In recent years I've rekindled my relationship with Stephen King, and a few months ago I made it my goal to read all of his "A-List" classic novels (most recently with Cujo). With Christine, I think that task is done. (Reading all of King's work is a much heftier goal that will have to wait for me to re-read the Dark Tower series a few more times, if it ever happens).
I'm not much of a car person. Cars are transportation to me, and not even my favorite kind of transportation (I prefer a nice walk if possible). So, Christine was never very high on my list. But I was wrong. This book is about a haunted car somewhat like Moby-Dick is about a whale.
I mean, it is about a haunted car, but it's also about so much more: friends drifting apart, growing up, watching children grow up, facing the deaths of ones loved ones and oneself, and perhaps above all: the deep psychological and social harm of obsession (a theme King picked up later with Needful Things and one thing Christine has in common with Moby-Dick).
I'll come back to some of these themes in a bit, but let me say a bit about the narrative structure. The book is set in 1978, although it wasn't published until 1983 (there is a reason for this the reader doesn't learn until the end). And it's in a town near Pittsburgh instead of King's typical Maine. It starts off with the first person narration of a teenage boy named Dennis, whose friend Arnie purchases a used 1958 Plymouth Fury, one of those 50's cars with lots of chrome and fins and stuff... I don't know. I told you I'm not a car person.
At first I was lamenting the first-person narration, which can wear thin in a book this long (my pocket paperback from the 80's comes in at about 500 pages). But I really loved Dennis's sarcastic wit, and was looking forward to reading the book in his narration. But then in the second part of the book, we suddenly switch to third person narration. There are reasons for this (those parts of the story would be impossible to tell from Dennis's POV). It was an interesting choice, and then King made it even more interesting by going back to Dennis's first-person POV for the third and last part of the book. Switching between first- and third-person narration is obviously not something King invented, but it worked surprisingly well.
My only real complaint is that the novel does start to drag about 3/4 through. There are really only four main characters (one of whom is a haunted car) instead of the cast of dozens you get in King's doorstopper tomes like IT or The Stand. And there's only so much these characters can do.
As for the deeper philosophical themes, the issue about kids and adults is best summed up by this line that really stuck with me: "If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die" (p. 45). Whoa. Pretty profound stuff for a 17-year-old narrator. There's also interesting stuff about how the parents don't know their kids anymore, and in Arnie's case there's a supernatural element, not just the usual teenage rebellion.
The haunted car stuff is fun. And creepy. Did I mention creepy? This is vintage King here.
But it's also a way to discuss desire and unhealthy obsessions. Arnie's obsession with Christine destroys his relationships with others: his parents, his girlfriend Leigh, and most heartbreakingly, his best friend Dennis (seriously, that was super sad to me, especially since they had a healthy and emotionally deep male friendship).
The parallel with Moby-Dick is maybe too obvious, but Ahab and Arnie are both destroyed by their obsessions. A less obvious parallel (or maybe obvious to King fans) is with Needful Things. In my review of that book, I noted that the whole thing is a kind of Buddhist hell-realm where people's obsessions and desires cause suffering. Even in traditional Buddhism, hell-realms are as psychological as they are "literal": you are reborn into a hell-realm whenever your desires, obsessions, and delusions cause suffering (see the first two Noble Truths). In Buddhism eliminating those causes and their resulting suffering is no small work, but it is possible (see the third and fourth Noble Truths).
In Christine, you get a modern horror version of the role of the Buddhist community (or sangha) in the lengths Dennis and Leigh go through to save their friend from Christine, but I don't want to spoil anything. Like the cycle of suffering (saṃsāra) itself, Christine is much more difficult to escape than you'd think. But in both cases perhaps escape is possible.
See my Goodreads review.
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| Enjoying a classic edition of the book on my porch... |
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| Where Stranger Things got their opening credits...? |
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