The chapter opens with Mike waking up in the morning thinking there is someone in the bedroom with him, but surprise-it's just an old jacket he hung up and had forgotten about. Then King adds a neat little saying I had never heard before and (hopefully) has never been said in real life, Mike's so relieved that it's just a jacket he says, "Oh shit. Fuck me til I cry." Classy King, keep it up -the dialogue crackles.
Mike gets served with papers to come testify at a deposition concerning the upcoming custody trial. The person serving the papers is another cliche and the thing I like about King throughout this book is that he keeps saying his characters are cliche but they're not too cliche. George Footman, the process server, says "Don't fuck with Max Devore." Then Mike comes up with another line that would make it more cliche. Sorry King, your character is either a cliche or not a cliche. There's no such thing as "more" cliche, just as there is no such thing as being "more" unique. George Footman's cliche is that he's an alcoholic cop out on the take and will do anything for money. He'll beat you up or threaten you because he's getting paid by Max Devore.
Mike is upset about being served so he calls up a lawyer to see what can be done. Mike's talk with the lawyer is rather well done. King talks about the line that's crossed when a lawyer becomes your lawyer. It's a comforting feeling to know that someone has your back and that no matter what (as long as you pay) they will defend you and your actions. Unconditional love.
The bottom line is that the lawyer needs to represent Mattie. Mike agrees to talk to her about him paying for this high-priced lawyer and wonders if she will agree to let him help her. The lawyer tells Mike to only be seen with Mattie in public so that the townspeople will think they're not having sex. This doesn't make much sense. Unless Mattie or Mike are available for twenty-four viewing, there's no way to know if they are or not having sex. But whatever.
At the end of the chapter we get a brief history of Sara Laughs and the area around the lake. In the 1890's a group of forty or so "pretty special black people" settled the area and they were all in some kind of musical troupe with Sara Tidwell as the leader. They were well received around the area after initial hesitation by the whites and enjoyed a nice career in New England until they packed up in 1901. I really, really hope that this will be the ultimate "King magical black person" novel. Not just one magical black person but an entire settlement of special, magical black ghosts. That would be truly incredible and I do think that we are going to get it later on in the novel. I can't wait.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Bag of Bones: Chapter 10 (pages 135-158)
This chapter will be known as the "exposition chapter." Bill Dean, the local caretaker, visits Mike at Sara Laughs and gives him an exhaustive history of Max Devore, Lance Devore and Mattie Devore. This chapter reminded me of the scene in Wayne's World, where Chris Farley plays a security guard and gives Wayne all the information he needs to track down the record executive he seeks. ("That guy seemed to have an awful lot of information for a security guard.")
Mike has an hour and a half long conversation with Mike (King gives a specific time frame for this conversation. Bill arrives at 9 am and has to leave to get to his next appointment at 11 am).
Mattie came from a poor family from the area and Lance, the son of the wealthy Max Devore, developed a passion for forestry. Max hired Lance to explore the vast forests he owned in this part of Maine. He also played in the local softball games held every week. The locals played the out- of -towners and Lance would play for either team. He met little Mattie then who was only seventeen and they fell in love.
King describes all of this exposition as coming from the mouth of Bill Dean, or as if the reader should understand that it's coming from Bill Dean but he also adds an odd little paragraph in the middle that gave me pause as to where the information was coming from. Bill's describing how Mattie met Lance and then Mike's narration takes over, " Mattie never said much about it, so I don't know much. Except I do...some of the details might be wrong [but] I got most of them right. That was my summer for knowing things I had no business knowing." So is King saying that Mike is becoming psychic as to the history of the people around him and is the story we're hearing coming from Bill, Mattie or the voice in Mike's head? Later on, Mattie tells her story herself, going into greater detail so we should then assume that the version in this chapter is Bill Dean's alone. But that paragraph throws some of this into confusion.
We find that Lance died retrieving a wrench from the top of his trailer during a thunderstorm. Lightening struck near him and he fell off the ladder. After Lance died, Max came into town and has been there ever since trying to get custody of Kyra.
The plot development in this chapter is that Bill tells Mike about some plastic owls that Jo had ordered in the fall of 1993 and that she came up to Sara Laughs by herself to retrieve them when they were delivered to the house. Mike has no memory of Jo going to Sara Laughs by herself and tries to dig around in his records to account for Jo's actions.
