{"id":859,"date":"2011-12-29T21:46:06","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T03:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.atomicnewstools.com\/pages\/?p=859"},"modified":"2012-01-28T21:46:23","modified_gmt":"2012-01-29T03:46:23","slug":"please-do-not-send-in-the-clowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/please-do-not-send-in-the-clowns\/","title":{"rendered":"Please, Do Not Send in The Clowns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>

I began reading Stephen King\u2019s latest novel, \u201c11\/22\/63\u201d over Christmas break, having requested and received it as a gift from Abbie, my youngest daughter. I have not read anything by King in years after a phase in the 1990s plowing through \u201cThe Stand,\u201d \u201cIt\u201d and others in short order \u2014 often scaring myself past sleeping soundly.
\nKing belongs to the genre of writing that a colleague terms \u201cbooger tales.\u201d I don\u2019t know where my coworker came up with the phrase, which refers to books or movies designed to scare the bejeebers out of the reader or viewer. But it stuck. I assiduously avoid booger movies, a habit that began after watching \u201cPsycho\u201d many years ago. Real life is scary enough without paying money to be frightened witless.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not as squeamish about books, since one can put down a booger book at any time and skip the scary parts if desired. The printed word, no matter how adept the writer, simply doesn\u2019t have the shocking effect as watching on the big screen when someone jumps out of the bushes to attack the teen couple strolling after dark in the park. Or whatever.<\/p>\n

King\u2019s \u201cIt\u201d features the scariest, evilest clown in modern literature. The novel is set in Derry, Maine, a favorite King locale that doesn\u2019t actually exist. (There is a Derry in New Hampshire, the state where I was raised until nearly a teenager.) The Derry that King describes is broadly reminiscent of the small New Hampshire town in which I lived, near Concord, the state\u2019s capital. Enough strange and sad events occurred there during my youth \u2014 a girl strangled on Good Friday, 1964 by her insane aunt in her home on the next street over from ours, a suicide by shotgun a block away, another classmate gone missing and found murdered months later \u2014 that \u201cIt\u201d resonated in that place deep within, where we try to keep our childhood fears buried. Besides, I have never liked clowns, so King\u2019s novel only reinforced my antipathy.<\/p>\n

King, who lives in Bangor, Maine, once did a fine favor for my middle daughter, Mere. When she was in high school she wrote King a fan letter. Weeks later a box showed up at our house, postmarked from Bangor. The box had previously been used, with the original recipient\u2019s address marked out in black. Inside was a limited-edition publisher\u2019s copy of the fourth Dark Tower book, \u201cWizard and Glass,\u201d and a personal note from him. It was obvious that King had found a used box, packed this personally and trudged down to the post office to send it to a 16-year-old fan. Mere had written King that she lived in Lufkin and loved to drink Orbitz, which she describes as a strange fruit drink with little floating tapioca balls in it.<\/p>\n

King wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cDear Meredith Borders, there’s still plenty of the magic in the world. Your letter proves it. From a fellow Orbitz junkie, Stephen King, 2\/3\/98.\u201d\u00a0King later mentioned my daughter\u2019s hometown in his next two books, in one describing a fellow \u201cmucking out horse stalls in Lufkin, Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where was I? Oh, \u201c11\/22\/63.\u201d That, of course, is the day President Kennedy was shot, news I received while in Mrs. Mahoney\u2019s third-grade class in Allenstown, N.H. In King\u2019s novel, a recently divorced English teacher in \u2014yes \u2014 Derry, Maine, discovers a way to travel back in time and possibly change the outcome of certain events, such as a father in Derry killing several members of his family, and the death of a young president. I couldn\u2019t spoil the ending for you if I wanted, since I\u2019m only about one-fourth of the way through this 850-page turner. King can spin a good yarn, so this is a needed break from dense histories and biographies.<\/p>\n

Early on, King mentions Moxie, a Maine-based soft drink that I tried and failed to enjoy as a child. It\u2019s a bitter carbonated concoction invented in the late 19th century. Moxie might explain why Maine residents have a reputation for being a bit curmudgeonly \u2014 unlike the sunny folks of the great state of New Hampshire. I\u2019m kidding about all that, of course. Moxie, from what I recall, tastes somewhat like root beer without sweetener. The beverage is still produced, though the company website admits Moxie is an \u201cacquired taste.\u201d Sort of like Orbitz, I suppose. Floating tapioca balls?<\/p>\n

My daughter Mere is now a full-time writer and editor. She got her start writing reviews of horror movies for her own blog. She clearly did not inherit her love for booger movies from her dad. She now gets paid to write and edit for Badass Digest, an Austin-based website that reviews pop culture. She works very hard. I\u2019m obviously quite proud.
\nI believe Stephen King played no small part in her success, though he likely will never know that. That\u2019s why returning to read one of his books, set in a place so eerily similar to where I grew up, is a fascinating, if somewhat scary, ride.<\/p>\n

I just hope no clowns show up.<\/p>\n

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Print this entry<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Print this entryI began reading Stephen King\u2019s latest novel, \u201c11\/22\/63\u201d over Christmas break, having requested and received it as a gift from Abbie, my youngest daughter. I have not read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-40"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}