I Read a Book…

…it was called 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Here’s what I thought about it:

Any person with even the teeny-tiniest bit of knowledge in history knows that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill President John F. Kennedy. Fact is, JFK’s death was faked in order to remove him from the public eye, thus allowing him to quietly work behind the scenes without fear of government scrutiny. Even to this day, the 35th president skulks beneath the White House, clambering through a series of secret passageway, whispering suggestions in President Obama’s ear while he sleeps and perversely watching the First Lady through peepholes in the presidential bathroom.

JFK always was a bit of a creepster. America loved him for that.

Knowing all of this made it a bit hard to take Stephen King’s new book, 11/22/63, seriously. I’m usually fascinated by the kinds of screwed up timelines and wild theories set forth by alt history novels; but an entire story that hinges on something as preposterous as JFK’s assassination actually being the real deal? Even Monica Lewinsky would have trouble swallowing that.

But King is a smart guy. He’s written a best-selling novel more times than George W. Bush has screwed up second grade English. Dude knows what he’s doing. In the same way the 2013 Presidential Inaugurations utilized a lip-synching Beyonce to distract people from the fact that they were watching a boring-ass Presidential Inauguration, King wraps his potentially dull tale of silly alt history with a blanket of time travel and provides us with an immensely likable protagonist who is both a bit cynical of and in love with life in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Here’s the plot in a nutshell: Main character Jake Epping is asked by a buddy to travel through a worm hole in time to the late 1950s and wait around until the “Kennedy assassination” and then put a stop to it. By doing so, Jake’s buddy says, all of the wrongs in the world will be righted and everything will be magic and rainbows and cookies and magic rainbow cookies. The United States won’t get involved in Vietnam, Richard Nixon will never be President, and 9/11 won’t occur because all of a sudden all the dudes in the Middle East will suddenly decide that, you know, the U.S. ain’t so bad after all. Also, the kids of the world won’t start misspelling the word “potatoes” just because a cool V.P. like Dan Quayle tells them to. Everything will be swell.

But, of course, even in the early pages of this massive novel, we know that’s probably not the case. Apparently, Jake Epping has never read a single time travel story; if he had, he’d know that even doing something small like farting on a blade of grass can cause horrific changes down the line. Much like the days of the Carter administration, there’s a growing sense of dread throughout the novel. The reader knows bad stuff’s going to happen; he or she’s just waiting for the foot to drop.

But the journey to that inevitable end point is really, really good…mostly. As Epping becomes more invested in his life in the 1950s and ‘60s, so too do the readers. It’s interesting to hear a modern perspective on life in these “simpler times,” where soda was made with real syrup and sugar and racism hadn’t been totally, 100 percent wiped from existence like it is now. Jake gets a job and falls in love and becomes attached to people, all the while knowing that date of purpose for his little stint in time is approaching fast. It’s nearly all fascinating stuff. Like 27th President William Howard Taft at an all you can eat buffet of turkey legs and gravy, I would gorge myself on page after page of this novel.

That said, there are certainly times when King’s writing seems to be on autopilot. I like a long novel that takes its sweet time fleshing out its characters, but there are times in which 11/22/63 seems to be spinning its wheels. A few too many chapters end with Jake and his girl having sex (usually in a passive or suggestive way. King might as well have written, “We did it” at the end of these chapters.). Much like Richard Nixon’s gelatinous jowls, the whole thing seemed like it could have been just a bit tighter.

All in all, though, 11/22/63 is a great read with an emotionally-satisfying ending. I would highly recommend to anyone with an interest in “what if” stories, convoluted yarns or good old-fashioned quality bullshitting.

In other words, any politician.

Genre Drama

"Harumph, cough cough, ehem. My word. I never."

As is often the case on lazy Saturdays, which is when the complete lack of work makes us realize we have absolutely nothing at all to do, Mandy and I found ourselves in a book store.

We really don’t ever know what we’re doing there. We’ll meander over into the science fiction/fantasy section, peruse the comics and Manga, pilfer through some board games and wander back to the magazines so I can check out rags like Bloody Disgusting and Fangoria (to which I lovingly refer as “gorno mags”). Occasionally, we’ll pick up a book or two, look at the back and say, “I’m going to buy this,” and then promptly return it to its place on the shelf. But as far as having an overall goal to our visits, we have none. We are the worst kinds of customers: Those who loiter, but never shop.

We do, however, often engage in intelligent conversation.

“What the fuck is the ‘literature’ section,” one of us asked the other. I don’t remember who; after you’ve been married for a while your brains begin to coalesce.

“It’s a catch all,” replied the other, the one who hadn’t asked the original question. “Whatever’s popular gets tossed in because it’ll sell more.”

“That’s stupid,” the first claimed, and the second agreed.That is incredibly stupid.

There’s a lot hubbub over genre. Time and time again, I’ve read that “genre fiction” — that is fiction that can easily categorized (westerns, science fiction, romance) — is inferior to “literature,” that somehow featuring cowboys or dragons or space pirates or ripped Native Americans with smooth sinewy muscles glistening an oily brown in the sun are somehow unworthy of taking up shelf space next to Sue Grafton’s alphabet books. “Literature” has come to be synonymous with “superior,” which is weird because I could have sworn I saw a whole slew of Nicholas Sparks novels filling at least a shelf’s worth of space within that section. To me, and I’m an idiot so take this with a grain of salt, Sparks’ novels are romance. Therefore, they belong in the “romance” section. Some may consider them to be a higher caliber of romance, likely because they’re printed in hardback and are published by some of the more respected publishing houses, but the stories within center around the plucking heartstrings of two individuals who usually have to overcome some obstacle before they can be together. Then, one of them dies. That’s a romance novel.

What’s most amusing are the titles that share both space on the genre fiction shelves and the “literature” shelves, as if somehow these novels have split the seams of their lowly categories and have grown snugly into broad generalization. I’m talking Stephen King (horror, science fiction, drama), Neil Gaiman (science fiction, fantasy), Cormac McCarthy (western, science fiction, thriller) and, of course, the army of writers who together form the “author” James Patterson (crime thriller, mystery). These authors write within genres. Sometimes they are different genres, or occasionally mix genres (as the best writers do) but they are genre writers nonetheless. Clumping them together with the general term “literature” because it sounds more important is just silly.

I propose either an all or none approach to categorization: We either break down novels into one of six or so distinct genres (science fiction/fantasy, romance, thriller, drama, humor, plotless ramblings, etc…) or throw them all together in a section simply labeled, “BOOKS.” That way, there’s little or no confusion. Because, while I’d be remiss to label what Nicholas Sparks writes as “literature,” there is no doubt in my mind “Message in a Bottle” is a book.