Fewer books read this month. Between turning 42 and getting both doses of the vaccine, I've been reading less (but writing more?). I'd hoped to have a fourth book done before the end of the month, but that's going to have to wait :(
Anyway, here are brief, non-spoilers reviews of the three books I did get through, again in reverse chronological order (so the most recently read book is first).
Carrie, by Stephen King
At this point I should just confess that I've decided to read all of the classic King books. Everything I missed growing up (parents!): Carrie, Cujo, Christine, Needful Things, etc.
This was King's first book, and it's amazing how much his writing improved between it and his second (Salem's Lot). Carrie is a lot faster paced than the other book, but as a result I didn't feel like I really got to know (or care about) a lot of the characters.
Even so, it's a gut-punch of a book. Would recommend.
Trade in Classical Antiquity, by Neville Morley
A non-fiction palate-cleanser between horror novels. Recommended by the author of acoup.blog, whose insightful and detailed critiques of the "medieval" world represented in the Games of Thrones TV series drew me in.
It's a short book, more of an extended scholarly essay than anything else. Morley's goal here seems to be to poke holes in two of the leading schools of thought about trade in the classical Mediterranean: one that holds trade couldn't possibly have been worth noting because of subsistence farming, and another that basically says globalization arrived thousands of years earlier than we thought.
I'm not familiar enough with those other schools to tell if that's a straw-person argument or not. But Morley lays out his own case well, arguing for a sort of middle approach, relying on archeological evidence that shows trade in certain goods was in fact massive, while admitting the large gaps in our understanding of the period. Certainly food for thought when designing a classical-like society, or writing a story set in the classical period.
The Dead Zone, by Stephen King
Published the year I was born! King's fifth book published under his own name.
Again I could see both the commonalities in the way he tells stories (newspaper clippings and interviews sprinkled throughout, a sharp focus on the minutiae of small-town life) and the leveling-up of his skills in the use of those techniques (and exploration of those themes).
Very much a horror-as-dread book, rather than blood-and-guts. Reminded me of his later book 11/22/63, not in the time travel aspect, but in the dilemma the protagonist faces towards the end (no spoilers, it's worth the read). King's rendition of the political mood of 1976 jibes with everything I've read about that election by recent historians, and his construction of a populist politician with evil in his heart and elections to win felt...let's say a little prescient, after 2016?
A Note on the Casual Racism in King's Earlier Books
While I'm reading through King's oeuvre, and enjoying it, for the most part, there's a few...problematic things that pop up again and again, like sour notes among an otherwise well-written symphony. And I feel the need to call them out, rather than skip over them.
Most striking, for me, in reading these now, is the way King drops at least one racist bit of imagery in each of the books I've read up to this point. Adjectives like "n*ardly", or describing a character's grossly misshapen and swollen lips as "African".
It jerks me out of the book each time, and makes me wonder why he (or the publisher) doesn't go back and remove it. This isn't in character dialog, it's narrative description, and it would be easy -- very easy -- to remove the short phrase that contains it without really altering the book at all. Why not change it?
More insidious is the way these books have basically no black people. In Needful Things, which I'm reading now, there's one (one!) black character, and he's only allowed to be a janitor, and his dialog is written...well, let's just say King tries to render what he feels is a Black manner of speech, and it comes across as a caricature. I know some of these books were written before I was born, but I swear there were Black people in America back then, even in Maine. Leaving them out altogether feels...strange. Less like oversight, and more like an authorial blindspot.
These elements might change in his later works (and I hope they do!). And I'm certainly not trying to say anything about King the person, especially given how much time has elapsed between when he wrote these books and today. I must hope that whoever he is now, it's a better version of himself than when he wrote these.
But these racist elements are in the books, and I feel must be called out as such.
