I just read his book On Writing and, if I’m remembering correctly, Carrie was based off of two loner kids he went to school with.
You know, this sort of phenomenon occurs all the time and it usually works the exact opposite of how you would think, and exactly how Ellen Glasgow’s publisher believed. Consider the Twilight books, the Harry Potter series (the NYT actually made a separate best seller list to stick the Harry Potter books in, because elitists were so tired of seeing it dominate the charts, as I heard), hell, even Stephen King himself. He has said many times that he routinely gets trashed by the critics.
This happens all over, not just in the world of books. Everything that reaches a “super popular” status starts seeing a backlash. It seems to me that it is very cool to dislike the “trendy” thing going. There’s a reason the Yankees are the most widely loved and widely hated team. Dane Cook was adored until he got too big for his britches, same with the Lakers, etc… Critics tend to think that the average joe is incapable of seeing what is “truly art” and anything that is popular must therefore be banal and juvenile.
When it comes to literature, I think this feeling gets passed down from the literary elite (critics and professors), who, generally despise the works of King, Crichton, Grisham, Rowling, etc. Basically any of the superstars of the writing world. That leads me to believe that, yeah, the more popular you are (in your time, I might argue), the more likely you are to get trashed by the critics.
It’s been years since I’ve read the book, but I seem to remember Mrs. White reminiscing at one point about her grandmother, who would sit in her chair cackling while objects moved around her; she concludes that Carrie inherited her “witchcraft” or whatever from Great-Grandma.
I have a lot of sympathy for Carrie; I remember near the beginning of the book, shortly after Carrie is sent home from school (I think), she begins fantasizing about being normal. She thinks about how she could fix her hair and lose a little weight and sew herself some fashionable clothes and maybe she’d be accepted…
But then her mother comes home and squashes her back down into despair, and the reader knows as well as Carrie that no matter what she does she’ll never be anything but an outcast; if she tries to improve herself the abuse and derision will only get worse. So when she takes the hugely courageous step of going to the prom, hoping against hope that it will be all right, that she might belong for once, only to end up covered in pig blood - I feel very sorry for her.
Not to nitpick Freudian Slit but I think you mean Fran instead of Nadine. Wasn’t Nadine a former school teacher and in her mid-thirties?
When it comes to Rowling at least this just isn’t true. The Harry Potter books have never attracted much scorn from lit critics. It wouldn’t take long on the Internet to find ordinary people willing to bash the series, but the New York Times has always given the books favorable reviews. I won’t link to all of them, but here are a few examples:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Other major reviewers like Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal are all similarly positive about the series.
As for literature professors, I’d be pretty surprised to hear that one had wasted valuable lecture time denouncing current bestsellers. Not TOTALLY surprised because there are plenty of crackpots and eccentrics in academia, but current bestsellers would be off-topic in most college lit courses. I do remember a high school English teacher of mine who had a rule against using King for book reports (not a total ban, one of four required reports could be on a King novel) but he didn’t say this was because they were bad but because without this rule there were students who would refuse to read anything other than King novels.
Carrie didn’t just act different, she looked different too, in the book. Overweight and clad in woolen underpants that scratched. She had a big giant target on her and kids had been teasing her for years. Sissy Spacek was a beauty queen compared to book Carrie. She was ugly, pimply, fat and greasy haired. The high-school girls though never rang true to me, though; mostly you’d ignore someone so repulsive, even if you are confident and popular.
I admit I read the book at a younger age and was sort of interested to find out if teenage girls were as horrible as the girls depicted in Carrie. Thankfully, they weren’t!
King said somewhere (it might be Danse Macabre?) that he thought the movie actualized his story better than he did in the book. It was his first book, remember; he got better.
I was going to mention about the cackling grandmother and moving objects, but I see Marlitharn beat me to it. I like the theory that the mother became a religious fanatic to contradict her innate witchiness. How she hooked up with the weird father, though, who knows.
As for the original question, I am pretty sure Tommy dies in the book. The bucket-to-the-head happens in the movie. In the book, she just torches the place.
Carrie didn’t kill that character. He died when the bucket hit his head.
Odesio
My thoughts exactly. No one at that high school or in that home would ever allow Carrie to “rise above her station.” That was the critique of HS that King was shooting for, IIRC- a strict caste system rife with cruelty and injustice. Carrie was homely and socially inept, and because she had been going to school with these kids since elementary (probably), she never had a chance.
King has also said that he got MUCH better at writing women later on! 
The female character who seemed the least believable was Tommy’s girlfriend- way too “white knight” for me to believe (of course, she wouldn’t do anything nice for Carrie in public…).
You will find plenty of people who will describe the snake-pit of HS as worse than King portrayed it.
Because there’s one moment in the book…maybe a page or two long at most right before the pig-blood moment…where Sue (the “good girl” who bullies her boyfriend Tommy into taking Carrie to the prom and who narrates much of the book) sees Carrie, washed*, make-up on, beautiful hand-sewn prom-gown and starting to interact with the other kids. It’s only for a minute or two. Tommy and some other guy start ripping on each other (“Hey asshole”/“Your mamma didn’t think I was an asshole last night” type stuff) and Carrie tenses, realizes it’s just a male-bonding thing and then, when the other guy’s date makes a “Men :rolleyes:” comment, Carrie responds with a zinger right back at the guys.
