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Health & Fitness

Double Book Review: Stephen King's "11/22/63" &"Doctor Sleep"

If you’ve been a consumer of any media at all over the past thirty-five years, it’s virtually impossible for you to not have come across a Stephen King work, even if you didn’t know it was his.  From his first book Carrie in 1974 he has explored so many aspects of the human condition from the sublime to the decadent to the horrific through so much content in the form of novels, novellas, short stories, and screenplays that it boggles the mind how any writer could be so prolific.  Although his signature genre remains horror-suspense, King is far more than just a teller of good ghost stories.  Even if you are not an avid reader, if you’ve seen decidedly non-macabre films like The Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Claiborne or Stand By Me, King has reached out to you in some form.  To list all of his credits would take pages but suffice it to say that in both quantity and quality of writing—especially in the use of metaphor coupled with an astonishing ability to develop three-dimensional characters, even the minor ones—King’s writing should be given the same respect as any of the great writers of the age.

With that somewhat bombastic pronouncement, I think I’ve given away my hand as to how much I respect this man’s genius.  But I still take any King story I happen to find the time to read (only a fraction of his body of work to date) as a stand-alone prospect.   As such I have just finished two of his latest novels and will briefly share my thoughts on each without getting into spoilers. 


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11/22/63

As the infamous title date implies, the focal point of the novel is the day John F. Kennedy was murdered.   This is the story of a divorced high school English teacher, Jake Eppings, who is shown a time portal located in the back of a soon-to-be-closed diner in his small Maine town.  We soon discover that Al Templeton, the diner's owner, has decided to share with the carefully chosen Jake this incredible secret for a reason.  Al is ravaged by very advanced cancer.  It is his dying wish that Jake should take over and finish what he has run out of time to do: stop the assassination of JFK on that dismal November day in Dallas...even if it means killing Lee Harvey Oswald to it.  Even if it means putting one's own life at risk. 

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Al informs Jake that this doorway to the past has some interesting properties beyond time travel which is fascinating enough.  Every journey through the portal takes you back to September 9, 1958.  No matter how long in the past you stay--whether an hour, a week, or years--only two minutes have elapsed in the present upon your return.  You can go back and change the past, but if you come back and then return to the past, everything “resets” and you must begin all over again.

This raises a daunting question when you really do a deep-dive and think it through.  What would you do if you could go back to 1958?   Jake with some reservations accepts Al's mission.  Five years between 1958 and 1963 is a lot of time to kill in not just a strange place but a different time!  In many ways a different country.   But once he steps through and sets off, he discovers that the past is not easily changed.  Like chasing a man who throws debris behind him to trip you up and hinder your progress, time seems to be conspiring against him to thwart his efforts—be it freak accidents, strange turns in the path of the faux life he must live in this new old world for years, to the unexpected relationships and even lovers he finds on the way.  All the while he must make his way to Texas and be absolutely sure that the conspiracy theories are untrue and that Oswald is, in fact, a lone gunman.

If I have one complaint about this book it is that the story probably could have been told in fewer pages.  Even though the amateur historian in me found King's take on every day late 50’s early 60’s America, the good and the bad, to be quite compelling, he dwells in the past a little too long for my tastes, developing story lines and relationships that almost muffle the log line which is “time-traveler tries to stop JFK assassination.”  He kind of gets bogged down.  I like to keep things moving.  I don’t mind slow starts to books as often it takes time to set the stage, develop the players, and set the plot wheels in motion.   But I am not as forgiving of slow middles.   That’s just my personal preference I admit.  And in the balance it was small price to pay.

I will not go into details nor will I tell you how it ends.  But I will say that King has thought long and hard about the so-called “butterfly effect” and the “law of unintended consequences.”  If time is a flowing creek, even minor change of course upstream is magnified the farther it flows and as the years pass entirely different topographies and all the developments that are built around them will change too.  For better or for worse we cannot say.  Only if we can go forward 50 years and see the results will we know for sure.  I’ll leave you with that.


DOCTOR SLEEP
 

Remember The Shining?  Remember little Danny Torrence being chased by the crazed Jack Nicolson (playing his father Jack Torrence) through the haunted Overlook Hotel?   Although King’s literary Jack carried a croquet mallet rather than an axe, the imagery remains burned into our pop culture psyche.  Did you ever wonder what happened to little psychic Danny who possessed the gift of “shine” and his poor mother Wendy after the murderous alcoholic Jack dies, taking the Overlook in a boiler explosion with him?

