Loose ends wrapped up

Hello Readers!

So before I launch back into my detailing what I’m reading and how it is teaching me about how to wrote (or how not to write), let’s talk about some books I have skipped over and take care of some old business.

First off, 1Q84…holy shit, what a letdown. At halfway through, I wrote glowing praise of a book I was in love with. It was weird, clever, filled with interesting people and had a cool vibe. Remember Twin Peaks? 

The first season? It was like that. Then, well, remember the second season of Twin Peaks? It got like that, directionless, confused, and ultimately pointless.

I think 1Q84 and TP had the same problem. Their creators were able to create a compelling mystery wrapped in a surreal atmosphere where it seemed like anything was possible.

The problem comes in the third act, when a writer needs to start answer questions and executing his end game moves. If you don’t know the rules of the game you invented, then you have no shot at resolving things in a way that makes any sense.

With 1Q84, things spin away with no clear answers or anything that makes me think the author knew what the rules of his universe were. Once the fictional universe loses its story logic, the suspension of disbelief is broken and the book becomes no fun anymore. The mystery isn’t a mystery; it’s just a jumble of scenes that feel like a mystery, but it’s nothing, just air and leaves you unsatisfied.

So then I took a break from reading, and did a bunch of writing. Somewhere in there I read A Dance With Dragons, Book 5 of the A Song of Ice and Fire. You might also know it as the basis of HBO’s A Game of Thrones.

Look, Books 1, 2 and 3 are classics. You will not find a better read in any genre. Forget that it’s fantasy complete with men in tights and magic swords. These stories are rich, meaty and delicious.

Book 4, however, was a long slog. Everyone was going somewhere, but no one seemed to get anywhere. It was also filled with all the least favorite characters.

Book 5 was better, but still not up to the pinnacle of Book 3.

What did I learn from Book 5? I suppose I learned about making your characters suffer. Martin piles on the pain, the humiliation, and the indignity. The likeable characters get the worst treatment, but then again, the most evil characters get more than their share of hell as well.  There isn’t one moment of happiness in the entire book, and I can barely put it down.

Don’t be nice to your characters, not until the very end, and even then, perhaps not.

Then I happily moved over to the new John Grisham, The Racketeer.

Reading JG is normally a solid lesson in how to write a crime thriller. He isn’t flashy, but his books always do the job and with an almost elegant efficiency. I’ll say it again, The Firm is a masterpiece in genre fiction writing.

The Racketeer, not so much.  The first half works. We learn all about a wrongly accused man, and we get to see him negotiate his way out of prison.

Then the guy launches into a long involved revenge sting that makes less sense the more I think about it. I’m not going to get into it. It’s boring. And disappointing. It’s also weird that of all the JG books to get good reviews, it this one. I have no idea why. It is my least favorite Grisham ever.

So now I’m onto Fifty Shades of Gray. It’s a lot more fun than I’d thought it be. More on that one soon.

Cheers,

The 107 Reader

My Triumphant Return

Hello readers, I’m sure all one of you has been anxiously awaiting my return. Your prayers have been answered. I am back.

Where have I been? Where haven’t I been!

I’ve worked a lot, I’ve traveled a bit, I ran marathon, and oh yes, I wrote a book.

Yes, I know, I said I wouldn’t do that until I reads 107 books and wrote up my thoughts and lessons here on this blog. Well, funny story…

I started noodling around with the book, and I wrote a bit here and there, and then more, and then more, and then I was pretty much like fuck it, I’m going to finish it.

I cranked out 250 to 1,000 words a day, stuck to the outline, worked through some sticky plot issues, took a few unexpected artistic side paths that seemed like a good idea at the time (and it turns out, maybe they weren’t such good paths), and eventually, boom, I reached THE END.

I didn’t smoke a cigar or get drunk, or really celebrate in anyway. Instead, I went back, and read the thing from the beginning, going over pages I hadn’t seen for a couple years (I started the things a long, long time ago, Dec, 2010, to be specific).

