Bag of Bones: Chapter 17 (pages 284-301)

The greatest chapter in an otherwise so-so book. The chapter is devoted to our "hero" Mike Noonan being pelted with rocks by Max Devore and his secretary the elderly Rogette Whitmore. In chapter 17, Mike says that, "Michael Noonan, Max Devore, and Rogette played out their horrible little comedy scene Friday evening." (page 272). This would lead me to believe that King knows this upcoming chapter is funny (I would say hilarious).
Mike takes a walk by the lake and is overtaken with spirits entering his body. His mouth fills with water from the lake (this is used throughout the book to mark when the spirits are entering him) but when he goes to spit it out nothing comes out. His head is filled with multiple spirits all shouting at once.
While he is going through this spell of demon possession, Max Devore comes up behind him and says, "Whore master, where's your whore at?" Max is in some kind of motorized cart and Rogette Whitmore is beside him. In this section, King has left any kind of reality based characterization behind and Max is a mix of Ross Perot and the grandfather on "King of the Hill." He taunts Mike about Mattie and Mike tells him to go to hell. Max tries to run him down with his cart and to avoid this, Mike jumps off the embankment into Dark Score lake.
This is where the chapter really takes off. Max's assistant, who has been described as being about seventy, starts to throw rocks at Mike as he tries to swim away to home. King does a very good job of describing what it's like to have rocks thrown at you while you're swimming. King (like most popular writers) is quite adept at describing action sequences. Mike tries to come up for air, down comes another rock. He looks up to see Rogette standing at the cliff with more rocks and Max egging her on and laughing. It's all very funny and I bet King had a good time writing this chapter.
The fact is, that Mike Noonan is a pretty unlikable protagonist. He does nothing but think about himself and while he appears to have feelings for Mattie all the forty something thinks of when he's with the twenty year-old Mattie is just straight-up sex.
There's a part in an earlier chapter where he's telling Mattie the meaning of the short story, "Bartleby," by Mellville. Noonan says that Bartleby is the first "existentialist protagonist" in American literature. This is because he has no family or community affiliation. Work is his only connection with human society. When he stops working, "he floats away like a balloon." King inserts this little bit of wisdom, and while it's an OK interpretation of Bartelby it doesn't fit Mike Noonan at all. Bartleby refuses to do work, even though he is capable of it. Therefore voluntarily cutting those ties. Mike cannot perform his chosen task and therein lies the difference. No other line of work is even discussed in the novel for him and Mike also serves on a number of volunteer boards and such. Mike's no existentialist hero, just an asshole. Believe me, he takes no joy in anything but his writing and the thought of sex with Mattie. I loved seeing him pelted with rocks for ten pages.
At the end of the chapter he struggles to get to his floating deck in the middle of the lake, out of range from the rocks. He tries to climb the ladder then clearly feels a hand helping him up onto the deck. He knows this is Jo's ghost helping him in a physical way.
Wonderful chapter.

Bag of Bones By Stephen King: Introduction

I'm starting off with a slightly "easier" book because that's what I've been reading lately. For the past two or three years I've been unable to read with anything like regularity for a number of reasons but now I have the time and the necessary focus to be able to read on a regular basis and I am very grateful for that.
When we begin a book we start first with what we know of the author and his previous books.
Stephen King: I loved him when I was in high school and probably read the majority of his works during that time. Since high school whenever I've tried to read one of his books I usually end up throwing it against the wall in disgust. The cliches are endless, the dialogue stilted and ladled with big fat spoonfuls of faux-New England slang and dialect. But King books were a big part of my life growing up and there are many worse things to read than King.
During the past month or so I've read three King books in quick succession. I started with his earlier books, they are better plotted and less bloated than his later books. I started with the Uncut version of The Stand. A 1000 page book that I had fond memories of in High School and I found it surprisingly good. Despite it's length it was tightly plotted and read very quickly. I did start to notice the King cliches or "tropes" if you want to dignify them with a fancy word. First, urinating in your pants a sign of fear or terror. This was so common in The Stand that I started to chuckle every time it happened and it happened what seemed like thirty times. This will reappear in all of King's books (as far as I know).
King also has alot of sex in his books. Not graphic descriptions but the characters have sex an awful lot. But in the Stand, for the most part it's just like brushing your teeth "Stu and Frannie went to bed and she reached out ready to recieve his love." Or something like that was at the end of every chapter it seemed like. Later on in his work the sex will be described in greater detail but I had forgotten just how constant it is.
King also has a "magical black person" in the Stand in Mother Abigail. This will reappear again and again culminating in The Green Mile. But it's a constant in a great deal of his work.
Then I read The Dead Zone: a very slim book for King. Nice little plot, not his best work but I liked the early carnival scene where he starts to become aware of his powers. The protagonist "John Smith" is just such a "nice guy" that he's kind of faceless and the reader never really feels like he knows him.
The Shining: I think the Shining is a good example of what most of King's work is like. A writer, trying to write starts to make contact with the "other side," with nightmarish results. This one has it all, the little kid with psychic powers, the menacing haunted house filled with ghosts, the magical black person. King does do a good job with his protagonist and his alcohol abuse and his attempts to quit. King has a well-documented history of drug and alcohol abuse until the mid-eighties when he quit due to family pressure. But it's interesting in this and other works that clear signs of alcoholism in the characters are never called alcoholism by King and his characters are never called alcoholics. King himself is the same way, refusing to call himself a drug addict or an alcoholic even when he admitted to being on so many drugs and drink he doesn't remember writing Cujo. Let's just say that Jack in the Shining doesn't deal with his alcoholism in a manner that works. Let's hope King has faced his issues a better way.
Let's get on to the current book, which I had gotten for Christmas in Hardcover in 1998. I remember reading up to page 100 or so and the psychic little girl was introduced and I stopped reading it. The opening chapter were still very vivid in my mind though because they are very good.
Bag Of Bones: By Stephen King
Scribner, Hardcover, first edition, 1998.

The First One

This is the first post of this blog. A quick summary of the primary purpose of this website: Everyone reads books differently. We all have different life experiences and knowledge bases which we use to interpret the words printed on the page. Take the sentence: "Mark sat down on the table and began to write." We all have a different image of what a table is. Some would see a large dining room table, some might envision a cramped card table in a dusty apartment. Some might imagine a picnic table in the backyard. Every sentence of every piece of literature is interpreted just a little bit differently in each person's mind. Books are not movies or TV where everything is laid out for you. It takes more work. Sometimes a little bit more work, sometimes a great deal of work. This is an attempt to examine that work in detail. You don't have to have read the book in some cases, some of the posts will have enough explanation to stand on their own. Others you might not understand what's going on until you've read the book. The best thing to do is to pick up the book along with me and read together.