That Reverend Dimmesdale-Hester Prynne jazz in The Scarlet Letter isn't just romantic bullshit. There is a very real streak of dour pessimism in the New England character, and it runs right down into the bedrock. We buy new cars expecting them to be lemons. We put in new heating systems and expect them not just to go tits-up but to do it stealthily, thereby suffocating the kiddies in their beds (but leaving us, their parents, to grieve and blame ourselves for at least fifty years). We understand we're never going to win the lottery, we know we'll get that unpassable and exquisitely painful gallstone on a hunting or snowmobiling trip far from medical help, and that Robert Frost was fucking-A right when he said that good fences make good neighbors. We expect the snow to turn to freezing rain, rich relatives to die leaving us nothing, and the kids (assuming they escape the Black Furnace Death) to get refused by the college of their choice. And we expect the Red Sox to lose. It's the curse, all right, but it has nothing to do with the Bambino; it's the curse of living here, in New England, just up that Christing potholed I-84 deathroad from the goddamn Yankees.
-- Stephen King, "Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season," July 13, 2004
Entirely obvious
jjohn on 2005-07-21T18:59:14
It's good to see King agrees with my perception of New England. Haunted by Puritans...