Strange thing about finishing a novel, you don’t know if it good or not. As I read the thing with fairly fresh eyes, some parts seemed good, some pretty bad, some somewhere in between. My final impression was that maybe I was on to something. There was something there that someone out there somewhere would pay to read, and be happy they did so.

So, I signed up for a couple of internet writers groups, Litreactor and Scribophile, both excellent in their own right. If you want feedback on your writing, I recommend signing up to either.

I signed up for Litreactor first, submitted Chapter One, and got three detailed bits of feedback after a few days, really good feedback. Having strangers give you unfiltered opinions will make your work better, but also leave bruises. Stuff you liked will get dinged, and stuff you didn’t think was so great will be cited as the good bits.

I was so happy with Litreactor, and how much those readers helped me make the first two chapters better, that I signed up for a second group, Scribophile. I also received great feedback there, also helpful.

My plan was to run a chapter through Litreactor, then after polishing it up, run it through Scribophile for a final tune up. Great plan! Except…It was stupid.

The way these sites is work is that you have to read and critique others’ works, getting points each time you do. On average, give or take, you need to read about five other things to be able to post one of your things.

With Litreactor, you don’t get your karma points until the person you critiqued acknowledges your feedback and rates you from great to good to blah. Great gets 3 points, the next gets 2, and the lowest gets one.

Most of the time, readers give you three points if you put in a fair effort to give useful feedback. However, a few time I got two points, which annoyed me to no end. I didn’t want to have to write more critiques. I just wanted publish my work and hear what others had to say.

Then there were the times when writers would takes days to give me my review credit. So frustrating. Especially after I read a 10,000 word piece that was kind of blah, not horrible, but definitely work to read. For that I guy, I had to wait three days for my points, and then, when he didn’t finally give me credit, it was just for two points. I wanted to strangle the guy.

Over on Scribophile, you get point per word you right. The writer can give extra credit if he chooses, but you always get your points, which is the big plus with Scribophile.

I probably should just stick with Scribophile, but I’m torn because I really like the crowd over on Litreactor. They are weird, writing more experimental, edgy stuff. The Scrib folks are more mainstream, more commercial, more trying to write the next Twilight or Hunger Games or be the next Grisham.

So, burned out on writing websites, I hatched another plan. This is pretty much what I’m doing now…

1.       Do one more read through, making a version four. (And boy, let me tell you, the fourth time you read your book, it sucks. Everything sucks. Nothing seems good anymore. I hope it’s not as bad as it seems right now.)

2.       Have a guy I know at work read it, a guy who is paid to write things for a living, and get his feedback. I’m going to pay him, because he is performing a valuable service for me. It is not just a favor I’m asking for. It’s 10-20 hours of work.

3.       Use Writer’s Digest writing services. For $4 a page, they will have a copy editor of a line-by-line edit. Expensive? Yes! Ah well. Whatever it takes. I will learn a lot.

4.       Then, ready or not, I’m going to publish it on Amazon Kindle. If it gets any kind of positive response at all, I’m going to invest in some marketing, maybe a few small ads in places like the New Yorker and Entertainment Weekly.

I’ve got an idea for my next novel. It’s a pretty good one. It could maybe even be a series. Maybe even be published by an actual publisher.

But we will see. First things first.  
 

Reviewing the reviews of 1Q84. They suck!

Title: 1Q84

Author: Haruki Murakami

Progress: 50%

Amazon Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover/E-Book List: #25 (but was in the top 10 for a while)

Book 7 out of 107

When I put down “1Q84,” I feel as if emerging from a dream. I’m a bit disorientated, a bit disturbed, melancholy and a might creeped out. I’ve never read anything like it.

Given the long passages of backstory, of exposition, of exposition delivered as long episodes of dialogue, all the extended asides into minutia, it has no right to be as compelling as it is, to have the power that it does. And yet it has a hold on me that I’m going to miss once I finish it.

I think it’s the work of a genius.

So I was surprised by its reviews, which range from dismissive to disappointed to angry. Not so with many reader reviews. The amateurs at Amazon and Good Reads have plenty of positive things to say. Search for #1q84 on Twitter and you’ll find a legion of happy Murakami-heads. 


