That was a wonderful read!
Because it is so different from King's other works, I'd hesitate to say things like, "It was his best!" It was different -- and wonderful -- and difficult -- challenging and at moments mesmerizing.
Audio:
I read this book via the audio edition. Yes, that counts as reading, Bryant.
Craig Wasson makes James Hosty sound like Jimmy Stewart. And that makes Hosty all out lovable to me. One problem in listening is that you cannot hear quotation marks. There have been a couple of times when I was not sure if George was thinking something, or saying it. Wasson's reading is very energetic. He performs as much as reads, which I enjoy. An example of someone who gets out of the stories way is Grover Gardner, who is often accused of being dry.
Genre:
11.22.63 is a genre buster. It is not alternate history! King spends very little ink discussing the real heart of "what if." So what is it?
The scenes after the assassination attempt reminded me of a John Grisham novel as the FBI sneaks George out of Dallas. I enjoyed it, as it is the kind of stuff that King doesn't usually engage in. Big government agents with their own agenda's out-smarted at points by the ordinary guy.
But 11.22.63 is not a legal thriller. It may smack at moments of John Grisham; but it's not Grisham! It's not alternate history. It's really not sci-fi. So what is it? Well, maybe goolosh. That stuff mom made when she had to clean out the fridges -- little bit of everything. Maybe a better way to say it is that it transcends genre, and good novels do that, don't they?
As I traveled through the last pages, I realized what this book was. It swept over me in a wave, and I almost cried out, "OH!" It was both painful, and obvious. This sucker is romance! I'm reading a romance novel! King isn't interested in time travel, he's interested in characters! He's not even that interested in the alternate history -- he is laser focused on those people in the book.
Love is such a messy thing, and gets in the way of good science fiction. It certainly does in 11.22.63. I like the love story quite a bit. That said, I wanted more alternate history. The love story isn't sappy; this ain't Danielle Steel! It is engaging because it occurs while you are focused on other things -- and that's the way love is, it happens while other things are going on. You're supposed to be focused don college classes, graduating, and some girl comes along and -- whoa baby! How many missions have been messed up by love?
Time Travel Tricks?
We never really get to learn what the world would be like if Kennedy had not been shot. Why is that? Because the science fiction gets in the way. Yes, the world is changed by Kennedy's escaping assassination, but the future is also changed by other things George does. So we don't get a "pure" look at the world. More than that, things are being ripped apart by time travel itself. I did not see how saving Kennedy would cause a giant earthquake. The logic escapes me, captain Kirk.
Seriously, now -- which changes history more, 1. JFK escaping death , 2. An earthquake that kills thousands ? I would say the earthquake! Thus the alternate history is affected more by the events in California than by anything in Dallas or Washington.
In regards to the alternate history, I really struggled to accept some of the main ideas. For instance, I think King gives Johnson far too much credit for the Civil rights movement. I also do not see how Kennedy's living changes anything with Martin Luther King. (?) It seems that the civil rights movement had a voice so loud that any American president would eventually be pressed to join in.
Also, would an American president really use nukes? I know that's what LBJ warned about. . . but do we want to believe the press offered up in a political ad? The further away from Kennedy that King got, the more unbelievable I found things.
He creates mega changes to the flow of history, but then keeps smaller flukes. He asks us to take a world where there are incredible racial tensions, hate meetings. . . but Hillary is president. And who calls their meetings "hate" meetings? Starting to feel like Orwell's 1984 here. It felt like King just wanted to make Hillary president, so no matter what flow of history he went with, that was the end in sight.
In The End. . .
In the end, the alternate reality doesn't matter squat anyway! In fact, none of it matters except the last strands of a love story. That's what you're left with that's real.
The middle section definitely lagged. See, I didn't realize back there that this was a love story. Now it all makes sense! That stuff that felt slow is what was really the meat of this novel. I would read it again with more patience for the character development and less urging for King to "get on with it!"
Does the book lag at points? yes. Is it a good novel? Absolutely! Is it King's best? I don't know. And neither do you! It should be enough to say, that was a good book.
