21st Century Literature discussion

This thread is for discussion of parts 1 and 2.

I can't believe no one has posted on this page, but since I finished this part, here goes. I had forgotten what a good writer Stephen King is; I knew it from my reading of some of his early novels, Carrie, The Shining, many years ago because my students were major fans of his writing. But I have never liked horror in print or film, and he was always just a bit weird for me, even though I recommended his books to many students over the years.

King requires us to suspend disbelief and accept the mysterious, time-travel entry in Al's diner and the strange, evil powers Jake senses at various locations in Derry. Since I have loved the magical realism of Gabriel GarcíaMárquez, and other writers with similar techniques, I am now more open to King's premise. And who hasn't wondered at times how events might have been reshaped if decisions and actions in history and our own lives had been different? I find the purity in the taste of food, the smell of the air to be entirely credible in Jake's entry into 1958.

King's style evokes continual suspense and curiosity in the reader. And his descriptive powers transport us to 1958 Derry.

I am anxious to find out what will happen when Jake travels to Dallas since he felt a force in the universe resisting his attempts to take action to change the history of the Dunning family. Will he remain scarred from the near scalping he suffered at the hands of Frank Dunning or will it disappear since he was not even born in 1958? Is Doris, Al's nurse, actually Doris Dunning? Will he learn what happened to Harold? Jake did find his name in the current day archives of the Lisbon Weekly Enterprise. Time to go see if these questions are answered to to find out if Oswald is still going to assassinate Kennedy.

P.S. If someone can explain how to use the HTML tags so I only italicize the newspaper title and not my next sentence, I will appreciate it since my attempts to correct it have been in vain!

If the text continues to be in Italics past where you want that to stop, you may not be putting in a stop code. Before you want italics to start, you put in . When you want them to stop, you put in . Just above the comment box, next to add book/author, you should see (some html is ok). If you click on that, you will get a list of html codes you can use in Goodreads.

Casceil wrote: "If the text continues to be in Italics past where you want that to stop, you may not be putting in a stop code. Before you want italics to start, you put in . When you want them to stop, you put i..."

Thanks, but I am having trouble understanding what you mean by "putting in a stop code." I have the HTML codes for Goodreads but I didn't see a stop code. I placed the italics codes right before the first word I wanted to italicize and put the ending ones right after the last word - no spaces between the code and the first and ending words.

I am on an iPad; I don't know if that is why it doesn't work right.

Maureen, some great insights there. I just finished the book and thought the set up in Parts 1 and 2 were so amazingly crafted. King really pulls you in to this idea of time travel, and there is suspense in wanting to know where this will take Jake to.

Maureen,
HTML tags close with a back slash--it looks like this "/". So at the point you want italics to stop you put LESS THAN SIGN--BACKSLASH--LETTER EYE--GREATER THAN SIGN. It's so difficult to show because if one of us types that GR thinks it's HTML and tries to apply it instead of displaying it to you as text.

I'm nearing the halfway point of this book but was amazed at how quickly part 1 went--I got sucked right in and was taken with the way the time traveling concept was presented.

Looking back at this part after finishing the book, King really did an amazing job of setting up the whole book in this section. The reader learns the "rules" of time travel, and sees examples of various ways things can go wrong. Also examples of creative approaches that can be used to change history--playing Cribbage instead of killing someone. When the book moves on to a grander scale plan in future parts, the reader knows what to worry about.

Marc wrote: "Maureen,
HTML tags close with a back slash--it looks like this "/". So at the point you want italics to stop you put LESS THAN SIGN--BACKSLASH--LETTER EYE--GREATER THAN SIGN. It's so difficult to s..."

Thanks, Marc! That solved the mystery! I changed it in my comment above!

Franky and Casceil, I appreciate your comments about part one setting up the rest of the novel; I expected that would be the case. I also like the idea of setting up the "'rules' of time travel."

I like that King kind of nods at the whole plot hole thing of "how come I remember the past differently now that it's changed?" He has Al and Jake both question it, and they (at this point) basically conclude that they won't ever know, but they guess that it's due to their proximity to "the rabbit hole." It's a nod at the problem without actually solving it. It's like King says "Look, I know what the problem is, but coming up with a scientific answer obviously isn't possible, but just work with me here, alright? Just pretend."