Still reading the four novels that comprise The Bachman Books, and have finished the second of the two, "The Long Walk." I can see why as a young writer, Stephen King used a pseudonym. He was just making his start as the master of horror and these novels were not in that realm. It really messes up a marketing plan when that happens.
But this second novel really makes me respect him as a futurist writer. It concerns a "game show" of a sort, with the stakes being lives. But this was written long before the advent of Fear Factor, and Survivor and The Amazing Race. So his foresight in where we were heading as a society is interesting. While the novel could have been edited a bit more aggressivley (say 50-60 pages more aggressively) the overall impact of his futuristic, dystopian viewpoint is compelling and challenging. He visualizes a society that undertakes these games after undergoing a slightly different past than the true version of reality. The thing he missed is that this society did not need to undergo attacks by Nazi Germany to become a place where life and death is for entertainment. We seem to have become that society all on our own.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment