Literary Sins: Cujo Is Not About a Killer Dog

I still feel bitterly guilty that I haven’t read every single book that Stephen King has written, so yes, I’m calling it a sin that I just barely got around to reading Cujo.

I was rather hesitant to pick up Cujo, which is completely out of the norm for me when it comes to devouring Stephen King books. I read Stephen King more easily than I breathe sometimes.

But Cujo is about a dog, and I love dogs.

I was more than a little reluctant to plunk myself down and read hundreds of pages about a killer dog that terrifies a small town, which is what I thought the book was going to be about. I mean, who else thought that? “Cujo” is a name synonymous with “giant killer dog” the same way “Pennywise” is synonymous with “giant killer clown.”

Imagine my utter surprise upon finishing Cujo and realizing that the book is less about a monstrous canine creature and more about the terrifying nature of pure happenstance.

That’s right, folks. Cujo is less about the dog and more about how downright terrifying the notion is that a series of events happening in a precise manner can lead to the worst day of your life.

I haven’t felt this lied to since I finished Moby-Dick.

The big difference this time is that I’m not upset over how many whale facts that I had to suffer through.

I’m delighted.

Low-key horrified after reading the last page, but delighted with the experience overall.

If you have any intention of reading Cujo, DO NOT CONTINUE READING AFTER THIS POINT. I’m about to just deep-dive into spoiler territory. It’s the only way I can gush. But just know that I was impressed with the novel, and I would recommend it not as some kind of monster book, but more as a slice-of-life horror novel.

Cujo starts with two families: the Trentons and the Cambers.

Donna and Vic Trenton have a very young son named Tad. He’s an imaginative little tyke who is terrified of a potential monster in his closet, but a good kid nonetheless. Donna and Vic are going through a rough patch. Donna cheated on Vic with this guy named Steve Kemp. She called things off with Steve, but in a fit or revenge, Steve sent a letter to Vic (a very not-pleasant letter) making him aware of his trysts with Donna. Vic is made miserable by this information, but has to depart to New York for a meeting that could potentially save his business. Donna is left alone at home with Tad and a car that needs to be taken to a mechanic’s.

Joe Camber is a great mechanic, but a bit of a rough husband to his wife, Charity. They and their son, Brett, live in the boonies, out at the end of a country road. Charity does not want her son to end up a deadbeat mechanic at the end of a country road, so after winning the lottery (literally), she negotiates a trip to her sister’s with Joe as a way to introduce Brett to a better side of life. She buys Joe a fancy piece of equipment in exchange for allowing this, leaving Joe behind to take care of the family dog, Cujo.

What then follows is a sequence of events that leads to tragedy.

1. Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave that has some bats and gets nipped on the nose after startling them with his bark. This gives him rabies.
2. Donna’s car breaks down on a grocery shopping trip, so she decides to take it in to a mechanic that Vic recommended the next day, i.e. Joe Camber.
3. Charity and Brett leave to visit her sister, with Brett noticing that Cujo is behaving oddly the morning that they depart.
4. Joe decides to take advantage of Charity and Brett’s absence and plans to go to Atlantic City with his neighbor.
5. His neighbor, in a drunken state, is attacked by a fully rabid Cujo. He is killed.
6. When Joe goes to pick up his neighbor, he too is also killed at the neighbor’s house.
7. Tad does not want to be left alone at the house with a sitter while Donna takes the car to Joe Camber’s. He begs to go with her and she relents.
8. Just as they arrive at Camber’s garage out in the middle of nowhere, the car finally breaks down for good.
9. Cujo attacks them, but they are able to safely retreat into the vehicle. However, they are stuck there, with no one living close by for miles. (The closest neighbor is dead.)
10. Steve Kemp, Donna’s former lover, is so incredibly steamed she broke things off, he decides to confront her at her house. Seeing no one is home, he goes around breaking things and ejaculating on the bed in the strangest fit of rage I’ve ever read.
11. Donna and Tad are stuck in the car for an entire day at this point because no one knows they went there and Vic, her husband, does not think it too odd that they have not called yet. He is also consumed with thoughts about saving his business.
12. Donna hopes to wait for the mailman to come along and then honk for help, but it turns out that Joe called ahead of time to hold his mail for his pending trip to Atlantic City. She and Tad spend another day in the car. (Cujo is being preternaturally watchful of their vehicle and has attacked several times.) It is summer. It is hot. They have no food or water to last them.
13. Vic, finally nervous that his wife hasn’t called him or answered his calls, calls the police to check on their place. The cops think he is just being overly worried, but they change their tune when they get to his place and find it trashed. Vic heads home.
14. After examining the wreckage and the ejaculate, Vic knows for a fact that it was Steve Kemp who did this, and everyone assumes that Steve abducted Donna and Tad. The one thing that is odd is that her car is missing, but given the abundance of evidence that Steve was in the house, he is the prime suspect.
15. Donna tries to make a run for the house to get to the Cambers’ phone, but she is tired, dehydrated, and hungry. Cujo attacks her and is able to wound her leg and stomach before she is able to escape back into the car. Tad starts having seizures. He is having severe heatstroke.
16. The police find Kemp, and he admits to breaking in but swears he had nothing to do with kidnapping Donna or Tad. The police learn from Vic when he arrives that Camber’s garage is a place she might have gone to get the car fixed. A cop is sent there.
17. The cop arrives and sees Donna’s car. Instead of calling this in immediately, he gets out of his car first. He sees them inside, but is attacked and killed by Cujo before he can relay this information to others.
18. The next day, Vic has an epiphany after seeing that his son’s “monster words” (a paper used to protect him from the monster in the closet) are missing from his room. He connects this with the fact that Joe Camber has a really big dog at his place, and hey, maybe that’s where they are after all.
19. Donna makes one last-ditch effort to escape to the house after Tad has another seizure. She actually succeeds in killing Cujo just as Vic pulls up.
20. Vic runs over to help, but by the time he has gotten there, Tad has passed away from heatstroke. Everyone was just too late.

And…well…there you have it. That’s the basic plot to Cujo.

This is Stephen King at his finest, if you ask me. He does excel with B-movie horror and Cthulhu mythos type stuff, but I really feel like he has total mastery over the many wiles of human evil and random chance.

More than Cujo’s brutality, you fear Steve Kemp’s outbursts or Joe Camber’s grim abuse. And you also fear the just insane amount of randomness that led to Tad Trenton’s death.

As I turned every page, my jaw dropped not from shocking scenes but from the sheer suckiness of how one person’s decisions could lead to someone being stuck in a car in the middle of the country in the middle of summer with a rabid St. Bernard patrolling outside.

So many little choices led to Donna and Tad not being found in time.

And that was goddamn terrifying.

More than the poor pooch who got rabies.

I rate Cujo a chilling-book-that-is-less-about-canine-terror-and-more-about-how-random-events-can-just-fuck-you-up.

Literary Sins: The Children of Men and Froley’s Namesake

Many of you Above Average readers know of my pet bird, Froley. I can’t seem to shut up about him. I’ve devoted a bunch of posts to anecdotes about his inane yet gorgeous behavior.

However, I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned how I came up with his name. (Honestly, I might have. I have a tendency to repeat myself, especially when it comes to talking about my bird.)

Years and years ago, I saw a movie called Children of Men, and the name “Froley” was just dropped. There isn’t even a character called “Froley.” It’s just offered as a possible baby name. But as soon as I heard it, I did this mental reminder thing. “You’ve got to use this name someday.”

And I did.

I got Froley at the pet store and immediately named him “Froley.”

What I didn’t know at the time was that Children of Men was based on a book called The Children of Men. And I unforgivably did not find this out until the book was staring me right in the face at a used bookstore in Tucson.

And as soon as I saw it, I knew I had unknowingly committed a literary sin. What sin is that, you ask? It’s the sin of enjoying a movie, loving it, in fact, and not reading the book it was based on.

So I bought the book immediately and I’m happy to report I just finished it and I loved it too.

Just in case you haven’t watched the movie or read the book, I’ll clue you in as to what it’s about. It’s set in a world where women and men suddenly become both infertile and sterile. The whole globe is suddenly faced with the realization that no future generations will come after them.

