something is off here. Or just factually incorrect, take your pick.
Anyway, back to Pet Sematary. As you may have guessed from my ability to treat Zelda's debilitating illness with a degree of levity, this time around the book didn't freak me out at all. And I even sat up very late at night reading it. I have no idea why. Maybe my fear of an SK book diminishes significantly for each re-read. But this may also be the book that I find easiest to understand within the framework of mythology. The story is basically the Orpheus myth retold, and I think that SK touches on exactly why Orpheus turns around before he reaches the surface.
As you may recall, the myth of Orpheus hinges on the idea that he has lost his beloved, so he retrieves her from the Underworld so that he can bring her back to life. There is only one stipulation, which is that he is not permitted to turn around until he reaches the surface. Naturally, like in any good horror story, Orpheus does not follow the rule and he loses Eurydice forever. Now, when most people encounter this myth they don't get it. Why would Orpheus turn around? SO DUMB. All he had to do was not turn around, and all would be well. Piece of cake.
Which is why a lot of retellings miss what I think is one of the key points in the original myth. He has no idea what is behind him since he has not seen Eurydice. He needs to take it on faith that she is there and that she will return as Eurydice, and not some terrifying Zelda monster, with the claw hands. You try walking through Hell without being able to turn around and make sure that your beloved is still your beloved! Less fun now, isn't it?
Pet Sematary plays on this myth because Louis keeps thinking that he can retrieve the dead, even though he should know after Gage that he really can't--heck, for that matter, he should know after the cat that he can't. The creatures that return from the Micmac burial site are the most horrific versions that could return. He should have turned around and left them behind forever. Orpheus turned out to be smarter than we thought!
Although not really, at least not the in version that has been preserved in Ovid's Metamorphoses. For Orpheus returns to the living, only to run around complaining about women and how it was all their faults that he could not bring back his beloved. He was so annoyed that he started dating men instead. A group of women--possibly the followers of Dionysus--took issue with this, ripping his body to shreds and leaving his head in a stream. I found a parallel with the succinct ending to Pet Sematary in that Rachel is the one to return. The final scene is, of course, ambiguous: we only know that she has returned from the grave and we suspect that she is now a corrupted, evil version of herself from the clues that SK provides. I like to imagine that she then rips his head off and tosses it in a stream to make the Orpheus theme complete.
This book returns to one of the major themes that is preoccupying King at this point in his career, which is the death of children, in particular little boys. A very similar thing happens, of course, in Cujo, and I have to say that I did not start on Pet Sematary for a while because I was concerned that it would be as grim as Cujo was. I found that overall it wasn't, which isn't to say that the part after Gage dies is anything less than very bleak. But I felt like Cujo was worse, particularly with the suffering that the kid had to endure. The line that stuck with me from that book was 'How long has Tad been dead?' Grim! I didn't find any single equivalent in Pet Sematary, it was more of an overall grimness that bedecked the Orpheus myth. In fact, the pacing was pretty interesting. The first part set up the situation very well and for once, we had almost all of our characters fully fleshed out. It was around 200 pages. The second part detailed all of the grimness that followed Gage's death and the ability (or lack thereof) to accept grief. That one was around 150 pages. The third part was really short, only about 30 pages, even with the epilogue. In fact, the most terrifying section, when Gage comes back to life, only needs a little bit of time to play out. The scenario has been totally set up already. What is key is the fact that then Louis/Orpheus takes the same journey again, only this time with his Eurydice.
(Am I losing my mind or do 'Louis' and 'Orpheus' kind of sound similar too? I may be reading too much into this).
There is one further quality that I find Louis and Orpheus share, which is that of hubris, to go all totally Greek on everything here--in some versions of the story, Orpheus is too confident and his attempt to rescue Eurydice is less about his love for her and more about his desire to prove that he can accomplish a feat that no other man has done in bringing back the dead. Louis is not a wholly flawed character; he is no Jack Torrence, where you are afraid for everyone in his presence, and he doesn't seem to be a bad father on the whole. In fact, he is mostly pretty normal. But there are some moments of hubris and these are what destroy him in the end. He views himself as detached from those around him because of his profession as a doctor; in the beginning of the story, in fact, he almost doesn't talk to his neighbor Jud because he fears that Jud will only want free medical advice. Okay, but that is viewing yourself through your professional accomplishments. At other points in the book he has similarly proud moments, such as when he is preparing to tear into a colleague through a professional critique in a journal. Of course, his greatest moment of pride is thinking that he can control Gage in case things do not go as planned. However, the antidote to his hubris is the fact that he is aging, a fact that is made abundantly clear throughout the novel. After his night of dragging Gage up to the burial site, he is in severe pain and exhausted. It is his exhaustion that allows Gage to get the scalpel and go on his rampage of terror. Had Louis been less sure of himself, probably he never would have even tried to rebury the body, of course. It is his confidence that as a doctor he will be able to assess the situation clinically (he even states so at one point) that is his downfall.
