Illustrated ‘Salem’s Lot,’ nautical book, sure to please

Editor’s Note: Maine Bound is a column featuring new books written by authors or set in the Pine Tree State.

BY DANA WILDE

OF THE NEWS STAFF

SALEM’S LOT: ILLUSTRATED EDITION, by Stephen King; photographs by Jerry N. Uelsmann; Doubleday, available November 2005; 594 pages, $35.

As a kid I had several Mickey Mantle baseball cards, which would be valuable now if I had thought to horde them. As I got to know baseball better and collected more cards, I treasured my Roberto Clementes the most. I made some spectacular catches at first base in Little League because of Clemente. To paraphrase John Sayles: Everything I know about style I learned from Roberto Clemente.

I never made it to Tom Gordon. I lost interest in baseball about the time Wade Boggs told a reporter he was just doing his job, making money. The idea that baseball was about money, not baseball, was not new, but Boggs’, well, practicality collapsed my idea of what happens on the field. Baseball ceased to mean much to me, either, after that. Except my memories of Clemente, and my Mickey Mantle cards which are now worth thousands as collector’s items. Who knows where they are, though?

As it happens I still have my first copy of “‘Salem’s Lot,” bought in Portland in 1976. It was my first Stephen King book. It scared the hell out of me. My Signet copy, never signed by the author, is more or less worthless. To everyone but me, I mean.

Stephen King is probably the Roberto Clemente of American horror fiction. And “‘Salem’s Lot” is an example of why: It’s not because of his ability to bend a plot – which is prodigious – but because his best books are about people first, and their circumstances second. The people suffering horrors in his stories are real people, with real reactions to unreal circumstances. “‘Salem’s Lot” is a classic vampire story because its characters have the dead-on complexity and vividness of real Maine people. It’s just as good nearly 30 years later.

In Doubleday’s “‘Salem’s Lot: Illustrated Edition,” however, the story is not the point. This is not a book, but a collectors edition created to fit in with other editions. Its text is the same as the original, and the rest is an inferior duplication of a well-crafted 2004 Centipede Press book. The new edition spoils the seven illustrations by cramming them onto smaller pages; it has the same two short stories (culled from “Night Shift”) set in Jerusalem’s Lot, the same author’s afterword, and the same 50 pages of “deleted scenes,” such as the extra scenes on DVDs, which add nothing to the movie, which is why they were deleted. The Doubleday edition will include an author’s introduction, which would be the only new thing you’d get for $35. That would be an expensive 10 or so pages, assuming your interest is in actual reading.

But if books are the same to you as nesting-dolls or baseball cards, then you should reserve a copy of “‘Salem’s Lot: Illustrated Edition.” It will be released in November, and every advance order will no doubt act like a steroid on the collectors value. Hey, the publisher’s just doing its job.

BY WAYNE E. REILLY

SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

A MARINER’S MISCELLANY by Peter H. Spectre, Sheridan House, Inc., paperback, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.; 2005, $19.95, 289 pages.

The first powerboat to go more than 75 mph was the Miss America II in 1921 driven by Gar Wood. The first to surpass the 300 mph-barrier was Donald Campbell’s Bluebird, but the boat disintegrated and Campbell was killed.

These are two of the thousands of nautical factoids you’ll find in this volume. One can turn to almost any page and be quickly rewarded with salty humor or wisdom or both. It’s a perfect gift for armchair mariners and real ones too.

Spectre, who is editor of “Maine Boats & Harbors” magazine, covers everything from knots to superstitions to forecasting the weather to anchoring a boat. He offers lists of good marine books, such as my favorite, “Lord Jim.” You can even read a few good nautical poems by Longfellow, Kipling and others.

I learned that just as Eskimos have several words for types of snow, sailors have at least six for blends of rum – rumbullion, bumboo, rumfustian, hangman’s blood, tarantula juice and screech. I wonder if the bartender will know all those on your next Carnival cruise.

I found passages on how to be a good skipper and how the U. S. Navy works. The latter, taken from the “Watch Officers’ Guide,” is quite simple: “If the Commanding Officer has strong views on certain matters which may appear to be at some variance with doctrine or with past practices, then by all means do it his way.” I’d add especially if he’s been into the rumbullion.