Stephen King: Regional Novelist
Oct. 26th, 2023 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraThe problem with breaking any kind of fast—media, chocolate chip cookies, The Real Housewives—is that if you do it one day, you’re inclined to do it the next.
How can it hurt? you reason. I’ll stop tomorrow. Etc, etc, etc.
Thus this morning, I found myself reading all about the latest mass shooting. Twenty-two dead. As many as 60 injured.
That’s a lot. Even for a mass shooting.
###
Happens that it took place in a part of Maine I kinda/sorta know: Ben’s brother, The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold, was the harbor master in Rockland during one of his periodic attempts to warm up, and TSWSOINC had a girlfriend who lived in Lewiston. We stayed with her once.
(After they broke up, the girlfriend actually read this journal for a while. But I digress.)
I vividly remember that afternoon we drove to her house and somehow stumbled upon Bates College, this bonsai Ivy League university rising up out of the jungle that is the Maine countryside in deep summer.
Maine has a deeply weird terroir.
I haven’t visited all the states, but of the ones I’ve visited, Maine and New Mexico are the weirdest.
Not necessarily a bad thing, this: New Mexico actually lives up to its license plate motto (Land of Enchantment), and Maine in the summertime can stagger your heart with its sheer physical beauty.
But let’s just say Stephen King isn’t a horror novelist; he’s a regional novelist.
###
The shooter appears to be a schizophrenic Army Reservist (ulp). Who loved Donald Trump.
I use Stephen King-ish tropes when I play out the scene—from the shooter’s POV—inside my head. Those kids in that bowling alley? sez the voice of Donald Trump inside the shooter’s head. They’re gonna grow up to do some very, very bad things. They’re gonna get abortions. They’re gonna try to change their sex. They believe the Bible says it’s Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve.
POW!!!!!!
POW!!!!!!
POW!!!!!!
Doesn’t help that Maine has the laxest gun control laws in the nation.
I mean, I think they don’t even do background checks for mental illness or prior felonies.
###
Oh, and that thing in the Middle East?
Still happening.
That thing in Sudan, too.
Plus, a Category 5 hurricane took out a big chunk of western Mexico.
In good news, Choupette (Karl Lagerfeld’s cat) did her best to take out Kim Kardashian.
Meanwhile, I did as little as possible yesterday.
Finished the Remunerative Project, did laundry, did grocery shopping, but did not work in the garden and one mile out on my tromp, thought, Fuck this, went home, ate Terry’s chocolate orange slices and watched Bodies on Netflix, which is actually a halfway decent science fiction/time travel story, though its central paradox is big enough to drive a fully armored IDF tank through.
I do love time travel stories!
Though given the opportunity to travel through time myself, I’d turn it down.
With all its shortcomings, 21st-century America is clearly the best time and place there’s been so far on this planet to be a woman.
How can it hurt? you reason. I’ll stop tomorrow. Etc, etc, etc.
Thus this morning, I found myself reading all about the latest mass shooting. Twenty-two dead. As many as 60 injured.
That’s a lot. Even for a mass shooting.
###
Happens that it took place in a part of Maine I kinda/sorta know: Ben’s brother, The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold, was the harbor master in Rockland during one of his periodic attempts to warm up, and TSWSOINC had a girlfriend who lived in Lewiston. We stayed with her once.
(After they broke up, the girlfriend actually read this journal for a while. But I digress.)
I vividly remember that afternoon we drove to her house and somehow stumbled upon Bates College, this bonsai Ivy League university rising up out of the jungle that is the Maine countryside in deep summer.
Maine has a deeply weird terroir.
I haven’t visited all the states, but of the ones I’ve visited, Maine and New Mexico are the weirdest.
Not necessarily a bad thing, this: New Mexico actually lives up to its license plate motto (Land of Enchantment), and Maine in the summertime can stagger your heart with its sheer physical beauty.
But let’s just say Stephen King isn’t a horror novelist; he’s a regional novelist.
###
The shooter appears to be a schizophrenic Army Reservist (ulp). Who loved Donald Trump.
I use Stephen King-ish tropes when I play out the scene—from the shooter’s POV—inside my head. Those kids in that bowling alley? sez the voice of Donald Trump inside the shooter’s head. They’re gonna grow up to do some very, very bad things. They’re gonna get abortions. They’re gonna try to change their sex. They believe the Bible says it’s Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve.
POW!!!!!!
POW!!!!!!
POW!!!!!!
Doesn’t help that Maine has the laxest gun control laws in the nation.
I mean, I think they don’t even do background checks for mental illness or prior felonies.
###
Oh, and that thing in the Middle East?
Still happening.
That thing in Sudan, too.
Plus, a Category 5 hurricane took out a big chunk of western Mexico.
In good news, Choupette (Karl Lagerfeld’s cat) did her best to take out Kim Kardashian.
Meanwhile, I did as little as possible yesterday.
Finished the Remunerative Project, did laundry, did grocery shopping, but did not work in the garden and one mile out on my tromp, thought, Fuck this, went home, ate Terry’s chocolate orange slices and watched Bodies on Netflix, which is actually a halfway decent science fiction/time travel story, though its central paradox is big enough to drive a fully armored IDF tank through.
I do love time travel stories!
Though given the opportunity to travel through time myself, I’d turn it down.
With all its shortcomings, 21st-century America is clearly the best time and place there’s been so far on this planet to be a woman.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-26 04:20 pm (UTC)I feel for her though re: animals taking a dislike to you. There's a dog in my neighborhood who barks at about 75 percent of the people who go by but not all of them. I'm in the 75 percent--but she has a special hatred of me. She begins barking as soon as she catches a glimpse of me and continues until I round a corner, whereas the other people she barks at, she gives up after they've passed her house.
I think it's cool you know a harbormaster. I need to make friends with a harbormaster.
... grim news is grim (thought I'd better put that in there too for fair acknowledgement of a truth)
no subject
Date: 2023-10-26 07:26 pm (UTC)I've had animals take unreasonable dislikes to me, too, and when they do, I stay far, far away from them.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-26 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-10-26 04:41 pm (UTC)Sad news. And...well, I wouldn't be surprised if it WAS Spanky's voice in that guy's head. The worst ssort of nightmare there is.
Smart cat.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-26 07:28 pm (UTC)I would so watch a reality TV series about Choupette the cat!
no subject
Date: 2023-10-27 11:02 am (UTC)Without ever seeing Maine, I feel this to be true. He's at his most compelling when what he's decribing is horror at home; that sense that there always was something wrong about this neighbourhood, whether it's the old school yard or the green and pleasant land. It's only when you see it again you think How could I have missed this?
I like time travel stories too. couldn't resist the opportunity if I knew I could get back safely!
no subject
Date: 2023-10-27 01:25 pm (UTC)Ah! Well. You and R might like Bodies. I wouldn't say it's great—It's your basic bootstrap time travel loop, and bootstrap time loops can be maddening if you apply logic to them. (The only bootstrap time travel loop I've ever really loved is 12 Monkeys.)
But it's solidly good, consistently entertaining, and has a few striking visuals.
no subject
Date: 2023-10-31 09:13 am (UTC)