Death is a central theme in this book, but even in his understanding of it, Louis shows his pride. He explains to his wife that death is a natural thing; however, the majority of the deaths in Pet Sematary are not at all natural. I probably don't need to rehash Zelda's death by choking because she has turned into some kind of surreal demon as one example. Three accidents are caused by creatures getting hit by cars (I am counting the cat, Victor Pascow, and Gage). None of these creatures should be dead. They are all young, and Victor, as a jogger, was even trying to stay in shape and better his health. As we hear about the various physical ailments that Louis endures in the course of the novel--feeling tired after a walk in the woods, straining himself from carrying the cat--we start to realize that he is not in great shape. Could he be next? Is this really all his own fear of death manifesting itself? I think that probably yes. His hair going white at the end signals that he is now old too.
The return of the dead, in particular the dead soldier from World War 2, really reminded me of the evil reanimated corpse in The Gunslinger. In fact, this book had numerous parallels with other SK works, including a character revealing small-town secrets (this will come back in Needful Things), twins digesting each other in the womb (The Dark Half, although King brings this idea up a lot in his books) and some kind of ancient evil surrounding a small town in Maine (do I even need to say?).
I have one last thing to say about this book: if I had to give it a 'Fractured Fairytales' subtitle, it would be 'The Wendigo Ate My Baby.'
Spoiler alert: you don't (thanks, internet!). I kept trying to figure out if maybe you did back in the 1960s or something, like when people used to have to live in iron lungs because they had polio and this is not a scenario that we are familiar with any more due to medical advances, but no, really. People do not mutate into monsters with claw hands from spinal meningitis. Here is what the Mayo Clinic has to say on the matter:
The complications of meningitis can be severe. The longer you or your child has the disease without treatment, the greater the risk of seizures and permanent neurological damage, including:Don't get me wrong: these are bad things. But they are not the same as what is described with Zelda. Also, how long did this agony go on for in their house? The novel makes it seem like this disease lasted for years and years. Unlikely in the case of meningitis. I now have this giant conspiracy theory that actually Zelda had something else, only the family couldn't talk about what it really was, and maybe she just mutated into a horrible demon. Which would be kind of awesome. Someone get on this prequel.
- Hearing loss
- Memory difficulty
- Learning disabilities
- Brain damage
- Gait problems
- Seizures
- Kidney failure
- Shock
- Death
Now I realize that this version of events is totally from Rachel's point of view, so perhaps she just misunderstood things. But still. Something is off here. Or just factually incorrect, take your pick.
Anyway, back to Pet Sematary. As you may have guessed from my ability to treat Zelda's debilitating illness with a degree of levity, this time around the book didn't freak me out at all. And I even sat up very late at night reading it. I have no idea why. Maybe my fear of an SK book diminishes significantly for each re-read. But this may also be the book that I find easiest to understand within the framework of mythology. The story is basically the Orpheus myth retold, and I think that SK touches on exactly why Orpheus turns around before he reaches the surface.
As you may recall, the myth of Orpheus hinges on the idea that he has lost his beloved, so he retrieves her from the Underworld so that he can bring her back to life. There is only one stipulation, which is that he is not permitted to turn around until he reaches the surface. Naturally, like in any good horror story, Orpheus does not follow the rule and he loses Eurydice forever. Now, when most people encounter this myth they don't get it. Why would Orpheus turn around? SO DUMB. All he had to do was not turn around, and all would be well. Piece of cake.
Which is why a lot of retellings miss what I think is one of the key points in the original myth. He has no idea what is behind him since he has not seen Eurydice. He needs to take it on faith that she is there and that she will return as Eurydice, and not some terrifying Zelda monster, with the claw hands. You try walking through Hell without being able to turn around and make sure that your beloved is still your beloved! Less fun now, isn't it?
Pet Sematary plays on this myth because Louis keeps thinking that he can retrieve the dead, even though he should know after Gage that he really can't--heck, for that matter, he should know after the cat that he can't. The creatures that return from the Micmac burial site are the most horrific versions that could return. He should have turned around and left them behind forever. Orpheus turned out to be smarter than we thought!
