Me: How is the vampyre book?
Ben: I am on page 169.
Me: lol 69
Ben: I don't think that DRACULA took this many pages to reveal that the story involves vampires.
Me: Which is better?
Me: Also it's right on the cover
Ben: Man, DRACULA is a pretty fucking good book
Me: right in front of your damn eyes.
Ben: from what I remember when I was young.
Me: I thought you said it was boring as shit except for the parts with Dracula, which was like one fifth of the book.
Ben: You must be thinking of someone else.
Me: Yeah, I must be thinking of one of my other friends who's read DRACULA.
Ben: So like all of them.
Me: Oh wait, I am.
Ben: So far it is okay.
Ben: I'm still trying to figure out which child in the town is supposed to be the child from the beginning of the book.
Ben: My bet so far is on that kid who beats up the bully.
Me: But who is the man from the beginning of the book?
Ben: It could be any of the characters in this book who are authors.
Ben: That narrows it down to 90% of Stephen King's main characters.
Me: It's actually the clown from IT.
Ben: Have you finished IT yet?
Me: No.
Ben: Damn you.
Me: IT is so depressing, I can't bring myself to marathon it.
Ben: I thought we were in this together.
Me: In what?
Ben: Stephen King buddies.
Me: I've already read all his primary DT works, you need to keep reading them so I have someone to talk about that world with.
Me: What has happened in Dracula so far?
Me: Isn't it like 600 pages?
Ben: Yeah.
Me: Excuse me?
Ben: Yeah.
Ben: As in
Ben: yeah, it's like 600 pages
Ben: so far
Ben: Hmm.
Ben:
So far, the author has gotten to the town and eaten dinner at the
female love interest's house twice and the vampires just opened up their
shop and have already sacrificed one little boy to Satan.
Ben: Their coffins were just delivered.
Me: That is a spooky scene.
Ben: Yeah.
Ben: With like the ambiguous bundle of clothes in the corner.
Ben: Which, if they really are the little boy's clothes, means the vampires are retarded.
Me: Hahaha.
Ben: Maybe the twist is that they were really just creepy old dudes, and the author was the demons all along.
Me: Does anyone know that they are vampires yet?
Ben: No.
Ben: The word "vampire" hasn't been mentioned outside of the introduction by Stephen King.
Me: It's a pretty good book.
Ben: I like his description of the town.
Me:
It starts out slow but he has to get you acquainted with the town
because it's like an analogy of the evils of Smalltown America and
vampires.
Me: Has Father Callahan even shown up yet?
Ben: Nope.
Ben: He is too busy climbing the Dark Tower, I suppose.
Me: Spoiler alert.
Ben: Wait is he the old guy from the beginning of the book, the Mexican preacher dude?
Me: No, he's the priest in 'Salem's Lot.
Me:
There's a newspaper excerpt at the beginning that lists the names of a
bunch of people from the town who are missing and he's one of them.
Ben: Because just as he was about to be eaten by vampires a two-dimensional doorway appeared and he vanished through it.
Ben:
Also what "evils" of Smalltown America are we talking here, aside from
the abrupt and short scene where a random character repeatedly punches a
baby the only evils are an abundance of gossip and a resistance to
change.
Me: That's like one of King's top themes across his books, how these quaint little towns can hide these terrible people and things.
Me: IT is all about that.
Ben: As far as you know.
Me: Shut up.
Ben: I can't tell you what IT is really about, because you've never read to the end.
Me: Shhhh.
Me:
Like there's the teenage girl who got knocked up and she had to marry
the guy because that's conventional morality and he abuses her and she
abuses the baby and their lives are miserable.
Ben:
Yeah that was a pretty good scene, but it's the only instance of evil
in this town that is not directly perpetrated by vampires.
Ben: Well.
Ben: The real estate guy is kind of sleazy.
Me: It's mostly about the vampires.
Ben: Haha.
Me: But it's a definite analogy.
Me: This is only the second book he wrote so it's not as pronounced as it will be.
Ben: We'll have to compare book reports after this is through.
Ben: What was his first book?
Me: Carrie.
Ben: O rly.
Ben: And his last female protagonist.
Me: I think Rose Madder is about a woman.
Me: But apparently that's one of his worse books.
Ben: And maybe that one with the author.
Ben: lol
Me: lol
Ben: I mean the one with the author that gets his legs broken.
Me: Isn't the author the main character?
Me: Whatevs.
Ben: I don't know.
Ben: I've only ever seen the FAMILY GUY spoof.
Me: King isn't very good at writing women most of the time so I don't care.
Me: The girl in 'Salem's Lot is one of his better female characters I think.
Ben: Yeah so far she is not bad.
Ben: Of course she probably gets horribly killed.
Me: There's another domestic abuse with another couple in the book I think, I don't know if you got there yet.
Me:
But anyway, shit like domestic abuse, homophobia, racism, violence
begetting violence, the sins of the father, etc. show up a lot in his
"Smalltown America" stories.
Me:
Then these kinds of settings of mundane evil attract a more visible,
supernatural evil, like the vampires or the clown or the demon in Storm
of the Century.
Ben: Spoiler alert.
Ben: But yeah that is cool.
_front_cover,_first_edition.jpg)