A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Well we all have a face That we hide away forever And we take them out and show ourselves When everyone has gone  - Billy Joel,  The Stranger   When Columbia Records (now part of Sony Music) first released Billy Joel's fifth album, I was 14 years old and still having to cope with the aftermath of my first serious breakup, the stresses of what was then called junior high, and my mom's decision to sell our house and move to the condominium where we still live. To my teenager's world-view, all of these "issues" seemed to loom over my life like an army of avenging demons, and I was lost in a fugue of sadness, anger, and confusion.  I mention this seemingly irrelevant bit of autobiographical detail because at the time my older sister Vicky was on a pop music kick, and though she had moved out of the house, she had not, thank the Force, taken the family's huge Zenith stereo cabinet, which had a turntable for LP records, an AM-FM radio receiver, and a state of the

(C) 2018 Simon & Schuster Whenever I see – or hear – Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan that he will “make America great again,” I can’t help thinking that many of his mostly white, older, and politically conservative supporters are pining for an America that – in their minds – existed between 1945 and 1961: the “age of Eisenhower.” To most Americans who long for a return to those seemingly idyllic years between the end of the Second World War and John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Inauguration as President on January 20, 1961, the world was a better one than the one we live in now. The United States, with its huge advantage in nuclear weapons over its deadly Communist rival, the Soviet Union, was the undisputed leader of the “free world.” Its industrial capacity was second to none, and as an ascendant Republican Party reclaimed control of the Congress and the White House after 20 years of Democratic dominance, conservatives began the long process of undoing Franklin D. Roosevelt’

Dust jacket of the original 1986 hardcover edition. Art by Bob Giusti. Lettering by Amy Hill. (C) 1986 Viking Press/Penguin Random House I'm glad I don't live in Maine. Oh, I'm not talking about the real New England state that was once part of Massachusetts and is famous for its lobsters and still very rural ambiance. I've never even been there, although I wouldn't rule out a tourist excursion at some point in the future, though if I do go, it would probably be in the summer, since winters up North are too chilly and snowbound for this Miami native's taste. No, the Maine I'm talking about is the Maine that exists in the imagination of Stephen King. Quite a few of his novels are set there, most of them in the fictional towns of Castle Rock, Tarker's Mills, Jerusalem's Lot, Little Tall Island....and Derry. Here, in towns that have existed since before the American Revolution, the inhabitants of these communities have coexisted with vampires