11/22/63 ******Spoilers!!!

[mae]

I cannot get over how good this is.

[pixiedark76]

I have finished 11/22/63 and I have this to say on the book. The Irish have a saying "What's done is done; can't be undone." In other words leave the past in the past! After reading 11/22/63 I never have realized how true this really is. You should leave the past alone and don't ever think about changing it! Things might end up a lot worse!

[Brice]

Just finished. Damn, this was good. Now i wanna use my time machine to see what i can screw up.

[mae]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...S78.DTL&ao=all

Stories about time travel generally share one trait: They believe, by implication or open statement, that yesterday remains a malleable canvas, if only you could access it. "The past," author William Faulkner once wrote, "is never dead. It's not even past."

In the United States, one of the most obsessed-upon pivot points of our recent past — the moment when people felt the country took a hard turn down a fraught and unpleasant path — was the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. The date is etched forever upon the American psyche: 11/22/63.

Which is exactly the minimalist title of Stephen King's new book. The behemoth "11/22/63" postulates what might have happened if an English teacher named Jake Epping slipped back in time from now to 1958, then lived out five years of his life waiting for Kennedy's appointment with Lee Harvey Oswald's bullet 48 years ago Tuesday — and possibly preventing it.

In other words: One of the Baby Boomers' most celebrated authors is spending three pounds of bookage examining whether the course of the 1960s and the decades beyond would have changed if a single traumatic event had been averted. It's like a mashup of "Back to the Future" and "In the Line of Fire."

This is a wrenching and subtle book, but that's not what we're here to discuss. More important is this: The 849 pages of "11/22/63" channel the angst and longing that so many Boomers feel about a past that, perhaps, didn't go in the direction they had hoped — and possibly even about lives that didn't turn out quite as planned.

The cover of "11/22/63" distills this duality. On the front is a newspaper bearing the familiar headline: "JFK Slain in Dallas, LBJ Takes Oath." On the back, though, is a might-have-been banner from another lifetime — "JFK Escapes Assassination, First Lady Also OK! Americans Breathe Sigh of Relief." It almost hurts to read it, to envision the possibility.

Imagine: giving someone a pen to rewrite the 1960s and beyond — to make Beatles survive, new presidents emerge, things turn out differently. Imagine how that could play with Americans who watched the Kennedy mystique peter out and dreams of revolution melt into ads that use Janis Joplin tunes to sell cars.

King is able to address questions that have been raised so often in the years since that lunch hour on Dealey Plaza in Dallas: Would we have gone so far into Vietnam? Would so many have died? Would JFK, had he lived, have produced an enduring foundation for peace and prosperity? Would the children of the 1960s have come of age in a different world?

Those are the obvious tensions. But, through the eyes of Jake Epping and his Brave-Old-World road trip through pre-Vietnam-era America, King also burrows into some less frequently articulated national themes, both philosophical and theological. Among them:

_Even if we could put a rewrite guy on the history books, could a single man, even one with foreknowledge, have changed everything? In a culture so based on individualism, this is a central question.

_Is there such a thing as fate? Are some things just destined to happen?

_Was the American past actually better, simpler, kinder, more bursting with possibility? Is the national zest for yesterday justified, or is it just a crutch that we use when we want to escape?

As the 1960s dawned, the future was a central part of the American experience. From "The Jetsons" to Kennedy's New Frontier, we shaped and shared optimistic visions of it, made it part of the political dialogue, elevated it to one of the fundamental expressions of our national optimism.

That has long since faded. Today, visions of the future are generally dystopian and menacing. Instead we look back, using entertainment and shopping and casual dining and home decor to evoke pasts that we never lived, to surf among our yesterdays without having to grapple with the tough questions.

This makes King impatient. At one point in 1963, the woman Jake loves in the past learns of his origin and his intent and snaps at him: "That's what all this is to you, isn't it? Just a living history book." King is gentle about it, but he indicts people who bathe themselves in the aura of nostalgia, who look back rather than forward and blindly glorify what came before.

Yes, Jake Epping allows, in 1958 we hadn't destroyed the environment quite so much yet, independent businesses were still serving great pie a la mode and life didn't move quite so fast. But things were a lot smellier, a lot smokier — and, most saliently, a lot more unfair to people who weren't white and male. It wasn't, Jake says, "all Andy-n-Opie."

