The First Paperback I Ever Read

When I was eleven years old, I saved my allowances and went a few weeks without comic books, because I was going to buy my first paperback novel.

I don’t know what it was in me that decided that I wanted to read something more concrete, and maybe comic books were not in-depth enough. Maybe comics as a medium suffered with me because the subsequent serializations were not readily available. I had to wait a month for each new release and to find how the story continued after the last page cliff-hanger. Maybe I felt that a novel game the ability to immediately read next month’s installment today. It’s a lot like watching television series on Netflix. All I have to do is click the button that reads “Watch Episode 23” and I can see what happens next without waiting.

Reading stories outside of comic books, up until that point, was a drag. We had to read stories in school. And they were horrible. Here’s a clue: when making a child read a story in school, how about making it something that they will enjoy and want to read? My grade school syllabus consisted of reading short stories by authors whose names I still can’t pronounce today, and the old standards of things like Wuthering Heights. I can’t remember if I had been assigned WH by this time, but it was like torturing me with little needles to my head. I know that there are people that will defend WH and have me quartered for this statement. But I hated, and still hate, the type of stuffy writing that makes up the classic genre of WH.

Somewhere I decided to find something that I wanted to read for fun. So, I started searching to paperbacks at the Acme to select the perfect book. If you’ve ever shopped for books with me, it is an arduous thing. This is something that I will be hitched to for a month (I don’t read a lot at one time, so it takes me a long time to read something). I can never have someone buy me a book to read, because I have no skin in the selection and it is potentially doomed to failure because of that.

I selected Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. I thought the name sounded really cool and the cover was great. It released in the previous year, and I’d seen it on the bestseller shelf for a year. I actually thought it was going to be about witches (with the title including the word “Salem” and all).

In reviewing what I liked about this book, I’m struck about how much I learned about writing from it, and how much I’ve patterned my own writing based on it.

My first reaction to the book was noticing King’s casual style of writing. There were no arcing descriptions of the moors every couple of pages. It was as if the writer was sitting with me telling me the story. I was sold on this type of writing, as I was enjoying it. A casual writing style is something that kept with me for many years.

And there was swearing in the book! To an eleven year old, whose reading list was supervised for its classical elegance, it was exciting to see a bunch of four-letter words in print. This was a particularly bad habit that took me a long time to shed. Now, I am almost four-letter word free in my writing (a few Gaelic one’s thrown in there). But, bad words in a book that I was reading had the desired effect that a choice word should – it shocks the reader into understanding either the character or that they situation is critical. Swear words are like salt. We know that too much salt will turn the impact of the creation into something that is overpowered by it. So, we know to use just a bit of salt. But, when you’re younger, you like salt a lot, and use it so often it can turn off people or turn your work into something bitter. That was how it was with swearing in my stories, I needed the years of aged wisdom to realize that salt wasn’t good for my stories. (Okay, now I’m hungry.)

For those who don’t know, ‘Salem’s Lot is a story about a writer named Ben Mears who goes back home to a small town in Maine, called Jerusalem’s Lot or ‘Salem’s Lot for short, to face his fears and write a book about it. His fears revolve around a creepy mansion called the Marsten House on the hill above the town. The house was the setting of a grizzly murder/suicide back before WWII. As a child on a dare, he snuck into the vacant house to remove an object to join the Bloody Pirates. He ventured farther into the house than he needed to in order to prove to the boys his worth. It was there that he saw the bloating, hanging body of Hubie Marsten. We don’t know if the boy imagined the body, saw a ghost, or was the victim of a prank. Ben returns to town at the same time that two men also appear and buy the Marsten House. Two boys quickly go missing, and people begin to act strangely as the town becomes inhabited by vampires.

‘Salem’s Lot is less of a horror story and more of an adventure that contains vampires. The pace is at breakneck speed, and it is as exhilarating as it is scary. It reminds me of the classic horror story, Dracula, which was paced like an adventure story with characters trying to keep up with what is going on around them. This is another aspect that appeals to me and my writing over the years. I love adventure stories: the setup, the ride, and the payoff. My horror stories are much less about gore and violence (the modern horror movie and book) and more about adventure and excitement.