We also get more details about the woman with the face from "The Scream." (I'm not going to call it "The Cry" even though King does throughout the book. I want people to know what I'm talking about.) Her name is Rogette Whitmore, she's Max Devore's personal assistant and the locals think she's a witch. Only in New England do people go around thinking other people are witches.
The chapter ends with Mike making contact with the ghosts that inhabits Sara Laughs. He goes into the dark basement to look for the owls and he starts to hear thudding and Mike starts to talk to the noises. He asks Yes or No questions while instructing the ghost to thud once for "yes" two for "no." It starts off kind of silly but in King's defense, it does get a little creepy after half a page. Mike asks the ghost if it is Sara and the ghosts says "yes and no." At the end of the chapter the ghost has rearranged the magnets on the fridge to spell "hello."
Mike has an hour and a half long conversation with Mike (King gives a specific time frame for this conversation. Bill arrives at 9 am and has to leave to get to his next appointment at 11 am).
Mattie came from a poor family from the area and Lance, the son of the wealthy Max Devore, developed a passion for forestry. Max hired Lance to explore the vast forests he owned in this part of Maine. He also played in the local softball games held every week. The locals played the out- of -towners and Lance would play for either team. He met little Mattie then who was only seventeen and they fell in love.
King describes all of this exposition as coming from the mouth of Bill Dean, or as if the reader should understand that it's coming from Bill Dean but he also adds an odd little paragraph in the middle that gave me pause as to where the information was coming from. Bill's describing how Mattie met Lance and then Mike's narration takes over, " Mattie never said much about it, so I don't know much. Except I do...some of the details might be wrong [but] I got most of them right. That was my summer for knowing things I had no business knowing." So is King saying that Mike is becoming psychic as to the history of the people around him and is the story we're hearing coming from Bill, Mattie or the voice in Mike's head? Later on, Mattie tells her story herself, going into greater detail so we should then assume that the version in this chapter is Bill Dean's alone. But that paragraph throws some of this into confusion.
We find that Lance died retrieving a wrench from the top of his trailer during a thunderstorm. Lightening struck near him and he fell off the ladder. After Lance died, Max came into town and has been there ever since trying to get custody of Kyra.
The plot development in this chapter is that Bill tells Mike about some plastic owls that Jo had ordered in the fall of 1993 and that she came up to Sara Laughs by herself to retrieve them when they were delivered to the house. Mike has no memory of Jo going to Sara Laughs by herself and tries to dig around in his records to account for Jo's actions.
We also get more details about the woman with the face from "The Scream." (I'm not going to call it "The Cry" even though King does throughout the book. I want people to know what I'm talking about.) Her name is Rogette Whitmore, she's Max Devore's personal assistant and the locals think she's a witch. Only in New England do people go around thinking other people are witches.
The chapter ends with Mike making contact with the ghosts that inhabits Sara Laughs. He goes into the dark basement to look for the owls and he starts to hear thudding and Mike starts to talk to the noises. He asks Yes or No questions while instructing the ghost to thud once for "yes" two for "no." It starts off kind of silly but in King's defense, it does get a little creepy after half a page. Mike asks the ghost if it is Sara and the ghosts says "yes and no." At the end of the chapter the ghost has rearranged the magnets on the fridge to spell "hello."
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Bag of Bones: Chapter 9 (pages 120-134)
Nothing much happens in this chapter, just King laying the groundwork for later events. Mike Noonan goes to take a walk near the Warrington ( a compound of restaurant-hotel-golf course) and sees an old woman he takes for a ghost standing outside the deck of the bar. The woman is described (to me at least) in a very confusing way. First, King brings up the Munch drawing "The Cry," not "The Scream" as most people in the English speaking world know it as but "The Cry." Wikipedia says that a more direct translation is shriek rather than scream, but it is occasionally referred to as "The Cry."
"Imagine that face at rest." King asks the reader. Then imagine that figure wearing black shorts over a black tank bathing suit. Huh? OK. King says that combination is "strangely formal, like a cocktail dress." I give up Mr. King, I'm not sure what you're talking about...Anyway he waves at the woman, she doesn't wave back Mike turns away for a minute and she's gone. He thinks it's a ghost but "Jo" tells him it's not. Thanks Jo, a ghost telling him it's not a ghost.