By the book's end, King's constant readers can place "11/22/63" in the context of his previous work and legitimately wonder: After all the rotting corpses and sharp-toothed clowns, after all the ghosts and aliens and possessed cars and possessed dogs, could this, at long last, be the thing that truly haunts Stephen King? Could the master of American horror, he who bravely shepherded us through the unspeakable in the 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s and the 1970s, be afraid of the 1960s?

And could the sheer capriciousness of history, and how it rearranges all of us like tiny chess pieces, be the most terrifying thing of all?

King actually addresses this. Toward the end of the book he writes, in Jake Epping's voice, one of the most eloquent passages he's ever produced:

"For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dream clock chiming beneath a mystery glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark."

Revealing how "11/22/63" ends would, of course, spoil the book. But it kind of doesn't matter, because the lesson is clarion: Don't mess with yesterday. It may bite. Pulling at the threads of time's tapestry is done at our own peril, and the conventional assumption that changing one thing about the past would make today better is simplistic. Besides, King writes: "The past doesn't want to be changed."

Boomers and Beatles may have believed in yesterday, but salvation doesn't necessarily lie there. No matter how deeply we feel, King seems to say, the answers were never just blowin' in the wind. They weren't even about whether one young president lived or died. They were, and remain, far more complicated.

[JQ The Gunslinger]

Half way into the book. The first 100 pages or so I was like Ehh, this plot is moving to fast for me. But once Jake visited Derry I was in for the ride. Can't wait to finish the rest. And am eager to find the explantion of the yellow-card man.

[pixiedark76]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...S78.DTL&ao=all

Stories about time travel generally share one trait: They believe, by implication or open statement, that yesterday remains a malleable canvas, if only you could access it. "The past," author William Faulkner once wrote, "is never dead. It's not even past."

In the United States, one of the most obsessed-upon pivot points of our recent past — the moment when people felt the country took a hard turn down a fraught and unpleasant path — was the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. The date is etched forever upon the American psyche: 11/22/63.

Which is exactly the minimalist title of Stephen King's new book. The behemoth "11/22/63" postulates what might have happened if an English teacher named Jake Epping slipped back in time from now to 1958, then lived out five years of his life waiting for Kennedy's appointment with Lee Harvey Oswald's bullet 48 years ago Tuesday — and possibly preventing it.

In other words: One of the Baby Boomers' most celebrated authors is spending three pounds of bookage examining whether the course of the 1960s and the decades beyond would have changed if a single traumatic event had been averted. It's like a mashup of "Back to the Future" and "In the Line of Fire."

This is a wrenching and subtle book, but that's not what we're here to discuss. More important is this: The 849 pages of "11/22/63" channel the angst and longing that so many Boomers feel about a past that, perhaps, didn't go in the direction they had hoped — and possibly even about lives that didn't turn out quite as planned.

The cover of "11/22/63" distills this duality. On the front is a newspaper bearing the familiar headline: "JFK Slain in Dallas, LBJ Takes Oath." On the back, though, is a might-have-been banner from another lifetime — "JFK Escapes Assassination, First Lady Also OK! Americans Breathe Sigh of Relief." It almost hurts to read it, to envision the possibility.

Imagine: giving someone a pen to rewrite the 1960s and beyond — to make Beatles survive, new presidents emerge, things turn out differently. Imagine how that could play with Americans who watched the Kennedy mystique peter out and dreams of revolution melt into ads that use Janis Joplin tunes to sell cars.

King is able to address questions that have been raised so often in the years since that lunch hour on Dealey Plaza in Dallas: Would we have gone so far into Vietnam? Would so many have died? Would JFK, had he lived, have produced an enduring foundation for peace and prosperity? Would the children of the 1960s have come of age in a different world?

Those are the obvious tensions. But, through the eyes of Jake Epping and his Brave-Old-World road trip through pre-Vietnam-era America, King also burrows into some less frequently articulated national themes, both philosophical and theological. Among them:

_Even if we could put a rewrite guy on the history books, could a single man, even one with foreknowledge, have changed everything? In a culture so based on individualism, this is a central question.

_Is there such a thing as fate? Are some things just destined to happen?

_Was the American past actually better, simpler, kinder, more bursting with possibility? Is the national zest for yesterday justified, or is it just a crutch that we use when we want to escape?

