Well, howdy there! What’s a good lookin’ thumb jockey like you doin’ hitchhikin’ on a lonely stretch o’ highway like this? Don’cha know that’s dangerous? Lucky for you I’m the trustworthy type. Where ya headed? That far?! Well, hop in! I don’t mind the drive if’n you don’t mind the company.
What’s that? “Grass, gas, or ass?” None o’ the above, doll! You wanna ride with me, then you gotta just sit back and let me talk. What am I gonna talk about? How’s about a ghost story to make the miles go by faster? Better yet — how’s about a ghost story that’s also a love story. The love of a man for his car. The love of one Arnie Cunningham for…
Okay… that’s enough of the “good ol’ bwah” patois. Let’s you and me get down to bidness — er… I mean business.
For the next thirty-one days, Blog-o-weeners, I will be behind the wheel as we motorvate our way through Stephen King’s 1983 novel Christine. Consider this post to be the pre-road trip planning session, where we sit down with our trusty old road atlas and trace out our main routes and a few alternatives just in case. Sorry, but where we are going, there is no GPS, no internet, no wi-fi, no nothing outside of what Messrs. Rand and McNally could fit on both sides of a fold-up map and what gossip we can pick up at the gas stations and diners along the way.
Of course, if we’re getting our directions from a Mountie, we may have taken a wrong turn!
There’s apt to be a lot of twists and turns to our travels. Some days, we’ll be on the highway, and it’ll be smooth cruising; other days, we’ll be taking some of the lonesomest backroads you’ve ever seen. We may even get lost once or twice. Not to worry, though. By the time we get to 31 October, we will have reached our destination.
Whether or not we will have “safely” reached that destination is something else entirely.
Much like our trip through Stephen King's novel ‘Salem’s Lot a few years ago, I think I’ve broken up our journey across the hi-ways and by-ways of Christine into twenty-seven doable legs. I don’t believe that any one night’s reading assignment will be too overwhelming for the average reader. If there are any longer sections to read, I think that the spooky story and kooky characters will act as a little nitro spat into your engine’s blower to give you a bit more oomph to get you over the finish line for the night.
As you math majors out there have already figured out, twenty-seven official nights of reading Christine leave us four “free” days to play around with. On these days, I’ll cut loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle about Stephen King, the writing of the novel, adaptations, and what I think it all means.
And, boy, do I have some opinions!
Plug yer ears all you want! It won't make a lick of difference!
So with that said, here is your first reading assignment, Blog-o-weeners: for tomorrow, let’s all read the Prologue and Part 1: Chapters 1 & 2. Depending on your edition, that’s should be around twenty-four pages. Not a bad stretch o’ distance for our first day on the road.
It’s still early days yet, but I’ll try to point out as many interesting roadside attractions and points-of-interest as I can in these first twenty-four pages. I can't promise I'll get to everything — I gotta keep my eyes on the road, after all — and I might not always sound like I know what I’m talking about, but just remember…
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