Then Mike wonders why he and Jo didn't go to Sara Laughs the previous summer. Mike declares that it was always Jo who brought up the idea of going and she never brought it up this year and he had "forgotten" they had a summer place upstate apparently.
Mike now remembers an old blues song that "Sara Tidwell" a black blues singer from the twenties and for whom Sara Laughs is named after. I think this is the first mention of her in the book and I was a little confused about it, at first I didn't know why she was being brought up. Or who she was. King explains it in the next chapter but for this brief appearance (unless I missed something earlier) the reader is lost.
Mike then goes about cleaning up his offices and Joann's office (it is never made clear what, if anything Joann did as far as an occupation, she seemed to be a full-time volunteer and hobbyist). He finds a dictating machine from his writing days, and instead of thinking about trying to write with it he will use to record the sounds the ghosts in house make during the night. Earlier in the book when Mike's writer's block is described in some detail King tells us how Mike tried to write longhand and even how he tried to write using the Notepad program. But he never even brought up the subject of dictating. But if Mike never dictated before, he might not have thought of it as a viable option. It's just funny how the first thing I thought of when the dictating machine made an appearance was, "Mike's going to try writing with it," and the first thing Mike thought of was, "now I can record those ghosts!"
He sets the tape recorder up and in the morning plays it back and hears a ghostly whisper, "Oh Mike."
"Imagine that face at rest." King asks the reader. Then imagine that figure wearing black shorts over a black tank bathing suit. Huh? OK. King says that combination is "strangely formal, like a cocktail dress." I give up Mr. King, I'm not sure what you're talking about...Anyway he waves at the woman, she doesn't wave back Mike turns away for a minute and she's gone. He thinks it's a ghost but "Jo" tells him it's not. Thanks Jo, a ghost telling him it's not a ghost.
Then Mike wonders why he and Jo didn't go to Sara Laughs the previous summer. Mike declares that it was always Jo who brought up the idea of going and she never brought it up this year and he had "forgotten" they had a summer place upstate apparently.
Mike now remembers an old blues song that "Sara Tidwell" a black blues singer from the twenties and for whom Sara Laughs is named after. I think this is the first mention of her in the book and I was a little confused about it, at first I didn't know why she was being brought up. Or who she was. King explains it in the next chapter but for this brief appearance (unless I missed something earlier) the reader is lost.
Mike then goes about cleaning up his offices and Joann's office (it is never made clear what, if anything Joann did as far as an occupation, she seemed to be a full-time volunteer and hobbyist). He finds a dictating machine from his writing days, and instead of thinking about trying to write with it he will use to record the sounds the ghosts in house make during the night. Earlier in the book when Mike's writer's block is described in some detail King tells us how Mike tried to write longhand and even how he tried to write using the Notepad program. But he never even brought up the subject of dictating. But if Mike never dictated before, he might not have thought of it as a viable option. It's just funny how the first thing I thought of when the dictating machine made an appearance was, "Mike's going to try writing with it," and the first thing Mike thought of was, "now I can record those ghosts!"
He sets the tape recorder up and in the morning plays it back and hears a ghostly whisper, "Oh Mike."
Monday, October 5, 2009
Bag of Bones: Chapter 8 (pages 106-120)
After Chapter One, Chapter Eight might be the best written section of this novel. King starts out strong with a nice writer's exercise in depicting an almost deserted greasy spoon. It's all about the details when it comes to making fiction resemble reality and there are some details here that make the diner stand out in the readers' mind. The old line cook "maybe fifty-five, maybe seventy," is depicted particularly well. The beef-blood soaked clothes but his hands are still clean. King wants to say that underneath all the grime, the cook is just as "professional" as any the "city."
Mike eats his burger and thinks about Mattie Devore and wonders where he has heard that last name before. After a little thinking and a flip through the phone book (the book written in 1998 is already dated in some parts, Mike thinks it's unusual that the phone book isn't attached to a cord to prevent theft but then thinks that's because no one would want to steal a Castle Rock directory because it's such a small town. Now the question is, "Who wants any phone book?" I can't remember the last time I opened one myself.) comes to the conclusion that Mattie's deceased husband was somehow related to the wealthy and reclusive millionaire Max Devore.
