Tracing The Trails Of Richard Bachman : Roadwork
L
iterary fiction.
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As a “genre writer”, I find the words literary fiction to be one of the more irritating terms that I come across. For me, it implies a line in the sand in the great landscape of literature, but one that is completely arbitrary and just a little bit judgmental. That on one side, you have the serious writers, the artists of distinction who tell important stories and have essential things to say. Then, on the other side of the line, you have genre fiction, the writers who have been delegated to the kids table in the grand scheme of things. These are the un-distinguished and the easily dismissed.
Hogwash.
At their essential core, writers are trying to do the same basic things. We want to tell a story that’s interesting, engaging and emotional for the reader. We may go about it differently and there will be differences in little things but at our core I really believe in this. Our process is that of telling stories. We are all writers and as far as I’m concerned, “literary fiction” should be considered just as much of a genre as splatterpunk or historical romance.
Roadwork was Richard Bachman’s third book and of all the books of King I have read, this comes the closest to what I would classify as being “literary”. The story is that of a man, Barton George Dawes, whose life is about to fall apart around him. The state is in the process of siezing huge pieces of land and private property for an extension to the highway. Both Dawes’ home and place of employment have been targeted to be destroyed in order to make room for the new road. It is a bitter irony that Dawes ends up therefore, responsible for ushering in the end of two huge monuments in his life. He has to purchase a new home for him and his wife, effectively turning his back forever on the house he has called home. And if that isn’t difficult enough, he also is responsible for helping find a new location for the laundering company that he has been loyal to for decades.
Because of his inability to let go of these things that are so important to him, Dawes effectively does neither. He excludes his wife from his attempts to find a house while in reality makes no effort to find anything. As his employer picks out sites for relocation, Dawes proceeds to drag his feet, coming up with paper-thin reasons to not move on a site and his intentional inaction leads to another company coming in and buying it. When his bosses discover his intentional sabotages, he is let go from his job. And at pretty much the same time, his wife discovers that even though they are on the verge of losing their house, they still have nowhere to move and will be effectively homeless in a matter of months. Needless to say, he is fired from his marriage as well.
It is the type of story most people would not associate with Stephen King. There are no supernatural elements here, no monsters or conventions of the horror genre. It moves along at a good pace, in my opinion, and I think does a good job demonstrating Dawes’ gradual deterioration and hopelessness in leading to what he ultimately does at the end of the story. That being said however, there will be many who have a hard time making it through this because it is so dissimilar from other Stephen King books.
Roadwork seems to be one of the less popular offerings from Bachman. Many people find the book boring and way too slow to get moving. I think this is one of those stories where the mindset you take into it is going to play a big part in terms of how you accept it while you are reading it. I didn’t love the book, but I did feel like it was a nice change in tone and atmosphere from the previous two Bachman books.
Here’s the thing, regardless of what package the story comes in, whether there are monsters or ghouls or supernatural, one thing that Stephen King is really good at is developing characters that are believable and sympathetic. He is good at creating tension and conflict for those characters and he is good at putting you inside of a story. Despite not having the normal trappings of one of his books, I thought that King did a great job in crafting the tragedy of this person’s life and in demonstrating the path which he inevitably ends up going down.
There is a heavy feeling of nostalgia throughout this book. Personally, I also have a lot of trouble letting go of things. I wouldn’t characterize myself as a hoarder but I have a tendency to attach emotional weight to physical objects that I associate with certain times of my life. I have often found myself going through boxes of stuff in our basement and come across something that made me smile for a minute before putting it back into the box, never to think of it again until the next time I happen across it.
Dawes is a man who also has trouble letting go of the past and the things that are important to him. Or to put it differently, he incorrectly imbibes the physical things around him with the emotional significance he feels and seems afraid that if he loses those things, he will lose the memories as well. He is understandably angered by the notion that these things which are so vital to him could be tossed aside like garbage for the sake of something as unimportant as a highway extension. And at the heart of all that nostalgic regret for things lost is his continued suffering for the death of his son, still fresh and raw in his mind. King puts us right there, right in the middle of that emotional, internalized storm and forces us to take notice.
In the course of our history, there are plenty of instances where certain individuals become the perpetrators of violent acts, unthinkable decisions and often in the aftermath we are left to puzzle over what might have happened. We hear interviews with friends and family and neighbors and nothing ever seems to come to light to satisfy us. Certainly this person must have some kind of a history that led them to that moment of horrible, violent conclusion.
With Roadwork, Stephen King puts us into the mind of that kind of a person and it is both fascinating and tragic to watch him move towards the ending which we all expect, but don’t want to happen. Characters and their stories are the reason why I continue to love the work of Stephen King, so from that perspective, Roadwork is a great example and a great book to check out.
My name is Chad Clark and I am proud to be a constant reader.
