Author: Edward Trimnell

5150 is 39 years old

It is difficult to believe that 5150, Van Halen’s seventh studio album, is now 39 years old. But this is indeed the case. 5150 was released on March 24, 1986. Has that much time really passed? I’m afraid so.

I can still remember when “Dreams” and “Why Can’t This Be Love” were new songs on FM radio. I immediately liked what I heard; and I became one of the thousands of people—mostly teenagers—who purchased the album in its early days. (More than 6 million copies of the album have been sold since then.)

This was the 1980s, and so we bought all of our music in record stores at the mall, of course. The album cover featured a muscle man holding up a metallic sphere, Atlas-like. This struck me as both interesting and strange, but I shrugged and went with it. (I was an avid reader of Muscle & Fitness in those days.)

The big news about this album was that Van Halen had a new lead singer. David Lee Roth was out, Sammy Hagar was in.

Sammy Hagar already had a following of his own as a solo artist. So this was rather like a merger between two companies with established brands. I was already a fan of Hagar, so I was predisposed to like the new, changed Van Halen.

Speaking of which: I had been a very lukewarm fan of Van Halen until then. Like everyone, I appreciated Eddie Van Halen’s unique guitar skills. But the Van Halen songs of the David Lee Roth era were banal in the extreme, even by the standards of a high school kid. The Roth-era songs were all about girls and parties, or they were about nothing at all.

I also suspected, even back then, that David Lee Roth was something of an egotistical jackass. These suspicions were confirmed for me decades later, when I read Runnin’ with the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen. Written by former band manager Noel Monk, Runnin’ with the Devil describes Roth’s self-indulgent, often vindictive behavior in detail. I didn’t know any of these details then; but I was glad to see Sammy Hagar replace the compulsively peacocking Roth. 

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5150 was a different kind of Van Halen album. The songs on this album had a mystic, almost aspirational quality. And yet—5150 was still upbeat, fun, and accessible. It wasn’t one of those dreary, navel-gazing rock albums that people claim you have to smoke weed in order to appreciate.

Van Halen would never be its old self again. The new trend—of better songwriting—would peak over the next two VH albums: OU812 (1988) and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (1991).

Should Sammy Hagar be credited for these changes? Given the magnitude and the timing of the shift, it is difficult to conclude otherwise.

“Love Walks In”, the second song on Side 2 of the album, is one of 5150’s most interesting pieces. The song’s lyrics suggest time travel, fate, reincarnation….who knows?

Some years after 5150 was released, Sammy Hagar stated that “Love Walks In” was written about communication with extraterrestrial aliens. I took a very different meaning from the song at the time—which I’ll spare the reader. And I still do. But that is one of the hallmarks of successful art: each person can walk away from it with a slightly different interpretation. For decades now, millions of people have regarded the Beatles’ “Let It Be”, as a Catholic ballad about the Virgin Mary. Paul McCartney actually wrote the song about his deceased mother, who was also named Mary.

5150 is one of those albums that, for me, will always represent a specific time and place. The spring of 1986 is long gone. I will turn 57 this year, and I don’t try to pretend that I’m still a senior in high school…not even when I listen to my favorite music from that bygone era.

I still have my own interpretation of “Love Walks In”, though. And I still enjoy listening to this almost 40-year-old album. Its songs never get old. If only the same could be said for this particular listener.

-ET

**Get 5150 on CD or vinyl at Amazon

Raymond Carver’s short stories

Some time ago I purchased Where I’m Calling From, the final collection of short stories from Raymond Carver (1938 – 1988). The collection also includes some of Carver’s early published stories.

I have just gotten around to reading this collection. Overall, I would rate these stories quite favorably, for work produced during the mid-20th century.

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That doesn’t mean that Carver’s stories will suit everyone’s taste. This is not genre fiction. These are not tales of horror, crime, adventure, romantic fantasy, or alien invasions. Carver’s fiction has been described as minimalist and realist. Kind of like Hemingway at his driest, on steroids. Carver mostly wrote stories about working-class life. And when you add in the generation gap, some of these stories can seem a little dated.

