Stephen King has taken on monsters, demons and the creepy crawlies of horror his entire career. Reading one of his novels is almost a guarantee that you're going to get a slightly different idea of the horror tropes that he sometimes helped invent. In fact, for those who are working on their own works of horror you think "How did he do this so successfully so many times?" I think the answer is passion. Reading a book by Stephen King is like reading a love letter (...maybe love isn't the correct word) that he composed to the reader.
I picked up Salem's Lot a little while back and read it for the second time in my literary time on this planet. I got a lot different themes and tones then when I first read the book. When I first read Salem's Lot, I was much younger. I was excited about how truly marvelous the vampire was. This dude did not give a shit. He was there for the purpose of drinking some blood and how Barlow turns Susan to a vampire destroying the protagonist spirit in the process was pure joy to my young heart.
I read it now as an adult and the grand scheme of King's world finally clicked. The small town that slowly became "over taken" by Barlow. I use the idea of "over taken" because eventually there's no leader to the vampires in Salem's Lot so they are kind of left to fend for themselves as blood sucking idiots go.
Some notable things about King's version of vampires that I think are important. These are your sparkle and shine kind of vampires. They are cunning and they don't play with their food. There's never a thought of keeping Susan as a bargaining chip against the protagonist. She's turned and he's forced to kill her. How people turn are some what traditional with a bite, but Father Callahan drinks from Barlow's neck and doesn't turn, but instead is kind of damned. There's some very spooky shit going on underneath the surface of it all.
Salem's Lot is basically over run with vampires at the end of the book and a year later when the remaining protagonist remains. Ben and Mark. The place is still over ran, there's no human life and they decide that its just too easy for vampires to hide so they start a fire to burn this mother down!
This book is an exceptional look at the time when small town's were leading economic prosperity. The people of the town were all connected and they all held these very tangible values that you can feel as you read. The dad who shares beers with the guy dating his daughter. The man whose schedule never changes. The guy who is smarter than anyone else in the town. There are people with terrible and dark secrets (early on a lady beats on her baby...yea...that's fucked up isn't it.). Salem's Lot has a photograph of all these arch types of people and fits them into a time period where things feel simpler.
The antagonist of this book, as mentioned briefly above, are completely diabolical and cunning and you find yourself with an unclear picture of who is good or who is bad until the point that everyone has fangs. Barlow is a great antagonist and there's a couple of great movies out there that are fun to watch (I'm not feeling the 2004 one as much as the original...) and I'll write about them later.
The book itself can take a little bit of effort in its reading. Stephen King pain stakingly is building a town that you have to try to keep up with. We're not talking several characters facing off against each other, we're talking a town of shifting allegiances and morals through several large events.
This really isn't a gripe, not really. You have to understand that if you're 16 years old you're reading a dated piece of literature. The world has moved on from the time that Stephen King writes about and his writing has evolved as time marched forward as well. There's a lot of real estate jargon, there's a lot of small town economic talk and a brief (while simple) time that you read about how everyone is preparing for the effect of the micro economics of their town from malls and changes taking place. The world is different now. It's just not quite the same, but if you are a younger reader and you can kind of appreciate what it was like to be back in that time you won't notice.
With that said, what we want...the horror of it all, is great. You're going to enjoy it. I'll have to rewatch the movies and write about them sometime, but....
FINAL VERDICT: MUST READ
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