'Salem's Lot
by Stephen King (1975)
"‘I haven’t given up hope of rational explanations, Susan. I’m hoping for one. Almost praying for one. Monsters in the movies are sort of fun, but the thought of them actually prowling through the night isn’t fun at all.’”
I may be entering my Stephen King era after this read. Back in high school I had read some of his shorter works, but I don’t think I was old enough at the time to appreciate his storytelling. As I currently contemplate whether I want to jump into his seven-volume Dark Tower series, I figured a good place to start is with one of his earlier and more well-known novels.
In the expanded edition’s introduction (which is well worth the read, by the way), King cites Bram Stoker’s Dracula as his source of inspiration – he wanted to explore what would have happened if Dracula appeared in 1960’s small-town America instead of 1890’s London. ‘Salem’s Lot also has many homages to Shirly Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. You certainly don’t need to read either of these to enjoy ‘Salem’s Lot, but having read them, I felt I appreciated his novel that much more.
“Being in the town is prosaic, sensuous, alcoholic. And in the dark, the town is yours and you are the town’s and together you sleep like the dead, like the very stones in your north field. There is no life here but the slow death of days, and so when the evil falls on the town, its coming seems almost preordained, sweet and morphic. It is almost as though the town knows the evil was coming and the shape it would take.”
In fact, much like The Haunting of Hill House, the further I got in ‘Salem’s Lot, the more I wanted to read – but for a different reason. Instead of just wanting questions answered and tension resolved, as I did in Jackson’s novel, there was more ‘action’ in this book that I wanted to get to; I constantly wanted to know what happened next. It was enticing, entertaining, emotional, and spooky all at once.
It’s also worth pointing out that the many childhood themes (e.g., guilt, fear, loss of innocence, the disconnect between children and adults) that permeate throughout King’s work start budding in ‘Salem’s Lot. I have not read It, but I’ve seen both the 1990 and 2017/2019 movies, and there are similarities between The Loser’s Club and the characters in this novel (specifically, Mark).
“Before drifting away entirely, [Mark] found himself reflecting—not for the first time—on the peculiarity of adults. They took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can’t get Jennie nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends. They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child.”
Even though October is over, I recommend this to anyone who wants a spooky read, any time of the year.