Carrie (on your way back home)

 This year I am embarking on my own Great Stephen King ReReaD - following in the footsteps of some great appreciators of Stephen King, including Grady Hendrix (whose novels and appearances on The KingCast I have come to appreciate very much), Richard Chizmar (whose essay links all seem to go to the Cemetery Dance Main Page today), and my own Brother Andy (who read Carrie* again way back in 2024 to mark the 50th Anniversary of its publication).

Grady started his re-read in 2012, and Richard his in 2014 (perhaps a nod to the then 40th Anniversary that was upon him), and since I have always enjoyed a bit of calendric calisthenics, perhaps I have started in on this venture as both a nod to the 50th Anniversary of the release of DePalma's Carrie.  Perhaps this ReReaD will be as much a celebration of King Adaptations as it is of the novels themselves, and so maybe I also started Carrie now because Mike Flanagan's new miniseries is due just two months from today.

Carrie (1974) 

The first thing I noticed, that had never before occurred to me before (likely because I first encountered Carrie White in any of its various versions in the late 80s or early 90s when all this was in the far past), was that even though the novel was written in '73 and published in '74, the events of the book occur in 1979.

This seems at first just a throwaway factoid, but it's certainly an odd choice, even for a science fiction adjacent book.  Most stories unless specifically set at a specific moment in history (or future history!) happen in a vague "now" and that illusion only fades when we encounter a calendar or an event poster that sets it in time (or with the passage of time and it feeling 'dated).

Stephen King has just opened the Stephen King Universe (SKU) with this novel, however, and as we will come to learn, There Are Other Worlds Than These.

And so I submit to you, Dear Reader, that the placement of this novel 5 years in the future is very intentional, even if King himself may not know quite why yet.  Another SKU touchpoint in the novel is when Carrie destroys Teddy's Amoco on her way from the high school to home - a gas station owned and operated first by Teddy Duchamp and later by Teddy's son after Teddy's death in 1968.  

Teddy Duchamp is also, of course, a resident of Castle Rock, Maine in "The Body", and could almost be the same person who operates a gas station in Chamberlain some years later, but probably not.  I would submit that these two Teddys are Twinners - the same person (or almost so) but in another world.  Just like in some King works The Overlook Hotel is a real place that was destroyed (e.g. Billy Summers) and other times its the place in that horror movie about the haunted hotel, I would suggest that one of these worlds (the world of Carrie or that of "The Body" is a bit more real than the other one.
(7.22.26 - 8.3.26)