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4everandever 's review for:
Rage
by Richard Bachman
I first started reading Stephen King when I was eleven years old. I think he might have been the first proper author I got into. I remember looking him up, trying to find what book of his I should read next, and I stumbled upon Rage. The website I was reading said it had been banned, which I now know isn't exactly the story. I told my mum about it. She also liked Stephen King, she was the one who handed me Carrie, the first book by him I had read. I asked her about it, I asked her if she had read it, if she knew what about it was so bad that it had to be banned. She told me that yes, she had read it, and in fact, she thought she might have known where it was. She left the room for a couple of minutes, and came back with an old, yellow-paged copy of it, which she had bought at least twenty years earlier. She handed it to me, mumbling something which I was too young to quite grasp about how I should always read banned books, so I could know what it was that they didn't want me to know (there can be a thin line between anarchism and paranoia with persecutory delusions, and boy my mother is a tightrope walker).
I found it quite intense at the time. Once again, I was a child in primary school. The scariest movie I had seen was Coraline. I sort of understood why they didn't want me to read it.
I recently remembered the whole incident, and I decided to to re-read it. Sure, it's edgy. It's not written amazingly: as all other Stephen King novels, it's full of women breasting boobily in the background. It does capture the sentiment of being seventeen and full of anger, anxiety, and confusion. It's nowhere near as bad as I remembered, though. Sure, maybe don't hand it to your eleven year old children. But we're living at a point in time where with a simple google search you can find and read both of the Columbine shooters' journals. I don't think a book where, as someone else has worded it, Holden Caulfield holds the Breakfast Club hostage should be put out of print and made to forget like it is. It's really not that impactful.
I found it quite intense at the time. Once again, I was a child in primary school. The scariest movie I had seen was Coraline. I sort of understood why they didn't want me to read it.
I recently remembered the whole incident, and I decided to to re-read it. Sure, it's edgy. It's not written amazingly: as all other Stephen King novels, it's full of women breasting boobily in the background. It does capture the sentiment of being seventeen and full of anger, anxiety, and confusion. It's nowhere near as bad as I remembered, though. Sure, maybe don't hand it to your eleven year old children. But we're living at a point in time where with a simple google search you can find and read both of the Columbine shooters' journals. I don't think a book where, as someone else has worded it, Holden Caulfield holds the Breakfast Club hostage should be put out of print and made to forget like it is. It's really not that impactful.