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'Salem's Lot
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...now the streets are haunted...
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'Salem's Lot
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'Salem's Lot was King's second published novel, and it came to be one of the first to award King the title "Master of Horror." Situated firmly between the telekinetic girl of Carrie and the haunted hotel of The Shining, 'Salem's Lot stands as one of the scariest novels ever written.
It concerns a small town in Maine named Jerusalem's Lot (shortened to 'salem's Lot) and the pervasive evil that comes to inhabit it. The town knows horror, of course. Years before the main events of the novel take place, we learn that a man named Hubie Marsten (prisoner of psychosexual disorders he can't control) commited a murder- suicide and now his house stands empty, seeming to watch over the town. The Marsten House becomes the symbol of evil in the novel, a central place in which terror and death resonate from. The Bad Place (to coin a phrase from Michael Collings) motif will be used countless times in later King fictions.
Introduced to the small town of 'salem's lot are three strangers: a writer named Ben Mears who used to live in the town when he was young; a young boy named Mark Petrie, a kid obsessed with monsters and horror movies; and the mysterious figure known as Mr. Barlow, who opens up a shop in town (quite an obvious precursor to Needful Things' Leland Gaunt). But Barlow himself doesn't make an appearance in the novel until more than halfway through. His assistant, Mr. Straker, takes care of Barlow's business while Barlow takes care of the town's business.
Following the arrival of these strangers, a young boy is found dead. The scene at the funeral in which the Glick boy's father throws himself at the coffin yelling at his son to wake up is perhaps King's most gut-wrenching. Then, when darkness falls on the town, the boy emerges from his coffin. His father's command becomes prophecy.
Death invades the town, but it is not really death that grips it: it is the much worse undeath of vampirism. By the time Ben Mears, Mark Petrie and their friends discover the truth, the town is almost unsalvagable. Their only hope is to destroy Barlow, burn the town, and escape.
The novel begins and ends with Ben and Mark leaving to once again visit the Lot, as they have discovered the vampire threat hasn't vanished. 'Salem's Lot ends with a cliffhanger that will probably never be balanced. What exists, though, is one of King's most intense and scary books. After the steady buildup, the moments of terror come in one-two knockout style. King's mastery of vampire myths and legends is amazing, especially in how he infuses them into a modern-day society. And the fact that the major villain stays behind the scenes for the first third of the novel only adds to the excitement and anxiety.
'Salem's Lot is not just a vampire novel. It is a novel of pure and unbridled fear, a truly scary book,. But it is about small towns and the nature of evil. It is about love found, love lost, and the persistance of hope. And, well, it has those vampires.
When Centipede Press published a brand-new, illustrated limited edition of ’Salem’s Lot, no one quite new what to make of it. It was almost prohibitively expensive, and many people had never heard of Centipede Press. In addition, they required pre-payment (by either PayPal or credit card) before the book was ever published. The whole thing smelled like a sham.
The problem was, it wasn’t a sham; by the time the King community verified this project’s authenticity, the lot (heh) was sold. Now, copies of the deluxe edition command up to $7,500, and the less-rare (but still uncommon) limited edition is now going for around $1500. (Now we know why Kev got out of the collecting game.)
But now, this amazing edition of this amazing book is being made available to everyone, and I couldn’t be happier. Doubleday, the original publisher of ’Salem’s Lot, has republished the Centipede Press version in an affordable yet quite spiffy hardcover, just in time for Christmas. The illustrations – sufficiently creepy photographs by Jerry Uelsmann – are represented here in high-quality black and white. They have an appropriately autumn feel to them, seeming a cross between Berni Wrightson’s black-and-white illustrations for Cycle of the Werewolf and the lunatic photo-realistic illustrations accompanying the Scream/Press edition of Skeleton Crew.
What’s most intriguing about this edition, though, and what most King fans will go crazy for, are the deleted scenes. When ’Salem’s Lot was originally published, King either opted to or was forced to remove certain scenes, for a variety of reasons (for example, one scene involving a full-scale rat attack was removed because the publishers thought it was far too gory.) Now, these scenes are back, and unlike with The Stand or even The Gunslinger, the expurgated material is not reinstated within the text, but comes afterward in a series of short vignettes. This makes for a somewhat schizophrenic reading experience, but those already familiar with the novel will find no trouble following along.
Some very intriguing bits are here, too: Barlow was once known as Sarlinov, and The Lot itself was at one point referred to as Momson (which seems, to this reader at least, a very obvious way of giving the town a very homey name, one that inspires images of motherhood and family ... only to have that very concept first subverted by the Peyton Place inner workings of the town, then perverted by the appearance of sudden evil). The aforementioned (and infamous) rat scene seems a lot less gory at this late date, but also seems less necessary than one might expect. It’s shocking and brutal, certainly, but not as important to the final book (unlike, say, the excision of the Barney theme song in Desperation) as I’d once previously believed. (Something interesting about the rats, though: in a later scene with Ben and Mark in the cellar, they force the rats to clear a path for them; as they move forward, the rats close ranks behind them. This scene is wildly reminiscent of the much later scene in The Dark Half, when Alan Pangborn is driving through the multitudinous waves of sparrows.)
The absolute best deleted scene is a fairly long discussion between Ben and Susan on the nature of evil, specifically as it relates to the Marsten House. King’s later comments about evil as a “floating” thing crystallize in this scene. And there’s another, shorter discussion later regarding Ben’s short history as a writer that I particularly enjoyed. (Anytime King writes about writing, I’m pretty darn gleeful.)
Rounding out the package are King’s 1999 terrific afterword to the novel (featured prominently in those weird garish trade paperback with the overbright pulp-fiction covers), the peripheral short stories “Jerusalem’s Lot” and “One for the Road,” and a simply wonderful new foreword, commissioned especially for this edition. It’s certainly the most complete – and most attractive – edition of this book ever published, a necessary and welcome edition to any King fan’s bookshelf.
Unlike the unsuspecting audiences of the '70's, I knew
long before I read the book that 'Salem's Lot was about
vampires. It's kind of sad, in a way, because of the lack
of surprise, but there were enough surprises in the book
to keep me guessing.
The whole opening sequence in the Marsten House freaked me out. And the funeral scene disturbed me to no end. These were things that could really happen. And then, there was the oft-hidden Barlow, who took the town and made it even scarier. It really woke me up, because I saw (as I did in It, but this really brought it home to me) that although the novel could have horrors great and small, it could also have my world. Horror wasn't all fangs and things with teeth. It was about the ordianry eclipsed by the extraordianry. 'Salem's Lot takes this simple, awesome premise, and runs with it until you can no longer take it. I really liked this book.
Directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), the four-hour miniseries 'Salem's Lot is fairly well done, but not worth a second look. It's boring at times, and though it's not Hooper's fault, it really looks stuck in the 70's. Plus, what was with the Nosferatu-looking Barlow?!? Less scary than just plain weird; he looks like a shaved albino gerbil with a nervous tic.
See it if you're a completist, but almost every following miniseries is better (well, there was The Tommyknockers...)