But for Day 5, this should be pretty easy--I try my damnedest to be asleep at 10AM, thankyouverymuch.
Oh, I am such a whore for ready-made blogfodder.
Anyhoo, here's today's:
Speaking of Stephen King, I'm reading the unabridged version of The Stand, the one published in 1990--when the book was set, interestingly. I'm guessing that Mr. King had never actually been to Texas in 1977 or so, when the book was presumably written (it was published in 1978, so I'm making an educated guess). The fictional Arnett, Texas, is described in the book as being 110 miles from Houston. In which direction I cannot be sure, but I do know that there is no desert for the Army to be running barbed wire through anywhere in that part of the State, nor would you be very likely to find maps of New Mexico and Arizona in a gas station in East Texas. I love Stephen King's work as always--particularly the older stuff--but between that and the fact that King's 1990 isn't substantially different from 1977, I'm having a hard time suspending the disbelief for this one. Had he been a bit more careful with his geography (if, for instance, the town was 110 miles west of San Antonio or Lubbock, or just not described as desert) and not set the book in a near future that somehow retained anachronisms such as leaded gasoline and prolific use of the word nigger in reference to music, the book would have aged much better.
Still a good novel, though.
2 comments:
I love seeing stuff like this in the movies, things where a few minutes of research on the geography of an area in Texas will let you know whether or not it is appropriate to locate your desert near Dallas or your mountains near Galveston. It's easy, but Hollywood writers are ultimately lazy. And dammit, to them Texas is simply made up of nothin' but rattlesnake-infested desert and redneck assholes. And cowboys. And gun owners.
(OK, the last part is true. But just the last part.)
I love this idea! I'd like to participate but I'm already behind - maybe for March?
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