It feels like this semester will never end...
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| Source: Amazon.com |
The Long Walk, by Richard Bachman
From the book’s cover:
On the first day of May, one hundred teenage boys meet for an event known throughout the country as "The Long Walk," a deadly contest of endurance and determination, where each step could literally be their last.
Synopsis:
The Long Walk revolves around the experience of a teenage boy named Garrity (I forget his first name), who takes part in a endurance walking contest in a dystopian world based on the United States of America if it were some sort of totalitarian state (it isn't, you ask?). The prize for winning this Long Walk is quite a bit of money, as well as the winning contestant's own life. The losers all die a horrible death at the hands of the soldiers who accompany the group of "walkers," one hundred young men under the age of eighteen who have come from across the country to compete.
The game's rules are simple. You walk along a road that starts at the the top of the United States, and if you fall below a pace of 4 mph, you are given a warning. After three warnings, your last notice of non-compliance is being shot to death. If a walker manages to go for an hour after receiving a warning without falling off pace, that warning is removed from the walker's record and they get a temporary reprieve. But eventually, everybody but the last surviving walker runs out of warnings and is killed by the stone-eyed troops who soullessly accompany the competitors.
To ruin the ending, our protagonist Garrity ends up being the unexpected winner after he survives the deaths of friends and enemies alike. The book chronicles his experiences, including the many ups and downs of the road (literally and figuratively speaking), the reactions of the locals who watch the ragged boys on their forced march, and the grim realities as the weakened teens about Garrity fall away one by one.
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| Richard Bachman was a pen name used by Stephen King. King used the name for a variety of reasons, including that it was generally accepted that authors were not supposed to publish more prolifically than one book a year at the time (the mid-1970s). King denied for some time that he was in fact Bachman, but a bookstore clerk eventually unraveled the deception and - rather tactfully - wrote King about it. For more details on the story, see the Wikipedia article on the subject. / Image Source: GoodReads.com |
What I liked about it:
The grueling nature of the book is both its strength and its weakness. The humanity experienced by the Long Walk's participants is powerful. It is difficult not to see yourself in the "walkers" collective shoes, as they struggle on, step by step. In fact, though I have certainly not read all of Bachman/King's work's, I might venture a guess that this novel is the one I would least term "consumer-oriented," and more like "literature." It's content is harsh, but the underlying themes are strong and primal.
I suppose I would say that The Long Walk is a good book to read if the reader wished to get a better understanding of the Vietnam War. This was my constant impression. To be clear, I have no direct frame of reference, as I was not there (I was born a few years after Saigon fell in '75). But the book strongly suggests the way soldiers from that conflict tended to react. I would guess this analogy fits, and invite anyone who knows better to either confirm or deny my statement. But that is the impression I get here. "Bachman" is making a statement about the war.
But the Long Walk isn't just war, but a statement on life as well. There is a thread of existence in this book that speaks to the way we live and the way we die. It's not a nice statement in most respects either. But it's there, just the same.
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| An early edition copy of the novel features a cover image that chillingly reflects the book's contents. / Source: Wikipedia.com |
What I didn’t like about it:
This book can really depress you. I don't know if I can say this is something I didn't like, but it doesn't make it a pleasant read. The material is so gloomy in places that I wanted to stop reading.
Also, the pain and suffering and gore gets a bit repetitive. This is not so much a gripe against the book's natural structure and flow, but just a comment on how painful it can be to read by the end. And the sexual content, though never actually explicit (as in direct intercourse) is pretty graphic and unforgiving. I recall one passage, though the specific details have been mercifully wiped from my memory after a day or two of reflection, that made me squirm quite uncomfortably. Granted, I'm a softy when it comes to sexual content - I can read horrible blood and guts but you talk about people "in congress" and I get a bit blushy - but this passage I refer to was unpleasant. Again, this isn't so much a gripe against the book as it is the general subject matter. It's real strong stuff.
What I learned, if anything:
The book itself has little to teach, other than the basic plot itself. What I did learn, and this may not be correct, is that King wrote The Long Walk first, eight years before Carrie was published in 1974, while he was still a Freshman at the University of Maine in 1966-67 (according to Wikipedia, that is). That's interesting.
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| An artist's impression of The Long Walk. This is a header image for an interesting article about the film director Frank Darabont, who so masterfully translated King's The Mist onto film. The ending of that one still leaves my jaw hanging slack. Way to out-do the book, buddy. Anyway, check out the article here. / Source: WhatCulture.com |
The Long Walk is stark at grim, even in its moments of macabre humor. To be honest, reading it on my headphones at work made my nights seem longer. Facing mortality in such a dim way is not inherently helpful when it's 1 AM and you feel like the night will never end.
At the same time, the book is an interesting take on the idea of "reality TV" way before there was such a thing. I'd venture a guess that it is the grandfather of the seedling that brought us The Hunger Games, and though the content is not for the faint of heart, it is still a pretty good yarn.
Speaking of content, the book would gather an "R" rating if it was made into a film (perhaps it has been, I don't know). There is frequent sexual reference of both tame and outlandish nature - these are a bunch of teenage boys walking along a road together while men with guns follow them and keep track of their foot-speed, after all. The subject of sex is bound to come up. And of course, Bachman pulls no punches when it comes to the blood and gore involved in the demise of the ones who fall behind and "buy a ticket," as the book refers to it.
I suppose the recommendation on The Long Walk should go something like this: If you like Stephen King/Richard Bachman books, and if you like The Hunger Games but think it was too tame, and if you don't mind the visceral nature of the subject and its connotations, then this book is probably for you. It's definitely not for everyone, I'd surmise. But in the same token, I do think it was a powerful read, and to be honest, if I was teaching a course which covered content reading such as Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22, or other novels with strong messages that make you think about the nature of life and death (there are plenty of others I could name if I thought about it, but these are these easiest to come up with off the top of my head), I might be tempted to include The Long Walk. It may be one of King's scariest works, because it looks so unashamedly into the nature of life and death, without shlock or even a strong sense of consumer-laden-value as its goal, and thus it might be argued that The Long Walk is actually one of his best pieces.
Learn more about The Long Walk, by Richard Bachman, on Amazon.com
The parting comment:
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| Source: FenMeme.com |
Did you ever have one of those conversations where somebody tells you to come up with an example, and then a few minutes later when you think of a perfect one and tell it to them, they still won't see your point and they tell you your example is invalid (probably because it doesn't fit within the tiny constraints of their ity-bity concept of reality)? Oh, and rest assured, this rant has nothing to do with the image above... I swear.
A two-fer on parting comments!
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| Source:MotiFake.com |
This one doesn't fit the subject of the book review, but it does go with the mood, as it were.
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