ManWithPez

The best book you can no longer find.

Richard Bachman is one of my favorite authors, and not the least reason being because (unless you’ve been living in a cave and don’t know) Richard Bachman is Stephen King’s pseudonym.  However, I have a special place in my heart for the books he produced under the Bachman pen name, and indeed, the one that almost was a Bachman book, Misery.  There’s one in particular that you just can’t find anymore, and while the reasoning is sound, it is a shame that you just can’t run out to the store and buy Rage.  I’ll make my case for this misunderstood book after the jump.

I realize that Stephen King is sensitive about this book, and for good reason.  This book has been under some amount of scrutiny for the past several years.  Ever since 1989 and a young man named Dustin Pierce took a classroom hostage in McKee, KY.   Police found that Pierce owned a copy of the 1977 Richard Bachman book, Rage.  Bad enough, right?  It doesn’t stop there.  Again, in KY in 1993, and young man named Gary Pennington shot and killed a teacher and a janitor and held a classroom hostage, asking them several questions while doing so.  The importance of this will be discussed in a bit.  The novel Rage was under scrutiny again, even though Pennington admitted that he didn’t read the book until after his crime.  While it would only seem to be a series of coincidences that tied these two crimes together and with the book, it’s sad association with incidences of this nature was not over yet.  In 1996 Barry Loukaitis, a junior high student in Washington state shot and killed two students and a teacher while reportedly quoting a line from Rage!  And, of course, the book was found in the boy’s locker on school grounds.  Honestly, all this would be bad enough, but it’s not over yet.   After a 1997 shooting of a youth prayer group in Paducah , KY, the book was found again, this time in the locker of 14 year old Michael Carneal.  Three girls were killed and five more were injured. 

After the Carneal shooting, Stephen King had had enough.  He appealed to his publisher to let the novel fall out of print.  It has never been published again.  That’s not to say it can’t be found.  Libraries still have it.  I’ll tell you how I came to read it myself before I continue.  A ten year old boy in rural KY committed a bit of mail fraud and joined one of those book of the month clubs.  You know?  That one’s that were remarkably like the Columbia House record deal where you get 12 records for a penny?  It didn’t stay mail fraud after my mother found out when a huge box of books was delivered to my doorstep in 1986.  She took over the deal because she wanted some books, and I got lucky in that she didn’t beat my ass half to death with a copy of  The Bachman Books!  I got to keep the books I had.  In that first shipment was the hardcover edition of The Bachman Books.  It collected Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man.  Now, I don’t know if you’ve read any of these books, but I have to tell you that with the exception of Roadwork (I just couldn’t get into it…that’s not to say it’s bad.  It’s just not for me.) all of those books are winners, and still some of the best writing I’ve ever read.  Rage was the first book in the omnibus.  Did an 11 year old need to read it?  Not in the least, but I loved it.  I was just old enough to start understanding everything in it, and I’ve carried it with me since as one of my favorite books. 

Rage is about a boy named Charlie Decker who ain’t quite right in the head, as they say where I’m from.  For reasons unknown even to him, he assaults a teacher, and is called to explain his actions two weeks later.  He responds with anger and is expelled from his high school.  He gets the gun he brought to school, storms into a classroom and shoots a teacher.  When another teacher investigates, Charlie shoots and kills him too.   A police standoff ensues, and Charlie prompts the students in the classroom he’s taken hostage to answer several questions about themselves truthfully.  The broad character study that follows is the reason that I like the book so much.  Not the violence, which is almost secondary to the story, though, obviously, it’s always there.  After sometime, Charlie releases his hostages and tricks the police into shooting him.  When all is said and done, even Charlie can’t explain his motivations for the things he’s done.  The shooting and the terrorism, however, was never the point.  Obviously Charlie is troubled.  Normal people, not matter how angry they get, don’t just run around shooting people for no reason.

Or, do they?   In 1977, when Rage was first published, the idea of gun violence on a campus was relatively relegated to being a college experience.  Heading into the 90s, however, the game got changed.  That’s not to say that things like this haven’t happened without the influence of a Stephen King novel.  Indeed, people are shot everyday, and no one thinks to blame him.  When such a thing happens, it becomes vastly important to understand the “why of it”, but for the life of me, I can’t quite figure out what is being done with that information.  Sure, in three of the four crimes listed above, a copy of Rage was found somewhere.  Did the book lead these boys to shoot the people around them?  Simple answer?  Fuck…and NO. 

I wasn’t the most well adjusted teenager out there, okay?  And, I read this book when I was 11 years old. (Then, I gave it to my father for Christmas…It was a shit thing to do, but, there it is.)  The simple truth of the matter surrounding these young men is that they had screws loose to start with.  People who are sane can fly off the handle due to outside pressures, sure, but they don’t shoot their compatriots because they read about it in a fucking book.  You’ve slipped a cog if you think that a book made these things happen.  Rage hasn’t been in print since 1997, and last I checked there have been plenty of school shootings since.  While it is a tragedy, it is not Mr. King’s fault, or the fault of any of his writings that these boys had problems. 

Stephen King himself asked his publisher to allow Rage to fall out of print.  I say that was a mistake.  Granted, I didn’t have mass media looking at me as a pariah because some kids went loopy and shot several people.  I understand the logic of not printing it anymore, but that doesn’t mean it makes me any less sad.  Rage is a well paced, well written, raw character study of a typical high school age set, and I refuse to let my memory of the book be sullied by anything other than its own merits and downfalls.   I also don’t think that subliminal messages on heavy metal records led any kids to kill themselves either, okay?

Rage is still available if you look hard enough.  Most likely at a library, but even that might be hard to corral before too long.  It would be a great sadness to me personally if this book were to go away forever.  If you’ve not read it, check it out.  You won’t be disappointed.  Don’t take my word for it.  Find it, read it, and see what the hullaballoo is about.  And, after that, don’t judge my mother too harshly for letting an 11 year old boy read it.   I had already read Rage once before she knew I had it.  Heh.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.