book review: 11/22/63
Stephen King has written good books, bad books, and even some great books (and yes, I mean Great Books, I think he will one day be spoken in the same breath as Fitzgerald and Hemingway) but regardless of whether or not any one of his particular books has been good, they have all been consistently original. That's why I was dismayed to find out about the concept behind his latest novel, 11/22/63, about a man who travels back in time to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I have no idea how many books or Internet stories have already been written about this, but they surely number in the dozens, if not the hundreds.
And as for TV and movies, I could think of three examples right off the top of my head: the excellent Quantum Leap episode "Lee Harvey Oswald" (in which our hero Sam repeatedly leaps into the body of Oswald, but still seems unable to prevent Oswald's destiny), the respected by pretty much impossible to find TV movie Running Against Time, and the truly awful alternative history movie Timequest, which pretty much uses the time travel adventure and assassination story as a prologue, and then settles into a terribly written present-day story set in the alternate reality caused by JFK's survival. In short, the usually original King has settled onto a story idea that has already been tackled multiple times.
But let me tell you something, I'm glad I didn't allow my initial dismay to dissuade me from reading the book, because 11/22/63 is an excellent novel.
The main character is Jake Epping, an English professor who discovers a time portal in the walk-in pantry of his buddy's local diner. No explanation for this time portal is ever presented; it seems to be an anomalous, but natural phenomenon. Stepping into the pantry, one is transported back in time to 11:58 A.M. on September 9, 1958. Always the exact same spot, always the exact same instant in time. You can change the past if you're able and willing, but if you go back to the future, and then make another journey through the pantry, then it's an "instant reset," erasing all of the changes you made during your previous journey through time. No matter how much time you spend in the past -- whether it's seconds, minutes, hours, or even years, your return to the present time is always exactly two minutes after you left.
With me so far? Jake can go back in time and have five years to figure out how to prevent the assassination, but if his plan hinges on waiting for the actual moment of truth, that means having to make a life for himself in the past for five years, because every time he tries to go back and forth between the present and back to the past, he'll always end up back in 1958 -- and any changes he may have made during each previous trip will be erased, meaning he has to start from scratch every single time. This may sound like it could get redundant for the reader, but Jake's a smart guy and figures the rules out pretty quickly, preventing the reader from having to sit through too many "do-overs."
Meanwhile, as Jake adjusts to life in the late fifties/ early sixties -- no cell phones or Internet, but a more innocent time, with cheap prices and delicious food -- he has plenty to keep both him and the reader occupied, since he embarks on side-missions while waiting for 11/22/63. These side missions are exciting stories in their own right, and never feel like King is just killing time while Jake waits to find a way to prevent the assassination from taking place.
I do have one nitpick. King loves to make all of his stories connect, and 11/22/63 is no exception, as one of the side-missions takes place in Derry, Maine -- the fictional town that was the setting for King's excellent supernatural novel It. Why did King choose Derry? I suppose because it's just a familiar setting for him, which is fine. But when Jake meets two of the main characters from It, the scene feels like a cheap, contrived TV crossover. You know the kind, in which Bill Cosby's doctor turns out to be the Ted Danson character from Danson's show, but nothing funny, insightful, or useful comes out of their meeting, and it becomes clear that the cameo exists merely for the sake of cross-promotion. That's the feeling I got here too. Yes, it's sort of fun to see these characters interacting, but once you realize there's no point to it, the scene becomes almost annoying more than entertaining. Now this may seem like a silly thing to nitpick, since it's only one brief scene in a long novel, but, oddly, King keeps referring back to it, as Jake repeatedly recalls his meeting with Bev and Richie for no reason other than for King to say, "hey, remember when he met those characters from the other novel, wasn't that fun, wasn't that a delight?"
But that really is a small nitpick, worth mentioning, but not worth changing my opinion about the book as a whole. Let me tell you, this book has everything you need for a good read. The action is exciting, the dialogue is natural-sounding, the main character and his friends are likable, the villains are dangerous, and the best thing about a novel whose premise relies on the suspension of disbelief is that Jake and his thoughts are so believable that you are sucked in to his world. Aside from the silly It crossover (which really is a small matter), 11/22/63 is an excellent, compelling, and plain old fun book.
