Country: USA
Genre: Dystopia/Thriller
Pages: 370
It's my second time reading "The Long Walk". The first time, it was a French translation, something like ten or twelves years ago and I had quite fond memories. I'm not the biggest Stephen King fan, but for each Cell and Pet Semetary, there's a Green Mile and Bag Of Bones to keep things interesting. I recommended "The Long Walk" multiple times throughout the years and last month, as suggested Literary Musing's Brenna to read it as an introduction to King, I thought I should read it all over again. I don't like to give shitty advice.
In an alternate-history, dystopian (but vague) USA, the national sport is The Long Walk. Every year, a hundred teenagers sign up for a death sport challenge that consists in walking for as long as they can, until there's only one left. As soon as a walker goes until four miles an hour, he receives a warning. After three warnings, he receives a "ticket" (meaning he gets shot in the face). The walkers can erase a warning by walking a complete hour at a correct pace. For three warnings, you have to walk for three hours. The protagonist of the story, Ray Garraty is a sixteen years old fatherless kid who enrolls The Long Walk without knowing the exact reason. During the race, he meets fellow walkers Peter McVries, Arthur Baker, Hank Olson, Gary Barkovich and a mysterious fellow named Stebbins and he soon realizes that the walk is way more than a simple physical challenge.
"The Long Walk" is kind of a blunt metaphor for existential dread. Blunt, but effective, like being clubbed on the head. Take a hundred teenagers with every reason to love life and expect everything out of it, remove everything and have them walk forward towards the only certitude in existence (death) and interesting things will happen. The walk will dust off the personalities and the upbringing of the contestants. On an hyper-linear life microcosm, winners, losers, gangsters, bullies, philosophers and victims among others meet and reveal to each other (and to the reader), who goes forward, who's left behind, who will drop out and who will survive. It's accessible and entertaining (like a reality show), but its crude and Darwinian approach will make you a slave of the page. This kind of elegance in simplicity is not easy to get.
There's a huge problem though. A problem I didn't remember. It's not in the story (which is close from a "perfect narrative" as I call them), but it's rather a mechanical problem. It's full of adverbs. Like CRAMMED full of them. Sometimes up to ten by page. Reproachfully, hoarsely, wryly (yeah, wryly!), numbly, that kind of stuff. I would say it's not that bad unless you've read writing guides, but in this novel it's harassing. It's like someone yelling in your ear what to think. It's funny because In On Writing talks about adverbs like they are vermin in his bed. Well, it's true he doesn't use them in general, BUT, they are all in this book. He trapped them in "The Long Walk" so that they don't contaminate his other novels.
Written by King's dark half Richard Bachman, "The Long Walk" is a little rough around the edges (the book is the walk, there's nothing BUT the walk) and it's full of adverbs, but it's also a gripping metaphor. The concept is great, the characters are AMAZING and as long as King let them talk, they are giving the best reality show experience despite the fact that they are fiction characters. "The Long Walk" is a gripping psychological thriller and one of Stephen King's best.
