<p>** Mary13** I hope you don’t mind me posting this link to very interesting Oprah ‘interview’ with Marina Oswald. </p>
<p>**Please CCer’s don’t discuss this link or the book
until Feb 1st, I offer this as “extra” background reading- ok. **</p>
<p>[Marina</a> Oswald Porter Talks to Oprah Winfrey](<a href=“http://www.jfkresearch.com/marina/marina.htm]Marina”>http://www.jfkresearch.com/marina/marina.htm)</p>
<p>Santa brought this book to me…I am finishing the last Stieg Larson book before I jump in.</p>
<p>In NJ, girls could first wear SLACKS not jeans in my school district in 1970.
By 1974, the floodgates had opened and torn faded jeans were everywhere.</p>
<p>SJCM - Thanks for the Oprah link. Fascinating. I finished 11/22/63 yesterday.</p>
<p>If my memory is correct, we first started wearing pants in junior high and we were first allowed to wear jeans in high school. My first year of high school was 72-73.</p>
<p>BUandBC, thank you for not launching into discussion !</p>
<p>Welcome to February! Let’s “launch”!</p>
<p>I couldn’t find any 11/22/63 reading guides in the usual locations (if you run across one, feel free to post), but here are two reviews, one positive, and the other not so much:</p>
<p><a href=“11/22/63 — By Stephen King — Book Review - The New York Times”>11/22/63 — By Stephen King — Book Review - The New York Times;
<p>[‘11/22/63</a>’ by Stephen King: Book review - Los Angeles Times](<a href=“http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/20/entertainment/la-ca-stephen-king-20111120]'11/22/63”>Book review: '11/22/63' by Stephen King)</p>
<p>Do you agree with the New York Times, that 11/22/63 is “a meditation on memory, love, loss, free will and necessity” as well as “one of the best time-travel stories since H. G. Wells”? Or do you agree with the Los Angeles Times that the novel is “too long by half” and “doesn’t hang together in a cohesive way”?</p>
<p>I lean toward the more positive review. I enjoyed the story very much, and despite its length, it moved quickly for me. I found it interesting that the first half of the book really has almost nothing to do with Kennedy’s assassination—it’s more about George getting situated in the Land of Ago, dealing with the Dunning and Poulin stories, and making a life for himself as a teacher.</p>
<p>Frankly, I was glad because I was not particularly invested in Jake’s mission to prevent the Kennedy assassination. I feel a little guilty for saying that, but I couldn’t buy the idea that saving the president’s life would lead to some sort of utopia—and I wasn’t convinced that rescuing Kennedy was any more or less important than rescuing Harry. Maybe I would feel differently if I had lived through the Kennedy era (I was only a toddler in 1963).</p>
<p>Also, as an aside, I found it a little odd that Jake’s other name was “George Amberson”–the same as the protagonist in Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons. Maybe someone who is more familiar than I am with the book (or the classic film) can shed some light on why that might be.</p>
<p>I thought, overall, the book was well done. Stephen King is such a good writer that once you buy into his big suspension of disbelief (time travel is possible) the rest of the story follows naturally. I enjoyed it.</p>
<p>I agree more with the New York Times review too. </p>
<p>As someone who was a teenager when Kennedy was shot, I did feel the allure of yearning after the prevention of the assassination.</p>
<p>Kennedy was such an an attractive, youthful seeming, cultured, inspiring president. The Johnson years became a time when many young people hated and reviled the president.</p>
<p>Who knows whether Kennedy would have been any different vis-a-vis the Viet Nam war than Johnson? When he was assassinated, people were not even thinking much about the conflict there yet. It was a horrible war, and it is inextricably associated with LBJ.</p>
<p>mommusic – I agree. Stephen King always weaves a good story. (My favorite is still The Stand, which also requires some suspension of disbelief. Come to think of it, most of his books do, don’t they? :))</p>
<p>NJTheatreMOM – Your comments would explain Al Templeton’s intensity of purpose re preventing the assassination. He would have been a young man in 1963 and was no doubt traumatized by Kennedy’s death and the aftermath in Vietnam. </p>