The professionals, not so much.

Janet Maslin of the New York Times throws several haymakers to the literary jaw of Mr. Murakami. To her, reading “1Q84” is akin to be “stuck in quicksand.” It’s a “stupefying” experience, she says.

My review of bad reviews of "1Q84"

To Nathan Heller over at Slate, Mr. Murakami isn’t even a good writer. In fact, according Mr. Heller, the wildly popular author has never been a good writer. Apparently, his first writing award as "best new young writer" was given half-heartedly by judges who in essence gave the entered work a grade of C. 


Why it won if it was so mediocre Mr. Heller doesn’t actually explain. It’s an unanswered question of the kind Ms. Maslin hates so much.

Across the pond, Matt Thorn at the UK’s telegraph calls it a “tedious waste of the reader’s time.” You read that aloud with a British accent and it has a serious sting.

All my life, I’ve been fascinated by works that get uniformly good reviews. If critics become unanimous about something, I want to know why and immediately digest whatever obscure foreign film or independently published novel is getting buzz from the professionally opinionated.

Sometimes, they are absolutely right. Sometimes, critics herald amazing works like “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” "Breaking Bad" and “Memento.” Thanks critics! You have made my life that much more enjoyable by celebrating what the Pop Culture Machine would not otherwise have put in front of my eyes.

On the other hand, I sometimes take it personally when something I love takes beating. Guess what? I liked “Thor” and “Captain America.” I liked “the Da Vinci Code” (the book, not so much the movie). I liked “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the book and movies (US and Swedish). 


I really loved Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works”. “Midnight in Paris” is getting huge kudos this year, and it’s great, but “WW” with a bitter, sarcastic and lovable Larry David makes me smile just thinking about it. And critics hated it.

And they loved “Greenburg: (75% at Rotten Tomatoes.com!), which is a stinking pile of unfunny dreck full of critic bait.

When I read a bad review of something I love, I try to decipher why the critic is disapproving, and figure out if maybe I’m wrong. What flaws do I have that I missed such glaring shittiness?

Let’s break down a few things Slate’s Mr. Heller offers as evidence of Mr. Murakami being a bad writer.

This is from his review…

“And yet for all of its plotting flourishes, 1Q84 reads, paragraph-to-paragraph, as some of Murakami’s weakest writing in years. Obvious things are overexplained. (“If we're through choosing, we'd better close the menus,” Aomame at one point instructs. “Otherwise the waiter will never come.”) Figurative language is often forced. (“Little children might pee in their pants, the impact of her frown was so powerful,” goes one description.) And when the book’s frenetically evolving plot requires explanation, as if often does, much of the crucial data is simply dropped into the mouths of characters…”

When I read the cited passages in the book, they didn’t strike me as bad writing. Maybe I’m a barely literate idiot, but they didn’t.

With the menu business, the stilted dialogue between two characters happens while they are just getting to know each other. They are young women who aren’t used to having friends. They are nervous and worrying about what the other is thinking and what they should think about the other. That kind of social situation leads to saying overly obvious things like: “We should put our menus down or the waiter will never come.” That line seemed perfectly suited to the situation and the mindset of the characters.

With the second example, citing the “forced” figurative language, this thought happens in the head of a character suffering from sharp self-esteem problems. And while a beautiful girl, she can become inordinately scary looking when grimacing. It’s something she worries about a lot and will often force a smile from her lips for fear of letting slip her frightening expression. So again, that line, the childlike tone of it, the simplicity of it, I had no problem with.

I’m trying to prove anyone wrong. When it comes to art, there is no right and wrong. People like or dislike, and some people can explain with entertaining clarity why it is something repels are attracts them.

In the case of “1Q84”, all I can say is that I love it. It has a hold on my imagination. I know, like and hope for the two main characters. My perception of the real world seems a bit shifted after a long session of reading this beguiling book; things seem a bit unreal and mysterious, filled with strange connections. I half expect to look up into the sky and see a second moon, a green one, and feel the pull of the vacuum of fate, which is what I think this book is actually about.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Who knows?

