joyland

I'm currently reading Joyland by Stephen King and enjoying it very much. I read many of his early novels when I was younger, the horror novels (The Shining, Carrie, Salem's Lot) and they scared the pants off me and I had to give up on him. But I've came back to him lately when I picked up 11.22.63 and raced through it. It involves a time-travel conundrum and the assassination of President John Kennedy (the title refers to the date he was killed). Anyway, that wasn't a horror story, it was a tense thriller and I admired it a lot. I'd forgotten what a good writer King is and it was nice to be reminded. Similarly, Joyland isn't a horror story, though it has some creepy moments, and I'm enjoying it and the writing. 

I suppose the world of the carny and the funfair, as we in the UK would call it, has been in my subconscious then, and as I've travelled around this winter I've spotted a couple of merry-go-rounds at Christmas Fairs and taken snaps of them. They are very evocative; the lights, the music, the bright colours. It's been years since I've ridden one but you're never too old are you?

Stephen King and the world of the amusement park, the setting for Joyland, are a good fit. There is something inherently dangerous and sinister about them, at least in fiction and on film. The men who work them, clowns, fortune tellers, sky scraping big wheels, heart in the mouth roller coasters. There is a fantastic, and catastrophic scene involving a merry-go-round/carousel in the Hitchcock film Strangers On A Train, not for the faint hearted or anyone planning a visit to a funfair.  

Photos are the author's own