While reading the latest
doorstopper of an opus by the ever present and ever prolific Stephen King, I
was struck by another kind of defense for those who continually downgrade his
importance to American writing simply because of his popularity. To get through
any of his books, the great ones especially, such as The Stand and It, and this
one 11/22/63, you really have to love reading. Not the kind of reading you do
in college, which, despite some student’s said enthusiasm, will always remain a
chore, or the kind of reading people do to get smarter and consciously develop
thinking skills. I am talking about the kind of reading that serves no purpose,
the kind that, while the act itself is taking place, does not seem to be
accomplishing anything (although and unconscious process is taking place) and
it is driven by the sheer joy of the reading, and the writer’s voice and the
act itself do not show their ugly little heads, and its just you and the story,
together on a long, perilous, and exciting journey into the unknown. To me,
that is the best kind of reading, since casts aside all the pretensions and
pressure so many intellectuals force into people’s reading lives, and allows
the process of learning to unfold organically, and reading a Stephen King book
is a good way to put this process into effect, and with 11/22/63, he has
produced his most accessible book since The Dead Zone. We are introduced to
Jake Epping in 2011, a divorced high school and GED teacher whose life seems to
have hit a standstill until he reads and essay of the harrowing account of the
murder of one of his student’s families. This student, Harry Dunning, is also a
janitor at the school Jake works at, and the story produces unknown emotions in
him, despite not being a “crying type”. Eventually, he forgets about this essay
(although he saves it) after a few years, and one day he goes to Al’s Diner, a
place he frequents despite rumors of a nefarious meat product in the
hamburgers, and finds his friend Al much older than the night before, as well
as sick. Al then shows him a portal that exists in his pantry that takes him
back to 1958, and brings you back two minutes ahead. After a brief trip that
resulted in Jake buying a classic tasting root beer, Al lays his main mission
on Jake: he must stop the Kennedy Assassination. Once Al dies, Jake, for a lack
of anything better to do, decides to see this mission out, spending five years
in the past. There he finds love, a new life, but also the impending consequences
of what he is about to do. Through this time travel story, King expertly
details the ideas of self-sacrifice, the ways in which the past must remain unchanged,
and the ways in which we have importance in lives of people we know, despite
how little we may feel it in the end. It offers the same kind of bittersweet
message The Dead Zone does, that doesn’t end smoothly, but it does end right. A
good read for Christmas break, and possibly the best thing this master
craftsman has done in a good, long while.
Rating: 5/5
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