Stephen King, 11.22.63, Hodder & Stoughton, November 2011
Political murders have been in the news a lot lately. Gaddafi's ugly last moments at the hands of a mob. Osama bin Laden's more planned demise. I doubt either of these will be remembered as long as the shooting that forms the basis of Stephen King's new novel.
The assassination of American President John F. Kennedy nearly 50 years ago continues to fascinate, and King's is the ultimate voyage into the land of 'what if'. He takes the reader through a portal to the 1950s, where the protagonist may or may not be able to use the intervening years to stop Oswald's infamous 1963 bullet.
The world of the 1950s is brilliantly evoked. Alongside the energetic music and the richer flavours of food, the near-universal smoking and the mile-long cars, wife-bashing seems to be up there with baseball as the national sport of the pre-feminist United States.
As the time-voyager, Jake Epping, journeys south towards Texas and Kennedy's murder, the entrenched racism of the 1950s is brought out through a casual stop at a gas station, where he finds three signs for the toilets: one for men, one for women, one for 'colored'. Jake (who is white) follows the 'colored' path to see:
There was no facility. What I found at the end of the path was a narrow stream with a board laid across it on a couple of crumbling concrete posts. A man who had to urinate could just stand on the bank, unzip, and let fly. A woman could hold onto a bush (assuming it wasn't poison ivy ...) and squat. The board was what you sat on if you had to take a shit. Maybe in the pouring rain.
If I ever gave you the idea that 1958's all Andy-n-Opie, remember the path, okay? The one lined with poison ivy. And the board over the stream.
Warped theology is used to back up this racism. Apparently Ham's glancing at his naked father Noah is responsible for the oppressed state of the 'Negro' in the view of some Southern Baptists. There are billboards stating 'THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY FAVORS INTEGRATION. THINK ABOUT IT.' The