Although not really, at least not the in version that has been preserved in Ovid's Metamorphoses. For Orpheus returns to the living, only to run around complaining about women and how it was all their faults that he could not bring back his beloved. He was so annoyed that he started dating men instead. A group of women--possibly the followers of Dionysus--took issue with this, ripping his body to shreds and leaving his head in a stream. I found a parallel with the succinct ending to Pet Sematary in that Rachel is the one to return. The final scene is, of course, ambiguous: we only know that she has returned from the grave and we suspect that she is now a corrupted, evil version of herself from the clues that SK provides. I like to imagine that she then rips his head off and tosses it in a stream to make the Orpheus theme complete.
This book returns to one of the major themes that is preoccupying King at this point in his career, which is the death of children, in particular little boys. A very similar thing happens, of course, in Cujo, and I have to say that I did not start on Pet Sematary for a while because I was concerned that it would be as grim as Cujo was. I found that overall it wasn't, which isn't to say that the part after Gage dies is anything less than very bleak. But I felt like Cujo was worse, particularly with the suffering that the kid had to endure. The line that stuck with me from that book was 'How long has Tad been dead?' Grim! I didn't find any single equivalent in Pet Sematary, it was more of an overall grimness that bedecked the Orpheus myth. In fact, the pacing was pretty interesting. The first part set up the situation very well and for once, we had almost all of our characters fully fleshed out. It was around 200 pages. The second part detailed all of the grimness that followed Gage's death and the ability (or lack thereof) to accept grief. That one was around 150 pages. The third part was really short, only about 30 pages, even with the epilogue. In fact, the most terrifying section, when Gage comes back to life, only needs a little bit of time to play out. The scenario has been totally set up already. What is key is the fact that then Louis/Orpheus takes the same journey again, only this time with his Eurydice.
(Am I losing my mind or do 'Louis' and 'Orpheus' kind of sound similar too? I may be reading too much into this).
There is one further quality that I find Louis and Orpheus share, which is that of hubris, to go all totally Greek on everything here--in some versions of the story, Orpheus is too confident and his attempt to rescue Eurydice is less about his love for her and more about his desire to prove that he can accomplish a feat that no other man has done in bringing back the dead. Louis is not a wholly flawed character; he is no Jack Torrence, where you are afraid for everyone in his presence, and he doesn't seem to be a bad father on the whole. In fact, he is mostly pretty normal. But there are some moments of hubris and these are what destroy him in the end. He views himself as detached from those around him because of his profession as a doctor; in the beginning of the story, in fact, he almost doesn't talk to his neighbor Jud because he fears that Jud will only want free medical advice. Okay, but that is viewing yourself through your professional accomplishments. At other points in the book he has similarly proud moments, such as when he is preparing to tear into a colleague through a professional critique in a journal. Of course, his greatest moment of pride is thinking that he can control Gage in case things do not go as planned. However, the antidote to his hubris is the fact that he is aging, a fact that is made abundantly clear throughout the novel. After his night of dragging Gage up to the burial site, he is in severe pain and exhausted. It is his exhaustion that allows Gage to get the scalpel and go on his rampage of terror. Had Louis been less sure of himself, probably he never would have even tried to rebury the body, of course. It is his confidence that as a doctor he will be able to assess the situation clinically (he even states so at one point) that is his downfall.
Death is a central theme in this book, but even in his understanding of it, Louis shows his pride. He explains to his wife that death is a natural thing; however, the majority of the deaths in Pet Sematary are not at all natural. I probably don't need to rehash Zelda's death by choking because she has turned into some kind of surreal demon as one example. Three accidents are caused by creatures getting hit by cars (I am counting the cat, Victor Pascow, and Gage). None of these creatures should be dead. They are all young, and Victor, as a jogger, was even trying to stay in shape and better his health. As we hear about the various physical ailments that Louis endures in the course of the novel--feeling tired after a walk in the woods, straining himself from carrying the cat--we start to realize that he is not in great shape. Could he be next? Is this really all his own fear of death manifesting itself? I think that probably yes. His hair going white at the end signals that he is now old too.
The return of the dead, in particular the dead soldier from World War 2, really reminded me of the evil reanimated corpse in The Gunslinger. In fact, this book had numerous parallels with other SK works, including a character revealing small-town secrets (this will come back in Needful Things), twins digesting each other in the womb (The Dark Half, although King brings this idea up a lot in his books) and some kind of ancient evil surrounding a small town in Maine (do I even need to say?).
I have one last thing to say about this book: if I had to give it a 'Fractured Fairytales' subtitle, it would be 'The Wendigo Ate My Baby.'
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