by Jay Wilburn
The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s novels and collections in their order of publication. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance set out the challenge for himself and invited others to join in. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my long fiction and storytelling. I think there are secrets to be discovered or rediscovered in it, too. As Chizmar posts his after read posts and Bev Vincent posts his accompanying history, I will add links to those in my corresponding posts.
Here is Bev Vincent’s historic essay.
Here are Richard Chizmar’s thoughts.
You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.
Much of what I write in these posts will really be notes for me. I will do my best to make them into coherent observations for you. I will also style my comments to be as spoiler free as possible for those who haven’t read the book, but in a way which will also work for those who have read the books. Be warned though that I am discussing the content of the book and the writing.
You may hear voices and see strange sights. Look away if they bother you. Sound carries and it is just the loons. Don’t look down …
According to the dates at the end of the novel, he wrote this over a period of four years. A fresh introduction was included in the copy I read. Pet Sematary is the scariest book he’s written, in his opinion. He almost didn’t publish it because he thought it might be that far over the line. It’s inspired by a real place and a real misspelled sign and a real incident with his son Joe apparently.
There are weird quotation mark mistakes in this reprint. One in particular stands out … “Get out,” I said … is probably supposed to have the quotation after “said” since this is a third person narrative. In addition, the last name of the main character is not capitalized in one spot and an “r” is missing in “were” in one sentence. In another place, the clock “truck ten-thirty” instead of “struck.” The reprints are bringing in extra mistakes that weren’t in the originals, I assume.
He did interesting work in describing relationships between the characters and in explaining the motivations for becoming a particular type of doctor based on a character’s hobbies. The husband trying to communicate an idea successfully to his wife and his daughter separately is really well written back to back. The motivation for doing the wrong thing in thanks for an act of kindness is expressed well enough for the story with a heaping helping of cosmic horror influence for good measure. In my early reading of King, I didn’t have the background to realize how much cosmic horror underscored the fear in his stories.
A “gore-crow” is apparently an old person who talks about death all the time like a crow picking at a carcass.
“Like Zues delivering from his forehead” is a beautifully morbid line. Maybe one of the best in the history of horror.
“The soil of a man’s heart is stonier.” That and the full refrain that follows is iconic.
“It is old and always restless” This is a warning doomed to be ignored or there is no story, now is there?
The details show a story told through the viewpoint of a doctor protagonist. 7 minutes to go to sleep on average, but 15 to 20 minutes to wake up fully. Eyes bulge when afraid and from raised blood pressure. Almost no one is actually immune to poison ivy. Other bits of knowledge like this punctuate his rational view of life and death that will be undone by the madness hidden behind the barrier. Explaining away the supernatural as long as possible is done well and similar to Christine. The mystery of what lies beyond the deadfall is built well.
“False modesty is the half sin of pride.” Good line.
No one can get away with telling a story as long as Stephen King does. And yet, 150 pages in, when a major event happens that I know is coming, it still surprises me. That has to be great storytelling.
“He was obedient” came from King’s daughter’s lost pet at a real life pet cemetery. Her jumping on bubble wrap produced the line “let God get his own cat.”
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is thrown in casually.
Reading about building everything on Christmas Eve makes me tired. Before we had kids, and on the way to a job interview for my wife in the town we live in now, we stopped at my brother-in-law’s house to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with their family. I went to bed as they stayed up until four in the morning putting together toys. I was doing the driving the next day. The kids were miserable and crying because they had to get up early and open their presents fast so they could get to other relatives’ houses. The adults were exhausted and miserable. That experience has shaped how we handle Christmas in taking our time and not going anywhere else with our kids on that day. We never wait until Christmas Eve night to assemble toys. We always make sure everything is together and ready before it is wrapped. When I read this Christmas Eve section in the book in high school, I just thought that was how everyone was supposed to do it.
On a separate note, but related to the sentiment above, exhaustion as an aspect of horror is under-utilized. It digs deep at me from the pages of this story as we approach the ending scenes.
King announced the second death was coming well in advance. Maybe it softens us up for what comes later.
