Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot
Part One
Chapter 2: Susan (I), Sections 4-8
After a brief overview of the town and its history, we follow Susan Norton to her house. She is excited about her date with Ben. Her mother, Ann Norton, is less so. The two argue, but nothing is resolved, and an unease settles over the house.
Later, returning from their date, Ben and Susan discuss the Marsten House. Susan is shocked to learn that Ben tried renting the house and is even more shocked to learn that he was unable to, because someone had already bought the ramshackle building. Ben tells Susan about an experience he had in the old house as a child.
Section Four of this chapter is a bit like those shots in a movie where the camera goes up into the air and gives the viewer a bird’s eye gander at the characters and their landscape. Unlike those shots, this description of the town and its residents is necessary and not at all dumb. (Sorry, filmmakers, but just because you have access to a drone doesn’t mean you should use it.)
King’s description of the town both physically and temporally reminds me of Robert Persons’s 2009 documentary/poem General Orders No. 9. Persons’s film, a Chris Marker-esque rumination on the State (and state) of Georgia, is about the loss of identity and innocence as life moves from the rural to the urban, or as Persons’s says in the film as “deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes county road becomes interstate.” The narration for the film has been transcribed as a poem here, and there are a few stanza’s at its beginning that resonate with King’s writing on ‘salem’s Lot:
Where the roads of the county intersect, there is a town.
The town is at the center of the county.
From the center, the town extends
for one mile in every direction.
It’s a pattern, a pattern of point and periphery,
star and satellite, being and witness.
The courthouse is at the center of the town.
It’s a brick building on a granite foundation.
It has a clock tower and a weather vane.
The clock tower has four faces
addressing each of the principle directions,
and the weather vane is high above,
brutal in its aspect and high in the air.
The building stands in the middle of the square
and the square is formed by four streets
running north and south, east and west.
Here, there is a sense of order
from above and below, from within and without.
This shall be the center post of the world,
the pillar of Heaven…
Section Four’s history and geography lessons speak not to Persons’s melancholy over the dissolution and desolation of the small town solute in the big city’s solvent. Indeed, King suggests that towns like the ‘salem’s Lot seem to exist outside of time, and that innocent, solitary existence may be dangerous:
“…the Lot’s knowledge of the country’s torment was academic. Time went on a different schedule there. Nothing too nasty could happen in such a nice little town. Not there.”
From the macro to the micro…
Susan and her mother Ann. What a pair they are, huh?
As someone who has lived with his parents at various times as an adult, I can attest to the friction that can arise under such cohabitational conditions. It’s helpful having a place to get your bearings again in the short-run, but as time accrues both parties just tend to get on each other’s nerves. It's just natural.
We will get more of this mother-daughter relationship as the novel goes on, but for now can we take a moment to pour one out for the host of The Hollywood Squares, the tv show Mrs. Norton is watching as Susan bursts in?
Peter Marshall was born in 1926 and was one of those entertainers who seemed to be everywhere doing everything. He was a night club performer, an actor, a singer, a radio personality, and, as I knew and loved him, a game show host. He hosted The Hollywood Squares from 1966 to 1981, going toe-to-toe with such celebrities as Buddy Hackett, Marty Allen, Wayland Flowers and Madame, and, of course, the king of the tactically important center square, Paul Lynne. Marshall died at the age of 98 just this year.
Driving home from the movies, we get an interesting moment between Ben and Susan where the history of the Marsten House — especially that day when the bodies of Hubert Marsten and his wife Birdie were found — is presented to us. Who is telling us this? Is it the unseen, informal third-person narrator? Is this from Ben’s perspective — he’s done an awful lot of research on the house, we will learn. Are these Susan’s memories of all the hearsay and rumors that have been told about the incident? There is a paragraph set off in parentheses just before we are dragged back to the interior of the car where we are definitely in Susan’s mind. Or is it the town itself telling us of the horrors of the Marsten House — free-floating rumors and legends and memories coalescing for a moment in a Citroën on the Interstate? Who knows?
Ben, we also learn, is not just sightseeing in the Lot. He’s there to write a book, sure, but he’s also hoping to exorcise some personal demons. The story he tells Susan about breaking into the deserted Marsten House as a nine-year-old is a doozy. It reminds me of an experience I had as a kid. The house in question, however, wasn’t the town spook house, but was my own.
I was left home alone one day. My parents took my sister somewhere or other. My youngest sister wasn’t born yet. I had some friends over, and at some point one of them freaked out because they thought they saw someone in one of the bedrooms. We all screamed and ran outside, trying to get a hold of ourselves. We snuck back to the house, and I stood on tip-toe to peer into one of the windows. As I did, a hand on the other side reached up and tried to grab me. I screamed, and my terror spread to my friends, and we took off again.
Later, after my parents returned home, I checked out the bedroom in question and discovered that the person my friend thought she saw was really just a pile of clothes on a bed. And the hand that tried to grab me? Well, glass is a reflective surface. When I'd tried to look into my house, I had to put put my hands up in order to see clearly. The hand that wanted to get me was a reflection of my own. Like the nine-year-old Ben Mears, my imagination was so juiced up that it was ready to turn anything — even my own hand — into a monster.
Señor Wences...nooo!
On that note, let’s call it a day. I’m letting you out of class early, because you have a lot of work to do for tomorrow, kiddies! No foolin’ around after school for yunz guys. I want you to be prepared to discuss Part 1, Chapter 3: The Lot (I).
I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t offer a “Content Warning” for this next chunk of reading: there are descriptions of child abuse in Section 5 and animal abuse in Section 6. Read at your discretion!
So, there you have it. Not only do you have 40 pages to get through, but some of those pages are kinda oogie. But it's like I always say...sometimes you just have to...
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