And yes, there are a few that are…not exactly boring…but you finish them wondering, “Now, what was the point of that?”

That said, Carver was a master of bringing narrative passages to life. He was a master of microtension. Even when he is writing about outwardly mundane circumstances, you want to read on, to find out what will happen next.

Raymond Carver lived only 50 years, and published fiction for about 20 years. He wrote only poems, short stories, and screenplays. No novels. As a result, he did not leave a massive body of work behind. But what he did leave is well worth exploring.

-ET

View WHERE I’M CALLING FROM: SELECTED STORIES on Amazon

‘The Americans’: is now the time for a sequel?

I don’t evangelize many 21st-century television shows. But I am unabashed in my enthusiasm for The Americans, the period spy drama that originally aired on FX from 2013 to 2018.

The Americans is about big events of the final decade of the Cold War. But it is also a family drama: about Philip and Elizabeth Jennings and their two children. The Jenningses are deep-cover Soviet KGB operatives. Philip and Elizabeth do all the bad things you would expect KGB agents to do. But they also cope with the pressures of maintaining their cover, and keeping their secret from their two children, who were born in the USA.

The series finale was set at the end of 1987/early 1988, just as Cold War tensions were easing. No spoilers here, except to say the series ended in a way that was satisfying, while simultaneously leaving the door open for sequels.

And it’s easy to imagine any number of sequels, based on a myriad of post-1988 plot lines. So much was yet to happen: the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan (1989), the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and the collapse of the USSR (1991).

And what about the post-Soviet, Yeltsin and Putin eras? The possibilities are endless.

In a March 11, 2023 interview on The Rich Eisen Show, series star Matthew Rhys hinted at the possibility of The Americans continuing in some form.

That was almost two years ago. I remain cautiously hopeful. But I am also realistic about these things. Despite the high quality of the show’s concept and execution, a revived version of The Americans would face certain obstacles.

To begin with, young audiences may have difficulty relating to the subject matter. I am in my 50s and I remember the 1980s as if that decade ended last year. Viewers under 40, who lack such a perspective (and who have suffered the intellectual depredations of American public education) may struggle to get a foothold as they begin a show that involves Cold War-era history.

The Americans premiered in a crowded 2010s TV arena, filled with more accessible shows involving dragons, superheroes, and teenagers performing magic. The Americans was always a critical success, but it never got the viewership it deserved.

That may also have been an issue of timing. Between 2013 and 2018, the US public was focused on economic recovery, ISIS, Islamic terrorism, and the 2016 presidential election. The Cold War and Russia seemed far, far away.

That faraway perception of Russia may have changed, however, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and talk of a Cold War II from all quarters.

Now may be the perfect time to revive The Americans, in fact. A post-Soviet storyline would make the most sense. But there is plenty of material surrounding the fall of the USSR, too.

Even if The Americans zoomed forward to the present era, it could be made to work. All of the main characters, though much older, could plausibly still be alive.

I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel to my all-time favorite television show. As the above interview with Matthew Rhys suggests, I’m not alone in hoping for more seasons of The Americans.

-ET

When the Ohio River froze over

This week’s cold wave brought record, or near-record, lows to much of the country. Temperatures fell below zero here in Cincinnati. In Pittsburgh (I have a friend who lives there), the low reached -11 F.

And yet, we old timers take such weather in stride. Many of us remember the blizzard years of 1976 to 1978.

In January 1977, the Ohio River froze over. I was only nine years old then. But one of my older friends, then in his late teens, claims to have driven his car over the river that cold January. Many people did, after all.

That said, I’m relieved to see the weather forecast for the upcoming week: afternoon highs above freezing, and one day with a forecast high of 50 F.

I’m no fan of this weather we’ve been having. But it could always be worse.

