11/22/63: A Novel

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11/22/63: A Novel

Postby whipstitch » Wed Nov 09, 2011 6:22 pm

Figured some of y'all would be into this...

From Amazon

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force.

Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.
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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby MinM » Wed Nov 09, 2011 7:12 pm

.
Some good stuff about this book and more here:
.
rigorousintuition.ca :: CIA's use of George Clooney+...Coen brothers?
hanshan wrote:...
bizarre

Image

...

dbcooper41 wrote:this is hitting very close to home. i grew up with rachael woods mother. we were bf/gf throughout elementary school. and her dad, ira david wood III is highly worshipped locally by the society elite.
he also is remembered for having flannel shirt parties with the kids in his productions. he ran the children's theater. i think my sister was about 14 when he first hit on her(probably successfully).
you may recall that evan wood was pimped out at a very tender age.
unfortunately this all fits in with what i have grown to suspect about my childhood. i'm shaking right now. :mad2
sorry if this doesn't make sense.

brekin wrote:
11/22/63
Background information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11/22/63

King first talked about this idea in Marvel Spotlight: The Dark Tower, an issue of Marvel Spotlight published on January 27, 2007, prior to the beginning of the ongoing comic book adaptation of King's Dark Tower series. In the magazine, in a piece entitled "An Open Letter From Stephen King", he writes about possible original ideas for comics:

"I'd like to tell a time-travel story where this guy finds a diner that connects to 1958... you always go back to the same day. So one day he goes back and just stays. Leaves his 2007 life behind. His goal? To get up to November 22, 1963, and stop Lee Harvey Oswald. He does, and he's convinced he's just FIXED THE WORLD. But when he goes back to '07, the world's a nuclear slag-heap. Not good to fool with Father Time. So then he has to go back again and stop himself... only he's taken on a fatal dose of radiation, so it's a race against time."


WTF? According to JFK and the Unspeakable wasn't JFK trying to draw down nuclear arms with Kruschev?
I hate to judge a book before I've read it but this seems like complete apologist propaganda. Maybe King will do a series
where time travelers prevent other assassinations like MLK's and the Universe caves in on itself.

Very interesting stuff.

It would also be interesting to know what kind of compromises authors like Stephen King might be forced to make. How about Norman Mailer and John Grisham before him? Either that or they are just terribly misinformed. Which seems highly unlikely.

The Worst Books Ever on the JFK Assassination - The Education Forum
That's a great website, Robert, and I've read that info on Mailer only recently...

The Blog owner of Rigorous Intuition has a collection of articles in book form.

An author called Peter Lavenda has written of Mailer as well, in his "Sinister forces" trilogy. Mailer contributed the forward to, I think, the second volume?

Lavenda talks about some of these "coincidences" surrounding Mailer...interesting.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... t&p=215308

The post above by Spartacus' Steve Duffy was, at least partially, in response to this RI thread:

rigorousintuition.ca :: View topic - 20 Most Amazing Coincidences
nomo wrote:
A novel that unsuspectedly described the spy next door

When Norman Mailer began his novel Barbary Shore, there was no plan to have a Russian spy as a character. As he worked on it, he introduced a Russian spy in the U.S. as a minor character. As the work progressed, the spy became the dominant character in the novel. After the novel was completed, the U.S. Immigration Service arrested a man who lived just one floor above Mailer in the same apartment building. He was Colonel Rudolf Abel, alleged to be the top Russian spy working in the U.S. at that time. (Source: Science Digest)

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... =8&t=11669

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... t&p=215257

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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby Nordic » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:07 pm

He tries to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from doing what exactly? Eating lunch and going to a movie?
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby DrVolin » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:27 pm

Nordic wrote:He tries to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from doing what exactly? Eating lunch and going to a movie?


Can we have a post of the week thread?
all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

--Guns and Roses
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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby whipstitch » Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:13 pm

Nordic wrote:He tries to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from doing what exactly? Eating lunch and going to a movie?


I believe it's fiction :wink
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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby MinM » Thu Nov 10, 2011 1:55 pm

whipstitch wrote:
Nordic wrote:He tries to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from doing what exactly? Eating lunch and going to a movie?


I believe it's fiction :wink

Fiction, as a device to reveal some uncomfortable truths, can be a powerful tool.
Conversely; fiction as a device used to conceal some uncomfortable truths, applied by the likes of Stephen King and Norman Mailer, can be a powerful tool too.
justdrew wrote:
RUNNING AGAINST TIME (1990)
History professor David Rhodes never has got over the death of his older brother, 1966 in Vietnam. When he hears the rumor that a famous professor is working on a time machine, he immediately contacts him and persuades him to allow him to travel back in time and correct history. If he could save President Kennedy's life, Vietnam war might never have happened

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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby ShinShinKid » Thu Nov 10, 2011 2:25 pm

I saw an interview with King yesterday...He said that Oswald acted alone with 98% of certainty...The whole book is based on a false premise!

