The Long Walk, by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachmann) and a bit on The Dark Tower and others

[rachelmanija]

Stephen King has written one of my favorite books ever (The Stand) in addition to one of my favorite psychic kids books (Firestarter) and also lots of books that I just like a lot, or are worth reading even if I didn't love them

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Hmm. Maybe Lisey's Story? It might be too digressive/self-indulgent for you. On the other hand, it's well-structured and is basically a love story, though not a genre romance because half of it takes place two years after the hero's death and is about how the heroine carries on. The ending is a little anti-climactic, but King has trouble with endings. (Firestarter is the only one I can think of offhand where I thought the ending was perfect.)

[sartorias]

I loved his writing book so much, too, that I'm tiptoeing around his work. I got kind of bored with the fantasy, have 11/22/63 sitting on the shelf here . . . do you have a recco for another? For vector purposes, I read Firestarter before it came out, when it was submitted to Larimar. Loved the entire thing except the middle, where all I recollect now is that they were torturing people. So I never tried another.

[rachelmanija]

The thing with King is that there is always going to be at least one really violent/gross/disturbing scene or section, even if most of the book isn't horror. (That was not my favorite part of Firestarter either.)

Like, Lisey's Story, I think you'd have a similar issue as with Firestarter, which is that the majority of the story is split between the (past) story of a loving marriage with some interesting problems, and the (present) story of a middle-aged widow who is badass and fabulous despite not having any special powers, and how she begins to heal and find her own life after her husband's death two years prior. T

hose parts, I think you'd like. And that's most of the book. However, there are a few short but plot-crucial scenes that are real horror, one involving a squicky injury and one involving child abuse/harm. (If you do read, get the mass market paperback. Apparently other editions have some weird font issues making parts hard to read. LITERALLY hard.

I'll keep my eye out, though. I also want to read 11/22/63.

[sartorias]

Okay, thanks! That one sounds good to try.

[movingfinger]

The Long Walk seems like it could be discussed in the context of the Aliette de Bodard series that tightropegirl mentioned the other day. The sacrifice as a genuinely necessary thing to keep the world going.

Perhaps that's the next place one goes after "The Lottery." Not only is this terrible thing happening, but it has to happen or something even worse comes into the world.

[rachelmanija]

That would be King's The Stand: the sacrifice, first of most of the world's population, and then of some of the few survivors to wipe the slate clean and start anew.

The Long Walk is different. he walk does have an implicit in-book reason, but it's not for anything good. America is apparently a military dictatorship and the person in charge is a sadist who gets his kicks out of watching kids die. The ending especially has the strong implication that the entire thing was a completely pointless waste of life. It might be an allegory for the Vietnam war, except that at least some of the people causing that believed that it had a purpose. It's a great allegory for the Iraq war, with the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, except that it was written something like 20 years previously. It does work as an allegory of pointless war in general.

[resonant]

I could see it as an ultra-patriotic response to an historical event, like the Long March in China. "You younguns don't appreciate how we had to walk for days chased by the enemy, gunned down if we paused for a moment. Let's hold an annual event to commemorate it".

[wordsofastory]

Have you read any of Joe Hill's books? (He's King's son, but writes under the "Hill" name because he wanted to be judged on his own terms.) His style is very similar to King's, so he might be worth a try.

I'd particularly recommend Horns, about a dude who starts turning into literally The Devil (growing horns and a tail, skin turning red) while solving the murder of his girlfriend; and NOS4A2, about a woman who has the magic power of being able to find anything lost fighting a vampire.

(My favorite of Hill's is actually his book of short stories, but that one's very very much horror, so maybe not for you.)

[rachelmanija]

SO LATE, sorry! No, I haven't.

But I am mostly commenting to say that I initially read a woman who has the magic power of being able to find anything lost fighting a vampire. and thought, "Worst power ever, how many things get lost while you're fighting a vampire" before realizing that there was an alternate reading.

It now goes on my hall of fame ambiguous sentences along with "I saw a heron fixing up my deck" and "The cowboy rode through the desert covered in cactus."

[wordsofastory]

Hahaha, I would actually love to read a book about such an amazingly specific power. But your second reading is the correct one!

[negothick]

King wrote the first version of The Long Walk while still in high school, and revised it while in college during the late 60s. It is by his account an allegory for Vietnam, during which working class boys were drafted and sent to war while slightly more affluent ones went to college on scholarships and proceeded to get stoned, drop out, and end up in Vietnam. Or graduate with a low lottery number, ditto. [yes, broad brush strokes over-simplified, but that's allegory for you]. By the time this was published "as by Richard Bachman," King was famous and the war was over. For a mature version of the "college during Vietnam" story, read the heartbreaking Hearts in Atlantis.

[rachelmanija]

That makes the entire book make so much more sense, thank you. Nothing more confusing than an allegory when you don't know what it's an allegory of.

I have obtained Hearts in Atlantis! King is really good at breaking my heart. I am never going to get over some of the deaths in The Stand.