Roadwork, Richard, & Running

I finished Roadwork last night. I would say that I don’t have a lot to say about it, but it seems that every time I do say that I end up having a post a mile long. So instead I’ll just say I don’t know how much I’ll end up saying and leave it at that.

 

If you’ve never read Roadwork before, allow me to give you the briefest overview of what the book is about. The book follows a man by the name of Barton Dawes. The city where Bart lives has decided to add an extension to the freeway which will go right though Bart’s neighborhood. As a result, Bart (and the rest of his neighbors and several businesses, including the one where Bart works) is forced to relocate. Bart, however, does not accept this very well, and the book is about his slow mental breakdown as he struggles to keep his house.

Struggles is not really the right word though. What he really does is just flat out deny the reality of what is happening. He goes about his life pretending to everyone around him that he is doing what he is supposed to be doing. He tells his wife that he is looking into new houses, but always comes up with some excuse as to why he isn’t buying one yet (termites, not a good deal, etc.). He tells his boss that he is working on signing a new lease for their business to move into a new building, giving excuses as to why he is delaying and waiting until their option from the city runs out. But, the reality is that Bart is doing nothing. He is not looking at houses; he has no intention of that. He is not going to sign the new lease; he has no intention of that. In fact, it comes across that Bart really has no intention of doing anything. Well, eventually he has intentions of doing “something”, but I’ll let you read and discover what that is on your own. I will tell you this though, Bart’s inaction eventually cost him his job, his marriage, and one might say even his sanity (though one might also say that his sanity was gone to begin with, which is why he failed to act in the first place).

As always, I’ll get to my thoughts on the book closer to the end of my post, but first, here are a few things I found interesting about the book.

The first thing is that we don’t actually learn Bart’s name until page 19 of the book. For the first several pages, he is only referred to as “he” during the narrative sections of the book. I found this to be somewhat interesting. Reading so far into a book and getting somewhat “invested” is a little odd when you don’t even know the name of the person you are supposed to be invested in. I don’t know that this really had any overall effect on anything; I just found it to be interesting.

The second thing is we never actually find out where this story takes place. The name of the city is never mentioned, and neither is the name of the state. There are some implications as to this being somewhere probably in the middle of the country, but nothing is ever stated specifically. That being said, this marks the second book not to take place in Maine. However, Maine is mentioned a couple times, so the prize for the first book to not mention Maine at all is still up for grabs (yep, even Danse Macabre mentioned Maine, more than once. Danse doesn’t qualify as “not taking place” in Maine since it was non-fiction and didn’t really take place anywhere, but since it did mention Maine a couple times, I thought I’d share that with you).

Next up on the interesting list, Bart works in an industrial laundry. There is one point in the book where there is a brief mention of the folding machine nicknamed “The Mangler” (so called because of what it would do to you if you got caught in it). And of course, this is interesting because King wrote a short story called The Mangler about just such a machine (you can view my post about that story here if you need a refresher).

In relation to where Bart works, there comes a point in the story where Bart is told that had he not sabotaged his career he would have been on track for an executive vice president position which would have paid $35,000 a year. I only bring this up because I always find it fascinating to read older books and think about just how much has changed since the time they were written. Here we are with a guy potentially being offered an executive position with a salary that is smaller than what some people make in their starting positions now. And ultimately, this book isn’t even that old yet. Granted, it takes place a few years before it was actually published, but not that many. It’s just amazing to me sometimes how much in our society has changed so quickly.

The last thing I want to talk about that I found interesting is actually something I’ve talked about before. If you’ll remember from my post on Cujo, I talked about how the main character made a comment that if her situation had taken place in a book, someone would have come along to have helped them (which, and I didn’t mention this before as I only just thought of it, is a little ironical because the fact that it is a book is probably the only reason that all of the events that needed to happen actually did happen to leave her in that position….but I digress). Anyway, this book also pulled the “let’s specifically say something to try and make this more real only to call more attention to the fact that this really is a book” card. Twice!

The first was early on in the book when Bart is talking to someone and says something that didn’t quite come out the way he wanted it to and he makes the comment (or thought) that it’s “only in books that people say everything right the first time”. To which I make the same comment as I did before – that it’s only in books (or so it seems) that people make the comments about what only happens in books.

The second event was later on in the story, and was a little… different in delivery than these other two examples. Bart is talking to someone about his life and how things are going and he makes the comment that “I get the feeling I’m a character in some bad writer’s book”. HA HA. So now, not only are we pulling the “this is real not a book” card, but were also commenting on the author. What makes this kind of extra funny is that this is one of the books that King originally published under the name of Richard Bachman (I may have forgotten to mention that earlier, so there we go). So is this perhaps some subtle comment by King that, “Yes, I know this isn’t the best book I’ve done, deal with it”? Probably not, but the line made me smile nonetheless.

 

So there we have it friends. That is Roadwork. It is definitely not the greatest book you’ll ever read (if you chose to do so), but it is by no means the worst one either (so why not give a try?). It’s by no means a bad read, and I’d recommend it if you’re a King fan or you want something quick and easy. But don’t expect anything big to come from it. The story is pretty simple and the character development is pretty basic (I know, pretty shocking for King, right? But then again, this is “Bachman”, so…). I got the feeling at times that some of the character “relationships” were just included because they would be expected to be. I didn’t get a lot out of the interactions between Bart and his wife. I suppose part of that is to show just how distant the two have grown. So I suppose in that sense things worked just how they should, because the interactions between them felt forced and unnatural. But they felt that way in a very simplistic way, not in the way that you could tell the author was really trying to convey a sense of distance between the two, but rather in a way that almost conveyed a sense of “I don’t know what to do with these two, but they have to interact, so here.”

One thing I did appreciate about the book is that a little bit of time was taken to explain some of the reason why Bart reacted the way he did. It seems for a while that he is just going crazy for absolutely no reason, but we eventually learn part of the cause and it actually does create a little bit of sympathy for him. A little bit. There still really is no excuse for his actions. But learning the why at least lets us feel a little sorry for the guy, but just a little.

Over all I did enjoy the book. It wasn’t exactly gripping in any way and as I mentioned, a lot of the relationships felt superficial and forced. The writing certainly wasn’t King’s greatest, but you have to keep in mind this was an early work of his and there is likely a reason why he published it under the Bachman name instead of his own (I mean, he could have chosen not to publish it at all, and that would have been a loss. A small one, but a loss nonetheless). That being said, the book was still fun and enjoyable for me, even the second time around. The best part was probably the short little epilogue at the end where we find out that (SPOILER, if you’re worried about that type of thing. It’s only slight and doesn’t ultimately affect the overall story, so you should be good) the highway extension wasn’t even necessary. The city simply had some extra money it had to spend on building roads and so it decided to use it (so it wouldn’t lose it next year). Thus, Bart’s whole livelihood ended up being ruined simply because of the government machine. HA.

 

And that’s about all I have for Roadwork. Up next is The Running Man, which is also a Richard Bachman book. It’s a little shorter than Roadwork, so I may be back pretty quickly. Or we might have a new baby soon, in which case who knows how long it will take me to get back. Either way, I will be back at some point.

 

As always, thanks for reading.