I do know this about reviews and critics.

As much as I appreciate their work, a critic has never moved me. Mr. Heller will never make me re-examine the nature of life and fate. Ms. Maslin will never make me cry or laugh or write anything that will make me say wow. Critics, at best, can point to works that would otherwise go unnoticed. But do they have anything to teach me? I think maybe not. Not much anyway.

So here is a new rule for this project. I’m not going to read reviews, professional reviews, until after I’ve read the book and learned what I can from it.

My task is to discover the power and secrets of how these novels work, reverse engineering them so I can put one together myself. I’ve read enough how-to-write books and reviews, and if you could become a novelist just through reading those, I’d be rivaling Stephen King by now.

Now, back to year 1Q84. Some crazy, crazy stuff is happening, and I’m sure Janet Maslin doesn’t approve of any of it.  

1Q84 -- Give me that old time sexy assassin surrealist novel

Title: 1Q84

Author: Haruki Murakami

Progress: 25%

Amazon Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

NYT BS Hardcover/E-Book List: #25 (but was in the top 10 for a while)

Book 7 out of 107

I had read a few commercial thrillers in a row and was craving something a little deeper.

Mr. King’s “11/22/63” almost scratched that itch, but not quite. I wanted my brain fed something a little more substantial, chewy and satisfying.

“1Q84” seemed to fill that bill. And it almost adhered to my rules for this project. It was a New York Times bestseller, and did indeed feature a crime, murder in fact. I jumped right in.

Woah. Trippy.

First off, I went into it not expecting what I like in crime thriller fiction, namely, sex, violence, a sense of danger and a taste of darkness. I was expecting an arty, dense, and deep read, but without much fun. I guess I was expecting a Japanese version of a Franzen novel with a little surrealism thrown in. (When discussing Mr. Murakami, people talk about surrealism a lot.)

Not too far into the book, a sexy female assassin kills a man with needle to the base of neck.

That’s the kind of thing that might happen in a Sandra Brown novel, but not a book by a writer who collects literary awards like he’s an 8-year-old collecting little league participation trophies.

And there is sex too, not graphic scenes, but adult thoughts about erotic situations, followed by the emotional aftermath of such encounters.

To my surprise, I’m getting my thriller itch scratched and my artful literature muscle massaged. I have cake and am eating it too. Nice. Thank Mr. Murakami!

From the first 25% of “1Q84”, here is what I’ve learned…

I like character development. Pages and pages are devoted to careful construction of living characters who have been grown, groomed and perfected like perfect little origami trees, each complete unique and yet each defined to the point that there is an elegant discipline evident in the eye of the creator.

I like weird coincidences, and this novel is full of them, small patterns and references that tie to each other, creating a support structure, but for what I’m not sure yet. The mystery that drives this book isn’t an obvious one. It’s subtle, delicate. How are these two characters (the sexy assassin and the bookish giant) going to come together?

Two stories are being told, each completely separate, and toward the end of quarter one, they have begun to flirt with each other, winking, touching hands, but not quite joining yet.

The whole thing feels Japanese, the patience of it, the elegance, the simplicity that belies a deep, perhaps incomprehensible, dare I say inscrutable, complexity.

Also need to note this…Mr. Murakami, like the previous authors I’ve read, also seems to be an outliner, even though he denies it in interviews. His plan seems quite clear for Quarter One, develop the two stories, and the two main characters, and then begin the connection process at precisely the 25% mark. It happened right on schedule and the next quarter is going to go in quite a different direction now that the two halves of this novel have begun to impact each other.

Underneath it all are the mysteries that make it hard to put the book down. Who are the Little People? What’s up with the second green moon? Did the world change somehow when Aomame went down that ladder?

If this is ever a movie, and it never will be, David Lynch should write and direct. Only the auteur behind Mulholland Falls and Inland Empire could capture anything close the dizzy feeling this hypnotic novel creates.