David, I had the exact same reaction! I read the last few pages and was like, holy crap, I can't believe I just figured out that this whole book was a love story! Makes me wonder if King meant for it to be read that way or if I was just too focused on the time travel angle.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, the description of the alternate reality that existed just because JFK survived seemed unbelievable to me and way too exaggerated or extreme. It felt like he was describing the world after an apocalypse - would changing one event really have that much of an effect? I get the whole ripple effect or butterfly effect concept, but why would changing the past cause only bad things to happen? Eh, time travel is confusing.
Anyway, I loved the book! It was new territory for King and I could feel his love for the story all the way through. Every scene and every character was important, nothing felt extraneous to the story. And for it being so long, it was a relatively fast read, especially the first time because as you said, I was waiting for him to get on with it and get to the JFK thing... I'm thinking on the next go around, I'll put some more thought into the Jake/Sadie story as I'm reading it.
BTW, I loved the part where Jake and Sadie were racing to get to the book depository and everything kept trying to stop them. Was totally picturing this as a scene from a slapstick comedy movie, you know?
The alternate reality hinges ont he idea that future presidents would use nukes in Vietnam, and that terrorist would use nukes on us. . . I think we agree that JFK alone does not change these events.
ReplyDeleteI did like the way the past protected itself!
Appreciate the final thoughts, Reverend.
ReplyDeleteMaybe now that line from Russell Kirk about the politics of Prudence begins to make sense.
To be fair, I have an interesting take on why King wrote the alternate history the way he did, it just takes some going into so bear with me, I know I'm under a limit here.
King had the disastrous timeline as far back as he had the germ idea in 73, so maybe the times have one factor in it. The other is Doris Kearns Goodwin. King said he got a lot of his ideas for the ending from Goodwin.
If the ending in any way reflects Goodwin’s thinking about politics and life then I have to say it’s very dim view of human nature.
In his defense, I don’t think its King’s view of human nature. If you want a good idea of King’s view of Life, the Universe and Everything I’d point you to The Stand (in fact, The Stand serves as a good thematic and moral rubric through which to view all his other work including this one.) On the whole I’d have to say King is more of an actual optimist.
The real reason I think he did it, why he used Goodwin’s ideas for the ending has more to do with psychology than anything else. Here’s where it gets kind of technical. If you’ve read On Writing you’ll know King’s run in’s with substance abuse (sorry, there’s just no other way to put it). That King bested himself also mean I think that he’s been watchful of himself ever since. He knows what his own fears did to him and so ever since he’s been determined to face them. One of those fears, aside from Oswald and the historical 11/22/63 is the paranoia he got from those years and his fears of worst case scenario nuclear fall out. What he was doing with the ending I think is facing these particular fears by writing them down and saying on a subconscious level, I’m not going to be afraid of this anymore.
I watched King interviewed by Chris Matthews of Hardball where King said he felt Kennedy never knew how to make the machine of congress work, in other words too naïve. It’s one of the ideas that powered the ending, and I think it’s also more of a fear, than a belief, just one more to get over in other words.
As for the presidency of John F. Kennedy? Like I said before, I choose to go with Political Prudence, and Faith.
ChrisC.
You're under no time limit on my end. . . just ask the mighty Honk Mafah!
ReplyDeleteWow, enjoyed that a lot. That is really interesting ! Never thought of any of that in connection with his substance abuse, and "besting" himself. Yes, the fears of that day were nuclear.
Are you saying, as much as it is a historical alternate, it is a "what if our worst fears had come true" . . . issue.
Yes, I choose faith.
Thanks for the considerations, Reverend. For the record yes, I think in large part a lot of King's works are about conquering fears, and to conquer fears you have to conquer your own self. I think all the great ones teach that.
ReplyDeleteAs to your criticism of the alternate timeline and Jake's actions. I think it's pretty clear the history that Jake tampers with has been so set in stone that if it is changed, it's not just history but reality that unravels. This might help explain the inconsistencies you note in the text.