Another aspect I loved about this book is that it contained a lot of characters, in fact the town itself became like a character. I liked that different attitudes about the day and the town are displayed by different people. The town had a distinctive feeling of its own, you could almost see the map in your mind. From the opening chapter when Ben Mears sees the sign that read:

Route 12 Jerusalem’s Lot
Cumberland Cumberland Ctr

Then you can feel yourself in a New England country back road in the fall as Route 12 became Jointer Avenue and led you into the Lot. King did not spend a lot of time describing the countryside, as a certain gothic English classic set on the moors might. But, you get the feel for the setting in the description of the action and dialogue, as listening to a filling station attendant describing how to get downtown.

The thing that King did better than anything else, and I learned a lesson from this book that I’ve tried to use in everything that I’ve written, is his sense of suspense. King ends chapters or sections of ‘Salem’s Lot with scary and suspenseful cliffhangers.

Part one of ‘Salem’s Lot, titled “The Marsten House” ends in Matt Burke’s house, a high-school English teacher. Matt ran into Mike Ryerson at the pub and noticed that he looked ill. Later that night, Matt hears some unsettling things in the guest room.

And in the awful heavy silence of the house, as he sat impotently on his bed with his face in his hands, he heard the high, sweet, evil laugh of a child –

- and then the sucking sounds.

At eleven years old (what am I talking about? Even at forty years old), this is a chilling passage. The suspense really sets in as this is the end of the first section of the book. Leaving it standing like this, I could not stop reading.

Later in the book, Ben has teamed up with several others that he has just met, and they enter the Marsten House in the daytime in pursuit of the vampire named Barlow. They come upon a coffin they think belongs to Barlow. Lying on the closed surface of the coffin is an envelope with a letter in it. In this letter is one of the most chilling sections of any book I’ve ever read:

My Dear Young Friends,

How lovely of you to have stopped by!

I am never averse to company; it has been one of my great joys in a long and often lonely life. Had you come in the evening, I should have welcomed you in person with the greatest of pleasure. However, since I suspected you might choose to arrive during daylight hours, I thought it best to be out.

I have left you a small token of my appreciation; someone very near and dear to one of you is now in the place where I occupied my days until I decided that other quarters might be more congenial. She is very lovely, Mr. Mears – very toothsome, if I may be permitted a small bon mot. I have no further need of her and so I have left her for you to – how is your idiom? – to warm up for the main event. To whet your appetites, if you like. Let us see how well you like the appetizer to the main course you contemplate, shall we?

…

My good friends – Mr. Mears; Mr. Cody; Master Petrie; Father Callahan – enjoy your stay. The Medoc is excellent, procured for me especially by the late owner of this house, whose personal company I was never able to enjoy. Please be my guests if you still have a taste for wine after you have finished the work at hand. We will meet again, in person, and I shall covey my felicitations to each of you at that time in a more personal way.

Until then, adieu.

BARLOW

I still get chills reading this passage. Ben’s group thought they were catching up with the ancient vampire, when in fact, he was steps ahead of them.

‘Salem’s Lot remains, to this day, my favorite book, along with The Bourne Identity. I’ve compared every horror book I’ve read since to ‘Salem’s Lot. Most horror books do not have the sense of adventure that this one does, replacing it with dreary settings and violence. The state of the vampire story has completely gone in different directions. Starting with Interview With the Vampire, the vampire turned into a flowery bore. I got so sick of reading about how wonderful the sights and sounds of being a vampire is, and page after page about the inner monologue of moody vampires. I struggled with IWTV, and found that I couldn’t even finish the second book, The Vampire Lestat.

Don’t even get me started with sparkly love-sick vampires who can go out in the daylight. The bloody daylight!

Student 3D Artwork

This fall on Wednesday nights I've been teaching 3D graphics. My class consists of eight boys ranging from 3rd grade to 5th grade. Now, put eight boys in a room, and it's a challenge to keep them on task. But, sit them in front of their own laptop doing cool things, that is a challenge.

Their computer skills ranged from not at all to pretty good - their artistic sensitivity was nearly null. After several sessions trying to introduce 3D concepts and making them pay attention, we finally arrived to the last three weeks of class where they needed to start working on their final project that would be shown to all the parents of all the classes.

Below is a sample of their work so far - some pretty really cool things. One boy accidentally made a sky out of water and produced a really cool starting concept of mountains under water. The other boys latched on the sci-fi aspect and worked on their own planets or deathstars.