What have we learned? First off, we learned that even an arty novel can have sexy female assassins. Good to know. Second, don’t be so afraid of character development. If they are good characters, fleshing them out with deep backstory is fine. Sometimes modern commercial thrillers speed along so fast they read more like story outlines than completed novels. At 1,000 pages, I think 1Q84 is complete, and if the first 250 are any indication, each one will be worth reading.

Make your hero suffer like you don't care what your friends think

Title: 11/22/63

Author: Stephen King

Progress: 100%

Platform: Kindle

Amazon Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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

Book 6 out of 107

Annnnnd ... we are back...

The holidays and work got in the way of this little project. Life does get in the way of our big plans, doesn't it? Fate throws things in our way, tests us, makes sure we really want what we say we want. 

That thought ties in nicely with "11/22/63," which is about about fate, about the things we can and cannot change.

When last we talked, I was halfway done reading it and had mapped out the outline Mr. King used for the first two quarters. The second two section fall perfectly into an outline, with big course changes happening at 50% and 75%.

Section Three has our hero, Jake, spying on Lee Harvey, working out if he actually was the JFK assassin or not. This is an important story problem because if Jake knows for sure, this becomes a short book. Jake kills Lee, runs back through the rabbit hole, and boom, done.

With a smidge of doubt, Jake just can't kill Lee in cold blood. He can't murder an innocent man. He has to know for sure.

This section is the most problematic, and Mr. King has said in interviews that he hopes it's not boring, all the logistics of setting up eavesdropping equipment and then doing the tedious work of actually spying on people. 

Mr. King's instinct is right. Those bits are boring. Why? Because Lee Harvey is a bore. He's a snotty, spoiled brat with delusions of grandeur. Until he picks up his rifle and goes out shooting at people, he doesn't do or say anything all that interesting. He's not actually part of a conspiracy, so Jake listens in on family arguments and political chit-chat. 

Luckily we've got the romantic sub-plot to keep us entertained. Will those crazy kids get together, our time traveler and his lovely librarian? We hope! 

The last quarter of the book is devoted to the prevention of the assassination and its aftermath. It's as  an exciting a final act as I have ever read. It's also a clever piece of clockworks that brings together all the gears, levers and springs that Mr. King has spent 100,000 words putting into the place and winding up.

Here are all the parts that come together...

1. Jake tells Sadie that he's from the future and why he is in 1962.

2. Sadie, her face horribly scarred after being attacked by her asshole ex-husband, is ready to help.

3. The mobsters who Jake has been robbing with his 100% accurate sports bet, catch up with him and beat the snot out of him. He is so injured that there is no way he can complete his mission without Sadie's help.

4. The past itself, as it has been for the entire book, makes things close to impossible. To change the future in such an epic way, the past demands a high price, punishing, heartbreaking price.

5. Lee himself reveals himself as the lone gunman, the single, arrogant asshole who decided he was special enough to change the world with nothing but a mail order rifle.

After all that comes together in the sixth floor of the Dallas Library Repository, Lee is finally stopped. The president is saved. We get what we were waiting for, and then we move into the aftermath, the effect of Jake's heroic cause.

I won't get into the ending. Some like it. Some hate it. I liked it, with some mixed feelings. 

I won't spoil the ending for you because it doesn't have anything to do with the lesson of the day. What is the lesson? Make your hero suffer like you hate him.

Yes, sure, absolutely, ever how-to-write-a-novel book says about the same thing. Yet, I've found it's hard to make my imaginary people, especially my hero, suffer. 

Part of me worries that going to far with the suffering would make my story overly dramatic and sensational. Another part of me actually feels bad for my people, doesn't want to hurt them too much, because I like them and want them to be happy.

And there is this other worry I have while writing, the worry about people I know reading my work and thinking...That is so cruel! So gross! I am so weirded out that this nice guy that I know wrote this hardcore, depressing, gross, sick stuff!

When writing, stop caring about the people in your personal life think.
Care only about keeping the reader on the page.

So I pull back. I soften. I sanitize.

