Man versus Push Back versus King kicking ass, King wins

Title: 11/22/63

Author: Stephen King

Progress: 31%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover/E-Book List: #1 (debuted at number 1)

Book 6 out of 107

First off, Stephen King is a liar. He does outline. The evidence? Right there at the 25% mark comes the first big plot point of the book, a big gruesome tent pole moment that completes the first quarter of the story and launches us into the rest of it with great momentum. 


You can tell it’s a big King moment because it comes complete with a bloody struggle, a sledge hammer wielding maniac and a chest skewered with a bayonet. He goes for the horrific gross out and dares you to look away. You can't.

Second off, Stephen King is amazing. What a great read.

There is too much to talk about for one post – time travel, first-person narrative, bringing to life the 1950s – so I will talk about what I think is the most important lesson of the read so far. Let’s call this the lesson of Push Back.

Push Back is whatever is pushing back against your hero. In the last book, Zero Day, the Push Back against our hero, Reacher, was first the mystery of who killed the family, then the mysterious people trying to kill him, and then finally the ultimate bad guy.

A good Push Back, like a good tennis opponent, is tough, quite close to unbeatable, but just a sliver not tough enough to win the battle against our hero. However, the Push Pack should be tough enough to abuse our hero, bruise him, batter him, make him miserable, give him diarrhea (which happens in 11/22/63), and make him suffer in myriad ways.

With 11/22/63, Mr. King had an interesting problem with the Push Back. The story is about a guy who goes back in time to prevent the assassination of JFK. The hero of the story, Jake Epping, does his time traveling via a portal conveniently located in the pantry of a diner he frequents. I’m not going to get into all the details. It’s a time travel story, which means there are paradoxes and logic problem to be found if you look for them. So…moving on.

Jake’s problem, once he gets past dealing with living in the 50s (No I-Phones! No computers! No automatic transmission!), his obstacles are not that big of a deal. It would be easy enough to track a person down, kill him, then hustle back through the portal to home. Not a problem.

So here is the genius thing King does to solve his Push Back problem…Time itself starts pushing back. Every time Jake attempts to make a big change to the future (like saving a family from being murdered by an angry, drunken father), things get in his way. He gets a stomach flu. His car break down. The stairs he’s walking on crumble. He get a blinding migraine.

As convenient and contrived as the idea is, that time would seek to defend itself from being changed, it rings true. There are times, in the real world, when you are urgently trying to complete something and the universe seems to intelligently and methodically conspire against you. Have you ever had to get to the airport to catch a flight that you have just barely enough time to catch? And everything goes wrong that possibly could? Traffic is backed up due to an accident. The long term parking bus breaks down. The line to check-in looks miles long. The security line looks longer. You end up waiting in the one line with the metal detector that breaks. Arrrrrrgh!

When things start pushing back against Jake, you can relate to him, understand how he needs to work to decrease the odds of failure. He putsan extra can of gas in the car, repairs the spare tire, picks up a bottle of Kaopectate, just in case a stomach flu hits him. He needs to be paranoid and prepare for almost anything. 

He’s going to have to earn his chance to re-write history.

That feeling of the entire world being against him, testing him, making him work for his victory, that is powerful stuff and makes for tense, addictive reading. Despite the fantastic time travel plot, there is something extremely relatable about Jake and his struggle to get past fate, and a lovely taste of sweetness when he does.

What have we learned so far? Stephen King kicks ass. And he solved a story problem in a clever way that elevates this story above so many others that cover similar ground. It becomes more than just a time travel story, but a statement about man’s struggle with fate. These are big ideas delivered via a thrill ride. Nicely done.