Doctor Sleep provides the answer to this in an admirable sequel to his terrifying 1977 novel.  We pick up the shattered life of now adult Danny and things have not gone well for him.   Wendy is dead of cancer and Danny has followed his father’s footsteps into the world of desperate alcoholism and has hit rock-bottom as an aimless drifter.  He is still tormented by the “ghosty people” of the Overlook—King reprises the woman in Room 217 and Horace Derwent—who haunt his dreams and the memories of a shameful existence.  But the old Overlook chef and “shining” man himself, Dick Hallorann, comes to Dan in his mind and tells him how to keep the memories at bay.  When Dan steps off a bus in New Hampshire his life changes forever.  He meets fellow alcoholics who welcome him into AA and he lands a job in a hospice for the terminally ill where his residual shining gives him insight into the dying. He uses his telepathic empathy to comfort those who are on death’s doorstep.  He develops the nickname “Dr. Sleep” as testament to his compassion for the passing.  He has  finally found a good life and a place to call home.  If he can stay on the wagon, that is.

Enter Abra Stone.  Abra is a young girl in the next town over who from infancy shows an ability to “shine”.   She telepathically reaches out to Danny, first unconsciously and then intentionally, and a friendly dialogue between them develops as she grows into her teen years.  Danny discovers that her powers dwarf his own, making his akin to a match next to her bonfire.  They develop a closeness that only those with “the shining” (which we discover is more common than we would think) can feel.  But it is this very awesome power that the good-hearted girl Abra manifests that puts her in danger.

Unbeknownst to we humans, there is a roving band of ancient monsters among us calling itself “The True Knot” who present themselves in the most banal and innocuous of personas: mostly middle-aged, polyester-clad  “RV folk.”  They criss-cross the country homing in on and kidnapping unsuspecting children who possess “the shining”.  They kill them and consume their released shining essence,  “steam” as they call it, which these beings need for sustenance.  Quasi-immortals, they have been around for thousands of years and as the world has rolled over so many times, they have endured.  They blend right it with us “rubes” as they contemptuously refer to humans, and no one knows how many innocent children they have put on the backs of milk cartons over the years. 

The True Knot are led by Rose O’Hara, a shrewd and sexy brunette witch of extraordinary power and menace who rakishly sports a top hat, hence her sobriquet “Rose the Hat.”  She senses Abra’s existence across the miles and realizes that the girl is both a threat and a goldmine for her clan.  She is a threat in that she has mentally tapped into the minds of The True Knot, she turns the world inside her psyche to see what they see, and so witnesses the horrible crimes they commit.  She knows their secrets.  But Abra is so off-the-charts psychic that she possesses enough  “steam” to sustain The True Knot for years to come.  An endless food supply awaits them...if they can get her.  Plus Rose needs no rivals to her position as the alpha member of the clan.

And so as the paths of all these characters—Danny, Abra, Rose the Hat, and many others that pour out of this extraordinary author’s imagination—converge, the stage is set for a “shining showdown” that is classic Stephen King.  He propels you along and before you realize it you are not just reading the story, you are watching it, feeling it.  Indeed, you are in the story.  There are parts that are disturbing (especially for parents).  Other parts exhilarating.  Some touching, some revolting.  But all the while is King's signature great writing that holds you glued to the pages as if in one of Abra’s suggestive trances.  If you will pardon this ultimate cliché, I could not put it down.  But I’m always a sucker for a good showdown.   

So here we have two novels from the same author that will take you in totally different directions.  Which one you choose to read depends on what you have a taste for.  If you loved The Shining, I would recommend Doctor Sleep so you can tie that whole storyline up in a bow and hopefully let Danny Torrence finally find some peace.  If you want to put yourself in the shoes of a time traveler and ask yourself what would you really do if you got the chance, and where would your actions propel the future without even realizing what alternate history you set in motion, then give 11/22/63 a read.  Ah, just flip a coin.  And enjoy.

Either way you can’t go wrong.  It’s Stephen King after all. 

 

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