Mario the lone bookwolf's review of 11/22/63 (original) (raw)

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Mario the lone bookwolf's Reviews > 11/22/63

11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63
by

78485297

Trying to reboot history

Has hardly ever been that compelling
Heck, I wish King would have chosen to more often enter the world of uchronias, alternative timelines, multiverses, and parallel realities. Just the imagination of King going more toward sci-fi elements makes me lose even more of my already shattered mind. Time travel alone opens the option

To show the bad, old days
Just ideologically, of course, because, and that´s the real irony, wealth distribution and economic order were far more eco social these days. So while sexism, racism, and discrimination became less dominant, the neoliberal dogma escalated towards total acceptance and consensus of TINA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_i... That´s especially interesting because King is pointing the finger at the extreme injustice of the economic system in some of his newer works while focusing on the traditions of hate in this one. So there is a delicious sociological crust under the

Groundhog day time cop concept
So many possibilities to ruin the spacetime continuum by saving and killing people, preventing catastrophes and wars, and playing god with the option of destroying reality or alerting almighty watchdog aliens getting angry when their universe could implode because of apes tinkering with relativity, quantum, gravity, and stuff. Or simply an easygoing letting ones´ grangrandgrandmother fall in love with one with the option of a menage a trois with ones´ own grandgrandgrandfather in the spirit of at least a bit of incest prevention and coming back less degenerated. Although a suddenly crazy time traveler has great comedic potential. King chooses some of these options and combines emotional impact, real history, alternative history, thriller, and just some grains of horror to create one of

His biggest hits he prepared for decades
He already had the idea in 1972, but felt that it was still too early after Kennedys' assassination to write it. I can´t imagine how incredible this would have been if he would have written it during his high years when he created It, Misery, and some of his other, best works. Because I just had some more, of course just theoretical, enlightenment about boosting productive creative output with legal and illegal substances some totally sober thoughts:

It´s difficult to differentiate what fueled King when, because he used to smoke like a chimney, drink, and consume marihuana already before 1985 with cocaine and hard pills, and one of my biggest questions is how drunk and high he was before officially becoming an alcoholic, cocaine, and stimulant addict. How drunk and marihuana high was he when he wrote everything between his first works and the end of his junkie career? How would neuropsychiatry and pharmacology explain the origin of his creativity under the influence of at least 3 to 6 substances that all, already as single consumption, have massive impacts on thought quality and imagination? Because, yes, that´s one of the few positive aspects of drugs. Would King have been able to become such an incredible writer without substance abuse? However, back to the show

I don´t get the whole politics I don´t care about anymore
Not just because it´s US politics from decades ago I never knew that much about, but also because the postmodernist realization that everything has been corrupted made me choose irony and sarcasm as the only possible responses to protect my, already balancing on the cliffs of insanity, brain. For someone prone to US history, there could be obvious or hidden innuendos, easter eggs, and goodies regarding the whole big, political global strategy real time and life game. It´s one of the new

Rare cases King entered a more reality based setting
When first reading his newer works, I didn´t really care that much about possible political agendas ( I do agree with) he implements in his works. But after the realization that he didn´t just change his writing style and its focus, but also the way he deals with topics, digging deeper was necessary. Instead of showing the dirty consequences of politics and economics in peoples´ everyday lives, King transformed to directly pointing the finger at the most important corporate sockpuppets called democratically elected chancellors, senators, and ministers. Or, more positively, at not assassinated presidents that could have prevented wars, neoliberal rise, and general neoconservative backlash mentality, and thereby fundamentally changed and improved the world we live in today.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

Hardcore fans will find some, in their cases obvious, hidden easter eggs from It and The Dark Tower series

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