Richard Bachman - The Long Walk

[dem bones]

"He's walking in pus from broken blisters."

Richard Bachman - The Long Walk (NEL, Sept. 1980)

Gerald Grace

Blurb:
In the America of the not-too distant future, authority wears a uniform and stands above the law.
The nation's top sport event is a 450-mile marathon walk, a gruelling road race for the fittest young men in the land, a terror trek where a single wrong step is probably the last.
Victory means fortune and fame. There's only one winner and there are no losers.
Tomorrow's world is a place where failure is against the rules

Tomorrow's world today, in other words.

It's North America's most popular reality TV show. Under the ever-watchful eyes of 'The Major' and three armed soldiers, a hundred eighteen-year-old lads set out from Maine toward the East Coast on a walking marathon. There's no set finishing line, you just have to keep going. Dip below the minimum 4 mph, accept food, drink, anything from spectators, or fall foul of the four strikes and you're out ruling, and you're gunned down where you hobble. So, we join Raymond Garraty as he says farewell to sobbing mum at the starting line. Ray's father, a liberal, couldn't make it. He was carted away by the squads, never to be seen again. Dad was so outspoken in his condemnation of the both The Major - "the rarest and most dangerous monster any nation can produce. A society-supported sociopath" - and his barbaric endurance test, that we wonder at Ray's willingness to participate. It's not as though he gives a damn about "glory" and he's not given a thought to his list of demands in the unlikely event of winning.

Two days and 75 miles along the way, we have already lost a quarter of the competitors. "For no reason Garraty could put a finger on, he felt as if he had just walked through a Shirley Jackson short story." We''re worried for Ray's new pals, Pete McVries, Hank Olson (not quite so chirpy now his legs are giving out), Stebbins the morose mystery kid, and Harkness who is writing a book about it all. More than anything, we are worried that Gary Barkovitch, an odious, seemingly indefatigable bully, will make good his promise to dance on their graves....

[To be continued ...]

[Deleted]

May 30, 2016 16:42:06 GMT dem bones said:

"He's walking in pus from broken blisters."

Richard Bachman - The Long Walk (NEL, Sept. 1980)


[To be continued ...]

One of my favourite King novels, and probably tied with The Running Man as the best of the Bachman books. My first read of this was completed in one exhausted sitting, which I still think is how it's best read (though I doubt I have the time or stamina to repeat the experiment). King can sometimes be a bit dismissive of his work as Bachman, but the limitations it placed on him gave rise to some of his best work, I think -- they're just so much tighter than a lot of his other work. I just wish he'd gone with Misery as the final Bachman book rather than the underwhelming Thinner. The former feels so much more like a 'Bachman' work. He should probably have put the whole thing to bed at that point too -- the couple of books he's released under the Bachman name since haven't really been up to much.

As an aside, I came across two copies of the NEL edition of this at the Barras in Glasgow two or three years ago, on sale for the princely sum of £2.50 each. I bought one, and have since regretted not grabbing both of them.

[dem bones]

Got mine for 25p as part of a 4-for-a-£ deal at the market. Pity previous owner used it as a saucer.

Not yet read Roadwork or Thinner, but loved Rage and agree that The Running Man is terrific. Already enamoured of The Long Walk. My trademark tedious blow-by-blow account is less appropriate than ever in this instance. Stuff I'm wondering at present includes: will the reader, like Ray and his ragbag Musketeers, eventually grow numb to the senseless deaths of fellow competitors? Will the winner drag himself to "victory" on bleeding stumps? Olson already seems to have accepted the inevitable but can he at least outdistance everyone's mate Barkovitch? Can rarely manage to complete a novel in one sitting these days - the stamina thing, plus frequent indecipherable scribble breaks - but ideally, would have set aside three hours for this and gone for it.

[dem bones]

In the spirit of the thing, I resisted sleep to polish off the final 100 or so pages in the early hours. An absolute choker of a novel, reminded me a lot of Richard Laymon minus the shorts fetish. It's no spoiler to mention that we lose characters we have come to know and like with alarming regularity, and the allusions to Vietnam are so blatant even I couldn't miss them: some competitors bow out with a final act of defiance, the vast majority just lose it altogether. Several references to Ray Bradbury's The Crowd. A tremendous "I didn't see that coming!" moment toward the end.

Think I prefer The Long Walk to the King/ Bachman collaboration-of-sorts, Misery.

[sadako]

The first paperback editions of NEL’s four Bachman books are current priced at hundreds of pounds online. I wonder if anyone pays these prices?