the Rats in "Salem's Lot"
Robb
This is FYI for younger fans and intended to provoke comment in older
readers.
In his Playboy interview in the late '70s or early '80s (I can't re-
member the month/year of the issue - sorry) Mr. King told the story
of the original story line of "Salem's Lot". He said that readers had
asked him, "what happened to the rats? - they just disappeared from the
story." Readers will remember that the rats were introduced with Dud
Rogers, the hunchbacked caretaker of the town dump. Dud would enter-
tain himself by shooting them for sport. However, they are not mention-
ed after Barlow appears at the dump and inducts Dud into his fold. In
the Playboy interview, Mr. King states that he originally had the rats
serving Barlow by guarding his coffin. When it is found by the still
human pursuers, they stumble into the rats and not all survive. Mr.
King said that his editor made him change that part, saying in effect,
that it would cause revulsion in the reading public (gross 'em out !).
I, personally, didn't miss the little buggers when I read the book, a
fact I am going to chalk up to Mr. King's engrossing story-telling
talents. What I did miss was the paucity of information about Barlow and
his existence. I intend to address this omission soon in future post-
ing.
In the same interview, he voiced his disappointment in the movie's
treatment of Barlow. If you saw it, you will know that Barlow was a
cadaverous being not unlike Nosferatu as Max Schreck and later, Klaus
Kinski played him in German cinema. However, in the book, he was por-
treyed as an elderly 'Gentleman' of aristocratic bearing who becomes
younger as he takes more victims. I keep imagining the excellent actor
actor Tom Berenger as the 'young' Barlow, dressed in modern clothes,
enjoying modern 'life' as he and what was Susan Norton pounce on the
unsuspecting deputy.
I recommend that interview for its insight into Mr. King's mind and his
style of writing. If you can't find that issue of Playboy in a used
book/magazine shop, you can probably find it in a collection of inter-
views that PB publishes from time to time. Your local library probably
carries at least one copy.
KermTzu
If I remember right, a character dies when he falls on blades under a
house, but King originally had him devoured by the rats, with one of his
last images being a rat forcing its way down the guy's throat! What an
idea. I can imagine why King's editors' took that out, although with
his status today, he could (and unfortunately sometimes does) write any
old thing and have it put in hardcover.
web-server-account
Robb (a001...@airmail.net) wrote:
: This is FYI for younger fans and intended to provoke comment in older
: readers.
: In his Playboy interview in the late '70s or early '80s (I can't re-
: member the month/year of the issue - sorry)
[snip]
: I recommend that interview for its insight into Mr. King's mind and his
: style of writing. If you can't find that issue of Playboy in a used
: book/magazine shop, you can probably find it in a collection of inter-
: views that PB publishes from time to time. Your local library probably
: carries at least one copy.
The interview was June '83. For a time it was available on-line, but
it seems to no longer be available at the playboy site. It is also
available in Bare Bones.
--
Bev Vincent
Houston, TX
Argus
Robb wrote:
> style of writing. If you can't find that issue of Playboy in a used
> book/magazine shop, you can probably find it in a collection of inter-
> views that PB publishes from time to time. Your local library probably
> carries at least one copy.
If I remember right, he also puts the real chapter in the his book what
was the name (Danse Macabe) (sp).
It was really really sick.
A.
Marjon Wiertz
-=> Quoting KermTzu to All <=-
Ke> From: KermTzu <Ker...@prodigy.net>
Ke> Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 23:43:15 -0500
Ke> Organization: Clowder House
Ke> If I remember right, a character dies when he falls on blades under a
Ke> house, but King originally had him devoured by the rats, with one of
Ke> his last images being a rat forcing its way down the guy's throat!
Ke> What an idea. I can imagine why King's editors' took that out,
Ke> although with his status today, he could (and unfortunately sometimes
Ke> does) write any old thing and have it put in hardcover.
Yeah, but then he wrote a story about a cat forcing his way down a guy's
throat and eating his way out of his belly... It was called Cat from Hell or
something and I didn't like it. The idea of an evil cat is just too much.
Marjon Wiertz ____/;
(Marjon...@iwg.nl) \o.O ' meow
=(___)=
U
Argus
Marjon Wiertz wrote:
SNIP
> Yeah, but then he wrote a story about a cat forcing his way down a guy's
> throat and eating his way out of his belly... It was called Cat from Hell or
> something and I didn't like it. The idea of an evil cat is just too much.
>
> Marjon Wiertz ____/;
> (Marjon...@iwg.nl) \o.O ' meow
> =(___)=
> U
Are you saying cats are not evil?
I can't think of anything on this planet more evil then cats.
A.