As the 1960s dawned, the future was a central part of the American experience. From "The Jetsons" to Kennedy's New Frontier, we shaped and shared optimistic visions of it, made it part of the political dialogue, elevated it to one of the fundamental expressions of our national optimism.

That has long since faded. Today, visions of the future are generally dystopian and menacing. Instead we look back, using entertainment and shopping and casual dining and home decor to evoke pasts that we never lived, to surf among our yesterdays without having to grapple with the tough questions.

This makes King impatient. At one point in 1963, the woman Jake loves in the past learns of his origin and his intent and snaps at him: "That's what all this is to you, isn't it? Just a living history book." King is gentle about it, but he indicts people who bathe themselves in the aura of nostalgia, who look back rather than forward and blindly glorify what came before.

Yes, Jake Epping allows, in 1958 we hadn't destroyed the environment quite so much yet, independent businesses were still serving great pie a la mode and life didn't move quite so fast. But things were a lot smellier, a lot smokier — and, most saliently, a lot more unfair to people who weren't white and male. It wasn't, Jake says, "all Andy-n-Opie."

By the book's end, King's constant readers can place "11/22/63" in the context of his previous work and legitimately wonder: After all the rotting corpses and sharp-toothed clowns, after all the ghosts and aliens and possessed cars and possessed dogs, could this, at long last, be the thing that truly haunts Stephen King? Could the master of American horror, he who bravely shepherded us through the unspeakable in the 2000s, the 1990s, the 1980s and the 1970s, be afraid of the 1960s?

And could the sheer capriciousness of history, and how it rearranges all of us like tiny chess pieces, be the most terrifying thing of all?

King actually addresses this. Toward the end of the book he writes, in Jake Epping's voice, one of the most eloquent passages he's ever produced:

"For a moment everything was clear, and when that happens you see that the world is barely there at all. Don't we all secretly know this? It's a perfectly balanced mechanism of shouts and echoes pretending to be wheels and cogs, a dream clock chiming beneath a mystery glass we call life. Behind it? Below it and around it? Chaos, storms. Men with hammers, men with knives, men with guns. Women who twist what they cannot dominate and belittle what they cannot understand. A universe of horror and loss surrounding a single lighted stage where mortals dance in defiance of the dark."

Revealing how "11/22/63" ends would, of course, spoil the book. But it kind of doesn't matter, because the lesson is clarion: Don't mess with yesterday. It may bite. Pulling at the threads of time's tapestry is done at our own peril, and the conventional assumption that changing one thing about the past would make today better is simplistic. Besides, King writes: "The past doesn't want to be changed."

Boomers and Beatles may have believed in yesterday, but salvation doesn't necessarily lie there. No matter how deeply we feel, King seems to say, the answers were never just blowin' in the wind. They weren't even about whether one young president lived or died. They were, and remain, far more complicated.

AMEN!! Don't mess with the past! THE PAST IS GONE!!! FORGET ABOUT IT!

[mtdman]

I thought King did a great job creating an atmosphere of what the 50s and 60s were like to live in, especially for someone who came from the future to live in the past. IMO it's his best job of creating an atmosphere as a character since Salem's Lot.

I pretty much loved the book. However, I could have done without so much day to day stuff about Oswald and his family. God that bored me and slowed the book down waaaay too much there for a while. I understand the historical aspect of that stuff, but it bored the crap out of me.

[Brice]

He could have given another five thousand or so pages and I'd have been happy.

[Erin]

I finished this a few days ago and LOVED it! A great book with characters I really cared about. I also think the ending was very satisfying, but bittersweet of course.

[Heather19]

I just finished it and absolutely loved it! The ending was perfect. I think this is definitely one of my favorites of his, and one of his best. The only part that frustrated me was Jake's gambling. I mean come on, that was bound to have extreme consequences.

[divemaster]

Finished this today. Like most here, nothing but the highest praise from me.

I was very pleased to see King reference (prominently!) the Saki short story The Open Window toward the end of the novel. Just by coincidence I happened to read The Open Window for the first time a couple of weeks ago. (Coincidence? Or harmonics, hmmm?) I encourage anyone not familiar with the sotry to give it a read--it's only a few pages long. You'll see why Jake Epping referred to it in his tale!

