Re: CUJO... Am I the only one..?
Who noticed that CUJO appears to be a first draft?
King starts the book with a monster in the kid's closet. His dad checks the closet, finds no monster, tells the kid goodnight. After he leaves, the closet door opens, and the monster watches the kid.
King then intros Cujo, and sets up the question: Is Cujo possessed by an evil spirit, or just rabid? Then he immediately bends over backwards to show that everything Cujo does is 100% consistent with rabies, thus obviating the evil spirit angle (which is promptly forgotten for the rest of the book).
Later, when dad finds his wife and kid gone, he searches the house for clues to their whereabouts. While looking through his son's room, the closet door opens, he steps inside, and finds himself in "the black forest." (No indication if King knows the black forest is a real place in Germany.)
His response? He looks around briefly, decides the wife and kid aren't here, and walks back out of the closet to search the rest of the house, AS IF NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY HAPPENED!!!
From that point on, there is no mention of anything supernatural in the book.
It's like King sat down to write a supernatural story, realized while writing it that no supernatural angle was necessary, dropped it, but never bothered to go back and remove it from the opening chapters.
What blows my mind is that I've never read or heard anyone else point this out.
What up with that???
Who noticed that CUJO appears to be a first draft?
King starts the book with a monster in the kid's closet. His dad checks the closet, finds no monster, tells the kid goodnight. After he leaves, the closet door opens, and the monster watches the kid.
King then intros Cujo, and sets up the question: Is Cujo possessed by an evil spirit, or just rabid? Then he immediately bends over backwards to show that everything Cujo does is 100% consistent with rabies, thus obviating the evil spirit angle (which is promptly forgotten for the rest of the book).
Later, when dad finds his wife and kid gone, he searches the house for clues to their whereabouts. While looking through his son's room, the closet door opens, he steps inside, and finds himself in "the black forest." (No indication if King knows the black forest is a real place in Germany.)
His response? He looks around briefly, decides the wife and kid aren't here, and walks back out of the closet to search the rest of the house, AS IF NOTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY HAPPENED!!!
From that point on, there is no mention of anything supernatural in the book.
It's like King sat down to write a supernatural story, realized while writing it that no supernatural angle was necessary, dropped it, but never bothered to go back and remove it from the opening chapters.
What blows my mind is that I've never read or heard anyone else point this out.
What up with that???