And as for TV and movies, I could think of three examples right off the top of my head: the excellent Quantum Leap episode "Lee Harvey Oswald" (in which our hero Sam repeatedly leaps into the body of Oswald, but still seems unable to prevent Oswald's destiny), the respected by pretty much impossible to find TV movie Running Against Time, and the truly awful alternative history movie Timequest, which pretty much uses the time travel adventure and assassination story as a prologue, and then settles into a terribly written present-day story set in the alternate reality caused by JFK's survival. In short, the usually original King has settled onto a story idea that has already been tackled multiple times.
But let me tell you something, I'm glad I didn't allow my initial dismay to dissuade me from reading the book, because 11/22/63 is an excellent novel.
The main character is Jake Epping, an English professor who discovers a time portal in the walk-in pantry of his buddy's local diner. No explanation for this time portal is ever presented; it seems to be an anomalous, but natural phenomenon. Stepping into the pantry, one is transported back in time to 11:58 A.M. on September 9, 1958. Always the exact same spot, always the exact same instant in time. You can change the past if you're able and willing, but if you go back to the future, and then make another journey through the pantry, then it's an "instant reset," erasing all of the changes you made during your previous journey through time. No matter how much time you spend in the past -- whether it's seconds, minutes, hours, or even years, your return to the present time is always exactly two minutes after you left.
With me so far? Jake can go back in time and have five years to figure out how to prevent the assassination, but if his plan hinges on waiting for the actual moment of truth, that means having to make a life for himself in the past for five years, because every time he tries to go back and forth between the present and back to the past, he'll always end up back in 1958 -- and any changes he may have made during each previous trip will be erased, meaning he has to start from scratch every single time. This may sound like it could get redundant for the reader, but Jake's a smart guy and figures the rules out pretty quickly, preventing the reader from having to sit through too many "do-overs."
Meanwhile, as Jake adjusts to life in the late fifties/ early sixties -- no cell phones or Internet, but a more innocent time, with cheap prices and delicious food -- he has plenty to keep both him and the reader occupied, since he embarks on side-missions while waiting for 11/22/63. These side missions are exciting stories in their own right, and never feel like King is just killing time while Jake waits to find a way to prevent the assassination from taking place.
I do have one nitpick. King loves to make all of his stories connect, and 11/22/63 is no exception, as one of the side-missions takes place in Derry, Maine -- the fictional town that was the setting for King's excellent supernatural novel It. Why did King choose Derry? I suppose because it's just a familiar setting for him, which is fine. But when Jake meets two of the main characters from It, the scene feels like a cheap, contrived TV crossover. You know the kind, in which Bill Cosby's doctor turns out to be the Ted Danson character from Danson's show, but nothing funny, insightful, or useful comes out of their meeting, and it becomes clear that the cameo exists merely for the sake of cross-promotion. That's the feeling I got here too. Yes, it's sort of fun to see these characters interacting, but once you realize there's no point to it, the scene becomes almost annoying more than entertaining. Now this may seem like a silly thing to nitpick, since it's only one brief scene in a long novel, but, oddly, King keeps referring back to it, as Jake repeatedly recalls his meeting with Bev and Richie for no reason other than for King to say, "hey, remember when he met those characters from the other novel, wasn't that fun, wasn't that a delight?"
But that really is a small nitpick, worth mentioning, but not worth changing my opinion about the book as a whole. Let me tell you, this book has everything you need for a good read. The action is exciting, the dialogue is natural-sounding, the main character and his friends are likable, the villains are dangerous, and the best thing about a novel whose premise relies on the suspension of disbelief is that Jake and his thoughts are so believable that you are sucked in to his world. Aside from the silly It crossover (which really is a small matter), 11/22/63 is an excellent, compelling, and plain old fun book.
posted by Movie Man at
4:21 PM
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