I'll post the final projects as soon as they are available.

Halloween

My favorite holiday of the year is Halloween. Before anyone reacts, I will say I love Christmas. But, I love Halloween. I love to be scared. I love attending haunted houses. The only thing I look forward as my children get older are when they are able to join me in my love of Halloween movies and activities.

As a child, my friends and I built a haunted house in our basement every year. We planned and built for weeks. My Mother’s profession was as a porcelain doll artist and the basement her workshop. Doll heads and parts on shelves in the semi-darkness is pretty bloody scary. We needed very few decorations. My basement scared most of my friends just as is.

Every year, I scan the channels for Halloween shows and movies (with Netflix, perusing my favorites is so easy). I have two categories of movies, those I watch with the kids (no easy task finding that these days) and those I watch late at night.

As you can guess, Halloween is my favorite Halloween movie. It is a late night movie, not yet consumable by my children. This film came out in 1978 and is directed by John Carpenter, written by Carpenter and Debra Hill, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance.

The film starts out in 1963, where six year-old Michael Myers snaps and kills his older sister. The family sends young Michael to a mental institution, where he does not speak or move for fifteen years. During this period of Michael’s non-activity, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) determines Michael is pure evil. I’m not sure how Loomis came about this diagnosis, but I will forgive a few plot holes if the ride is worth the suspension of disbelief. I don’t believe anyone saw Halloween and expected to see character development similar to Citizen Kane.

Back to the good doctor’s diagnosis, on Halloween in the present day, Loomis will petition the state to lock Michael away for the rest of his life. As they come in the front entrance, Michael overpowers them and drives away in their car (okay…I don’t know how a man in a catatonic state since age six can drive a car…but I’m willing this last time to forgive these hole, because the characters wondered the same thing on screen).

Michael goes on a rampage, he stalks and kills random people until he goes up against Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has the hapless job of babysitting on Halloween. Laurie, the good girl bookworm, doesn’t engage in any of the other vices or bad activities as the other unfortunate victims. This story seems a cautionary tale, as if a virtuous life will save you from the boogey-man. We find out in Halloween 2 that Laurie is Michael’s sister and this rampage was not so random after all.

Killing Michael Myers is no easy task. Stabbing him in the chest and eyes will not kill him. Shooting him and knocking him off a balcony only annoys him. Okay, that’s cool. I’ll suspend disbelief on that point. Adds a little bit of panic factor when he’s in the room with a character we like. But, at some point, I need to know some information. What happened to Michael to make him this way? We don’t learn any of that in the initial installment of Halloween.

This movie remains a vivid memory in my mind. I did not see the film in the theatres. I believe if I saw it there, it would not be as frightening. I saw Halloween in the fall of 1979 on HBO, when my friends Bruce and Keith came over to my house after a Friday night high-school football game. Because we watched in my dark family room, and the scariest parts of this film were set in a normal dark house just like mine. The experience was far more terrifying at home. At any moment, Michael could pop out of a room in my house and that would be the end.

The most memorable moment came after the movie. Bruce and Keith lived just a few blocks from my house, and my parents went out for the evening. The only way to get home was to walk home. On a normal night, a walk of two blocks at midnight in my neighborhood caused no concern to anyone. But, not this night. I watched from my room, Bruce and Keith sprinted home as fast as their legs would carry them.

This film impacted us after viewing. Greatness is a funny thing; Halloween was not blessed with an incredible plot or phenomenal writing. In fact, the stiff dialogue was forced. John Carpenter made this movie for $325,000, a bargain even for 1978. For us, the movie lived on after the final credits. For weeks after the viewing, I paused before entering a dark room. I looked out my window at night hoping not to see someone standing in the street watching.

Even though critics panned the film as too violent, the movie contains little blood and gore.

Three things come to mind when I reflect on this film.

1. The setting for the street in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois was actually a street close to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The setting looked and felt like fall in the Midwest. You could almost smell the burning leaves in the crisp air (even though filming occurred in the spring).
2. The images of jack-o-lanterns. From the movie poster to the opening credits, the image the orange pumpkin glowing yellow through the slit eyes and toothy grin endures. The hue of the film just screams Halloween to me.
3. The music. With no budget to work with, instead of an orchestral score, John Carpenter composed and performed the moody soundtrack music using a piano and a synthesizer. The main theme is an uncomfortable piece of music, written in 5/4 time with ominous chords swelling along with the piano. The texture and rhythm of the music makes the listener off kilter and on edge. Thirty years later, even listening to a bar or two of this theme brings back the mood of the movie.

