{"id":145,"date":"2008-11-09T09:25:53","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T14:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatsociety.org\/?p=145"},"modified":"2018-10-31T09:26:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T13:26:49","slug":"sunday-archive-xix-notes-on-a-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/?p=145","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Archive XIX: Notes on a book review"},"content":{"rendered":"

From February of 2007.\u00a0 This picks up from mysterious and long lost commuter train notes.\u00a0 No idea where I was going with it… Though I did mention that high school walk home again in the recent post, Train Town<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

For a city kid whose definition of country is having a half acre, wooded backyard in Silver Spring, MD, it was something to go wandering down those tracks.\u00a0 At the end of the semester, those glorious June days in DC, getting your last exam at 1pm and then leaving campus for the walk home through the woods where you could just be away from all the trouble of being, you know, alive and shit, was as good as it got.\u00a0 Unless it was actually possible to fuck the hell out of this girl I had a crush on but, here in my adulthood, I fully understand that things like that never would have happened and, in fact, Tanja was simply a figment of my imagination.\u00a0 As was Melissa, Lindsey and other unattainable women.<\/p>\n

Being an algebra final, it only took me 40 minutes to fail it, but we were required to sit at our desks for the full two hours regardless.\u00a0 Pining for that walk home almost as much as I was pining for the Dr. Pepper and Celeste Pizza and trashy B-movie rented from Video 99 at the end of that walk, I settled down for my 80 minute internment with Different Seasons<\/em>.\u00a0 I was on the Stand By Me<\/em> story. (which is called \u201cThe Body.\u201d\u00a0 See?\u00a0 I\u2019m not a snooty reader\u2026I really am one of you.)<\/p>\n

For a mind that feeds on and constantly desires escape, reading that story was a major moment in my liternamary eduakation.\u00a0 Primarily because it was followed by that walk of mine.<\/p>\n

King had this sort of influence in my life for quite a while.\u00a0 So I don\u2019t jump all over Cell<\/em> just because I think he\u2019s beneath me.\u00a0 He\u2019s the master of horror.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably best to say, simply, that I was disappointed.\u00a0 Because, of course, King can do better.\u00a0 He has done better.\u00a0 The expanded, uncut version of The Stand \u2013 that great monster of a book \u2013 devoured my life for a week.\u00a0 It was leader of the apocalypse novels\u2026and I love apocalypse novels.\u00a0 Mainly because I hate all of you and I want you to die.<\/p>\n

My concern is how the hell is King doing it?\u00a0 Is he the overmind of some sort of literary Pulse? We pick up the book and our eyes go slack and we start to utter gibberish?\u00a0 If that\u2019s the case, he\u2019s dangerous and we need to kill him.\u00a0 The Senate and the People of Rome declare him an enemy and he should be killed on site.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m disappointed.\u00a0 So what?\u00a0 I still read through it, and enjoyed it at that base level.\u00a0 I had to enjoy it after I stopped reading though.\u00a0 Take a break, close the book and pretend that I was in the situation with people who behaved normally.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t unique to Cell<\/em>.\u00a0 I get this quite a bit in the fantasy\/horror\/sci-fi genres.\u00a0 There\u2019s that wonderfully promising apocalypse story and, hey, the characters are idiots.\u00a0 We all have that \u2013 screaming out to the chick in the horror movie not to open that door, or go into that dark house, or to stop to take a shower after being chased by a maniac for an hour.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sensitive to this phenomena in literature, as well, being a reader and, now, *flashing lights* an internationally famous publisher! (Girls \u2013 if you want to sleep with me, please send an email to janus_808@hotmail.\u00a0 If you\u2019re good in bed, I\u2019ll publish your retarded book about how your father raped you and you\u2019ll be famous!\u00a0 I swear!)
\n\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From February of 2007.\u00a0 This picks up from mysterious and long lost commuter train notes.\u00a0 No idea where I was going with it… Though I did mention that high school walk home again in the recent post, Train Town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[137,402,176,127],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sunday-archive","tag-archives","tag-books","tag-publishing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1615,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}