Constant Reader Book Club #1

At some point in your life, you're almost guaranteed to have a conversation about time travel, and what you would do if you could go backwards and fix mistakes or go into a situation with forward knowledge. Sometimes, you might even be asked who you would go back and save from a tragic act and change the trajectory of history. You'll hear MLK, Lincoln, Lennon... and John F. Kennedy, amongst others. What if you could go back in time and save the life of a major figure? What would happen to the present and future? The idea that it would change for the better is strong, but what if? What if it didn't? What if it made things worse?

Because I enjoy weaving in Twilight Zone content, I can't help but reference "Profile in Silver", from the 1980s remake, where a man goes back in time to save Kennedy, but the only way he can do so is to take the bullet himself, and send Kennedy back to his time and take his place. It's all very similar to the original TZ episode "Execution", which also involved time travel... just not voluntary time travel. Anyway, if you're a Stephen King constant reader you know he tried to write a novel about time travel when he was just starting out, but didn't feel he had the ability to do it justice. Instead, he waited until 2011, and gave us this masterpiece, 11/22/63.

Jake Epping is an accomplished English teacher at Lisbon High School in Maine, and when the book begins he's teaching GED summer school curriculum . The opening pages discuss his relationship with Harry Dunning, a janitor at his school who is taking the program. He writes a story about how his father killed his mother and the rest of his siblings in a drunken rage on Halloween night, and Jake is moved enough to award Harry an A+ for his work. At graduation he takes Harry to "Al's Diner", a joint known for extremely cheap food that causes suspicion amongst the residents of town for being too cheap to profit. Anyway, a little while after this event, the owner of Al's, Al Templeton, calls Jake at school to ask him to stop by. Jake is confused because Al sounds awful, which makes little sense as he had seen him the night before and he was fine.

Upon arrival at the diner he notices Al has lost a great deal of weight from last night, and Al claims its from lung cancer, and he's got one foot in the grave. Jake is understandably confused! To ease the confusion, Al sends Jake, unwittingly, back in time, to September 1958. Dumbfounded, Jake looks around, gets a root beer from the nearby soda fountain, and returns home the way he came, per Al's instructions. Al explains the "Rabbit Hole" where he goes to get his meat for cheap burgers, and also explains that after Jake left the diner last night, he went into the Rabbit Hole and spent 4 years back in time, trying to save JFK from being assassinated, but had to return when the lung cancer developed.

The initial conceit of the book drew me in immediately, and because King is such a gifted author of characters and worlds, it quickly became an addictive, fast read. After Jake's experience is complete, Al begins to talk Jake into undertaking his mission to stop JFK's killing. Jake is somewhat willing, but yet not sure about spending 5 years of his life in the past, coming back to the current time older, but yet the same age. Thinking of the story from Harry Dunning, which was in Halloween 1958, he decides to tackle that situation first to see what happens to the present if he can accomplish his goal of saving Harry's family from his father. It takes him to Derry, and in a great bit of fan service, it takes place during the story of It, and features some characters from that book.

Ultimately Jake makes his way to Texas under the alias George Amberson, and the meat of the story begins. This where the novel truly shines, as while it's a story of one man stalking another man to make sure he's the one who killed the man he went back in time to save, it's also a tale of nostalgia and love. When Jake has to find a job to make some extra funds aside from gambling on sports events that are already over and done with in his time, he gets hired on at a small consolidated high school and becomes close friends with other school employees, and, wistfully, meets the love of his life, Sadie Dunhill, who is such a presence in his time in Texas that oftentimes you wonder if he will just give up his mission, settle down with the girl, and let things go as they did.

As per usual with King, his characters are the star of the show, and there are so many memorable ones that it would take 10,000 words to cover them all. His characterizations of actual historical figures is likely not accurate, but his dynamic of painting Lee Harvey Oswald as a pathetic wife-beater whose ego overshadows his abilities is a strong point. The guy is desperate to be famous, and that drives what ultimately leads to the assassination. He writes Oswald's mother Marguerite as an overbearing, self-serving narcissist out to cause trouble in his marriage as what call today a "boy mom." There's even a bit of characterization of JFK and Jackie Kennedy, and he writes the kind of dialog for them that absolutely fits their real-life personas.

The pages just fly by as Jake gets closer and closer to the fated day in question, and tragedy is everywhere, when you least expect it. The true antagonist of the 11/22/63 is the past itself, which we learn is not willing to be changed as easily as one might think. It somehow knows that Jake is trying to do, and will throw up roadblocks for as long as possible to prevent it from happening, to varying extremes. By the end of the book you wonder how things will play out. How can he ever accomplish his goal? It all builds up to a truly bittersweet ending that wraps things up in a way that you wish you could get more. That's saying a lot given it runs over 800 pages in length! I'm fully admitting that I have read through this book several times over the years, and while I know the story inside and out, it never gets old. That's how good the writing, characters, and plot is. It's just a joy to read.

Several years back there was an attempt to bring the series to television via Hulu, and while "11.22.63" had its moments, it also took much of the original plot and flipped it the wrong direction. James Franco was fine playing Jake Epping, and Sarah Gadon was good as Sadie Dunhill as well. It's just that while the overarching story remained the same, the changes made were not very good. Bill Turcotte was just a side-character during Jake's exploits in Derry, but suddenly he's a vital character who goes with Jake to Dallas as his partner? It got better when they added a twist to his presence there, adding a little more conspiracy, but it's too much of a change from the book and hard to take serious. It's been taken off Hulu by now, but please go find the book and read it if you haven't, and then maybe find the miniseries.

11/22/63 is an older book now, but I hold that it's one of Stephen King's best. It's the kind of literary book that sticks it to critics who think he's just about terror and horror, but here he went writing a story that ultimately became about love of a woman, someone he could truly never be with due to the circumstances of their meeting. Yes, it's also about preventing a tragedy, but I argue that it plays second fiddle to Jake desperately trying to have his cake and eat it too. It captures the era its in, in a nostalgic, sweet way, while also pointing out the hypocrisy of the period, avoiding sugarcoating reality. By the time you wrap up this behemoth of a novel, you'll be ready for round two.