[Silenoz]

I'm a little over 300 pages in, it keeps surprising me how good this is. It's ridiculously absorbing so far. I love that it's long too, Jake is only just starting to get introduced to the Oswald family, and it's already been a great ride. Seems like it's going to have a great payoff at the end.

[Heather19]

I think this one has one of the most satisfying endings to a King book. Sometimes I get a little let down by the endings to his stories, but not this one. It was perfect in every way.

[Merlin1958]

I'm about 700 pages in and I'm starting to think Sadie won't make it in the end!!! That would suck big time!! I also hazard a guess that Al, the portal, the Yellow card man and the Obdurate past have a common link. That's just speculation though!!

[Randall Flagg]

What if any Dark Tower references are in the book?

[jhanic]

I don't know of any Dark Tower references in the book, unless the comment "There are other worlds than these" applies. Of course, that would apply to any fantasy book.

John

[mae]

What if any Dark Tower references are in the book?

There are, I believe, mentions of the Takuro Spirit. Also, the town of Arnette figures into it, but that's a reference to The Stand.

[Bev Vincent]

And the obligatory mention of #19 -- Al's cottage is at #19.

[Merlin1958]

Well, there are quite a few "19" references in numbers and otherwise, but that could just be a result of "knowing to look". Of course the big one is the nod to "IT", other than that nada.

[divemaster]

A couple of references to the turtle. But of course that ties into It as well as The Dark Tower.

[Merlin1958]

I suppose the portal itself could be construed as a TDT reference.

Spoiler:

In retrospect the portal (rabbit-hole) could be considered a "natural" door between worlds on this was more time specific. He really doesn't go into much detail regarding how it works. There are vague references to multiple "strings" resulting from Jake's changes that could be interpeted as A/R's

but none of that was the main focus of the story.

I wish he had explained the Yellow card men more. That was a very interesting component of the story to me.

[mae]

Plus, of course, Jake's fake name is a reference to George Amberson from the Booth Tarkington novel The Magnificent Ambersons. Here's what Wikipedia has:

The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood, between the end of the Civil War and the early part of the 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socio-economic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new-money families, which did not derive power from family names but by "doing things." As George Amberson's friend (name unspecified) says, "don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"

The titular family are the most prosperous and powerful in town at the turn of the century. Young George Amberson Minafer, the patriarch’s grandson, is spoiled terribly by his mother Isabel. Growing up arrogant, sure of his own worth and position and totally oblivious to the lives of others, George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, a young though sensible debutante. But there is a long history between George’s mother and Lucy’s father, of which George is unaware. As the town grows into a city, industry thrives, the Ambersons’ prestige and wealth wanes and the Morgans – thanks to Lucy’s prescient father – grow prosperous. When George sabotages his widowed mother's growing affections for Lucy's father, life as he knows it comes to an end.

[ICry4Oy]

I held off but finally started reading it on 11/22 since it seemed (harmonic?). Yep, I'm still under its' spell. Tried to make it last as long as I could but a week was all I could take and had to finish it. Simply an amazing story! My ride home from work is almost an exact backtrack of the route Jake/George and Sadie took on the bus and Studebaker into Dallas, just not all the way into Ft Worth since I live over by Love Field. But the ride home yesterday was slightly surreal as the story was still so fresh in my mind. King actually made me believe in these characters and very much care for them. Loved how 19 pops up so many times and I agree about the rabbit hole being a version of a door. I could be stretching here but to me anyway, all the harmonizing was akin to Ka.

The ending to me had to be one of, if not the most satisfying of any King story. This story also had real places and addresses of places I have been to and anyone can google streetview. Also a fictitous old frightening familiar place (Derry) and a new comfortable place (Jodie). Bevie from the levee and Ritchie from the ditchie were a most pleasant surprise!!! This was a horror story of a different kind and a love story that tears at the heart.

I definitely have to put this book near the top of my favorite King stories list.

[Bev Vincent]

According to Ms. Mod: Now that the book has been out and folks have had a chance to read it, I now feel it's okay to say that as far as their being connected, Steve said

Spoiler:

he intentionally did not connect these two stories.

[Heather19]

What two stories are you referring too? It and 11/22/63?

And ICry, I agree. I thought it was a very emotional book. Especially once you get to the end. It was heartbreaking, but fulfilling at the same time.