As I Lay Dying?
^ Yep, love that one, too!
What do folks think about the decision to make this a 750+ page book?
As many others have mentioned, this really should have been – and easily could have been – a 350-page book. There were so many repetitive scenes. And even on a sentence-by-sentence level, the book was loaded with redundancies and just plain flab. I found myself thinking in many parts that they almost could have just deleted every other sentence and made it a leaner, tighter book.
Given that so many of us recognize that the book was much, much too long, why do you think it was it published at this length? It is a symptom of the changing nature of the publishing world that active editing is no longer supported? Or do we think there was an issue with Hill’s ego, such that he would not allow it to be cut? Or is it a matter of readers’ expectation with this genre – a supernatural thriller in the mode of Stephen King should be a doorstop?
For those of you who liked the book, do you think a slimmer volume would have bern as satisfying to you?
I ask these questions because undue length seems to common problem these days.
I hated Jakob’s plow. It seemed to me that every time that vehicle rolled out, Hill was channeling Mad Max Fury Road.
I lean toward this as an explanation only because King’s *11/22/63/i is about the same length as is Hill’s *NOS4A2/i. I noticed it most with King’s 11/22/63 as he slid off on a tangent that evidently referenced another of his books that I hadn’t read. It didn’t fit well in the story King was telling.
This is a cynical response, but I think the publishing world has become more about blockbuster dollars than about promoting quality literature. Publishers must be reluctant to say “revise!” to their golden geese. It’s really too bad, because the result is an inferior product.
However, that doesn’t explain the writer himself. Wouldn’t Joe Hill have some sense that he needed to rein things in? And what about his family and friends? Hill says in the NPR interview that all the writers in his family read his books while they are in process:
So either his “Yankees lineup” really loves overwritten books (which is possible–as @ignatius noted, 11/22/63 was too long) or there is sort of a collective family ego manifesting itself in the critiquing process, wherein there is too much doting and not enough discipline.
I’m not sure what tangent ignatius is referring to in 11/22/63. I thought that book was a bit long because King was careful to include much of the information he had gathered about Oswald’s activities in the run-up to the assassination. I’ve read maybe eight or nine Stephen King novels over the years and have never thought that any of them was overly long or bloated.
I think there may be some sort of fashion these days for long books – a “bigger is better” bias for certain sorts of titles. I found one article that addresses the phenomenon:
The idea that Joe Hill’s family members provide helpful criticism sounds bonkers to me, considering the turkey they apparently “approved” in this instance.
Interestingly, I ran across a very articulate blurb by Joe Hill for a far superior, far more literary (and far shorter) novel that I recently read, Slade House by David Mitchell. If Hill appreciates a book like that so much, why can’t he write a better one himself?
Well he writes a good blurb!
When I was in college I had a good friend who was getting her books published. Back then printing cost were a big deal and they would have conversations like “We want to make this a $14 book so you are going to have to cut a third of it.” Then kid after kid would come to book signings saying “We wish it were longer” and she’d think “It was, it was.” She was so happy when J.K. Rowling made it possible to sell longer books to kids. (Though man I thought the last three books desperately needed an editor to make her cut a third of it.)
Anyway I think it’s a mix of things, but I think that the growth of ebooks means that length and price aren’t really coupled any more. There’s less incentive to make books shorter.
The tangent evidently came from King’s book It. Those of us who hadn’t read it were lost for a bit in a town with characters who had no relevance to the story.
Here’s a reviewer’s comments:
That’s not to say that I didn’t like 11/22/63. I did. I just had no idea why I was spending time in Derry with a Richie Tozier and Beverly March. Never having read It the town and the characters had no relevance.
Thanks, ignatius. I probably could have looked back at the discussion of 11/22/63, where you undoubtedly mentioned this, but I was too lazy!
Oddly enough, the Derry stuff in that book didn’t bother me.
Speaking of those long Harry Potter books, one of the later ones in the series had Harry going through some quite depressing trials for pages and pages and pages, though the book did have a deliriously happy ending. That was my least favorite of all the books (except maybe for #2), but my two boys adored it. I asked them, “Didn’t you think all the gloomy stuff during most of the book was off-putting?” Their response: “It didn’t matter at all, because the ending was so wonderful!”
