Just Finished Rereading The Long Walk by Stephen King

Before I began writing this blog back in April of 2007, I had already read most of Stephen King's published novels.  Since I tend to review books here that I just read, this means that I never got around to discussing those earlier books.  King early on liked to publish come of his works under the pseudonym Richard Bachman...The Long Walk, from 1979, was one of them.  And I just finished reading it...again. The setting...as in so many other Stephen King stories...is Maine.  America has turned into an authoritarian, militaristic state and the big sport on the day of the story is the annual Long Walk, where everyone wagers on who will survive the grueling ordeal...and only the last one left walking will.  Survive, because any participant who dips below the four miles per hour threshold will be warned three times and then shot dead by the soldiers patrolling the route.  Yet many young men volunteer for this "race", because if they do survive, they will pretty much have anything they want for the remainder of their lives.  Ray Garraty, a native of Maine, throws his hat into the ring and, along with 99 other boys, sets off.  The tale is about surviving, giving up, the limits of human endurance and the meaning of friendship and honor while the walkers all know that the others must die in order for them to continue living.  Ray has his friends and foes, and the story gets pretty worked up as you might imagine whenever a boy cannot physically go on any further...and here come the soldiers.  I picked The Long Walk as the first of a series of rereads I plan to continue with because, well, although I'm not going to go out on such a race myself, I have been working on my walking speed both around the neighborhood and at my gym on the treadmill.  The plan is to develop an athletic level of performance with walking, past the 4-mph standard of King's novel.  Oh, although the author was depicting a cruel American society that didn't exist, I might add that it doesn't exist yet: it will happen, though, if its people allow it to happen...