<p>Thinking of Al…I’ll bet it was much easier for him to adjust to returning to the past than it was for Jake. For Al, there would have been a certain familiarity to the time, since he had once lived through it. Maybe that maybe it easier for him to be swept up again in the “Camelot” period and determined to find a way to keep it from coming to an end. Of course, as it turned out, keeping John Kennedy alive ultimately led to a dystopia, not a utopia. Was that just a construct of the story (i.e., to create tension, plot complications, etc.) or do you think it was political/social commentary on the part of Stephen King?</p>
<p>I don’t think the dystopia was a political/social commentary. These are the reasons I think King had for creating it:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It is a convention of time travel fiction that messing with the past has bad results.</p></li>
<li><p>The dystopia King describes lets him have fun flexing his horror writer muscles. In addition, the scene he paints is somewhat like the nightmarish Bedford Falls scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”</p></li>
<li><p>If the changed past had been a utopia, the sacrifice of Sadie might have seemed justified. But the story was primarily a love story, so a reset was necessary not only to undo the dystopia, but to save Sadie.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>One comment about the idea that Al’s having lived through the “Camelot” period might have made it easier to be swept up in it again…</p>
<p>Okay, imagine you are quite elderly and are thinking back to how different post-9/11 America has felt from how pre-9/11 America felt. </p>
<p>It’s the same thing for us oldsters with regard to the early 60s. 
You don’t forget the sudden “loss of innocence” when Kennedy was shot and the feeling, in retrospect, of having been plunged into a dark new era (of a dreadful war that was widely regarded as unjustified, repeated assassinations, race riots…on and on).</p>
<p>NJTheatreMOM, good point. I wonder if I would have been more drawn into the “mission,” if it had been, let’s say, Jake Epping returning to 2001 and getting himself a ticket for United Airlines Flight 93. It would appear that stopping the 9/11 tragedy could only be purely good with no downside. That’s probably how Al felt about stopping Oswald. But who knows? If King had written a 9/11 story, maybe the future dystopia would have been a world where, unwarned by the events of 9/11 (which Jake would have stopped), the U.S. would have been caught off-guard and then hit by a far worse attack, perhaps even a nuclear one. Maybe the “obdurate past” isn’t malevolent (as Sadie described it), but quite the opposite: It tries to forge a path that leads to the lesser evil.</p>
<p>That’s a nice way to look at it. One would hope so!</p>
<p>^^^ I agree: nice way to look at it.</p>
<p>I liked 11/22/63 and found it moved quickly. Still, I found it overly long. I got tired of it at times: tired, as opposed to bored. I found myself ready to move along before Stephen King allowed me do so.</p>
<p>I mostly agree with </p>
<p>
</p></li>
</ol>
<p>However, I think maybe King touched a bit on political/social commentary. I just read “JFK: In Sickness and by Stealth” in Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens, obviously not a Camelot fan, paints a bleak future not dissimilar to that which Jake Epping finds on his return to 2011. I honestly have no idea re King’s view of the Kennedys (and Hitchens’ surprised me.) The essay for anyone interested:</p>
<p>[Arguably:</a> Selected Essays - Christopher Hitchens - Google Books](<a href=“Arguably: Selected Essays - Christopher Hitchens - Google Books”>Arguably: Selected Essays - Christopher Hitchens - Google Books) </p>
<p>Now just for fun - enter the site in 2011 to visit Al’s Diner, go back in time to 1963 (though, of course, Al’s Diner shouldn’t be there, and the re-enter in 2011:</p>
<p>[11/22/63</a> By Stephen King](<a href=“http://112263book.com/]11/22/63”>http://112263book.com/)</p>
<p>and I must say that I like the book’s ending much better than King’s alternate ending.</p>
<p>[StephenKing.com</a> - 11/22/63 Alternate Ending](<a href=“http://www.stephenking.com/other/112263/112263.html]StephenKing.com”>StephenKing.com | 11/22/63 Alternate Ending)</p>
<p>And speaking of names, I laughed when Jake Epping could no longer remember Oswald’s name and came up with Oswald Rabbit. (I enjoy the movie Harvey.)</p>
<p>Did you see in the Afterword that it was Stephen King’s son who suggested the current ending to the book? But I like the alternate ending! I like the idea of Sadie being happily married, surrounded by lots of children and grandchildren.</p>
<p>I’m glad I read the book-many topics for discussion-a great book club book! I did feel it was too long. I think I was ready to move on to another book before I finished.