-ET

‘The Dead Zone’ and narrative drive

At the end of 2024 I read Stephen King’s The Dead Zone for the second time.

I had read this book for the first time back in 1984, when I was fifteen going on sixteen. In the intervening years, I had never revisited  the book. (I did see the 1983 film adaptation starring Christopher Walken. While this was a valiant effort on Hollywood’s part, the movie simply didn’t capture the essence of the complex, multilayered source material of the novel.)

‘The Dead Zone’: an experiment in rereading

I decided in December 2024 that forty years was enough time to wait between readings of The Dead Zone. I therefore gave the book another reading. While I remembered most of the major plot points, I had forgotten enough that the book was “fresh” in my rereading.

I also did this as an experiment of sorts. I have been disappointed by Stephen King’s recent novels. Last year I plodded my way through the meandering Fairy Tale (2022), and I struggled to finish it. I was glad when Fairy Tale was over. I nearly gave up on The Outsider (2018) and Doctor Sleep (2013). I did give up on Cell (2006), Under the Dome (2009), and Lisey’s Story (2006), abandoning all three books midway through.

And yet, I recalled loving Stephen King’s early novels so much. Seemingly everything published under his name between 1974 and 1983 was pure gold. Carrie, The Shining, Cujo, The Stand…I had gone through all of those books like a hot knife through butter. And that was back when I had the distracted mind of a teenager.

I wondered if my tastes had changed, or maybe matured. For example, I still enjoy the music of the Canadian rock group Rush. But I have backed off from my teenage assertions that Neil Peart’s lyrics are absolutely brilliant, a complete system of philosophy set to music.

The fifty-something eye can simply not see the world through the teenage lens. Therefore, a rereading of The Dead Zone would be a worthwhile test. Had Stephen King changed? Or had I changed?

‘The Dead Zone’: not quite a horror novel

The Dead Zone is the story of Johnny Smith, a Maine English teacher who emerges from a car accident and a four-year coma with psychic powers. Not long after his awakening, Smith discovers that he has an important mission to perform, one involving an act of political violence. But in committing this one act, Smith will literally save the world.

Although there is a serial murderer subplot, The Dead Zone is not a horror novel in the conventional sense. If Stephen King hadn’t written it, The Dead Zone would have been shelved in the science fiction section. The Dead Zone reminds me of something the late Michael Crichton would have written.

**View ‘THE DEAD ZONE’ on Amazon**

The results of my reread

So what did I think? Forty years later, I will tell you the same thing I would have told you in 1984: The Dead Zone is an absolutely brilliant novel. I enjoyed The Dead Zone just as much as a 56-year-old as I did at the age of not-quite-sixteen. In fact, I enjoyed it more, because there were some layers and references that went over my head forty years ago, that I appreciated this time around.

The power of narrative drive

Why is The Dead Zone such a good novel? The premise? Well, yes, the premise is an intriguing one. But Stephen King, in the early years, made magic with vampires in ’Salem’s Lot, his second novel. Vampires were hardly original by the time ’Salem’s Lot was published in 1975. Bram Stoker had already done them seventy-eight years earlier.

The Dead Zone has a compelling premise and strong central characters. More than that, though, The Dead Zone has a strong narrative drive. Although by no means a short book, there is not a single wasted scene in The Dead Zone. There are no meandering subplots. 

The problem of the Frankenstory

Fairy Tale, by contrast, is what I would call a Frankenstory. It lacks a coherent wholeness. If you read the book, you’ll find that it is actually two novels in one. There is the “in-this-world” story that comes in the first half of the book. And then there is the portal fantasy.

Or, no…that isn’t exactly right. It would be more accurate to say that Stephen King devotes a full novel’s worth of space setting up the main story premise in Fairy Tale.

I first noticed that Stephen King’s style had changed back in 1986, when I read It. Whereas before his novels and stories had moved along a straight narrative throughline, now they meandered to and fro.

What else makes a novel a Frankenstory? A story with too many characters, especially point-of-view characters. (This is a particularly pernicious trap for many fantasy authors.)