Mr. King doesn't. He makes Jake suffer in a variety of ingenious ways, mentally and physically, from a cracked skull and bruised brain to the heartache of losing the love of your life. When Jake is beaten by the gangsters, you feel the pain of each steel-toed kick to the face and baseball bat to the spleen. You want it to stop, hope for it to end, and just when you think it might, Mr. King goes a little further, pummeling you as much as the hero.

I don't think Mr. King cares what the people in his personal life think. He cares far more about grabbing the reader by the neck and not letting go.

I think the lesson is if you aren't going so far that you fear offending your friends and family, you aren't going far enough.

Imagine if Stieg Larrson had cut out the anal rape scene in "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" because he was concerned about what his wife and friends would think. If he does that, the book doesn't work. We never understand Lisbeth's rage and develop the strong desire to see her come out okay. Without the rape scene, the book doesn't set the world on fire, and maybe doesn't even get published.

So what have we learned? Make your hero suffer, really suffer, suffer to the point you worry about what your family will think about you.

Next up, "1Q84."

Stephan King gets sexy in 11/22/63. Surprising!

Title: 11/22/63

Author: Stephen King

Progress: 50%

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

It's been a while since my last post. It's not because I've been too busy. It's because 11/22/63 is a freaking long book. I could have read The Litigators twice by now, but really, who would want to?

I'm halfway done and I remain steadfast in my opinion that Stephen King is lying when he says he doesn't outline. I think he thinks it makes him sound cool, like he's just so talented that he doesn't need a guide to get to the end of a book like the rest of us hack writers, like he's a jazz saxophone player riffing his way to the end of a bestseller without so much as making a note in a margin.

Yet, right there at 50%, bang, a major turning point, our hero Jake being sent in a new direction, one part of the story done, and another just begun.

If I could break into Mr. King's home and take a peek at his notebooks (after looking in his refrigerator, because who doesn't want to know what a guy like that eats?), I think I'd see something like this...

First Act -- We explain the rules of time travel, introduce Jake and have him go back in time to kill a guy who deserves killing. This will be a warm up act to the main event. This section is about Jake proving to himself he can take on history and win. 

Second Act -- This is the calm before the storm. Jake falls in love with the 50s, re-falls in love with teaching, then falls in love with a girl. This will make the reader love him and makes the stakes more personal. We will go into the second half of the book not just wondering about preventing JFK's murder, but worried that Jake won't get the girl and live happily ever after.

Stephen King gets romantic in Act Two of 11/22/63. More gore is sure to be around the corner. If King had baked this cake, it would be filled with blood and a time bomb filled with anthrax.

It's all working famously. Mr. King is awesome.

I was once of the opinion that one of his tricks was a little too worn. He will often lovingly develop a character, make you, the reader, care more than you really should about the fate of a fictional person. Then, cruelly and with relish, Mr. King will kill that character slowly, gruesomely and with a poet's attention to detail. I think his goal with his books from the 80s and 90s was only to terrify. The well developed characters were just a trick and felt contrived, created to be killed. This is especially obvious if you happen to read two King books in a row.

These days, as the horrorist revels in his post-death scare artistic phase, the frights don't seem to be the point. The point is about the character, about life, about love. The scares are a spice, but not the point of the meal.

This second act of 11/22/63 could be cut out, edited a bit, and released as a successful novella, a time travel love story between two misfits who find each other, he in the wrong time because of a wormhole, she in the wrong time because of her gender.

Some of the few negative reviews cite this romantic subplot as the bad thing in this book, as the thing they would like to edit out. Dumbasses.

If this were Mr. King's first novel, cutting out the romance would be the first bit of advice an editor or agent would give. Get rid of the fluff. Drive the plot forward. No cares about the characters. Readers want action. Get to the killing, blow some stuff up, can ninjas be involved? Sure, throw a little romance in there for the ladies, and a little sex for the guys, but get back to the guns as soon as you can.

Again. Dumbasses.

What have we learned this week? When your story has a heart, everything else -- the action, the gore, the frights, the dangers, the bad guys -- works better. A lot better. 

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.