Reading Christine
Wednesday is about books. And reading. (And writing). Today, I finally make it through an old classic. And what a joy it was to have that time to read.
Last night, I finished reading Christine by Stephen King. It was released in 1983, turned into a film by John Carpenterlater that same year (the King boom was on following 1980’s The Shining film adaptation, there was a race to adapt almost everything he had released).
I first bought a copy of Christine in the early 1990s. I read Pet Semetary, It, and Carrie – in that order – and was hooked. We shared titles at school, talked about the latest scary read, and the movie adaptations. I went to Sleepwalkers on the big screen – an original Stephen King screenplay; this one not based on any of his books. It almost didn’t matter that it wasn’t good, that it was totally bonkers and barely appropriate for us at the time (young kids). It was Stephen King. That was what mattered.
Right through high school, King was my favourite author. When I started university, I embarked on the giant rewrite of The Stand (the biggest book I’ve ever read). And sometime after that, my King reading started to dry-up. I was still picking through some of the short stories, and finding my way to his non-fiction, but the five or six-year love affair with his books was now making way for the Beat writers and everything else.
Stephen King books were relegated. But in an adult-sense, they had taught me to read. The only other author whose books had had a similar impact (vital touchstone) many years earlier, was Roald Dahl.
During the 2020 and 2021 lockdowns, I started collecting up Stephen King novels. Over the years, I’d sold and given away most of my stash – had kept just a few. I re-purchased many of the editions I’d previously held, those gorgeous, hand-painted covers as important as the words that sat behind them.
I’d given up drinking, social media was filled with memes and chat about people drinking to cope with being locked down and locked in. I was earning money, but had nothing to spend it on. I took to TradeMe and bought myself a Stephen King collection, book by book.
And I started reading a few of the more recent books – I was never completely out of the loop, I chipped away at a book now and then over the years and watched most of the movies.
Over summer, I started Christine. And loved it instantly. Hurled straight into that world. It’s a dark, and silly book about a killer car. But it’s also a coming-of-age story. King does coming-of-age as well as anyone. Especially if you discovered his working during your own first coming-of-age.
There I was, on holiday, catching up with Leigh and Arnie and Dennis as if they were old friends. Observing them from above.
Over two days, I made it through just over half of the book, and was totally absorbed in the world, nostalgic also for when I read Needful Things, and Gerald’s Game, and The Dark Tower’s first three volumes.
But life gets in the way, as an adult. I have to keep repeating this to my 11yo son, who laughs that I can no longer finish a book in day or two. (I can. Just not in the same luxurious way that he can, or that I once could). We also rewatched the John Carpenter film of Christine, which was glorious – but a silly thing to do when in the middle of reading the source material.
So I, er, parked Christine in January. I have been reading all sorts of things since – but mostly poetry and music biographies. (It’s probably fair to say that, after discovering the Beats, it was poetry and music bios that first shelved King for me all those years ago).
After letting the film die back down in my mind, and reading many other things on the list, yesterday’s public holiday was the perfect chance to just sit with a favourite book and get to reading. I tore through those final pages. And, sure, a book that’s now 40 years old, written in another time and place by an author who was a different person, and possibly pitched at a very different reader from the one I’ve become, could do with a bit of a prune and spruce. A wee edit wouldn’t have hurt. But I just embraced Christine for what it was. A runaway bit of fantasy fiction. A horror story wrapped up in the chrome dreams of youth, an almost cliché American youth – the American youth of the late 70s, the American youth of so many movies, and of the songs (many of them quoted in Christine).
Reading it took me back to the first discovery of Stephen King. It, and Cujo and Four Past Midnight and Night Shift and Skeleton Crew… and every one of those books has several editions and many different and updated covers, but I can only see in my mind the ones that mattered, the ones I owned, the ones I read.
I can remember where I was when I was reading Stephen King. Literally, the position I was in. Reading Gerald’s Gamecurled up on my brand-new double bed. I was meant to be doing my final, crammed study for School C, but my grandfather died the day of my first exam. The new bed arrived. And a hardback of Gerald’s Game had been my incentive for completing the exams. But I just couldn’t wait. Home after my English exam, to dive straight into the weirdness and wonder of Gerald’s Game. To forget about the funeral preparations. To live in another world while I could.
I read Night Shift on a rep hockey trip, playing most of the games on a busted ankle. We watched the film Graveyard Shiftone night, huddled around a motel TV, because I had been talking non-stop about the stories in the book.
Last night, I climbed up to return Christine to its place on the top shelf of my King collection. (Chronologically arranged, obviously). And I plucked out Danse Macabre from right next to it. Published the year before, Danse Macabre was King’s first collection of non-fiction. I’ve dipped in and out of it over the years, but never read it cover to cover. I decided it would be next.
Earlier in the day, I’d watched Evil Dead Rise, which was neither as funny nor scary as I’d hoped. And seemed only to have gore going for it. Well, that and best intentions. But I know Stephen King had been tweeting up a storm about it. And he, like many of us into horror, has always had kind and great things to say about the Evil Dead franchise.
So, it’ll be Danse Macabre next…
When I bought up the King books and made a new collection out of old memories, I liked to think I knew what I was doing. It wasn’t spending for a dopamine hit, okay, it wasn’t just spending for a dopamine hit!
Sitting down over a couple of days, a few months apart, to read and adore the world built in Christine reminded me so viscerally, so palpably, of the world of reading that Stephen King built for me. And for millions of others. That kind of escape isn’t actually as easy to buy as just hitting up TradeMe. There’s something very special behind those gorgeous, hand-painted covers.