Instead of seeing what happens as one continuous timeline, what if Jake's action create multiple alternate realities and therefore timelines bouncing off and effecting one another to create not a coherent whole running in a straight line, but rather a jumbled mixture going every which way and nowhere at the same time. What Jake and the reader finds isn't a coherent reality, but the natural result of existance coming unglued at the seams with events not determined by the ordinary historical factors but by the simple occurrence of multiple alternate timelines clicking into place and pulling people and events hurky jerky along after it, like a magnet.
One of the more disturbing ideas of this way of looking at it is the idea that this means Jake has ultimately undone any and all free will and with it the concept of morality and replaced is with a random degenerating determinism. Consider if you will the implications "that" for any possible stable society. Well, technically you can't, nothing can exist under such conditions. By the way, no, I don't think the the Tower has anything to do with it, although I know Honk Mafah would disagree on that. Oh well, no big deal, besides as any true student of stooge-ology knows, Curly gets all the ladies.
ChrisC
YIKES! I think you might be right, Chris. Though I woudln't have seen it. Yes, several timelines bumping into one another, pulling and messing up the future. Again, we are denied all the more a "clean" peek at what the world would be like with Mr. Kennedy alive.
ReplyDeleteMy wife agrees with your assessment -- but if that is what the Green Card man said, I missed it. But the sky rubmeling was certainly a big hint.
see, the book is very much a sci-fi. Waht's crazy is we don't figure out until the end that Jake, not Oswald, is the bad guy. It is Jake who threatens the world! Jake, with his good intentions, who might pulle verything apart.
Glad you enjoyed Wasson's reading, David. I thought his performance of Hosty was downright embarrassing, though; it wasn't so much like Jimmy Stewart, though, as it was like Stewart impersonating W.C. Fields. Terrible.
ReplyDeleteI also had a rather intense dislike for what he did in performing "1922" from "Full Dark, No Stars." At this point, I'd have to say that I've listened to my last audiobook by Wasson. He frequently does King's dialogue a disservice, in my opinion.
As for some of the other stuff discussed here recently, I'd say it's definitely the case that Jake's actions have led to a chain of events which cause all of reality to fall apart.
It isn't spelled out in these precise terms, but I believe that it's all got something to do with the Dark Tower. Specifically, I think that the alterations to the course of events in Viet Nam cause Henry Dean to either die there or to never go, thereby also causing Eddie Dean's life to be altered in such a way as to prevent him from ever joining Roland's ka-tet. That alteration to Roland's life causes a chain of events that would, eventually, lead to the collapse of the Tower and the victory of the Crimson King.
That's not in the novel in any way, but it makes sense to me, and I'm stickin' to it!
I have an interesting theory about Jake as hero. I believe he's a hero, it's just that he's a Gothic hero.
ReplyDeleteGothic heroes differ from traditional heroes in one important aspect. Heroes of Gothic stories are often a mixture of black and white. Edgar Allen Poe laid out the idea best by demonstrating in his works that often the outer world in Gothic fiction is a mirror of the protagonist's inner mind.
Over the course of most of tales like these, the main character is confronted with circumstances that dovetail with his own personal turmoil in such a way that he either masters those circumstances and by turn his of herself, or else the conquer themselves by failing to rise to the occasion.
For a more on this idea I'd recommend Mahfah's part 1 of the two part review of the book he's got posted on his site for more info, and an interesting (and for me convincing) take on character motivation.
ChrisC.
I misread "goolosh" as ghoulish. While my cooking is bad ... let's just say I'm glad you defined the word!
ReplyDeleteOne final thought about timelines.
ReplyDeleteAs for never getting a "clean" look at what life would be like had JFK lived, well, what if we're not shown all, just snippets of what what it might be like? i.e. the Beatles still together, Hilary as President (although recent history has made me ambivalent about that, sorry). The problem is even if this is a glimpse into a possible better future, it makes no difference because it's timeline immediately canceled by another future cropping into place (Paul and the concert bombing) thus creating a hopeless jumble which gives only mere "appearances" of logical sequence when in fact the whole works are out of whack, A doesn't follow B doesn't follow C.
In a way, that just makes it all the more tragic. Think of it, a world where the Beatles never broke up and yet it doesn't mean a thing, literally, the word Beatle would technically not exist.
Frightening.
ChrisC