Richard Bachman

THE LONG WALK by Richard Bachman was part of an experiment by Stephen King to see if his books were selling as well as they were because he was a very gifted writer, or if people were just buying them because his name was on the cover. Or perhaps he felt he was flooding the market with “King” novels and wanted to expand his vistas.
Either way, I wish I had discovered Bachman back before the big reveal. THE LONG WALK is classic King. It is simple, elegant, psychologically dense. The show more characters come to life within the pages because of his ability to nuance personalities and enhance individual strengths and weaknesses.
But, as in all King novels, the characters you are reading about are real people struggling against an unfair world. Here we have a dystopian future where the biggest contest is the Long Walk. The rule is simple. 100 young men (spare me cries of sexual bias. I don’t know about you but I would not want to read about women going through this ordeal), selected from a massive group of volunteers, start walking from a point in Maine. They must average 4 miles an hour. Slow down from the pace and you get a warning, Three warnings and the soldiers riding on the accompanying vehicles shoot you down like a ban dog. Last one walking down the road wins their heart’s desire.
Simple, but masterly worked. This 1979 book works as well today as it did then. As always, King proves himself the master of suspense no matter what name he uses. show less

My #stephenking #readathon with @ame9022 and @wendysallison has moved on to RAGE, the first of the Bachman Books, the novels that Stephen King released early in his career under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.

This was a hard book to read, given the current state of gun violence in schools in our country, and seems very prescient in a way. The book follows one afternoon in a Maine high school, when student Charlie Decker kills his algebra teacher and takes the class hostage. What follows is an show more alternating narration of Charlie's troubled childhood with secrets held by the students in the class, as well as Decker's taunting of the school officials and police involved in trying to apprehend him.

The whole thing culminates with the students in the class turning on Ted Jones, the only student in the classroom who eventually doesn't seem to want to be there of his own volition. They beat Jones into unconsciousness and Decker gives himself up, and that's basically the story. Written when SK was in high school, and slightly cleaned up to be published under the Bachman alias, I feel it tries to be more ambitious that its capable of being. Given our current state of affairs with gun violence in schools, I'm sure I also read this with a slight bias against the story from the onset. I'm also fairly certain that this will be one of those books that I'm never going to feel a reason to revisit again.

King eventually let this book fall out of publication after it was discovered in the locker of Michael Carneal, the 14-year-old who opened fire on his fellow students at Heath High School in 1997.

#stephenking #horror #rage #richardbachman #thebachmanbooks #bachmanbooks #horrorbooks #horrorbookstagram #bookstagram #book #bookworm #booksbooksbooks #bookreview #frommybookshelf #frommybookshelfblog show less

There are portions through the first half of this book that show Stephen King as a still-new and not quite in control of his craft yet. There are sections that try too hard, sections that are awkward, and sections that are damn near embarrassing.

But in the back half? It simply seems to take off and soar.

This is obviously King's practice run at the high school culture he would later nail in [b:Carrie|10592|Carrie|Stephen King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166254258s/10592.jpg|1552134], but show more it's also his take on [a:William Golding|306|William Golding|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1198342496p2/306.jpg]'s [b:Lord of the Flies|14425|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|2766512], an oft-mentioned favourite of King's, and finally, he's mixed in a touch of The Breakfast Club albeit without the humour.

King had a lot to say here, probably more than he's said in most of his other works of fiction. That's both a good and bad thing. It's good, because he often nails it, or at least peels back the scab to allow us a good look at the wound. It's bad because there's times when it's so earnest that it's overwrought.

Still, for all of that, it's an early work, and it's an interesting glimpse into the author that would become a household name. show less

Holy hell, I had no clue what I was getting into with this one. I am a SK lover and King’s earlier [a:Richard Bachman|5858|Richard Bachman|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1289702449p2/5858.jpg] books are some of my favorites. (read [b:The Long Walk|9014|The Long Walk|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165856860s/9014.jpg|522169] and [b:The Running Man|11607|The Running Man|Stephen King|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1286562591s/11607.jpg|3652165] if you haven’t) I show more happened upon this one rather randomly and couldn’t stop reading it. It is out of print, for reasons that will be absolutely clear by the time you are done reading the next paragraph. (SK and his publisher both agreed that it was for the better)

Written in 1977, [b:Rage|66370|Rage|Richard Bachman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1299003176s/66370.jpg|1657128] starts of with a bang (pun intended), when Charlie Decker gets called to the office, mouths off, lights his locker on fire, then shoots two teachers. He holds his entire class hostage and the rest of the book is basically a psychotherapy session wherein he and his classmates tell stories of times when they “got it on.” (no sexual connotation) Are we all a little bit crazy? I have no clue.

The shared experience of the hostage situation was weird…but not unrealistic. It is amazing to see how people react in stressful situations. I mean, there is a body lying in the room and everyone is basically shooting the shit, but I could buy it and that is what is kind of scary. It’s that moment when everything is so serious and you’ve gone beyond the seriousness to some sort of relaxation. King writes, “When you’re five and you hurt, you make a big noise unto the world. At ten you whimper. But by the time you make fifteen you begin to eat the poisoned apples that grow on your own inner tree of pain…You bleed on the inside.” God, how sad is it that ?

When I saw the movie Se7en, I remember thinking it was crazy to imagine a government keeping tabs on what people are checking out at the library. This is the type of book that would be on those hypothetical lists. (hypothetical? :-)) There are at least two instances of teenagers taking guns to school and holding their classmates hostage after reading this book. Do I think it is dangerous? No, not any moreso than all the other crap we are bombarded with daily. Impressionable teenagers will find their inspiration from somewhere else. And this book is more of a commentary on how parents affect their children for better or worse. The takeaway should be not to exhibit violence in school but to keep lines of communication open, not be a shitty parent, and to treat your classmates like human beings. (is this even possible in high school?)

Stephen King is the ultimate storyteller. I swear, on nearly every page, I’m either chuckling, underlining, or completely aghast. He is like that friend that we all have who can tell a story about something completely benign and have you rolling on the floor with laughter or make you cry just by recounting the plot of a sad movie. I’m sad that more people won’t get the chance to read this book. If you can stomach it, definitely find a copy. show less