Mike leaves the diner and drives back to Sara Laughs and remembers that in his nightmares a radio station bumper sticker was stuck onto the entrance sign of his house. The other two vivid details of his dream had appeared in real life and he wants to know if this third one was real also. There's no sticker on the sign when Mike checks but he feels a "sticky residue" where the sticker would've been and decides to take a look through the garbage where the caretaker might have thrown it away. (A neat little aside that King throws in: The garbage bags are not stored in cans but in an old cabinet so the raccoons won't get in them. Since it's not a can they won't know that it contains garbage. I wonder if that actually works.) And sure enough, the bumper sticker is there, exactly the one Mike dreamed of.
King then has a nice little scene of Mike swimming in "Dark Score Lake" that is just outside his house. This is really the first appearance of the lake in the novel and I have a feeling we'll get more of it before the book is over. In the last chapter when Mike mishears Mattie say her daughter's name is "Kia," Mike has an odd reaction of tasting water in his mouth and out in the lake he realizes he was tasting Dark Score water.
Later on he settles back with a can of Pepsi (remember, he's no longer "troubled" and has forgotten to buy a six pack of beer while he was in town.) and watches the fireworks show from across the lake. But just when the fireworks begin, the phone rings and it's none other than Max Devore the millionaire!
Max wants to know about the incident with his granddaughter, Kyra. Mike denies that anything happened that would appear to make Mattie a bad mother. Max knows Mike is lying and gets angry. A good line that King adds in this section when referring to Max is, "this is a man who hasn't had to conceal his emotions in a lot of years." (116). Because Max is very rich he can rant and rave and be angry any time he wants and there's nothing anyone can do to stop him. I've never thought about that before. For most people with a boss and coworkers who are more or less equal to ourselves we have to be civil and cordial. We have to be "polite." If we are not things can breaks down pretty quickly and we can find ourselves fired from a job or ostracized from a social group. But rich people don't have to act in quite the same way. If they are angry they can be angry. They're too rich to have to be polite. Nice work King, something I've never thought of.
The troubling part of this section is the introduction of Joann's "voice" inside Mike's head talking to him, giving him advice. Why can't this just be Mike's own thought processes depicted instead of his dead wife's. I can see this getting annoying very fast and am fearful of my ability to finish this book if this gets out of hand. The dumbest line she "says" is that when Mike's talking to Max and deciding not to tell him the truth she says, "Be careful Mike. Beware of Maxwell's silver hammer." It took me a while to understand why this was said. Let me take you through my thought process A) It's a reference to the Beatles song off of Abbey Road. B) The song is about a science student going on a killing spree with a hammer. Is Max going to kill Mike with a hammer? Didn't make a lot of sense. Then I saw the name Maxwell-Max. Okay. Then the word silver, meaning money. Max has a lot more money than Mike and will use that money to make Mike regret his decision not to help him. Maxwell's "silver" "hammer." Man ,that's a long way to go for one throwaway line.
Mike goes to sleep and in the middle of the night he starts to hear the child crying again, and then the crying drifts away like "the child is being carried away." An inadvertently funny line is when Mike hears the crying he knows that it's not his imagination and says aloud, "it's scary." You know you're struggling with the horror element in your book when you have to have your main character declare to the reader, "it's scary." The chapter ends with Mike coming to the realization that "Sara is alive" and it's his "home." What this means we're not really sure yet. We'll have to keep reading to find out.
(Quick side note: In this chapter Mike mentions how much me he likes the Beach Boys song, "Don't Worry Baby." And how it's his favorite. It's far from my favorite but a good song, so I looked up the lyrics and to my surprise they're about drag racing and how his girlfriend's love will protect the frightened protagonist from harm during the race. An unusual part of the song happens when Brian Wilson sings loud and clear, "Oh what she does to me/when she makes love to me/and she says/ Don't worry baby." I just wonder what came to most people's minds when he sang that lyric. Was it the old-fashioned "make love to-" meaning sweet talking /flirting or actual sex? This is the mid-sixties and I'd be surprised if most of the listeners didn't think about sex but it was still a popular song and the most groups like the Beatles or even the Stones we're singing about was I want to hold your hand or the most the Stones could get away with (and they still got censored) was "Let's spend the night together." ) Unusual...