The whole topic of time travel is fascinating.
I’m suprised that Stephen King believed so strongly in the one gunman theory. Then why Jack Ruby? It also made me start when I realized Jack Ruby was only 24. I somehow remember him as older.
I found it a little hard to identify or like the narrator. I loved Sadie and the other inhabitants of Josie.
I was born in Dallas and was in kindergarten when President Kennedy was shot. My mom was watching the parade on tv and my dad saw the motorcade on the parade route. I remember lots of phone calls and distress.
I have to say I don’t like King’s depiction of Dallas-he makes it seem sinister and seedy and even justifies it in the afterword. The Dallas I remember as a child was quite different.</p>
<p>Ignatius—Love that link to SK website for the book. At first I didn’t realize you can “enter the diner through the front door”- so I did that , and fun to see the little differences (as it was reading them in the book).
Then if you go back and forth, you get to the “alternative” future, lightning crackling, black and white scene of destruction. Then a small box says “reset” history…VERY CLEVER PR!!! thanks for link.</p>
<p>And, great reading the alternative ending, which was mentioned in interviews. I agree, with all, that the final version, far superior, after reading that “overly” LONG book, would have been dissatisfied with King’s first ending.</p>
<p>My review of the book would put it somewhere between the two reviews Mary posted. I love time travel books. My favorite time travel books are The Outlander books. Time travel in those books leave you wondering if the traveler’s influence on the past is changing history or making the history we already know. In 11/22/63 it’s clear that changing the past influences the future. I really like the concept of an “obdurate past” that doesn’t want to be changed. I thought that aspect of the novel was very intriguing. I was very disappointed in Stephen King’s dystopia of the new 2011. The world had changed significantly since 1963, yet most of the political players were the same. Wallace and Humphrey became presidents, so same people with a different result. Then Ronald Reagan in 1976 (instead of 1980) and Hilary Clinton as the current president, after taking over Bill’s campaign when he died of a heart attack. I’m sorry, but I cannot be convinced that all of these people would still have been key players in politics. The world was too different. The writing in this whole section seemed rather sophomoric to me. I also rolled my eyes on page 817 when Paul McCartney was blinded at a concert where a bomb went off. It seemed like King was forcing references with the past rather than making a new future.</p>
<p>
I really like that point of view, Mary!</p>
<p>
Me too!</p>
<p>Yes, PATheaterMom, I agree that Jake Epping/George Amberson was not really very likeable. I was surprised how many flippant and/or cynical comments King put in his mouth, about various topics.</p>
<p>One target of that occasionally, sneering, know-it-all tone (with some statements that were actually erroneous!) was Dallas. I lived in San Antonio, not Dallas, as a young person, but I know you’re right that Dallas was not at all as bad as the book suggests.</p>
<p>I didn’t like the part where the earth started having major earthquakes everywhere.</p>
<p>That was getting a bit too much.</p>
<p>BUandBC82, I think King was forcing references with the past in order to entertain the largest number of people, and push their buttons.</p>
<p>I think King is a gifted writer and fine storyteller, but I have liked other books of his better than this one. </p>
<p>King may have researched Oswald very carefully, but he surely was lackadaisical about period details. Every 20 or 30 pages throughout the book, I’d think either “that’s wrong,” or “that doesn’t seem quite right.” </p>
<p>I think he did this because the late 50s/early 60s were not quite different enough to make them sufficiently entertaining or “exotic” to modern readers without throwing in anachronistic details from a slightly earlier era.</p>