Sue thinks “My God…there really is a person in there. Maybe I’m seeing the ugly duckling actually become the swan”. Carrie begins to open up, the girls admire her dress and moreso when they find out she made it, she relaxes a bit…
No doubt that King makes Carrie loathesome throughout most of the book, but that one tiny ray of hope that you get via Sue, just before the incident makes the book work for me.
*She’s constantly described as greasy/sweaty before the prom
No, I meant Nadine. I liked her because of that whole promised to Satan thing. Fran kind of annoyed me. Too…normal by far.
Fenris–Sue wasn’t at the prom, though…are you sure we’re seeing it through her eyes?
In the movie, Sue sneaked in and watched what happened. I don’t remember if she did that in the book though.
I remember in the book, her being at home. And I think she’s worrying about not getting her period, and then she runs into Carrie who has been hit by the car and I think she finally starts bleeding. I don’t think she was at the prom, but I’m not entirely sure.
Yeah, even as a child, I could clearly see that Carrie wasn’t pulling as much emotional sympathy out of me than other book heroes. But the story was still so interesting. It’s like Freudian Slit said; it makes you realize that sometime the tormented poor sap you see getting beaten down in life isn’t a poet or an artist or misunderstood at all. Sometimes he is just a poor schmuck getting the shit kicked out of him. Doesn’t mean there isn’t an interesting story to tell.
It does make me think though. I often hear book or movie critics say that a character is ‘unsympathetic’, or that the author doesn’t make us care about the characters. Can a story still be very interesting if we aren’t emotionally invested in the characters? Watching Wolverine, I noticed that I was moved to care about the relationship between him and his wife. But then I realized, I really liked that movie overall. Didn’t need my heartstrings tugged by their little love story.
I need to care. I don’t need to be sympathetic but I need to care about them. Usually all it takes is that the character feels like they could be a real person. King made Carrie seem real, even though I didn’t like her or sympathize with her.
My most recent disappointment in a character was the secret policeman in Child 44. He never felt like a real person.
That’s exactly how Sue Snell felt about Carrie, isn’t it?
I think you’re right, Caricci. I remember her and even the gym teacher saying as much. You want to take the underdog under your wing, but well…Carrie’s…eh. I don’t know.
Coming back to Christine, Arnie was really imaginative and quirky even before the change (acquiring the car). I mean, yeah, the guy was technically a loser but he has at least one friend who recognizes his cooler qualities. It’s hard to read Carrie because it’s just like…I don’t know, so much shit. I try to inhabit the world of the main character when I read a book, esp. a King book, but I just can’t do it with Carrie as easily because her life is too hellish. Shitty classmates, an emotionally abusive barely capable of love mother…there’s no like, moment of hope.
Sometimes I think we should start a SDMB Stephen King book club.
I’d be up for that. It’d be a good excuse to re-read some of them. Or to read some for the first time. I haven’t read Black House or the last two short story collections.
For sure, when Under the Dome comes out (this fall?), we should try for a group read.
He did, and by a couple of students he knew as a high schooler. I remember that one was a girl who came to school dressed like a compound girl from Big Love (my analogy obviously, not his)- blouse sleeves to her wrist, skirt to her heel, and another was a sloppy/slobby girl with greasy hair and always a mess, and another just super weird in general (and not in a quirky eccentric way or even a ‘poseur who thinks it’s cool’ way). One of these- I don’t remember which- was in his class when he was a teacher, and one of them (again I don’t remember which) came to school with menstrual blood visible through her clothing (though the “Plug it up!” scene [changed to “Period! Period!” in the TV remake :rolleyes:] was his own imagination and of course he had to ask his wife several questions about girls locker rooms and hygiene products).
He said (in On Writing and some of his interviews) that it was the combination of the fact that these girls were so pitiful and so mercilessly picked on that he felt sorry for them and really wanted to help them. (King grew up in an impoverished family with a single mom and sometimes living in places where the plumbing didn’t work or the roof had holes, so I’m guessing he has a natural sympathy for the underdog.) At at the same time he admits that he didn’t like them anymore than the kids who were picking on them and that sometimes it wasn’t just a matter of having no personality- that they had personality and it was obnoxious, or that they did things which brought teasing on themselves- and ultimately there was just nothing to like about them, only to pity. That conflict of emotions made him have to write about such a character.
CARRIE is the book that’s famous for ending up in King’s trashcan when he decided it was worthless. His wife Tabitha fished it out and told him he had to finish it. The week he got the advance ($2500 or something like) he’d had the phone disconnected and was trying to figure out how to keep the power from being disconnected as well, so it saved him financially, then the paperback rights made him financially independent soon after.
Let’s try to remember this! I love book clubs but never have time for actual meetings. Can I appoint you in charge, AuntiePam?
I’ve been hot and cold on King for years; more hot than cold, usually. My mouth actually dropped open when a co-worker told me recently he’d never been able to “make it through” The Stand. :eek: I’m certain I’ve read it at least 10 or 15 times over the years; more than half of them the re-released, longer version.