Mike eats his burger and thinks about Mattie Devore and wonders where he has heard that last name before. After a little thinking and a flip through the phone book (the book written in 1998 is already dated in some parts, Mike thinks it's unusual that the phone book isn't attached to a cord to prevent theft but then thinks that's because no one would want to steal a Castle Rock directory because it's such a small town. Now the question is, "Who wants any phone book?" I can't remember the last time I opened one myself.) comes to the conclusion that Mattie's deceased husband was somehow related to the wealthy and reclusive millionaire Max Devore.
Mike leaves the diner and drives back to Sara Laughs and remembers that in his nightmares a radio station bumper sticker was stuck onto the entrance sign of his house. The other two vivid details of his dream had appeared in real life and he wants to know if this third one was real also. There's no sticker on the sign when Mike checks but he feels a "sticky residue" where the sticker would've been and decides to take a look through the garbage where the caretaker might have thrown it away. (A neat little aside that King throws in: The garbage bags are not stored in cans but in an old cabinet so the raccoons won't get in them. Since it's not a can they won't know that it contains garbage. I wonder if that actually works.) And sure enough, the bumper sticker is there, exactly the one Mike dreamed of.
King then has a nice little scene of Mike swimming in "Dark Score Lake" that is just outside his house. This is really the first appearance of the lake in the novel and I have a feeling we'll get more of it before the book is over. In the last chapter when Mike mishears Mattie say her daughter's name is "Kia," Mike has an odd reaction of tasting water in his mouth and out in the lake he realizes he was tasting Dark Score water.
Later on he settles back with a can of Pepsi (remember, he's no longer "troubled" and has forgotten to buy a six pack of beer while he was in town.) and watches the fireworks show from across the lake. But just when the fireworks begin, the phone rings and it's none other than Max Devore the millionaire!
Max wants to know about the incident with his granddaughter, Kyra. Mike denies that anything happened that would appear to make Mattie a bad mother. Max knows Mike is lying and gets angry. A good line that King adds in this section when referring to Max is, "this is a man who hasn't had to conceal his emotions in a lot of years." (116). Because Max is very rich he can rant and rave and be angry any time he wants and there's nothing anyone can do to stop him. I've never thought about that before. For most people with a boss and coworkers who are more or less equal to ourselves we have to be civil and cordial. We have to be "polite." If we are not things can breaks down pretty quickly and we can find ourselves fired from a job or ostracized from a social group. But rich people don't have to act in quite the same way. If they are angry they can be angry. They're too rich to have to be polite. Nice work King, something I've never thought of.
The troubling part of this section is the introduction of Joann's "voice" inside Mike's head talking to him, giving him advice. Why can't this just be Mike's own thought processes depicted instead of his dead wife's. I can see this getting annoying very fast and am fearful of my ability to finish this book if this gets out of hand. The dumbest line she "says" is that when Mike's talking to Max and deciding not to tell him the truth she says, "Be careful Mike. Beware of Maxwell's silver hammer." It took me a while to understand why this was said. Let me take you through my thought process A) It's a reference to the Beatles song off of Abbey Road. B) The song is about a science student going on a killing spree with a hammer. Is Max going to kill Mike with a hammer? Didn't make a lot of sense. Then I saw the name Maxwell-Max. Okay. Then the word silver, meaning money. Max has a lot more money than Mike and will use that money to make Mike regret his decision not to help him. Maxwell's "silver" "hammer." Man ,that's a long way to go for one throwaway line.
Mike goes to sleep and in the middle of the night he starts to hear the child crying again, and then the crying drifts away like "the child is being carried away." An inadvertently funny line is when Mike hears the crying he knows that it's not his imagination and says aloud, "it's scary." You know you're struggling with the horror element in your book when you have to have your main character declare to the reader, "it's scary." The chapter ends with Mike coming to the realization that "Sara is alive" and it's his "home." What this means we're not really sure yet. We'll have to keep reading to find out.
