Maciek's Reviews > 11.22.63

I never got to know my grandfather very well. Even though we lived close to each other (his home was just a few streets away from mine), he never visited me and I rarely visited him. He was a man who mostly kept his thoughts to himself and rarely displayed emotions to others. His small apartment that he shared with grandmother was full of nostalgia; a very old trimline telephone with a receiver which looked like a tube and the calls sounded like they were coming from one; a small musical box, with a ballerina who danced when you wound it up; many old photographs, colors varying from faded sepia to black and white. He was an amateur photographer and painter, and his paintings hung on the walls.

I spent one summer with him and grandmother in their small cottage, which remembered both world wars. There was no indoor plumbing and you had to pull water in a bucket from an old well. The house was full of bullet holes through which wind howled throughout the night; I had to pull my blanket up to my chin to keep warmth, and to keep it from being eaten because there were mice in the house which liked to nibble on it, and judging by the sound they made outside crickets must have been the size of small dogs. Good thing it had electricity; there was an old Russian monochrome TV set with rabbit ears, which could capture a channel and a half. My grandmother spend her days listening to the catholic radio station, and my grandfather spent his repairing his old Wartburg in the shed which had all sorts of tools hidden, from small hammers to a big and rusty saw. The neigbor's dogs yapped and ran after one another, and I wandered from one settlement to another, hiding and playing spy in the tall grass, staring at the enormous tractors and harvesters, most liking to go to a nearby pond and paddle in the water. Sometimes I carried an old inflatable mattress on my back, which I spent hours pumping air into and then i dragged it onto the water and reclined on it, enjoying the sun and silence.

I have always been drawn to places where I have not lived, the strange houses and neigborhoods. I always wondered how it would be to live in times before my birth, in a different era, in a different place. With different technologies, different culture, different people. I spent hours watching old American movies at TCM when I was a boy, the noir classics from the 20's and 30's. I saw movies from the 50's and 60's; they portrayed a world long gone, and one which was not coming back.

I have not been excited for anything Stephen King wrote for a while. Sure, I've read all of his classic contributions to contemporary culture several times: Salem's Lot, The Shining and the monstrous epic of The Stand, both the original and the restored version. Different Seasons, a great collection of novellas camed a bit later, as did The Talisman, on which he collaborated with Peter Straub. And then my personal favorite, IT, which I loved because it's his most nostalgic one, and in a way most brave. A true monster of a book, IT is probably his finest achievement when it comes to holding a long, complex narrative together and conveying the dreamlike quality of childhood, in that time long gone which I longed for.

Aside from the gem of Hears in Atlantis and the Dark Tower saga, his later works did not affect me in that way that these older did. Maybe it was me who got older, and maybe it was him who changed? Maybe we both did? I don't know. It's not that they were poor; I have fond memories of Insomnia, which didn't put me to sleep and i really liked The Green Mile, but then who didn't.
But I longed for something which would revive the kid in me and make me turn the pages deep into the night, which was what I did when I first started reading him. Cell was okay; Blaze was good but it was an old novel from the 70's, only published now, and Listey's Story and Duma Key I enjoyed but would really par down in places. Under The Dome was plugged as the next The Stand, and while size-wise it certainly was, the content left a lot to be desired in that department. So, when 11/22/63 was first announced I paid no heed to it, and when it was released I started reading without much expectation.

Which changed quickly. I was drawn into the story from the very beginning, thanks to the first person narration, which is convincing and gives an intimate perspective to things. As you know, this novel deals with a schoolteacher traveling back in time to prevent the assasination of JFK; he is convinced to do it by his friend, who owns a diner and has discovered a wormhole in his pantry which leads back to 1958. Science Fiction buffs need to lay down their expectations; that's all there is to the time travel aspect of this story, as Jake Epping (that's the name of the hero) falls into 1958 like Alice fell down into a rabbit hole.

But what wonders came after the fall. Unlike the biblical one, Jake is not expulsed out of eden; he feels strange at first, but then he realizes that he enjoys his new surroundings. Although the novel never quite reaches the intimate quality of IT, the time period is wonderfully presented and covered; along with Jake, I felt his wonder seeping through the pages, Enormous cars which could be filled up with gas for two dollars; rich beer and food, people of the long ago with their hospitality and manners. Everyone smokes, and the internet and cell phones have a long time to be invented (can you imagine?). There are wonderful easter eggs tying to King's past novels, which are small, but very rewarding.

I really loved the first 3/4 and consider them to be the finest storytelling Stephen King has written in recent years, but the novel loses steam in the last quarter. I don't want to spoil anything, but by the time the pivotal events started occuring, I was ready for it to end, and to give credit it ended just in time, if you'll pardon my pun. But it never quite managed the seamless stream of narrative which defined IT; the ending events did not bring as big of a bang as I hoped they would. Still, they were skilfully conducted, with the experience of a mature writer who knows what he's doing, and did not left a bad taste in any way. My only complaint is that the taste did not last all the way through, but died down like the one of a chewing gum. You know what I mean? I wanted to the sense of wonder, the experience of haziness and reality as viewed from old reels to last longer, but it felt out of my hands and into history, like a balloon flies into the sky from the hand of a child who had let it go by accident. I've closed the book satisfied but not swept away, not as much as I hoped to be; I still remember the closing paragraphs to IT which are among the best writing he has done, beautiful but also very sad, full of leave-taking. I hoped for a similar feeling here, and I almost got it. I think the problem lies more with me than with the text, as it will be undoubtedly called as one of his best, and in many cases rightfully so; the sheer amount of research and work to set up this period piece must have been astounding and deserves respect just for that alone. The craftsmanship is fine, as we come to expect. However, I wanted more of the nostalgia, and not just the rosy colored one; I wanted more of the narrator's life in the late 50's and early 60's. These are the best elements of the novel for me - I would happily skip the minutia of Oswald's life for pages on the world that's not here anymore. I would love more focus on the life of the narrator, as ultimately this is his story, and his alone. The events happen to him, and not the other way round.

Still, this monster of a book is well worth reading, and I would recommend it to anyone with enough time on their hands. It does a great job at showing the times past, and offers at intimate look at how one man can change the history of the whole world. Whatever its flaws, it offers a plentiful of rewards and a rich reading experience. A keeper and a good novel for long winter evenings.