Brandi Weed
On Wed, 29 Jan 1997 10:56:06 -0600, Argus <ar...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>If I remember right, he also puts the real chapter in the his book what
>was the name (Danse Macabe) (sp).
In Danse Macabre the chapter isn't there, just the description of what
he had planned, which did sound vicious but might not be too far out
now in the wake of Graveyard Shift...
--
Brandi Weed
bra...@wheel.dcn.davis.ca.us
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~brandi/
Yann Clochec
From all of eternity, Robb <a001...@airmail.net>, lost in all the
noise, told us :
>This is FYI for younger fans and intended to provoke comment in older
>readers.
BTW, "Salem's Lot" spoiler below !
>In his Playboy interview in the late '70s or early '80s (I can't re-
>member the month/year of the issue - sorry) Mr. King told the story
>of the original story line of "Salem's Lot". He said that readers had
>asked him, "what happened to the rats? - they just disappeared from the
>story." Readers will remember that the rats were introduced with Dud
>Rogers, the hunchbacked caretaker of the town dump. Dud would enter-
>tain himself by shooting them for sport. However, they are not mention-
>ed after Barlow appears at the dump and inducts Dud into his fold. In
>the Playboy interview, Mr. King states that he originally had the rats
>serving Barlow by guarding his coffin. When it is found by the still
>human pursuers, they stumble into the rats and not all survive. Mr.
>King said that his editor made him change that part, saying in effect,
>that it would cause revulsion in the reading public (gross 'em out !).
<snip>
>I recommend that interview for its insight into Mr. King's mind and his
>style of writing. If you can't find that issue of Playboy in a used
>book/magazine shop, you can probably find it in a collection of inter-
>views that PB publishes from time to time. Your local library probably
>carries at least one copy.
Stephen also tells the story in "Danse Macabre" (know it almost by
heart now, read it three times to complie the Juke Box ;-).
Having had more than enough spoiler space, can't resist quoting the
whole thing ;-)
"I decides I would let Barlow (my version of Count Dracula) also use
the rats, and to that end I gave the town of Jerusalem's Lot an open
dump, where there are lots of rats. I played on the presence of the
rats several times in the first couple of hundred pages
--
The Lone Gunslinger - Mythologist-General, OP - Cdr Whale Patrol, EE
Starship trooper go sailing on by, catch my soul catch the very night
Hide the moment from my eager eyes. Though you've seen them please
Don't tell a soul what you can't see can't be very whole. Jon Anderson.
Argus
Antti Matikka wrote:
>
> Argus <ar...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I can't think of anything on this planet more evil then cats.
>
>
> Andy
> http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/andy/
Yes.
You say that like its a bad thing?
A.
Argus
Antti Matikka wrote:
>
> Argus <ar...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Antti Matikka wrote:
> >> Argus <ar...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> >I can't think of anything on this planet more evil then cats.
>
> >> So you've got relatives/friends in Oz, don't you?
>
>
> like to have a word or two with Mr. Evans...
>
> (To those who don't know, Richard Evans is a Parliament member in
> Australia who demands all the cats be destroyed by year 2020.
> He's got quite a large support: now the famous sports event in
> Queensland is using cats as golfballs! -- hit the papers even here
> [pun definitely unintended], on the other side of the globe.)
> Bast help me...
>
> Andy
> http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/andy/
Well now, even I think thats a BAD ideal.
I might not like cats but I know a lot of people love cats, and for some
strange reason cats love me.
But I don't want them all killed, thats a little to much. I think that
there is a big stray cat, and dog, problem the world over. I when I have
to go outside 5 minutes after placing my trash by the curb to scare away
the cats I get real upset.
A.
Hope I didn't offend you.
Jared Head
Brandi Weed (bra...@wheel.dcn.davis.ca.us) wrote:
: On Wed, 29 Jan 1997 10:56:06 -0600, Argus <ar...@hotmail.com> wrote:
:
: >If I remember right, he also puts the real chapter in the his book what
: >was the name (Danse Macabe) (sp).
:
: In Danse Macabre the chapter isn't there, just the description of what
: he had planned, which did sound vicious but might not be too far out
: now in the wake of Graveyard Shift...
Ironically I found the version in the book much more scary. The
instantaneous death, with no warning and no hope for reprieve disturbed
me much more than yet another consumed-by-manic-animals-death would have.
Jared
--
Jared Head at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Bristol
"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human
history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
Mitch Ratliffe
Rachel and Paul Feuerherdt
Hi everyone,
Just a quick intro : I've been lurking here for a month or so - it's a
good newsgroup etc...
Just would like to clear up about Aussies and cats (being one myself
(an Aussie not a cat))
That article was a total do-do. We had it reported in our local papers
"US told - Aussies cat killers" or words to that effect.
