Beginning Gerald's Game

So, hello all.

It's early on the afternoon of March 15th, and I'm sitting outside of my local Starbucks as I write this. It's one of the first pleasantly warm days so far this year, but this damn wind is just no fun. Oh well. This vanilla latte (and my lined plaid flannel coat) seem to be decent remedies for the chill.

I've just finished On Writing, but I'm not going to say too much on it now; I mentioned previously that I really would rather include a book ton which I can comment from the beginning. It was very good, though it was a bit different than I expected. I'm not sure what I did expect, though, or why; the cover of the book very clearly states "A Memoir of the Craft", and the book was very much that. It was enjoyable though, even though I'm not necessarily what I'd call a 'budding author'.

Sip.

So, Gerald's Game. I had previously heard about this story (the story), and had also previously heard the title, but hadn't ever really made the connection between them before reading a bit in OW about it. So, having my interests piqued, when I knowingly looked in my Pandora's box of Stephen King books this morning for something to read after I inevitably finished OW, I picked up G'sG almost immediately. One of the stories in Just After Sunset has a similar captive-theme to it, and I enjoyed that one very much.

But before I get too ahead of myself, let me go ahead and describe what I know pre-reading about G'sG to those of you (haha, assuming there's a collective 'you' out there) who are unfamiliar with it. The short synopsis is that a couple's game of bondage in a secluded Maine home go wrong, and the female half of that pairing finds herself alone in the woods and completely bound to a piece of furniture. The novel describes this predicament and what ensues (those of you have read OW will recognize Stephen King's ever-present idea of situational stories).

The cover art of the copy sitting to the right of my laptop is rather simplistic: the author's name is centered at the top in bold, gothic-looking type, solid black with a slight shadowing of golden brown down and to the right, set off about a millimeter. Under that in black-shadowed red font, looking like someone scrawled it with a paintbrush (similar to that on [I believe] my copy of Cujo and one of my copies of Carrie) is the title of the book. Under these texts is the top left corner of the headboard of a bed, with a slightly crumpled pillow just inside of the frame in the bottom right. There's a pair of handcuffs, with one cuff casually latched around the top of the bedpost; the other half is dangling toward the floor. The ornamental decoration on the amber-red wood of the headboard is an interesting one: what first looks like a patterned globe is really a profile view of a woman curled into a fetal position, with her arms encircling her forelegs (shins, I suppose, though I tend to think of the actual bone there when I hear the word 'shin') and her head between her knees. Very telling. The back cover just shows Mr. King himself looking off to the left of the camera (his right), and you can see an out of focus cat poking to the bottom right corner.

Why describe all of this, you ask? Well, the first reason is simple: when I read back over this journal of reading, I want to remember it all, want to feel like I'm there again, feeling its weight in my hands and looking at its art.The second reason is similar, and quite as simple: I want whoever is reading this blog to be on the journey with me, to see what I see and experience what I know. If you have a problem, if you're thinking "Get on with it!", well, that's why those wonderful wizards of computer technology have invented a scroll wheel.

Sip.

To give a little more background on the book, here's what the dust-jacket has to tell us (on the inside flaps, of course: the outside has much more important things to tell):

"On a warm weekday in October, Jessie and Gerald Burlingame are alone in the bedroom of their Maine summer house, playing a game that isn't listed in Hoyle's. But suddenly, as Jessie hears the click of the second handcuff locking her to the bedposts and sees her husband looming over her, a nerve-snap of recognition tells her that this time Gerald is playing for keeps. Her next move is furious, violent, and, she is shocked to discover, deadly. Giving up control is scary enough; it is terrifying when there is no one left to give it to.

Except that Jessie is not alone. Over the next twenty-eight hours, trapped in a lakeside house that has become a prison, Jessie will come face-to-face with all the things she has ever feared, and the unlatched back door banging fretfully in the breeze is an open invitation to horrors she has never imagined. Inside the darkening bedroom, shadows gather in mute menace, while inside Jessie's head a taunting chorus of voices whispers and shrieks: 'Women alone in the dark are like open doors...and if they cry out for help, who knows what dread things may answer?'

(Continued on back flap)

Stephen King knows. Nothing he has written before will prepare readers for the challenges of Gerald's Game. It's a fiendishly imagined version of No Exit. It's a nerve-racking excavation of the deepest layers of a woman's fear and courage. It's our foremost literary terrorist exploring what happens when the ordinary routine of the woman's life is suddenly eclipsed by the irrational. Jessie Burlingame's nerves are about to be tested. So, Reader, are yours."*

Did you like that inclusion of '(Continued on back flap)'? Again, I wanted you to feel as if you were reading it with me. I find it interesting the the title is Gerald's Game, and the titular character's surname ends in '-game'. I wonder if that was planned; surely it was noticed, at least. I also like how it is compared to Sartre's No Exit, a favorite of mine. I wonder how it will relate? Possibly with a comparison of the existential idea that other people are the bane of our existence ("Hell is other people") and the idea that Jessie G. goes through her own Hell in the absence of other people, plagued only by manifestations of her own mind? Hmm. I also think the idea that Stephen King is "our foremost literary terrorist" is charmingly satisfying. He certainly does have the ability to prey on our most internal of fears, hitting that mental Achilles heel just right to transmute us into the story as the protagonist, preyed on by our own fears.

I'd also like to point out that a good bit more of a detailed synopsis can be found here. You can also compare my description of the cover to the picture in the upper right, and see what other works of his are interwoven.

Sip (now it's a 2 pump each no water vanilla chai).

So here, I disembark from you. I'm off to actually being the book, instead of just introducing it, providing a bit of background, and making some pre-reading observations. I hope that you (whenever/wherever/whoever) read this with me, either vicariously or truly.

And have a good time.

*Just to satisfy all of those legal town-criers out there, I did not come up with the above paragraphs inside the quotations. I merely transcribed the information found on the dust jacket of the book. And to give credit where credit is deserved:

(According to the information in this book and on this dust jacket)

Jacket design by Neil Stuart

Jacket illustration by Rob Wood, Stansbury Ronsaville Wood, Inc.

Back jacket photograph by Tabitha King.

Viking Penguin

a division of Penguin Books, USA Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y. 10014

Printed in U.S.A.

The copyright page of the book says much the same. The ISBN number is 0-670-84650-3. Look it up. I repeat, I Did Not compose the passage quoted above, nor am I claiming such. This is the text as found on the book's dust jacket.

Also, the quote "Hell is other people," is correct, to the best of my knowledge, and is a quote from Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit.