THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON..WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT?
Ramy
a bit. Not as good as some of his other work, and pretty damn small, but I
still enjoyed it to some extent. But people here, like RW, say that the book
is total bullshit, that King focuses on the Trisha's bareness as she pisses
and shits. I totally disagree.
Would someone please explain to me what they thought wrong with it? I am a
bit confused by some o fthe remarks. Care to share your insights with me?
Robert Whelan
First, King starts in a flashback, supposedly recapping the events
up to the point where Trisha was already lost. He forgets that
he's in a flashback, though, and never returns from it.
It's foreshadowed that Trisha will get lost after she steps off
the path and "behind a stand of bushes". She never does this.
Instead, she goes down a side path and then down a slope of
a ravine and hangs on to a pine tree!
Trisha is described as going a "little way" down the side path,
which is believable if she wants to take a quick pee. But later,
she remember is as "50, 60, 70 paces" down that path, so that
her getting lost in between the two trails is believable.
Trisha, on one page, thinks about how simple it will be to just
cross the gap from where she pees. On the very next page she's
desribed as climbing the STEEPER slope of the ravine she's in,
and dodging around piles of bushes and brambles! Why did she
think that would be simpler?
Trisha wants to catch up with her family, and worries that they'll
miss her for a few minutes. But she goes on for 10 minutes before
getting worried herself! That's an incredibly long amount of time
to travel, while aiming deliberately for a path only at most
a minute or so through the woods, before getting worried.
Trisha NEVER considers even TRYING to go back the way she came. NEVER.
Trisha's Gameboy, which should contain batteries for her Walkman,
is totally forgotten by the story. (original Gameboys run on
AA batteries, like Walkman cassette players do.)
Trisha, when she encounters that log, insists on crawling UNDER
it to avoid "losing her bearings", though she could easily just
walk around it to the other side of the hole, and still have
her "bearings". IT was just an excuse for King to scare Trisha
with the snake and hurt her back. And perhaps a lame excuse for
her to not try going back, though she could just as easily
go around the tree again, to the hole, and just aim back from
the tree the way she came.
Trisha is given the smarts to TRY and go in a straight line
until she hits the tree, and the smarts to try and use
landmarking, after the tree, but never considers GOING BACK
using that landmarking. Instead, King makes her cry, and
forget about it, and then run screaming.
As for the wierd sexual focus...
1. The peeing. Overdescribed. A girl who has peed all her life isn't
so focused on her own physical details. The image of her grown
mom DEMONSTRATING how to pee for her was also bizarre. Do adults
really demonstrate how to pee, or do they usually just instruct?
2. Sexualizing thoughts. "Utterly Sexual" is something Trisha
Thinks of. "Sugartit" is another. Trisha thinks of herself
and Pespsi as having looked like the "world's youngest stripteasers",
and she pictures herself, wading through the swamp, as looking
like an exercise girl on TV, "flex those hips, move those buttocks",
which is a bizarre way to imagine oneself when involved in
practical wading through a swamp. Had a pervert been watching
Trisha from the shadows, these thoughts would maybe have
been natural to this pervert, but they don't seem natural
to Trisha. Also, the "Yeah Baby" stuff seems to be a
reference to Austin Powers, whose "Yeah Baby" was a leering
sexual comment. Add to this the bizarre sidebar about a
sex fiend who MIGHT have kidnapped, had sex with, and murdered
Trisha, and who the police expect would steal her panties
IF he did. This adds a totally unnecessary focus on Trisha
and her panties for the purposesof explaining why the
search parties haven't found Trisha. (It fails to do
so, of course, because police don't give up search parties
if they think a murder has been comitted. They increase
them, particularly in the area the victim was last seen.)
Along with Trisha's overdescribed peeing and bathing
bare from the waist down, you can see how the reader can
be left with a creepy feeling about Mr. King and his
attitude in this story.
Note that the "call off the search party because of the imaginary
panty stealing pervert" sidebar is supposed to deal with the
fact that most people, as the story points out, tend to wander
in circles near where they first got lost, not head out in
a straight line as far from their point of origin as possible.
It still doesn't answer why Trisha never tried to backtrack,
so that she, even if she remained lost, could be found by
the search parties.
Note that if Trisha had turned around, and gone back, anytime
soon after she set out, she'd have had TWO trails, each miles
long, likely, to run into. She wouldn't have had to get back
to the exact spot at all, and still have hit a trail.
Note that Trisha's reasoning "The swamp has to end somewhere" is
an unbelievable reason for continuing to wade deeper into a
wet muddy swamp, when there is dry land behind her, if she'd
only try to go back to it.
Looney
Oh, Criminy... Here we go again :-)
Enjoy, Ramy... I think I'll just watch from the sidelines this time...
Anthony "Looney" Toohey
----
Real people don't look at ringing phones.
- Don DeLillo - The Body Artist
Robert Whelan
I forgot to mention the scene during the Meteorite shower, where
Trisha is described as crossing her arms across her "breastless
chest". Again, natural to the point of view of a pervert watching
her from the woods, but why would King think it so important
that she doesn't have breasts?
This is why I think adding a real pervert, stalking Trisha through
the woods, would have helped, as it would have put these weird
sexual focuses on Trisha into an understandable POV, rather than
in Trisha's head, or in King's narration.
Trash
Don't you think most of the above could have been written to increase
our sense of Trisha's vulnerability? He seems to be emphasisng not
her sexuality, more her *lack* of it. Her semi-nakedness (peeing,
bathing, whatever) and describing her as an undeveloped female would
highlight just how fragile and alone she is.
JMO
Trash
Castle Librarian
CotCsig#23 CotBSig #58
www.castlelibrary.co.uk
________________
Cognito Ergo Boom
Robert Whelan
Wouldn't other aspects of Trisha being young and small be more
appropriate to mention than her sexuality, or lack thereof?
I don't see how having breasts would help Trisha if it didn't
accompany adult smarts. If she had been an adolescent, with
developing sexuality, and feelings of vulnerability due to
growing awareness of sexual attention being directed at her,
it would have perhaps made more sense, though still hard
to connect with the non-sexual dangers of the woods, unless
connections are made to her real life, and the sexual
threats present in her real life. Perhaps that's what King
was considering doing, but he didn't seem to go there, so
it still ends up feeling bizarre.