The reference to Audrey Rose on TV, I had to look up. It’s a horror movie about reincarnation from 1977. Anthony Hopkins is in it.
Church the cat keeps bringing dead things to the house. Not unusual for cats, but out of place for him. Quite in place for this story.
“The last happy day of his life” is powerful foreshadowing of death again. The protagonist speculates that we might get one month worth of really good days in our entire life, but God in his wisdom was more generous with the pain.
Childhood is a period of forgetting as much or more than a period of learning is a powerful concept.
A vulture kite was mentioned in this story and in Cycle of the Werewolf.
A zombie analogy is used a couple times in the story including Hattian zombies and a direct reference to George Romero’s zombies. Also referenced is T.S. Elliot’s Hollow Men.
“Sun going down like a bucket of guts” is a great line.
Switching the notion of resurrections into a partial possession is a powerful and eerie trick.
A “what might have been” chapter caught me completely off guard. I kept flipping back to be sure I hadn’t missed something.
The spiral is introduced as an ancient spiritual symbol and an important theme in the book.
The moment of escape could have been when a Stephen King version of a Dicken’s style ghost comes to warn about the future, but it is definitely when a plan of deception turns into an unexpected reconciliation and an opportunity for redemption presents itself. This is the moment of last escape. Putting his wife and daughter on the plane proved to be damaging in and of itself. The separation was a problem even if it was an act of mercy in a horror novel scenario.
Pay toilets in airports … My God, this may be the most awful idea still lingering in the 1980’s. Putting a quarter into pay phones to make a collect call was new to me, too. I’m old enough to have used pay phones at my high school, but I wasn’t familiar with dropping in a quarter being a step in collect calls. It also took me too long to realize that HoJo was short for Howard Johnson’s.
King talks about women’s periods a lot.
A dream proves to be something supernatural. Forces out there somewhere are trying to prevent the cosmic forces of evil from succeeding in their dark magnetism.
The cemetery scene may have been a little long. The tension probably required it though. Couldn’t make that sort of dark business too easy.
“When you get here, come to my house first” feels like sensible advice and the right move, but to just has to be a mistake in this story.
A character passes the exit for Jerusalem’s Lot and the name bothered her. Derry was mentioned as a land marker a few times, too.
This sour dead thing coming from the burial ground is the same evil intelligence from before when the power cycled up in Jud’s younger days and it has unfinished business. This is expressed subtly by Stephen King and left for the reader to piece together.
“Obdurant” may be Stephen King’s “zest.” Other than in 11/22/63, King uses it one time each in some other books and stories, so maybe he gets a pass.
The hurt knee in this story is described the same as similar injuries in Christine.
Another chance to escape is presented as the option of not answering the phone. It’s a little late for that though.
The climax of the story ended faster than I remembered or expected. Again, the movie may have shaded my recollection of the book.
Hair going grey from fright and stress again.
As a parent, as haunted as I am by the gruesomely simple final lines of this novel, I’m haunted by not knowing what happens to a particular family member left behind in Chicago.
The book is a powerful exploration of the one great fear of death. The nephew and second cousin as pallbearers drove the difference between my two readings of this book home for me. 20 year old kids with no connection to the dying generations are just performing a temporary duty. They’re setting death aside and moving on with their lives. That’s who I was when I first read this book. Now, I’m a bit past Louis, but not quite to Jud. I sure as hell wouldn’t be climbing a deadfall, crossing a haunted swamp, and burying a cat or anything else in a sour ground Indian burial ground. If for no other reason than I don’t have or want pets.
My kissing acquaintance with death from my own experience made it an entirely different reading this time through. The losses young and old all hit differently in this stretch of my life. Maybe more than I expected even though I suspected they would. I enjoyed this reading of Pet Sematary immensely more than the first time I read it in high school. Easily in my top ten Stephen King books. My next post will be Before The Eyes of the Dragon which will be linked on Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
— Jay Wilburn, unless you have given me a kidney, don’t ask me to help you bury anything … and I sure hope that guy doesn’t ask.
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