I’m thinking that the readers who really liked The Fireman probably read the first 500 pages very quickly and relatively non-critically, then reveled in the exciting latter part of the book and the essentially happy ending,
Wow, I never in a million years would have considered either the real ending or the coda to be a happy ending! The initial ending where they are essentially faced with traversing the Atlantic in an ill- equipped boat, with no food or water, and with an ill newborn is so depressing that I can’t even stand it! Maybe they would have the ghosts of the departed freaks to help them but that’s pretty creepy, and not what I’d consider to be happy!
And, if the coda is the ending – to me, it’s like they are starting this whole trial all over again. SHUDDER! Not happy!
(See what I mean about my being too pessimistic and depressive for a book like this? 
)
@nottelling Nope, you’re not too pessimistic. I agree with you completely!
I remember the appearance of Richie and Beverly in 11/22/63. Having no idea who they were, I spent too long pondering their meaning and wondering when they would show up again in the novel (which would be never). During our discussion, I learned their source and–as much as I liked the book–I found it a little irritating. Because really, it was just vanity to insert them (at length) where they didn’t belong.
Joe Hill does this, too, but without interrupting the story, i.e., the story flows whether or not you know that Harold/Cross/Frannie/Nick, etc. are allusions to The Stand. At times, though, he goes a bit far. What was the point, for example, of Harper finding the imaginary baseball game on the radio, not once but twice? Seems like Hill just wanted to slip in another King reference (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon).
^^^ And I have no idea what you’re talking about. :-??
But at least in The Fireman what I didn’t know enough to notice didn’t hurt me.
Near the beginning of The Fireman, somebody was mentioned in passing who had an unusual last name. I can’t find it now – I think it started with a “d.” The name was sufficiently odd that I googled it, and guess what? Apparently the name, with a very slightly altered spelling, occurs in one of Stephen King’s novels and nowhere else. Sigh.
True; that didn’t occur to me.
It’s a strange tug-o-war. There are corporate cost savings with ebooks…but on the other hand, there are also gimmicks to draw people back to paper books. You had mentioned upthread about the smoky pictures in the hardcover of The Fireman–I also read online that the pages were created to look like they were lightly dusted with ash. True?
That’s what I mean–Joe Hill is skillful at burying his “easter eggs.” If you don’t recognize them, it doesn’t diminish the entertainment value of the story. If you do recognize them, it’s kinda fun – but maybe adds to the “flab” @nottelling mentioned above. (Harper listens to a fantasy baseball game [with player Tom Gordon] on the radio in Book Nine, chapter 2 and then again in chapter 6.)
YES! But, I didn’t realize this when I was reading “The Fireman” – only the other day when H found “Mad Max Fury Road” on TV. I didn’t really “get” the movie, but at one point I did actually think of Jakob and his plow.
Re: the comments about “11/22/63”-- I read the book, but finished so long after the discussion here on CC that I never went back and read everyone’s comments. So, I didn’t realize there were references to other King books. I also didn’t get any of the references in this book to characters in any of Hill’s other novels. All in all, I’m in the category of “I don’t know what it is I didn’t know.” I probably would have been more irritated by these tangental characters/events if I did know what they referenced.
I found this link online, and in a way, it relates to the second question above. The beauty reveals itself under the microscope. I thought many of the images were fascinating, but considering The Fireman, what really struck me was Smoker’s Lung: “Note the areas where the light shines through the lung, as well as black spots representing carbon accumulation from years of smoking.” It’s black, it’s gold, it glows…it’s eerily like draco incendia trichophyton: http://www.cell.com/pictureshow/beauty-in-disease
Re:
- the boat trip to Ireland: I got the impression this would not have taken as long as it ordinarily would because of John “helping” them along. I don;t have the book in front of me but I thought there was some mention of John in his fire form being able to push the boat ahead or create favorable winds or something.
But yes, I don’t remember if Don said anything about having food and water aboard or if anything was aid about a plan for that.
- Jakob and his truck: I kept thinking of the 1971 Spielberg movie Duel where the main character is stalked by the relentless driver of a tanker truck.
Stephen King also has a short story Trucks, which was made into the movie Maximum Overdrive, about trucks that suddenly start driving themselves and killing people and destroying things. Not the same as Jakob, obviously, but the killer truck or stalking truck idea is there.