Like any successful movie, Halloween spawned sequels and remakes. Despite the lower quality of each successive installment, many of the sequels give me the same feel – and perhaps because of the music and fall setting.

• Halloween II – 1981 – Just more of the same, just with more violence and gore. Written by Carpenter and Hill, this story picks up immediately following the events in Halloween. Carpenter handed directorial duties to Rick Rosenthal. The primary milestone for the sequel is the realization that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers little sister.
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch – 1982 – Carpenter wanted to use different Halloween themes throughout the series, rather than just Michael Myers slashing people to death. This movie attempted to start a new line, as the film has no connection with the prior two films. This is not necessarily a bad direction, if only number 3 executed better. The plot centers on a Halloween mask manufacturer called Silver Shamrock. Each mask embeds a computer chip with a fragment of Stonehenge in order to invoke the magic of the Gaelic tradition of Samhain to kill all the children (I know, I don’t understand either).
• Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers – 1988 – I remember little about this movie, it contained so few remarkable aspects, except the setting, which still made me feel like the fall in the Midwest (this film they also filmed in the spring). The plot revolves around the daughter of Laurie Strode, who died (but we find out in a later film she lived and faked her death). Anyway, Michael returns to kill the little girl, after surviving the explosion at the end of number two. But, he’s been in a coma ever since. The only true shock appears at the film’s end, where the little girl dons a mask, picks up a pair of scissors, just like Michael all those years ago, and brutally stabs someone to death.
• Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers – 1989 – Another unmemorable follow-up, coming right on the heels of number four. We find Michael’s niece Jamie, from the previous film, interred in a state hospital. Brief clips of a man in black traveling to Haddonfield comprised the only items of interest in the film. This man’s tattoo was the same as Michael’s. At the end of the film, the man in black rescues Michael from the police station. This important revelation should provide fuel to drive the next movie. We were going to learn why Michael was the way he was. I eagerly waited for number six to learn the mythology.
• Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Halloween 6 or Halloween 666) – 1995 – I saw this movie the in 1996 on tape. I remember becoming furious after viewing the film. Not only was there no explanation of the Michael Myers mythology, but they ignored what happened at the end of number 5. aHI discovered the producers created several versions of this movie: a theatrical release, a producer’s cut, and a director’s cut. I found out one version contains the explanation for the man in black. I am looking for this version of the movie. The man in black belongs to a group of druids, who also kidnapped Jamie, Michael’s niece. The rest of the movie is boring traditional fare.
• Halloween H20: 20 Years Later – 1998 – Jamie Lee Curtis returns in this film, revealing she faked her death and has an adult son (Josh Hartnett). The movie ignores the events from the fourth, fifth, and sixth installments. The story is set in Northern California, where Laurie Strode lives. This doesn’t fit right. Halloween movies belong in the Midwest. Twenty years passed since Michael Myers first returned. At the end of the movie, Laurie beheads Michael at the end of the movie.
• Halloween: Resurrection – 2002 – Again, this movie ignores everything from movies four through six. We learn Laurie did not behead Michael Myers at the end of the last movie, as we witnessed. In a change of events from the previous movie, Michael switched clothes with a paramedic and taped the mask to his face. Laurie beheaded a paramedic, thinking him Michael. Weak, very weak. There are so many ways this doesn’t work. At the beginning of the film, we discover that Laurie lives in an institution her accidental beheading of someone dressed up as Michael Myers. Three years later, Michael shows up to kill her. This scene elapses over twenty-five minutes. At this point the movie takes a left turn. We are introduced to a reality show set in the old Myers house. And guess who shows up?
• Halloween ­– 2007 – Rob Zombie attempted to reinvent the series. Zombie is responsible for some of the most violent movies I’ve ever seen. I hate cruel pointless violence and killing in movies, and I felt Zombie’s other movies were almost pornographic in their violence. As a result, I hated this movie as I felt it a pointless exercise and a taint against the original movie.
• Halloween II – 2009 – Rob Zombie’s sequel to his horrible remake. I didn’t even bother to see the film.