Hello Again

It's not been too long since you and I have spoken (rather, it's not been too long since I've spoken to you; since I have no current readers, you'll read this at the same time as the previous post this afternoon, most likely).

First, let me say that I've found it infuriating, well, no...annoying, that my posts are made with the most recent at the top. This does indeed make sense under normal circumstances. However, given those under which I'm writing, it's rather backwards (you'll read talks about later chapters before those of earlier ones, if you read from top to bottom). Oh well. I haven't found a way to reverse it, and until someone more technologically savvy can show me otherwise, the current layout is how they'll remain. I do urge you to start from the beginning.

The second thing I'd like to say is that there are, naturally, going to be spoilers in this blog. I can't imagine that anyone would be here without either a.) having read the books in question, or b.) not caring much to hear things you haven't read yet (after all, the point and content of this blog is rather self evident), but just the same, this blog will contain information about Stephen Kings works that would be considered spoilers. You have been forewarned.

On a somewhat related note, there may be information that some of you may find adult, or 'inappropriate'. Surely it can be claimed that for any given factoid, even ones as innocuous as the fact that red paint mixed blue paint should yield some variation of purple, someone, somewhere is taking offense. A good rule of thumb is if you're not comfortable reading Stephen King's works, you shouldn't be reading this blog. Simple as that.

Thirdly, I forgot to mention one thing in my previous post, that one talking about the basic background information of the novel and linking the Wikipedia page. Some of you may wonder why I looked up information, including a rather detailed synopsis, before having read the book. In effect I've 'spoiled' key parts and events in the novel for myself. Certainly the dust jacket, like the blurb often found on the back of a given book, is designed to wet the readers appetite, and would be considered appropriate pre-reading material. But why look for more than the author/publisher put for you?

The answer is simple: I've found that knowing a vague, basic idea of a novel helps the reader to fully appreciate and understand what's going on as the reader is reading. Before reading and discussing Shakespeare's Hamlet, my English teacher in my senior year of high school said something along the lines of this: "With Shakespeare, the audience is meant to have a basic idea of what is going to happen before it does." She, I'm sure, put it much more sweetly and shortly, but the idea is basically the same. I may be wrong in this, but I believe she mentioned something about how, when going to a Shakespeare play 'back in the day' (back, back in the day), a narrator/chorus would read a brief summary before the play began. I can only imagine that this was to do what I've already mentioned and thought about: to allow the audience to see things for what they were in the play, and to recognize any foreshadowing that occurred.

And so, fourthly, I'll comment on/discuss the notes I made during my first foray into G'sG, chapter one.

Brief pause, though. If any of you (the future you) will want to actually read along (I smile inwardly at the thought, although the more humble part of me denies such blatant arrogance), I'll let you know what copy/version of the book I am using, so that page numbers will line up and the like. My version, which was possibly evident in the previous post, is such:

Gerald's Game, by Stephen King

Published by the Penguin Group Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

First published in 1992

Copyright (c) Stephen King, 1992

The ISBN on the publishing page is 0-670-84650-3,

and the code on the back of the book's dust jacket (under the barcode, the ISBN above it is the same as inside the book) is 9 780670 846504

That's my copy. If it's the same as yours (whoever you are), great. If not, the locations should be approximately the same, or close.

Sip.

On to the book, yes?

The first thing I'd like to note is King's uncanny ability to make us know the characters. From the first couple of pages, the reader feels like he or she knows Jessie and Gerald personally. It has a good bit to do with King's descriptive skill,. He tells us everything we need to know to get a feel for the people and none of the stuff we don't. If only real life interactions with people could also be edited to remove the unnecessary bits. I think more of this, though, has to do with the fact that King knows how people think, and how associations are made. King knows (or assumes) that we've all met people similar to Jesse and Gerald in our lives. People who, like Gerald, have the pushy, over-the-top 'self confidence' of people who are still feeling the blisters from the un-worn-in shoes of stable self-esteem. People who are starting to become accustomed to having things go their way, who are not used to being the one standing at the foot of the bed instead of being handcuffed to it wearing nothing (but a smile). Pardon the rather colorful metaphor there, but it's book relevant. We've also most certainly met some kind of road-weary female who has fallen for a guy who she thinks is a pretty good person, and who is willing to overlook his faults in the name of being a good partner. It is this that lies at the heart of us knowing the characters rather than simply understanding them. We no longer feel like we're reading about some believable, but still fictional, event, but rather we feel like we're remembering such an event, with the certain concreteness that we know the events to be true. We feel like we're in the next room, spying this exchange through a bar-window pass through, or perhaps eavesdropping on the conversation from our comfy vantage point on the back porch, the events only punctuated by that ever-present door flapping. The setting also comes alive, we can feel ourselves on the coast of a beautiful like somewhere in the wilderness of Maine. We can almost hear the bird, dog, and chainsaw (as well as that obnoxious door) as if we were right there, experiencing it.