***

Anyway, I very much enjoyed my reread of The Dead Zone. The book really is that good. I recommend it for those who would like to read Stephen King at the top of his game.

-ET

Language learning goals for 2025

Zoe.languages is one of the language YouTubers whom I like. Below she speaks about her language learning goals for 2025.

What about me, you ask? I love learning foreign languages, and could easily spend all my time doing so. But for me, learning languages (especially new ones) is now a sideline.

My goals for 2025, therefore, will be somewhat limited:

  1. Maintain my Japanese and Spanish
  2. Become more articulate in Mandarin
  3. Become fully proficient in Russian and German

I.e., I’ll be focusing on five languages this year, four of which I already speak and understand to a significant degree.

I am sorely tempted to take on Polish, Korean, and Arabic, too. But these are three difficult languages that would require more time than I can justify at present.

In the past I have studied French, Italian, and Portuguese. I may pick French back up near the end of this year. We’ll see. As for Italian and Portuguese: they are so similar to Spanish that I tend to mix them up, when I’m not spending a lot of time in a Spanish-speaking environment (as I’m not doing now).

-ET

‘The Empire Strikes Back’ comic magazine: 1980

In the spring of 1980, I was eleven years old going on twelve. I was a huge Star Wars fan, part of the original generation that discovered the movies as kids.

Like many kids of that era, I couldn’t get enough of the Star Wars story. Seeing the movies in the cinema wasn’t enough. 

And for that we had Star Wars comics. Marvel put out a big Star Wars edition for the first film in 1977: more or less a retelling of the movie in graphic form, and simplified a little for young readers.

My parents bought me the comic version of the first film in 1977, and I read it from cover-to-cover, many times over. When the comic for The Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, my parents gave me that, too. I also read this one many times, even though I’d seen the movie!

Thinking about all the hours of pleasure I (and so many other Gen X kids) derived from a single comic book makes me long for simpler times, of course.  We did not have as many entertainment options in those days. The Internet was still almost 20 years in the future. Video games, still crude, were only beginning to become a thing.

But there is also something to be said for the unprecedented creative impact and economic power of the Star Wars story in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The glory had faded a little by the time Return of the Jedi, the third movie, came out in 1983. But between the release of the first and second movies, 1977 – 1980, Star Wars was a cultural colossus. To put it in contemporary terms: combine Taylor Swift with the Super Bowl, and then multiply that by a factor of five.

Looking at that comic, I feel something else, too; and this one is personal. I feel fortunate that I had two parents who loved me, and provided me with more than the basics of food and shelter. As I’ve noted before, I was very blessed in my formative years. I have little to complain about.

-ET

Audrey Hepburn’s languages

I study multiple languages, and I worked for many years as a professional translator. I love foreign languages, and I love learning them.

Nevertheless, I don’t have much interest in the online “polyglot” community, as it has come to exist on social media platforms like YouTube. 

Nor will I ever create one of those cringeworthy YouTube videos in which a language learner displays his or her various languages for the virtual claps of fellow language learners.

(On that note: I am particularly dismayed by the “polyglot” YouTuber who employs randomly chosen native speakers as unwitting”props” in public spaces.)

I am far more impressed with people who combine multilingualism with a full slate of personal and professional interests. Foreign language study should be a part of every well-rounded, well-educated life. But not the sole focus of it…and certainly not an excuse to engage in constant public preening.

This is why I’m genuinely impressed by the linguistic achievements of the late Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993). Her first language was Dutch. She also spoke fluent French, English, and Italian. She was proficient in Spanish and German. 

Watch the above video, and you’ll see what a natural multilingual she was. You’ll also note that, unlike so many of today’s YouTube polyglots, she did not make a big deal of her attainments. She did not say, “Hey, watch me speak X language now!” Rather, she used the languages she had learned in a situationally appropriate and unpretentious manner.

