Triumphant Return & Roadwork

Whew...months of slogging through rather difficult and somewhat depressing reads, time spent relaxing, but I am finally through!

In order to be 100% transparent, inaction / stagnation are traits that I can't abide. Characters (and people) that stagnate hold no interest for me. They are one dimensional, and dare I say it, boring. I live for growth, realization, epiphany, and painful awareness of one's motivations in life. With that in mind, I have no problem telling you that it was with resentment that I pushed my way through Roadwork.

Roadwork is another of King's works written as Richard Bachman. This work is about a man, Barton Dawes, who is going to lose his home to a freeway. Rather than allow the state to buy his house and look for a better home, he is paralyzed by depression. Barton destroys his marriage, his career and his life with his inability to move forward.

The saving grace for Roadwork and Barton are the references to a son that died - which are the only parts of the book that I really enjoyed. The reader is led to believe that his motivations for wanting to remain are that all memories of a happier time, with his son and wife, are alive in this house. We are led to believe that perhaps Barton Dawes believes that outside his home he loses his child. But it is just an allusion and Barton does not come to realize this, as far as we are aware. Instead, we are left to read pages and pages of painful stagnation and action without motivation.

In the Dead Zone

is apparently where I put all my memories of this book. Not a slow read at all! Perhaps I got the book confused with the movie - which was very slow (and what were they thinking when they cast Christopher Walken?!?).

My general rule, when starting any new book, is to read the first 30-40 pages without interruption. To me, this insures that I will continue with the book, because I am invested in reading it. Whereas, in the rare cases that I have sat down and started a book and only read 10 pages, I ended up not finishing it. This is all to illustrate the fact that I found The Dead Zone so engaging that I read 65 pages the first night.

The other thing that has struck me about this book is that The Dead Zone is a Richard Bachman book - or Stephen King trying to unite the halves of himself as an author. King's first three books, Carrie, 'Salems's Lot, and The Shining, were horror novels, no doubt about it. Carrie, is not really that scary, but it is disturbing. Then he publishes Rage under the name Richard Bachman - a purely fiction work, with no terrifying elements, at all. TDZ, seems to be a work that encorporates his love of the supernatural with fiction.

When people talk to me about Stephen King and how they do not read his work because they do not like horror novels, I often point out that King is an author that is interested in the exploration of the supernatural, not horror. Sometimes horror and the supernatural dovetail nicely, but I do not think it is his intent to frighten. I then go on to point out how the person talking to me already enjoys Stephen King, they just don't know it. I list off The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Stand by Me, and they nod about how they really enjoyed those movies. To that list, I will now add The Dead Zone, as a novel they should read.

Weak and Powerless

Finished Rage last night.

Charlie Decker holds his class hostage after shooting and killing two teachers. Prior to this incident, he beat a teacher that had bullied him with a lead wrench, almost killing him. Yet, the students identify with him and I identify with him. Not his methods, mind you, but his sentiments.

Charlie is a character that is eaten up inside by his lack of power in his own life. He has terrible gastric distress and feels disconnected from life and the people around him. The students that he is "holding hostage" echo this feeling - one of them says that she feels that life is not real. I don't know if this is typical for all teenagers, but I know I felt that way in my teens. It is an odd thing to be told by everyone around you that you need to act like an adult, yet the authorities refuse to let you be one. Old enough to have a baby, yet not old enough to make a decision about your future.

Charlie acts out in the only way that he can fathom. His childlike behavior is rewarded with adultlike consequences and in today's world he would be sentenced to life in prison for his actions. When we do not instill our children with a sense of responsibility nor recognize mental illness, terrible things happen. We are all in this together and this story really brings that home for me. King wrote it as a means of sharing his feelings from high school and I think it is interesting that this sentiment still exists more than 30 years later and bullying, school shootings, and murders are just getting worse. Instead of being out of print, this book should be on everyone's shelf as a warning for what happens when we treat others as invisible.

I happened to hear this song today and thought how much it echoes this story.

Rage

This is the first of The Bachman Books, and also the very first Stephen King work that I read. Most people equate King with horror, but I think that he lives beyond that genre and is a skilled fiction writer. Not sure you believe me? Well, you probably enjoyed "The Green Mile," or "Shawshank Redemption," or "Stand By Me," just to name a few.

King has mentioned that his inspiration for this novel is the frustration experienced as a teen in high school. I think many people can identify with that. Perhaps too many, since the paperback of this novel became associated with a number of high school shootings. After an incident in 1997, where a copy of rage was found in the students locker, King asked that Rage be taken out of publication. I am not a fan of censorship, but I can understand why someone might feel that their work was inspirational in a not so healthy way. This novel is still available in The Bachman Books.