Title: The Running Man (from The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King)
Author: Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
159 Pages (pages 533-692) (Hardcover)
Read: 27 June 2011
Spoilers: I go over the plot in scant detail but I don’t really give anything away
To begin with, this book is gory. Really gory. There’s blood, everywhere. There are guts, flying. There are gunshot wounds, which causes most of the blood and guts. Having never read Stephen King, I can’t say if there is an unusual amount of blood and guts, but there seems to be quite a bit. The story is fairly interesting, so getting over the gore seems worth it to me. However, there is also racism, prostitution, anti-homosexual sentiments, and a screaming woman in distress. So the worth of the novel is sort of a toss-up.
Stephen King writes in the introduction (a weirdly organized essay entitled “Why I Was Bachman” which is interesting but ultimately useless) to this collection that The Running Man “is nothing but story--it moves with the goofy speed of a silent movie, and anything which is not story is cheerfully thrown over the side.” He seems rather proud of this assessment. I think it’s perfectly true, but I’m not sure that it makes the story powerful or even particularly noteworthy.
The set-up is simple. The masses are sedated by watching violent games on television; in many of these games (if not all, it’s hard to tell exactly) the contestants die. Ben Richards, strapped for money (his cause is noble, of course), becomes a contestant on the most violent and bloody (and rigged) of the shows, The Running Man. The story follows his attempt to overthrow the system. Along the way, King makes room for a indictment of pollution and an exploration of class.
King discusses pollution in an interesting way, suggesting that the effects of pollution are felt by the poorest. The wealthy are able to escape the negative effects of poisonous air and therefore don’t notice it anymore. Furthermore, the government of The Running Man censors information about pollution and pollution levels, raising questions about the government’s involvement with environmental injustice. I think he raises interesting points about pollution and environmental justice, but he discards the environmental question when it starts to take the novel over. This weakens his argument some, as well as making pollution seem unimportant. However, this depiction suggests, very powerfully, that environmental issues fade when a person is confronted with terrible personal trauma. It is depressing, but seemingly accurate. I think that if King had chosen to focus on the pollution issue he would have had a much more interesting and powerful novel. As it is, he settled for an action story without any attempts at making it an “issue book.”
King’s discussion of class moves in and out of focus, but remains a theme throughout. Obviously King has great sympathy and understanding for the suffering of the poor and unemployed and he does his best to uphold them as the better sort of person. In some ways, this echoes Orwell’s use of proles in 1984, proles being considered the greatest hope for the future, a dream that is complicated by reality. However, the ending of the novel doesn’t provide closure or even hope for the future. King points out class issues without suggesting that the lower classes will ever be able to escape.
Interestingly, two of the lowest class characters are readers, suggesting that class can be escaped through education and imagination. This vision does not work particularly well in the context of the novel. Ben Richards is depicted as an action hero, but somehow it is necessary to see him also as a sensitive reader of novels. The other major reader is a gang member, who belongs to a gang of...readers. They sneak into the library to read about pollution and how the upper classes cope with poison air. It’s a bizarre moment in the book, one that made me raise my eyebrows (not that I don’t think people should read). I think reading is great, and I think everyone should sneak into their libraries to read about pollution. The scenes just aren’t in keeping with the rest of the novel. I think perhaps King wanted people to know how important reading is and didn’t work too hard on how to deliver that message.
I think this is a fair dystopian novel. The novel is more about society than about politics, along the lines of Farhenheit 451 rather than 1984. That being said, this isn’t the greatest dystopian novel ever written. I think King was trying to take on racism, but he didn’t make his point strong enough. He just comes across as possibly racist. Further, he seems to be trying to fight against anti-gay sentiment, but he fails there too. This isn’t to say that the book ought to have been longer. The story would have lost its pop and suffered terribly if it were longer. I just think King should have worked harder on making his argument stronger.
That being said, I’d recommend this to the same audience as Logan’s Run. The stories are roughly similar (superhuman runs away from bad guys; there’s even a similar scene of claustrophobia), but Richards seems a little more interesting (perhaps because he’s 28 and not just 21) even as his situation seems a little less plausible. This isn’t a book for the faint of heart or the easily upset. This feels like a book that a non-reading teenager (I mean this as nicely as possible) would really like--there’s blood, the main character kicks ass, and a couple important issues are mentioned. It isn’t boring, it isn’t slow, and it doesn’t stop in the middle for a complicated political discussion (ahem, 1984).
