Last week, I finished the decidedly hefty (849 pages!) new Stephen King book, 11/22/63. My knowledge of Stephen King's writing lies--aside from a number of short stories I've read--in the Dark Tower series, which I think was the best collection I could have started with (thank you to my wonderful boyfriend for that advice). The Dark Tower is Stephen King's literary baby, and it reaches out to all of his other works, so I feel like I have a solid base for reading everything else--and I plan on it. It's the trunk of the King tree, the veins in all of the leaves, the connector...
But let's leave that for another time.
As soon as I opened 11/22/63, I was immediately comforted. I just love the way King writes. It makes me feel wholesome and fully engulfed, as only this Mainer's easy pace could. I grew intensely attached to the characters, and I will be honest and say that at more than a few points, my heart was racing while I was reading. A true thriller. No spoilers here, I just want everyone to read it and enjoy it as much as I did.
The book surrounds the "mission" of Jake Epping, who is introduced to a sort of worm hole that enables the user to travel back in time--but here's the (first) catch--to the sunny, warm day of September 9, 1958.
Side note: I wonder what the weather was actually like on that date in 1958??
His goal is to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, because the timing is right (the assassination will occur about five years from the time he "arrives" in the past) and because he and his cohort Al the diner owner think that this was the turning point to where the world started going downhill. Think of a world without the Vietnam War. Pretty enticing idea, right?
What Jake Epping discovers is that the past is obdurate--it does not want to be changed. He can lay low and not encounter too much resistance, but as soon as he attempts to change the past in a larger way, the past fights back. With such a turning point as the Kennedy assassination, you can imagine how hard the past will fight back.
My favorite aspect of this story was the time period. The way Stephen King described the 1950s made me ache for life to be like that. Simple, slow, appreciative. People were, for the most part, genuine and nice (and when they weren't, you could tell just by looking). The months that Jake Epping spent on the cabin by the lake--rising early, reading, writing, hiking, and canoeing all day long, to fall asleep exhausted and fulfilled--is just the absolute peak of daily appreciation that appeals to me. And the setting of the late 1950s and early 1960s in Jodie, Texas, just doesn't get any more small-town-lovey. You can learn a lot from Stephen King's view of the 1950s: take things slow, appreciate the finer things in life, and cultivate your relationships, because they are the most valuable possessions you will have.
But let's leave that for another time.
As soon as I opened 11/22/63, I was immediately comforted. I just love the way King writes. It makes me feel wholesome and fully engulfed, as only this Mainer's easy pace could. I grew intensely attached to the characters, and I will be honest and say that at more than a few points, my heart was racing while I was reading. A true thriller. No spoilers here, I just want everyone to read it and enjoy it as much as I did.
The book surrounds the "mission" of Jake Epping, who is introduced to a sort of worm hole that enables the user to travel back in time--but here's the (first) catch--to the sunny, warm day of September 9, 1958.
Side note: I wonder what the weather was actually like on that date in 1958??
His goal is to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, because the timing is right (the assassination will occur about five years from the time he "arrives" in the past) and because he and his cohort Al the diner owner think that this was the turning point to where the world started going downhill. Think of a world without the Vietnam War. Pretty enticing idea, right?
What Jake Epping discovers is that the past is obdurate--it does not want to be changed. He can lay low and not encounter too much resistance, but as soon as he attempts to change the past in a larger way, the past fights back. With such a turning point as the Kennedy assassination, you can imagine how hard the past will fight back.
My favorite aspect of this story was the time period. The way Stephen King described the 1950s made me ache for life to be like that. Simple, slow, appreciative. People were, for the most part, genuine and nice (and when they weren't, you could tell just by looking). The months that Jake Epping spent on the cabin by the lake--rising early, reading, writing, hiking, and canoeing all day long, to fall asleep exhausted and fulfilled--is just the absolute peak of daily appreciation that appeals to me. And the setting of the late 1950s and early 1960s in Jodie, Texas, just doesn't get any more small-town-lovey. You can learn a lot from Stephen King's view of the 1950s: take things slow, appreciate the finer things in life, and cultivate your relationships, because they are the most valuable possessions you will have.
No comments:
Post a Comment