The movie takes a more action-oriented style to the story, focusing on one man as he rushes to protect the world’s first pregnant woman in years. The two of them have to escape from a literal war in the process. As a movie, I get why they took the story in this direction. It made the plot more visceral, and gave the audience a more visual experience when it comes to the desperation everyone was feeling.

The book takes a ponderous approach to the situation. The lack of children in the world is described with a quiet horror. As everyone slowly ages, despair permeates the reflections of the main character. Set in the UK, an authoritarian government has been constructed to make life more comfortable for the aging population. If you’re in a good spot, the oversight and executive privileges the government wields might not bother you. But if you’re part of a less than desirable social rung, your decline into old age is not as easy.

The main character is well off, but his comfortable world is thrown into disarray when a group of rebels confront him with the disquieting truth about society as it currently stands. These rebels’ position is heightened in our protagonist’s awareness when it is revealed that one of them is pregnant.

Despite the drama of these broad strokes I’m painting of the plot, the pace of the novel is measured and sedate. The Children of Men is really about reflecting about how humanity’s progress and innovation largely stems from the knowledge that people will come after you. Without that hope for the future, humanity stagnates.

These musings are portrayed to readers perfectly in small moments. My favorite is when a deer makes its way into a church. This church is like the rural ones we always see described in Victorian novels, small stone edifices nestled in green hills or gentle woodland. The protagonist sees a deer has made its way into the church and is standing by the altar. For him, it’s a small moment of beauty in a world that is turning decrepit.

That’s when the pastor runs in screaming.

It was not a moment of beauty for him. This elderly man rushes at the deer with his arms waving, angry at it for making its way inside. He cries after it as it bounds away, saying that the world will soon be its for the taking, so can’t it just wait a few more years before claiming it.

The Children of Men was by no means a lighthearted read, but its fairly short length makes it a quick one. You can dive into it and escape in the span of two evenings if you’re pacing your reading time. However, I’d recommend this only to people who enjoy thoughtful prose. Because while it is a digestible size, it does not hold back when it comes to ponderous paragraphs.

I rate The Children of Men a deep-yet-quick-read-that-will-have-you-appreciating-the-continuity-of-the-human-species.

Literary Sins: The Firestarter to Stephen King’s Flame

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a Literary Sins post. I think the last time I wrote about my experiences reading classic books that I probably should have read ages ago, I was railing against On the Road.

Well, this time, I’ve rectified a Literary Sin that many will probably shake their heads and scoff at. “Firestarter by Stephen King is not a literary classic,” they’ll say, “and therefore it’s not a sin that you had not read it.”

I beg to differ.

As a self-proclaimed Stephen King fan, it is an egregious oversight on my part to have not read one of his earlier works. As a matter of fact, I’m making it a personal mission to read through his entire bibliography, so expect to see a few more Stephen King titles in future Literary Sins posts.

Stephen King’s early pieces are some of my favorites. They capture a grisly kind of horror that has become more nuanced in his more recent novels. Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and Rage cover not only horrific themes and monstrous people, but they do so in a very raw fashion. So while I do appreciate the mastery of King’s later works like Under the Dome and 11/22/63, my inner horror fanatic much prefers the slasher qualities of young King.

However, Firestarter is not a terrifying tale such as you would expect from Stephen King. It tells the story of a young girl named Charlie who possesses the ability to start fires with her mind. Her parents were both subjects of MK Ultra-esque experiments, and their child’s latent gifts are a result of those experiences.

Most of the fear in Firestarter comes from two main sources: the unpredictability of a child having access to such destructive power and the widespread reach an immoral branch of government can have on a person’s life.

Charlie and her father spend most of the novel on the run, and you really feel for the dad as he tries to instruct his daughter about when it is okay and not okay for her to use her powers. And those government agents dog them relentlessly.

As you can probably see, those monstrous horror elements that King usually includes in his stories are missing here, and Firestarter suffered a drop in my esteem as a result.

That’s not to say I disliked it. I adore Stephen King’s writing style more than any other author’s, and that was still apparent in Firestarter. But I was expecting something different from what I got.