-ET

Happy 2025

The view from the parking lot of my gym

I caught this rainbow in the parking lot of my gym this morning, as I was departing from my New Year’s Eve workout, and my last workout of 2024.

Regular readers will know that I’m a teetotaler. (The last time I drank to excess was New Year’s Eve 1986.) So this will be a quiet night for me.

I hope 2024 ends well for you, and that 2025 brings something better.

This will be my last post of the year, too. I’ll see you in 2025.

-ET

When ‘TV Guide’ was essential

In those days before a zillion cable channels (let alone the Internet), there was TV Guide.

Launched in 1953, these little weekly magazines would be familiar to anyone from the Baby Boom generation or Generation X. (Some of the older Millennials may have dim early childhood memories of TV Guide, too.)

Each issue of TV Guide contained a listing of the week’s programming, of course. There were also articles in the front of the magazine that were sometimes worth reading. (If you were interested in television and Hollywood happenings, that was.)

The covers, moreover, were often minor works of art. Like this one from 1986, which depicts the cast of Cheers, one of the most popular shows of the 1980s.

TV Guide was always on my mother’s shopping list. It was on everyone’s shopping list. Why? Because without this publication, you would have a hard time knowing what programs were on, on which channels, and at what times.

The magazine was cheaply priced. (The 60¢ May 10, 1986 issue shown above would equate to only about $1.70 in today’s dollars.) But TV Guide was nevertheless essential.

With a shelf life of only one week, these weren’t magazines that anyone saved for posterity. Sometimes, though, one of them would end up beneath a sofa or behind a recliner, only to turn up months later.

TV Guide still exists as a going concern, but it’s a shadow of its former self. The TV Guide website probably gets some traffic, but the stripped-down, printed version of the magazine is no longer the weekly grocery-cart essential it once was. Not in this era of cable, Hulu, Netflix and YouTube. I could not find a copy of TV Guide at my local Walmart, Meijer, or Kroger. The publication now seems to rely on a shrunken, hardcore base of snail-mail subscribers.

Yes, another casualty of our digital age of hyper-abundance. TV Guide’s original mission has become not just obsolete—but impossible, even if someone wanted to attempt it.

Network and cable listings are only a small part of the viewing options nowadays. On-demand is where the real action is…not just on Netflix and Hulu, but on the endless sea of variety that is YouTube. On-demand viewings, loosely organized by search engines, defy the bounds of itemized printed lists.

It would not be incorrect to say that the original TV Guide is a relic of pre-Internet times; but this description would be insufficiently precise. The old TV Guide is a relic of a time when the scope of available programming for a single week was small enough that it could be completely curated, listed, and described in a single publication.

Needless to say, those days are gone; and—barring some cataclysmic change that restarts everything from scratch—those days are gone forever.

-ET

The bygone, venerable 8-track

Members of my generation lived to see plenty of changes in the ways popular music is consumed. We were born in the golden age of the vinyl album. As adults, many of us are learning to cope with streaming music services.

Throughout most of the 1980s, the audio cassette tape was the most popular means of buying music and listening to it. When I see nostalgic Facebook posts about physical music media from the 1980s, the cassette tape is most often the subject.

But there was another musical format that was already dying out as the 1980s began, but which was actually quite good, by the standards of the time. I’m talking about the venerable 8-track tape.

The 8-track was a plastic cartridge that had dimensions of 5.25 x 4 x 0.8 inches. Like the audio cassette, the 8-track contained a magnetic tape. But unlike the audio cassette, the 8-track was much less prone to kinking and tangling.

The 8-track was actually 1960s technology. The 8-track took off in the middle of that decade, when auto manufacturers began offering 8-track players as factory-installed options in new vehicles. Throughout the 1970s, 8-track players were popular options on new cars. 8-tracks were further popularized by subscription music services like Columbia House.

