Classic King. An amazing read. ( )

True-to-form King, but again, one of my favorites. ( )

I used to read Stephen King back in high school and college many years ago. Recently, I decided to re-read “The Dead Zone”. It was first published in 1979, and the storyline takes place through the 1970s. Reading it now, it feels almost like historical fiction, as well as suspense. For those of you who are not familiar with this story, ”The Dead Zone” is about Johnny Smith, who receives a head injury as a young boy, which causes him to have psychic experiences later on. These experiences are not quite obvious until he is an adult, however. Johnny doesn’t even realize that he has these psychic experiences because he sort of blacks out while he has them.

It isn’t until much later that he understands the full impact of his powers. Much, much later. He ends up in a horrific car accident which leaves him into a coma for four and a half years. During that four and a half years, his girlfriend Sarah marries someone else. His parents keep a vigil over him.

When Johnny wakes up, he is shocked that he has been in a coma for so long.

He asks his parents about who he thinks is the current president, Nixon. He’s shocked to hear that Nixon had resigned.

“Johnny suddenly realized that there had been some great and fundamental upheaval in American politics — almost surely as a result of the war in Vietnam — and he had missed it. For the first time he really felt like Rip van Winkle. How much had things changed? He was almost afraid to ask. Then a really chilling thought occurred.

‘Agnew…Agnew’s president?’ “

Then his parents have to explain to him the convoluted way that Jerry Ford ended up being president instead of Agnew.

Johnny also tries to come to grips with Sarah now being a married woman and mother of a young child. A few months after he woke up from the coma:

“He wasn’t over the hurt of the past. For him, time had been crudely folded, stapled, and mutilated. In the progression of his own interior time, she had been his girl only six months ago. He could accept the coma and the loss of time in an intellectual way, but his emotions stubbornly resisted”.

Johnny does become reunited with Sarah, but not in the way that he wishes that he could.

Threaded through “The Dead Zone” is also the plot of a rapist/murderer — because of Johnny’s psychic powers, this case is eventually solved. Also, there is the story of a corrupt politician, Greg Stillson, working his way up the political ladder. Again, because of the psychic powers, Johnny realizes that Greg Stillson has the potential to be terribly destructive, but Johnny isn’t sure exactly what and how – because when Johnny has his visions, there is a “dead zone” where he can’t quite see all of what is going to happen. Johnny then becomes obsessed with Greg Stillson and wonders if it’s possible to change the course of history.

Incidentally, “The Dead Zone” was also made into a movie– starring Christopher Walken as Johnny, and Martin Sheen as Greg Stillson. ( )

This is the King book I always recommend to newcomers to King. Great plot, well-done characterization, light on the blood and gore -- this is not what they will be expecting. ( )

Boring! I expected more from Stephen King, but this book had nothing that interested me. ( )