-Benvolia
Also read this week:
Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits, by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson (23 June 2011)
The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley (27 June 2011)
Author: Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
159 Pages (pages 533-692) (Hardcover)
Read: 27 June 2011
Spoilers: I go over the plot in scant detail but I don’t really give anything away
To begin with, this book is gory. Really gory. There’s blood, everywhere. There are guts, flying. There are gunshot wounds, which causes most of the blood and guts. Having never read Stephen King, I can’t say if there is an unusual amount of blood and guts, but there seems to be quite a bit. The story is fairly interesting, so getting over the gore seems worth it to me. However, there is also racism, prostitution, anti-homosexual sentiments, and a screaming woman in distress. So the worth of the novel is sort of a toss-up.
Stephen King writes in the introduction (a weirdly organized essay entitled “Why I Was Bachman” which is interesting but ultimately useless) to this collection that The Running Man “is nothing but story--it moves with the goofy speed of a silent movie, and anything which is not story is cheerfully thrown over the side.” He seems rather proud of this assessment. I think it’s perfectly true, but I’m not sure that it makes the story powerful or even particularly noteworthy.
The set-up is simple. The masses are sedated by watching violent games on television; in many of these games (if not all, it’s hard to tell exactly) the contestants die. Ben Richards, strapped for money (his cause is noble, of course), becomes a contestant on the most violent and bloody (and rigged) of the shows, The Running Man. The story follows his attempt to overthrow the system. Along the way, King makes room for a indictment of pollution and an exploration of class.
King discusses pollution in an interesting way, suggesting that the effects of pollution are felt by the poorest. The wealthy are able to escape the negative effects of poisonous air and therefore don’t notice it anymore. Furthermore, the government of The Running Man censors information about pollution and pollution levels, raising questions about the government’s involvement with environmental injustice. I think he raises interesting points about pollution and environmental justice, but he discards the environmental question when it starts to take the novel over. This weakens his argument some, as well as making pollution seem unimportant. However, this depiction suggests, very powerfully, that environmental issues fade when a person is confronted with terrible personal trauma. It is depressing, but seemingly accurate. I think that if King had chosen to focus on the pollution issue he would have had a much more interesting and powerful novel. As it is, he settled for an action story without any attempts at making it an “issue book.”
King’s discussion of class moves in and out of focus, but remains a theme throughout. Obviously King has great sympathy and understanding for the suffering of the poor and unemployed and he does his best to uphold them as the better sort of person. In some ways, this echoes Orwell’s use of proles in 1984, proles being considered the greatest hope for the future, a dream that is complicated by reality. However, the ending of the novel doesn’t provide closure or even hope for the future. King points out class issues without suggesting that the lower classes will ever be able to escape.
Interestingly, two of the lowest class characters are readers, suggesting that class can be escaped through education and imagination. This vision does not work particularly well in the context of the novel. Ben Richards is depicted as an action hero, but somehow it is necessary to see him also as a sensitive reader of novels. The other major reader is a gang member, who belongs to a gang of...readers. They sneak into the library to read about pollution and how the upper classes cope with poison air. It’s a bizarre moment in the book, one that made me raise my eyebrows (not that I don’t think people should read). I think reading is great, and I think everyone should sneak into their libraries to read about pollution. The scenes just aren’t in keeping with the rest of the novel. I think perhaps King wanted people to know how important reading is and didn’t work too hard on how to deliver that message.
I think this is a fair dystopian novel. The novel is more about society than about politics, along the lines of Farhenheit 451 rather than 1984. That being said, this isn’t the greatest dystopian novel ever written. I think King was trying to take on racism, but he didn’t make his point strong enough. He just comes across as possibly racist. Further, he seems to be trying to fight against anti-gay sentiment, but he fails there too. This isn’t to say that the book ought to have been longer. The story would have lost its pop and suffered terribly if it were longer. I just think King should have worked harder on making his argument stronger.
That being said, I’d recommend this to the same audience as Logan’s Run. The stories are roughly similar (superhuman runs away from bad guys; there’s even a similar scene of claustrophobia), but Richards seems a little more interesting (perhaps because he’s 28 and not just 21) even as his situation seems a little less plausible. This isn’t a book for the faint of heart or the easily upset. This feels like a book that a non-reading teenager (I mean this as nicely as possible) would really like--there’s blood, the main character kicks ass, and a couple important issues are mentioned. It isn’t boring, it isn’t slow, and it doesn’t stop in the middle for a complicated political discussion (ahem, 1984).
-Benvolia
Also read this week:
Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits, by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson (23 June 2011)
The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley (27 June 2011)
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