(Quick side note: In this chapter Mike mentions how much me he likes the Beach Boys song, "Don't Worry Baby." And how it's his favorite. It's far from my favorite but a good song, so I looked up the lyrics and to my surprise they're about drag racing and how his girlfriend's love will protect the frightened protagonist from harm during the race. An unusual part of the song happens when Brian Wilson sings loud and clear, "Oh what she does to me/when she makes love to me/and she says/ Don't worry baby." I just wonder what came to most people's minds when he sang that lyric. Was it the old-fashioned "make love to-" meaning sweet talking /flirting or actual sex? This is the mid-sixties and I'd be surprised if most of the listeners didn't think about sex but it was still a popular song and the most groups like the Beatles or even the Stones we're singing about was I want to hold your hand or the most the Stones could get away with (and they still got censored) was "Let's spend the night together." ) Unusual...
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Bag of Bones: Chapter 7 (pages 93-106)
Chapter seven introduces us to the cute little girl, Kyra, and her mother Mattie. A few things of note struck me when I was reading this chapter. Mike Noonan goes out to get a burger and almost runs into a little girl walking down the center lane of the main road. Noonan rescues her and meets her hot twenty-something mom.
King uses a dramatic incident to introduce us to the little girl, but there's very little drama in the way King tells it. Noonan almost runs the child over but when he goes up to talk to her (she's three), she speaks in cute, precious and frankly unreadable baby-ese, so there's goes the drama of the life or death situation. "I go beach. Mommy 'o'nt take me and I'm mad as hell." Not sure a three year old would say that and it's hard to give King any leeway here. As in most of his stories the kid is too precious to be real. She's a blond white child name Kyra. I've never heard of the name Kyra, and it doesn't sound like a good name to me and I'm even more startled when Mike Noonan declares that if he had ever had a girl with his wife he was going to name it Kia. This book was written in 1998 and I'm not sure if the Kia car company was in America at this time but I laughed aloud when I read that. I laughed even harder when Noonan declares that Kia is an "African name" meaning "season's beginnings." I wonder if the Korean car makers are aware of this? I just like the idea of a kid walking around named Kia.
Mike Noonan saves the child and meets the mom who is driving around looking for her. King goes to great lengths to establish that Mattie (who is around twenty and looks like, "a young Grace Kelly") is not not NOT trailer trash even though she's living in a trailer. She's better than that because she doesn't spank her child and is a fan of Oprah. And, what a coincidence, one of her favorite authors is none other than Mike Noonan. Also her husband's dead just like Mike's wife is dead and she's going through a difficult time. I'm smelling romance here! And just to make abundantly clear what's going to happen, King makes sure that Mike "accidentally" feels her breast while trying to help her put Kyra in the car seat. If that's not romantic I don't know what is.
King uses a dramatic incident to introduce us to the little girl, but there's very little drama in the way King tells it. Noonan almost runs the child over but when he goes up to talk to her (she's three), she speaks in cute, precious and frankly unreadable baby-ese, so there's goes the drama of the life or death situation. "I go beach. Mommy 'o'nt take me and I'm mad as hell." Not sure a three year old would say that and it's hard to give King any leeway here. As in most of his stories the kid is too precious to be real. She's a blond white child name Kyra. I've never heard of the name Kyra, and it doesn't sound like a good name to me and I'm even more startled when Mike Noonan declares that if he had ever had a girl with his wife he was going to name it Kia. This book was written in 1998 and I'm not sure if the Kia car company was in America at this time but I laughed aloud when I read that. I laughed even harder when Noonan declares that Kia is an "African name" meaning "season's beginnings." I wonder if the Korean car makers are aware of this? I just like the idea of a kid walking around named Kia.
Mike Noonan saves the child and meets the mom who is driving around looking for her. King goes to great lengths to establish that Mattie (who is around twenty and looks like, "a young Grace Kelly") is not not NOT trailer trash even though she's living in a trailer. She's better than that because she doesn't spank her child and is a fan of Oprah. And, what a coincidence, one of her favorite authors is none other than Mike Noonan. Also her husband's dead just like Mike's wife is dead and she's going through a difficult time. I'm smelling romance here! And just to make abundantly clear what's going to happen, King makes sure that Mike "accidentally" feels her breast while trying to help her put Kyra in the car seat. If that's not romantic I don't know what is.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
