The forenote to Danse Macabre may be short but it does have a few comments that deserve our parsing. First, I like how he used his Themes in Supernatural Literature course at U of Maine to work through his ideas - that will be the class that I will be imagining I am a part of.
"No one is exactly sure of what they mean on any given subject until they have written their thoughts down; I similarly believe that we have very little understanding of what we have thought until we have submitted those thoughts to others who are at least as intelligent as ourselves."
This quote resonates with me because I'll often ramble on a topic but then find out I have very little to say when it is time to put in on paper. This blog so far has been an example of this; I will work through plenty of unrelated bits of ideas in my mind during the day but when it is time to write, those ideas have to make sense. Imagine having to work through those thoughts with an audience sitting in front of you; that must have been unnerving to say the least.
The forenote also is the first time he relays his anecdote about hanging out a bar in July 1978 watching the All-Star game with his friend and editor Bill Thompson and asking the bartender who takes advantage of the bar's A.M. alcohol special and the bartender responds with "College kids like you". It's interesting that he told this story again in On Writing in reference to his alcoholism as opposed to him just casually telling the story in Danse Macabre. Let's dive into some of the differences in the two tellings of the story,
Not that it matters but when he told the story in 1980 all drinks were fifty cents from 8-10 A.M. while in 2000 it now says that screwdrivers are $1.00. Interestingly in 2000 the story is given more detail so now we get more details about the bartender and the bar but King is consistent that the bar is Irish and it was at the 1978 All-Star Game. One thing that is very consistent about King back in the day was that he was very cavalier about alcohol. He would show up at book talk with a beer and in his non-fiction would just casually mention that he drank alot of beer. So the point of the story in 1980 was that his partner-in-crime Bill Thompson would just hang with King and shoot the shit. Whereas when tells the story in 2000 it is clearly to illustrate the alcoholic side of King.
Finally the forenote contains what I believe to be the first appearance of King's often-used line, which appears in many variations:
"If you like the book in question, thank Bill, who thought it up. If you don't blame the author, who screwed it up."
King usually uses this line to thank his researchers but here he uses it to thank Bill Thompson for asking King to write this book. I wonder exactly how many times he has used that line. Anyone know?
There isn't really anything in the Forenote to the Paperback Edition worth talking about so I will be jumping in to Chapter 1. I am going to begin by viewing the films The Day the Earth Stood Still and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. I watched the former about 20 years ago but I've never seen the latter so this should be fun.
For next class:
Read Chapter 1
Watch The Day the Earth Stood Still
Watch Earth vs. The Flying Saucers
No comments:
Post a Comment