Before I dive into the negatives, let me focus on the positives.

As always, King excels at describing a person’s inner thoughts. He could cover a whole page with one person’s ruminations, and I would not be bored. Plus, since Charlie’s father possesses some low-key telepathy powers, that makes King’s style of writing from a person’s mind ten times more exciting.

This is doubly obvious when he writes about men who are just plain evil. There is a character named Rainbird who could accurately be called the villain of the novel, and reading from his perspective always induces a shudder. King takes the time to set up Rainbird’s character and motivations, and that is a large driving force behind the plot.

Now, on to the negatives.

The plot meanders.

That’s perhaps the biggest flaw. (Be wary of spoilers ahead, by the way.)

If you want to know the broad strokes of the plot, it is as follows:

a) Charlie and her dad are on the run.

b) Charlie and her dad hide out on a farm.

c) Charlie and her dad get caught and taken to a government facility.

d) Charlie and her dad try to escape.

While handy flashbacks provide context for how Charlie got her powers and fill space between these plot points, they can’t hide how bare bones the story feels. Though Charlie and her father are the protagonists of the narrative, the people we root for, they are often not given much agency when it comes to charting their own course. Granted, when you’re on the run from a shady government organization, you don’t always have a lot of options. However, there never seems to be a big plan or future that they are heading toward.

When compared to some of King’s other stories, Firestarter falls short of a gripping narrative.

In addition to that, none of the characters are as magnetic as some of King’s other infamous characters. Any Stephen King fan worth their salt can name the most memorable characters from The Stand, but a lot of the characters in Firestarter are forgettable.

In conclusion, I would not say that Firestarter is a must-read, even for Stephen King fans, not like Carrie. However, it’s not an altogether bad book. It’s enjoyable. I’d even rate it above the majority of Dean Koontz’s stuff, i.e. all of it.

I rate Firestarter a flaming-good-read-that-won’t-set-fire-to-your-world-but-can-serve-as-a-warm-outing-into-the-world-of-Stephen-King.

Literary Sins: On the Road Can Suck My Below Average Blog

On my neverending quest to become an enlightened reader, I bought a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road a few months ago. I finished it yesterday, and all I can think is what a letdown reading it was.

I don’t know about you, but I had heard fantastic things about On the Road. Kerouac’s writing style was extolled as revolutionary, and his encapsulation of the wild and untrammeled Beat movement was considered a highlight of the times.

And as far as Kerouac’s writing style goes, On the Road was enjoyable. He writes in a semi-stream of consciousness style, almost as if he’s next to you, mumbling his tale. Often, his description of commonplace things are damn near poetic, and his vivid imaginings of what it feels like to feel are enticing and magnetic.

But fuck almost everything else about it.

The story is narrated by an indecisive and wandering young man named Sal Paradise, but it actually follows Sal’s friend, Dean Moriarty. It’s clear that Sal greatly admires and pities Dean at the same time. The two of them decide to travel “on the road” together. They’re looking for some kind of Beat Eden, a place that holds no restrictions against what they want and what they are, but they never really find it. Their own contrary natures and the regulated way American society functions stops them from ever finding that place where they belong.

This all sounds tremendously romantic, but I just couldn’t get into it for two very big reasons.

For one thing, the book is incredibly sexist. Women don’t seem to have the same voice as men do. Sal is his own person, Dean is his own person, every dude is his own person. They all have a presence in Kerouac’s writing that assures you they are sentient beings with hopes and dreams.

The women, on the other hand, are so objectified, they have zero personality. They’re in the story to be nuisances, background items, or sexual objects.

Normally, I don’t get hung up on novels not being MEGA inclusive. A good story will grab me every time no matter who it’s about. But On the Road grated on my nerves with every woman Sal and Dean ogled at, slept with, abandoned, harassed, or ignored. Plus, there is some really shady shit that goes down when Sal and Dean are staying at this house with a woman named Frankie. They both start developing a crush on her thirteen-year-old daughter.

No, you read that right. A THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD girl.

And she’s not the only young girl the two men lust after.