Columbia House magazine ad from the 1970s

I purchased my first home stereo system for my bedroom in 1982, with money I had saved from my grass-cutting job. I bought it at Sears, which was one of the best places to buy mid-level home audio equipment at that time. The stereo included an AM/FM radio, a turntable for vinyl records, a cassette deck, and an 8-track player. 

I quickly discovered that I liked the 8-track format the best, because of its relatively compact size and ease of use. That spring I bought 8-track versions of Foreigner 4, Styx’s Paradise Theater, and the Eagles Live album. All of these produced good sound (again, by the standards of that era), and none of them ever jammed or tangled. I was convinced that I had found my musical format.

It has often been my destiny to jump on a trend just as it is nearing its end. Little did I know that my beloved 8-track was already in steep decline.

8-track sales in the USA peaked in 1978, and began falling after that. The culprit was the slightly more compact, but far more error-prone audio cassette. This was the format that all the retailers were suddenly pushing. By the early 1980s, cassette players were also replacing 8-track players in cars.

I would like to say that I yielded to the march of technological progress, but this wouldn’t be truly accurate. The audio cassette, invented in 1963, was slightly older technology than the 8-track.

I did, however, yield to the march of commercial trends, simply because I had no choice. Nineteen-eighty-three was the year that retailers began phasing out 8-tracks in stores. You could still purchase them from subscription services, but they were disappearing from the shelves of mall record stores and general merchandisers like K-Mart. By early 1984, the venerable 8-track had completely vanished.

In recent years, there has been a movement to resurrect the vinyl record. I’ve noticed no similar trend aimed at bringing back the 8-track. At this point, in the early- to mid-2020s, I may be the only person left on the planet who still fondly remembers this bygone musical medium.

-ET

Iron Maiden: what was cool about ‘The Trooper’

“The Trooper” appeared on Iron Maiden’s 1983 album, Piece of Mind. Both the song and the MTV video are now regarded as classics.

But when I first saw and heard this, it was just another new song in the MTV lineup.

Not to me, though. I immediately recognized something special about “The Trooper”. I can’t say I predicted that it would become a timeless classic. But I’m not exactly surprised, either.

Yes, of course, there is the hard-driving beat. Also, the juxtaposition of old movie footage with studio clips of the band in the video. (This would become a signature technique for Iron Maiden music videos.)

Even more than all that: this is a heavy metal song about the Crimean War, inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1854 narrative poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.

In the early 1980s, heavy metal bands like the Scorpions and AC/DC were singing about the usual, tired topics: sex, parties, and rock-n-roll. Iron Maiden was writing songs about 19th century warfare. And the musical results were pleasing to the ear.

Now, if you don’t think that’s cool, well, I don’t know what to tell you. This is why I’ve been an Iron Maiden fan for over 40 years.

-ET

**Shop for Iron Maiden merchandise on Amazon**

Reading notes: Michael Connelly’s ‘Chasing the Dime’

One day in 2004, I was browsing through the bargain books bin at my local Borders bookstore. (Yes, we still had brick-and-mortar bookstores back then, though only for a few more years.)

I came across a hardcover copy of a mystery novel, Chasing the Dime. The author was Michael Connelly, whose name I recognized, but whose books I had yet to read. The price of the hardcover book was cheap, even by 2004 standards: $5.99, or something like that. I decided to give Chasing the Dime a try.

Drawn in by the story, I read Chasing the Dime in a few days. I then moved on to Michael Connelly’s series mysteries: those of Harry Bosch and Jack McEvoy, and then Mickey Haller, aka the Lincoln Lawyer.

Chasing the Dime is a standalone novel, of the “amateur sleuth” genre. Originally published in 2002, this is the story of a tech entrepreneur, Henry Pierce, who gets a new phone number after he changes his residence. The new phone number was recently held by a woman named “Lilly”.

Pierce gets numerous calls from men, many who are phoning from Los Angeles-area hotels. These men all seem eager to make evening appointments with Lilly.

Pierce quickly determines that Lilly is an escort. He also learns that Lilly went missing about two months ago. The phone company reassigned her number when she failed to pay the bill.