I knew, I just knew there was a reason I never really cared for his books...I have tried reading almost all of his "genres", horror, sci-fi, true fiction, etc..and I never got into any of it...it's easy to see now. He is truly ignoring great and vast underpinnings of various forces that motivate the actual horror that occurs in our world!
Well played, God. Well played".
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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby Nordic » Thu Nov 10, 2011 3:23 pm

I always thought King was a dreadful hack of a writer. Although I'll admit I did enjoy "The Dead Zone".
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby IanEye » Thu Nov 10, 2011 3:43 pm

Nordic wrote: Although I'll admit I did enjoy "The Dead Zone".


you mean the one about the political assassin who is considered mentally unstable because he saw visions?
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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby Nordic » Thu Nov 10, 2011 4:23 pm

IanEye wrote:
Nordic wrote: Although I'll admit I did enjoy "The Dead Zone".


you mean the one about the political assassin who is considered mentally unstable because he saw visions?



Dead Zone was about a guy who, after being in a coma for a long time, awakens and is able to, upon physically touching someone, see their future in a vision.

Eventually he shakes hands with a popular presidential candidate who is on his way to the White House. When he does so, he sees that this candidate is a psycho who will start a thermonuclear war.

So he becomes the assassin, killing the candidate and thus saving the future. Sacrificing himself in the process.

David Cronenberg made a movie of it.
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11/11/11

Postby IanEye » Fri Nov 11, 2011 10:58 am

Johnny Smith doesn't successfully assassinate Greg Stillson.
But he ends his political career.

That is because Stillson grabs a child out of the audience and uses that child as a human shield.
Once the Press reports on this act of cowardice, Stillson's political ambitions are unattainable..

If you study The Dead Zone and King's following novel Firestarter, it puts his new "lone gunman" novel about the assassination of JFK in an interesting perspective.

*

Oh, and this is for Hugh:


Image



The event is covered up by the government, and released to the papers as a terrorist firebomb attack. The Shop quickly reforms, under new leadership, and begins a manhunt for Charlie, who has returned to the Manders farm. After some deliberation, she comes up with a plan and leaves the Manders', just ahead of Shop operatives, and heads to New York City. She decides on Rolling Stone magazine as an unbiased, honest media source with no ties to the government, and the book ends as she arrives to tell them her story.
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Re: 11/11/11

Postby Harvey » Fri Nov 11, 2011 11:29 am

IanEye wrote:Johnny Smith doesn't successfully assassinate Greg Stillson.
But he ends his political career.

That is because Stillson grabs a child out of the audience and uses that child as a human shield.
Once the Press reports on this act of cowardice, Stillson's political ambitions are unattainable..

If you study The Dead Zone and King's following novel Firestarter, it puts his new "lone gunman" novel about the assassination of JFK in an interesting perspective.


Didn't Red Dwarf (series 7 episode 1) say pretty much the same thing in Doug Naylor's first edition of the show written without former co-writer Rob grant, except it was Kennedy himself on the grassy knoll, from an alternative future, trying to save the world from the unforeseen consequences of his uninterrupted presidency.

Nice idea but as pointed out, it doesn't align with the facts. ;)

I’m just trying to inject a note of optimism here, but I am beginning to understand that evil, whether it is no more than an aspect of our selves, or partly something outside our selves, it can not avoid doing unintended good. No matter how selfish, fearful, hating, arrogant and murderous it becomes. Perhaps there’s a bigger picture we don’t see. It would need a sufficiently distant perspective from the 20th century to see it, I agree, but unfortunately for us, we don't have that.

Maybe there is a grain of truth in the fictions.
Last edited by Harvey on Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby sunny » Fri Nov 11, 2011 12:59 pm

This kind of reminds me of the novel Replay, which also assumed Oswald was the assassin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_%28novel%29
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Re: 11/11/11

Postby Nordic » Fri Nov 11, 2011 1:43 pm

IanEye wrote:Johnny Smith doesn't successfully assassinate Greg Stillson.
But he ends his political career.

That is because Stillson grabs a child out of the audience and uses that child as a human shield.
Once the Press reports on this act of cowardice, Stillson's political ambitions are unattainable..

If you study The Dead Zone and King's following novel Firestarter, it puts his new "lone gunman" novel about the assassination of JFK in an interesting perspective.

*

Oh, and this is for Hugh:




Oh, okay. You have a better memory than I do about it! I haven't seen it in years, and read the book probably in high school (which for me was in the 70's). :)

Maybe I remember him shooting the guy because that's what I was hoping would happen .....
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Re: 11/22/63: A Novel

Postby Harvey » Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:22 pm

sunny wrote:This kind of reminds me of the novel Replay, which also assumed Oswald was the assassin:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_%28novel%29



From the link:

"...it soon becomes clear why the man is institutionalized when he calmly states that aliens are forcing him to murder people for their own entertainment..."



Which is in turn reminiscent of King's Under the Dome, (I really enjoyed it, but it's uneccessarily dark, the wiki description is spoiler central.)

Spoiler:Alien children cover a small town with a clear force field and according to King's characters, get their jollies as the towns folk destroy each other in short order, like ants blundering into the focal point of a giant magnifying glass.

I get the metaphor, but ultimately he's far better at describing the causal chain of our social ills, than he is at what it all means.
Last edited by Harvey on Fri Nov 11, 2011 9:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
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And be loved
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