It was disgusting reading about these older men crushing on these little girls.

Plus, Sal and Dean can’t seem to stop thinking about ladies period. Every time they’re out on the town, Sal fantasizes about meeting a “gone” girl for a good time. And they don’t care about these girls as people, with thoughts and dreams of their own. They only care about how good the girls can make them feel.

That actually leads to the other big reason why I hate On the Road.

The main characters are incredibly selfish. Now, I don’t care if a book tells me a story about a selfish person and their exploits. Human beings are fairly selfish creatures, so nearly every story with a human being in it has some degree of self-centeredness to it. What I do hate is if a book tells me a story about a selfish person and glorifies and romanticizes it.

Dean and Sal only care about themselves and their goals. They talk this big talk about aspirations and meaning-of-life shit, but they don’t ever take other people into consideration. They expound upon the immensity of life and love, but they act as if they’re the only people on the planet with these thoughts. It’s frustrating as hell, enraging even.

It’s like they willingly trapped themselves into this egocentric state of mind, and then they spend the rest of their time talking about how self-obsessed everyone else is.

They sound so holier-than-thou, but I bet if you walked up to them and told them so, they would just shake their heads and say that you “don’t get it.”

This attitude of theirs is epitomized in the second-to-last chapter, when Sal suffers a fever during their trip to Mexico. Dean decides to head back to the States to be with one of his exes, leaving Sal, in the throes of his sickness and half-hallucinating, behind. Dean simply says he’s “got to get back to his life.”

Maybe what infuriates me so much is the fact that I actually know guys that act like Sal and Dean. I’m not going to name names (though there is a part of me that really wants to out these guys), but they are modern-day Dean Moriartys. They think the world of themselves and their viewpoints, but they never stop to consider what another person is feeling like.

For me, there is nothing romantic about On the Road.

I rate On the Road a read-it-if-you-feel-you-must-but-if-you-like-it-then-we-seriously-need-to-have-a-deep-literary-discussion-about-why-you-do-so-that-I-can-understand-where-you’re-coming-from-because-I-honestly-loathe-the-thing.

Literary Sins: Little Girl, You’re in the Middlemarch

When I tell people I have a love for British literature, everyone assumes I’m talking about Pride & Prejudice.

Um, no.

There are a lot of books that count as British literature. It’s not just Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.

Recently, I finished reading Middlemarch, a rather large novel by George Eliot. The book looks like a daunting read, with a thick spine, thin pages, and a tiny-ass font. But I knew Eliot. I had read Daniel Deronda a few years ago, so I was super excited to spend time with her writing style once again.

You have to like a certain kind of writing style to like Middlemarch. Eliot spends a lot of time diving into the minds of her characters. Entire chapters are devoted to the conflict in a person’s head when they have to make a decision. Perhaps the best example is when Mr. Bulstrode has to decide on how to treat an ill man resting in his house. (For those of you who have read the book, you know exactly which moment I’m talking about.)

These deep dives into a person’s mentality are simultaneously Middlemarch’s greatest strength and weakness. I’ll admit, reading paragraphs describing a person’s hesitancy before giving a speech can be a bit…much. But, in my opinion, it’s worth it in the long run.

Those chapters you spend learning about a person’s every inclination, motivation, and inspiration set you up for bombshell chapters when these characters come into conflict with each other. You understand where everyone is coming from. So even if there is a misunderstanding between the characters, who do not have the windows into the minds of others the way we do, we as readers know all.

You feel like a god looking down into the lives of these people. Knowing their fears, their flaws, their hopes.

Something I’ve noticed with British literature (though I hate to make generalizations) is a massive attention to detail. It often feels like there is an inordinate amount of focus given to descriptions, descriptions of thoughts, emotions, and material objects.

When I was younger, reading giant paragraphs describing a person’s obsession with their furniture would have irritated me.

Now, I’m hella riveted.

Side note: Pardon the teenage parlance.

The plot of Middlemarch can be boiled down to the story of two people: Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate. Both Dorothea and Tertius have high-minded goals for themselves. Dorothea, bound by restrictions determined by her sex, decides she wants to marry someone of like mind who wants to do good in the world, for humanity and all that. As his wife, she plans to assist her future husband in all his endeavors. Tertius, a doctor, wants to initiate medical reforms and advances that will create a lasting impact in his field.