Pierce becomes obsessed with finding Lilly, or discovering what happened to her. (Not far into his investigation, Pierce concludes that foul play is involved.) This leads him to neglect his work and personal life. The search for Lilly also leads him to risk his physical safety.

**View CHASING THE DIME on Amazon**

Twenty years have gone by since I first read the novel. I recently decided to listen to the audiobook version of Chasing the Dime. As is often the case when I watch a film or read a story for the second time, I noticed things.

There are two major challenges in any “amateur sleuth” story. The first is: how does the amateur sleuth become involved in the mystery? The second: what motivates the amateur sleuth to investigate?

Michael Connelly plausibly answers the first question. In a big city like Los Angeles, just before the iPhone era, it is easy enough to imagine the phone company quickly recycling abandoned phone numbers, with some odd coincidences resulting.

The amateur sleuth’s motivation is less believable here. Connelly does create a childhood backstory for Pierce that partially explains his sudden obsession with Lilly’s fate. Also, Pierce has just broken up with his girlfriend, so he is emotionally vulnerable.

But as numerous secondary characters tell him, missing persons cases are best left to the police, or a trained private investigator. Also, Henry Pierce is a very busy man in the middle of some all-consuming, high-stakes endeavors. Would such a man really devote so much time to investigate the whereabouts of a stranger?

But that’s a flaw I noticed on the second reading/listening. There is no such thing as a perfect story, and Chasing the Dime is not a perfect novel. But this was the book that got me hooked on Michael Connelly. Twenty years later, I’ve been a fan ever since.

-ET

‘Salem’s Lot’: then and now

I was poking around on YouTube when I discovered the above trailer. Apparently Max (formerly HBO Max) has created a new screen adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot, Stephen King’s 1975 novel about vampires taking over a small town in Maine. 

I saw the original TV miniseries when it aired back in November 1979. I was 11 years old, in the sixth grade. There were some scenes in the 1979 original adaptation that were genuinely creepy–especially to the 11-year-old me.

When I started reading Stephen King’s novels in 1984, ‘Salem’s Lot was the one I started with. About five years had passed since my viewing of the miniseries. And I was then a sophomore in high school instead of a sixth-grader.

I read ‘Salem’s Lot in about three days. I found the book an absolute page-turner. (I seem to recall doing poorly on a geometry test, because I was reading ‘Salem’s Lot when I should have been studying!)

I’ve reread the book several times since then. From my more critical (and more jaundiced) adult perspective, I can see some flaws that I didn’t notice back then. But no matter. ‘Salem’s Lot is still a humdinger of a story, at the end of the day. 

‘Salem’s Lot has a modern (1970s modern, anyway) feel to it.  You don’t get the sense that you’re reading a story set in a remote location in 19th-century Europe, like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). ‘Salem’s Lot therefore seems like a story that could happen. (If vampires existed, that is!)

Moreover, ‘Salem’s Lot is a real vampire story. Not a fake, teen girl romance tale masquerading as a vampire story, like that Twilight nonsense. (Don’t even get me started on Stephenie Meyer’s high crimes against the vampire genre.)

The 1970s/80s paperback version of ‘Salem’s Lot that I read in 1984

The new Max film version of ‘Salem’s Lot looks scary, based on the trailer. I will doubtless get around to seeing it a some point, but this is one that can wait, in my case.

‘Salem’s Lot, great story that it is, is one that has been with me for 45 years now, in one form or another. I watched the original TV miniseries at age 11. I read the novel for the first time at age 15. I’m now 56, and I know this story so well that I cannot help anticipating all the major plot points before they occur.

But such are the vagaries of age, and of rereading books, and watching their screen adaptations over decades. If your history with ‘Salem’s Lot is less extensive than mine (and it probably is), you’ll  want to rush to the new Max version of it. A younger version of me would have felt the same way.

-ET

View ‘Salem’s Lot on Amazon!