Because Ideas Matter...
The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences presents
Recommended Readings
11/22/63: A Novel
by Stephen King, Scribner 2010
Reviewed by Judi Morrel
There is hardly an American of a certain
age who doesn't remember where she or he was when JFK was killed.
What if you could time-travel backwards and prevent Lee Harvey
Oswald from assassinating him? Would you? Should you? That's the
premise of Stephen King's new novel 11/22/63. Jake Epping, a
teacher from Maine, is presented with a wormhole in time, which
transports him from 2011 back to 1958. Through this portal, he can
visit as many times as he likes and stay for as long as he likes
(until November of 1963, for example), but when he returns to the
present, only two minutes have passed. Every subsequent visit
results in a reset (mostly), so he can change the past, undo his
changes, and change it again. But as Jake learns, "the past is
obdurate," and changes to the past may have unintended consequences
for the present. If you are a Stephen King fan, you will recognize
some of his previous characters who make cameo appearances, but
this is not a horror novel. King makes it easy to suspend
disbelief, rendering time-travel plausible; voluminous research
enables him to depict the late 1950's and early 1960's perfectly,
complete with ubiquitous cigarette smoke, fin-tailed Chevrolets,
party lines and Elvis. No one tells a tale like King, but there is
an underlying moral question: assuming such past-altering is even
possible, do we have a moral obligation or even a right to change
history?
- Judi Morrel is Professor of Mathematics and Director of the
Center for High Achievement and Scholarly Engagement (CHASE) at
Butler University.