Unfortunately, both Dorothea and Tertius are thwarted in their goals (temporarily in one of their cases) by imprudent marriages. Middlemarch is about their respective struggles in maintaining their ideals while adjusting to reality.

This is a very poor attempt at laying out the premise of Middlemarch. Reading it over, I feel like I’m doing the novel a disservice. I’m making it sound boring.

But that’s seriously part of Middlemarch’s charm. It doesn’t have an exotic story with drastic twists and turns. Rather, it showcases the extraordinary in the ordinary. Dorothea and Tertius are like you and me. They make poor choices, good choices, and in-between choices. They as characters resonate with you because of that.

And who hasn’t had their ideals dampened because of the onward rush of life?

The book is best described by its final sentence, which I will include here:

“…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

George Eliot (Middlemarch)

I rate Middlemarch a best-book-I’ve-read-in-a-while-and-even-though-I-know-its-style-is-not-for-everyone-I’m-going-to-recommend-it-nevertheless-because-I-had-a-great-time-reading-it-and-I’m-selfish-that-way.

Literary Sins: The World Lied to Me about Moby-Dick

As seen in my first Literary Sins post, I’m on this journey to read classic books that are great works of literature. I started this endeavor because a) I like to read, and b) I did not want to miss out on these classic stories.

Mistakes were made.

Why did no one tell me that Moby-Dick was a complete and utter bore?!

I chose to rectify the supposed literary sin of never having read Moby-Dick months ago. I had read some of Herman Melville’s short stories as part of an English course I took in college, but I had never tackled his “greatest” tale about a man’s vendetta against a white whale.

I had heard of Moby-Dick before, though. I mean, who hasn’t? Its first line is famous, and parodies of the demented Captain Ahab are a dime a dozen.

With those parodies ingrained in my mind, I thought Moby-Dick was going to be an adventure. You know, something along the lines of Treasure Island.

I thought it was going to be fun.

It’s not.

AGJHSKJDHSFDGHUAWESGFBSDBLKIUHYSUGHDFVBSGHDFIERHGKDBFVLJHDBFJKASVGDKVSHDGFJSHDGBFAJHGSD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What the hell, guys?! I was under the assumption that I was in for a seafaring treat, and instead I got this hefty compendium of whale facts.

Seriously, story is just lightly sprinkled over these massive portions of whale tidbits. 10% of the book’s lengthy page count is devoted to progressing and resolving the plot. The other 90% provides details about whale fins, whale bones, whale eyes, whale teeth, whale baleen, whale flukes, whale blubber, whale migration patterns, whales throughout history, whale myths, the whaling industry, the different kinds of whales, whale behavior, whale hunts, whale boats,WHALE EVERYTHING.

I love whales as much as the next person, but come on.

I’m usually not one to mind descriptive detail in my books. Ask anyone who knows about my reading and writing style. I don’t mind getting into paragraphs devoted to describing a single thing.

But there is a limit to how much I can take.

And Herman Melville reached it.

Apparently, Melville’s love of whale trivia is known throughout literary circles. My boyfriend even showed me a meme he found about it after I complained to him about all the whale facts. It’s that one where a boyfriend and girlfriend are walking past a hot girl, so the boyfriend is doing a speculative double-take while the girlfriend glares at him. In place of the hot girl’s face, the words “Whale Facts” covers her features. “Herman Melville” is the boyfriend. “The Actual Plot of Moby-Dick” is the girlfriend.

It’s just a shame that I only found out about this running joke after I had already gotten halfway through Moby-Dick.

Do not, under any circumstances, fall for the trap that is Moby-Dick.

I give Moby-Dick an only-read-this-if-you-are-prepared-to-read-a-lot-of-whale-facts-and-you-want-to-spend-hours-soaking-that-information-up-by-reading-a-novel-instead-of-just-Googling-that-shit-oh-and-it’s-all-written-in-old-timey-language-so-good-luck.