We have another feral pest, the cane toad, which I've heard, the odd
five-iron is used on, but I don't think so on cats.
But yes, that MP wants a virus to be released to kill all cats in
Aust! (There is another guy too who wears a hat made out of feral puss
to make a point about the problems)
(Back to lurk mode for me...)
Rachel
Jared Head
Rachel and Paul Feuerherdt (ho...@merlin.net.au) wrote:
: That article was a total do-do. We had it reported in our local papers
: "US told - Aussies cat killers" or words to that effect.
: We have another feral pest, the cane toad, which I've heard, the odd
: five-iron is used on, but I don't think so on cats.
:
: But yes, that MP wants a virus to be released to kill all cats in
: Aust! (There is another guy too who wears a hat made out of feral puss
: to make a point about the problems)
Actually, I have no problems with killing the cats, but releasing a
virus? Sounds a bit iffy. Didn't the cane toad get released on purpose
to eat something else?
Yann Clochec
heart now, read it three times to compile the Juke Box ;-).
Having had more than enough spoiler space, can't resist quoting the
whole thing ;-)
"I decided I would let Barlow (my version of Count Dracula) also use
the rats, and to that end I gave the town of Jerusalem's Lot an open
dump, where there are lots of rats. I played on the presence of the
rats several times in the first couple of hundred pages of the novel,
and to this day I sometimes get letters asking if I just forgot about
the rats, or tried to use them to create atmosphere, or what."
"Actually, I used them to create a scene so revolting that my editor
at Doubleday (the same Bill Thompson mentioned in the forenote to this
volume) suggested strongly that I remove it and substitute something
else. After some grousing, I complied with his wishes. In the
Doubleday/New American Library editions of _'Salem's Lot_, Jimmy Cody,
a local doctor, and Mark Petrie, the boy accompanying him, discover
that the king vampire -to use Van Hesling's pungent term- is almost
certainly denning in the basement of a local boarding house. Jimmy
begins to go downstairs, but the stairs have been cut away and the
floor beneath littered with knives pounded through boards, Jimmy Cody
dies impaled upon these knives in a scene of what I would call
'horror' -as opposed to 'terror' or 'revulsion', the scene is a
middle-of-the-roader."
"In the first draft manuscript, however, I had Jimmy go down the
stairs and discover -too late- that Barlow had called all the rats
from the dump to the cellar of Eva Miller's boarding house. There was
a regular HoJo for rats down there, and Jimmy Cody became the main
course. They attack Jimmy in their hundreds, and we are treated (if
that is the word) to a picture of the good doctor struggling back up
the stairs, covered with rats. They are down in his shirt, crawling in
his hair, biting his neck and arms. When he opens his mouth to yell
Mark a warning, one of the runs into his mouth and lodges there,
squirming."
"I was delighted with the scene as written because it gave me a chance
to combine Dracula-lore and EC-lore into one. My editor felt that it
was, to put it frankly, out to lunch, and I was eventually persuaded
to see it his way. Perhaps he was even right."
End of quote, and please notice the quality of the style and choice of
words, just as good as in the best of his fiction works.
web-server-account
Yann Clochec (10077...@compuserve.com) wrote:
: "In the first draft manuscript, however, I had Jimmy go down the
: stairs and discover -too late- that Barlow had called all the rats
: from the dump to the cellar of Eva Miller's boarding house. There was
: a regular HoJo for rats down there, and Jimmy Cody became the main
: course. They attack Jimmy in their hundreds, and we are treated (if
: that is the word) to a picture of the good doctor struggling back up
: the stairs, covered with rats. They are down in his shirt, crawling in
: his hair, biting his neck and arms. When he opens his mouth to yell
: Mark a warning, one of the runs into his mouth and lodges there,
: squirming."
Anyone who saw the 60 minutes interview the other night will recognize
this description from the opening moments of the interview as King does
his level best to gross Ms. Stahl out!
Rachel and Paul Feuerherdt
bi...@zeus.bris.ac.uk (Jared Head) wrote:
> Rachel and Paul Feuerherdt (ho...@merlin.net.au) wrote:
> :<my bit snipped cos who wants to read that again>
> Actually, I have no problems with killing the cats, but releasing a
> virus? Sounds a bit iffy. Didn't the cane toad get released on purpose
> to eat something else?
> Jared
The cane toad was cleverly released to combat a bug which was eating
the sugar cane... of course, the bugs could fly, the cane toads
couldn't...so still bugs, and now, toads too!
I have no problems with a virus (they've just released one to get all
the feral bunnies) as long as I can vaccinate my cats from it!
Cheers,
Rach