The second is a bit of foreshadowing (only noticed because of the information we already know from our own research pre-reading- Me: 1, Naysayers: 0). On page 12, Jessie says that her feelings or fury, after being embarrassed by her brother in her childhood, would 'put out the sun.' This could be foreshadowing a future finding in the book (although since the finding, although in the future tense in the sense that it has not yet happened in the book, is actually a past event, it would really be more of a fore-back-shadowing). It says on the Wikipedia page for G'sG that she discovers later in the book that she was sexually abused by her father during a total solar eclipse. It seems apparent, then, that this semi-subconscious thought of 'putting out the sun' is referencing that. Later on that page King again calls our attention to this idea, having Jessie think "'You won't put out the sun,' she thought, without the slightest idea of what this meant. 'Be damned if you will.'" This, again, points out the idea of the sun being put out as a negative thing, but it also blatantly calls attention to the fact that she doesn't know where this thought it coming from. This maybe hindsight bias, but it seems like a neon road-sign (once you know what to look for) pointing towards foreshadowing.

Later on on that same page (12), Gerald hints at the fact that maybe he won't want to let her go, just because she's deciding that she no longer wants to play along. Jessie is momentarily dumb-struck by this, and is 'astounded'. Should we have been astounded? I sure wasn't. Now, again, this might come from knowing how the book turns out, or just from the natural idea that we all seem to have of how stories progress, but it seemed like Jessie was pretty dumb if this is the first time it occurred to her that her husband may not pay too much attention to how she feels about things. I mean, he's finally got things going his way (and all of that childhood bullying is probably still putting spurs in his side to keep him from what he thinks is losing his control over the situation), and she's really in no position to make ultimatums (being strapped down, and all). Maybe we just expect certain depravities from the characters we've already labeled as antagonists, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who had a well-formed inkling that Gerald was no longer playing on any other rules than his own. Maybe King wanted us to think she's slow on the uptake? I don't necessarily think that's it; in other areas she seems rather self-reliant and quick-witted. Maybe the bond that brings people into marriage just clouded her vision to what her husband could truly be capable of.

At this point in the novel, King has already introduced the fact that Jessie hears voices in her head. I think these are much more similar to the idea of a conscience than to the schizophrenic auditory hallucinations that can also be referred to as 'hearing voices'. The voices apparently seem to have differing agendas. The 'Goodwife Burlingame' voice is that conservative housewife that seems to try to mollify the situation, maintain the status quo, and even seems to uphold an idea of feminine chivalry, even getting mad at Jessie for injuring her rape-minded husband. The other, apparently new, voice is much more confident, in-control, and authoritative. The idea of the cartoon-stereotypical devil/angel on one's shoulders comes to mind. This idea of voices expressing varying ideas and concerns from inside oneself is a rather common King idea (taken to the extreme in Susannah/Odetta/Detta in The Dark Tower series). Often the characters say or think something similar to 'I'm sure everyone else has these, but no one ever talks about them." Jessie G. likens them to bowel movements: everyone has them but they aren't often polite dinner conversation. This could possibly mean that King employs a similar moral matrix in his head, with voices of people he knows (or doesn't) acting as his conscience. Further, on p. 14 Jessie acknowledges that she knows that the voices, even the new, stern one, are her voice, not alien thoughts in her head.

An interesting thing occurs on pages 16-7; Jessie envisions (after feeling certain that her husband means to rape her) a play-by-play of a future day in divorce court. As this image goes on, it would seem as though the idea is building that since she willingly let him begin this game months ago with scarves, then with ropes, then finally handcuffs, since she said she thought it might be fun, since she willingly came out here to the solitary house, and willingly held her hands up to be handcuffed, that she gave consent on more than one occasion, and that Gerald would come out of the courtroom as a kind of victim, rather than her. Surely, it would be no far stretch for the judge to feel that she really had been okay with it, that she had not communicated that she did not want it, and is really only doing all of this as a kind of revenge for some other thing that she's mad at him about. That's where I thought it was going, at least. Reading on, though, it would seem as if she thinks that the judge, after hearing all of this, will still call it rape. In short, this section seems to pile up a healthy mound of evidence as to why Gerald would not be found as a rapist, and then tells us that she feels confident that he would be locked up. Am I the only one who was confused by this?

Page 18 has one short note, King (well, Jessie) compares the feeling of Gerald's warm drool hitting her stomach (the spit that broke the wife's back, so to speak) to the feeling of him ejaculating in the same spot. I just though that this comparison was interesting.

Finally, my last note for chapter one deals with a possible character...trait in the Goodwife Burlingame voice. She mentions to Jessie that of course Gerald's not dead, no ones going to die today, but then he does indeed die. Is this setting a precedent for G.B. to ultimately not be trusted, to be wrong about situations? We'll have to see.

And that is that for chapter one. It's already a very compelling novel, and I find it interesting that the novel starts with a short bit or rising action, and then a monumental climax. It turns the normal pattern of narrative flow rather backwards, doesn't it?

And now, after spending a good hour or two writing a blog about a chapter it took me maybe twenty minutes to read, I'm singing off for now.

'Til next time.