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'Salem's Lot, Illustrated Edition
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Doubleday (2005-11-01)
ISBN: 0385516487
EAN: 9780385516488
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Hardcover: 600 pages
Release Date: 2005-11-01
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Upon its initial publication in 1975, Salem’s Lot was recognized as a landmark work. The novel has sold millions of copies in various editions, but it wasn’t until Centipede Press published a special limited edition in 2004 that King’s masterpiece was brought to brilliant and eerie life. With the addition of fifty pages of material deleted from the 1975 manuscript as well as material that has since been modified by King, an introduction by him, and two short stories related to the events of the novel, this edition represents the text as the author envisioned it. Centipede’s deluxe edition, of which only 900 copies were printed, features lavishly creepy photographs by acclaimed photographer Jerry Uelsmann, printed interior endpapers, and a stunning page design. Doubleday is proud to make this volume, printed from the original design of the Centipede Press edition, available to the general reader. No King aficionado’s library will be complete without owning this definitive illustrated edition of the great Salem’s Lot.
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Amazon.com Review
Stephen King's second book, 'Salem's Lot (1975)--about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula--has two elements that he also uses to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil. Simply taken as a contemporary vampire novel, 'Salem's Lot is great fun to read, and has been very influential in the horror genre. But it's also a sly piece of social commentary. As King said in 1983, "In 'Salem's Lot, the thing that really scared me was not vampires, but the town in the daytime, the town that was empty, knowing that there were things in closets, that there were people tucked under beds, under the concrete pilings of all those trailers. And all the time I was writing that, the Watergate hearings were pouring out of the TV.... Howard Baker kept asking, 'What I want to know is, what did you know and when did you know it?' That line haunts me, it stays in my mind.... During that time I was thinking about secrets, things that have been hidden and were being dragged out into the light." Sounds quite a bit like the idea behind his 1998 novel of a Maine hamlet haunted by unsightly secrets, Bag of Bones. --Fiona Webster
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Customer Reviews
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"Perhaps she was going to be all right."
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-12-31
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I have quite fond memories of this book, dating to my teenage period. What I had remembered liking best about it is the way that King used the vampires as a foil to explore the darker side of small town Maine life. If you haven't read it, this is the story of a tragedy haunted writer and how his move to the small Maine town where he spent part of his childhood coincides with an infection of evil.
I still like that part of the book. King manages to show a small town in a way that feels both affectionate and honest. He looks at the constant threat of poverty, the no-good young men with their bitter old/young wives, the town gossips, the salt-of-the-earth types-- he manages to peg them. I was able to see them as specific characters, but it was also easy to extrapolate them out to type. Very satisfying. This skill with the characters also works well to help him show how the evil that they fear comes from abroad, but also from within.
King deals well with vampires, which is an accomplishment. He acknowledges their allure without making them too attractive. His vampires have a grotty side and even their charisma has got a sheen of vaseline to it. Something about the vampire as subject seems to send writers over the edge. Lately they seem to fall so in love with them that they forget the savagery inherent in the symbol. We seem to constantly want to reform and understand vampires in popular media. I admire King for not going down that road.
The novel has the typical King weaknesses. His characters are strong, but their dialogue always sounds a little bit too much alike-- particularly in these early books. They muse out loud like the writer himself. Sometimes that's charming. Sometimes it's a weakness. I also was a little bit surprised how old the book felt. I suppose that I shouldn't be-- it was published more than thirty years ago. But the landscape of many of these towns have undergone such tremendous changes that the prose now carries the unintentional flavor of a period piece.
A nice antidote to the modern renditions of sparkly vampires and librarian-kidnapping vampires. I'd still recommend it.
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King's first masterpiece...
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-12-27
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I approached 'Salem's Lot with some trepidation. It's such a milestone of a horror . I'd read it before, about fifteen years back, but my memories come more from the excellent seventies miniseries than the novel. I've joined a group where we are reading through all of SK's novels in publication order, one a month. With this, his second novel it's easy to see what a wunderkind Stephen King was when he first appeared on the scene.
