It’s an interesting postmodern exercise in making the reader feel what the characters are feeling, not just through the action and dialogue, but by taking the reader through every step, every thought. The Long Walk, on the other hand, takes a surprisingly long time to unravel, dragging the reader along for nearly every step of the journey, forcing one to contemplate the arduousness of life itself. It comes and goes quickly, making its point and leaving before the reader gets anxious. As a story, it’s a classic example of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Both are concerned with the undercurrent of violence and sadness inherent in teenagers, but where Carrie bent its tale through the prism of telekinetic explosions, Rage kept the pyrotechnics strictly interpersonal, proving that a character need not move things with their mind to wreak havoc in the lives of theirs classmates. Rage is a solid book that functions as a sort of companion piece to Carrie. One bad book could have derailed the momentum, so Bachman was a place to experiment with new forms, ideas, and voices. At the time the first batch of Bachman books came out, he was on a good trajectory, but hardly guaranteed the 4-decade career he’s had. It makes sense, if you consider that Stephen King was growing into a household name and the author was finally making some money for the first time in his life. There’s a decided second-hand quality to the Bachman stories, as though King was unwilling to launch a real novel under the name of Richard Bachman.

Having now finished my second Bachman book, I’ve found that some of my trepidation, while uneducated, wasn’t terribly inaccurate. The reasons were myriad and largely uneducated: Bachman seemed “ uncanon” somehow I’m not a big fan of sci-fi, the synopses themselves didn’t pique my interest, etc. I have been a Stephen King fan for nearly 30 years, and during that time I’d managed to never read a Richard Bachman book, until starting this blog.

The long walk book richard bachman