'Salem's Lot is an excellent piece of writing. Pace, description and characterization all work hand in hand to make this book something more than a cheap horror novel. If for some reason, you don't know what 'Salem's Lot is about, I'd advise you to stop reading reviews and just pick it up. King tries his darndest in the beginning to keep you as a reader off balance. In the opening flashback chapter we learn about 'Salem's Lot, a small New England town where 'something bad' happened. It seems to be tied into a creepy old house (the Marsten house) on a hill where our hero (Ben Mears, the first in a long and proud line of SK author/main characters) saw a ghost when he was a child.
Stephen King then goes on to detail the various lives of the townspeople of 'Salem's Lot. Here he shines. Just a few paragraphs about a character who may not ever play a major part in the overarching story is richer in characterization than most horror authors are able to provide for their lead characters The town becomes something 'real' to you. Not a stock 'small town' but a place where real people live and do things good and bad. Those sections of the book really put me in the mood to finally read my copy of Peyton Place.
Of course, 'Salem's Lot is a lot more than a slice of life tale in small-town New England. Odd bits are woven into the story. Even then he keeps his cards close to his chest. I vividly remember an eerie scene where Hank and Royal Snow (what a name!) deliver a sideboard to the newly purchased Marsten house.
It was an excellently written and darn creepy scene. Even more so because really, nothing overtly 'bad' happens. It was such a well done mood piece. (I have to say, the version of this scene that appears in the '70's miniseries was also really well done.) King does an excellent job of adding more and more weird going's on to his tale through the entire first section, drawing you as a reader in. He builds an atmosphere of paranoia, showing a town disintegrate from within as a cancer eats it away. By the time the doors are thrown open on the town's secret, you are hooked and willing to buy into anything
I've been trying to keep my review vague in order to not spoil things for a potential first time reader. It's hard to say more without the details though, so I'll just wrap it up by recommending you read the book. The sooner, the better.
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NOTHING TO ADD. MUST READ BOOK.
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-12-20
SALEM'S LOT is almost excellent. I give it 5 stars because it is damned good reading...it's almost excellent. But it has 2 serious flaws.
Too many principal characters. King shoulda focused on Ben, Susan, Mark, Straker, and Barlow.
And King coulda used Susan's ordeal for a nail-biting save by Ben.
Over-reaching and pulling punches are King's fatal flaws as a writer.
But this is a good read and a keeper.
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Early King classic...
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-11-24
King's vision of vampires that don't live in far-away Europe...only small town America. I read this as a younger man and re-read it later. It still carries the intense frightening quality now as it did then. King readers as well as any avid horror readers should love this book.
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Small-Town Feel Is The Genius Of This Novel
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-10-25
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Unlike most hard-core Stephen King fans, I have been reading his books in no particular order...just whichever one I can get my hands on next. Thus, I happened to read the entire Dark Tower series penned by King before I happened onto this novel. In that series, I learned more about Father Callahan, who was first introduced in this book. By reading things so disjointed, I figured that "Salem's Lot" was just a book about vampires who had to be expelled from a small town. Once I dove into this text, however, I realized that the true genius of this novel has nothing to do with the vampires themselves, but more so how King sets up their appearance.
The biggest thing that surprised me about this book was that actual vampires do not appear until the last 100 or so pages of the novel. They are hinted at many times earlier, but never fully exposed/explained. However, at least to me, that is where King makes this story so scary. Pretty much the entire first half of the book is devoted to trying to capture the small-town feel of Jerusalem's Lot but examining its citizens, their relationships, and the day-to-day events of the little town. Thus, when the great evil is unearthed towards the end of the novel, it makes it all the scarier that the evil is coming from such an out-of-the-way place, a type of place usually reserved for a slow, uncomplicated life. That, not the vampires, is the most interesting theme of the novel.
Of course, in typical King fashion, the characters are also very well-written and interesting, thus easy to root for (or against, in some cases) as they fight to extinguish the evil in small-town America.
So, although "Salem's Lot" was first published way back in 1975, it is still a thrilling read even today, as small-towns still exist all over America...small towns where he feel safe and never think anything can hurt is. In King's universe, that is not so, which is what makes this book so frightful.
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Retail Price: $35.00
Amazon.com's Price:$8.96
That's 74% Off!
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