![]() ![]() Each contestant has to maintain a pace of 4 miles per hour or more, or else he gets a warning. The premise of the book is very simple: Every year, 100 boys enter a contest called the Long Walk, and the winner gets all his heart desires. This book is in-your-face and physical, while simultaneously never losing that dreamy, philosophic quality of existenstial fiction. It's not a Hunger Games type of book, despite the "game show" element of the Long Walk, nor is it a world attached to any tower, Dark or not. This isn't a book about killer clowns or haunted hotels. If this book does not make you feel physical pain, I don't know what will. The introduction, titled "Why I Was Bachman," details the whole Bachman/King story. King has taken full ownership of the Bachman name on numerous occasions, as with the republication of the first four Bachman titles as The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King in 1985. ![]() Two weeks later, King telephoned Brown personally and suggested he write an article about how he discovered the truth, allowing himself to be interviewed. Brown wrote to King's publishers with a copy of the documents he had uncovered, and asked them what to do. ![]() Brown located publisher's records at the Library of Congress which included a document naming King as the author of one of Bachman's novels. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, noted similarities between the writing styles of King and Bachman. The link between King and his shadow writer was exposed after a Washington, D.C. King dedicated Bachman's early books- Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), and The Running Man (1982)-to people close to him. After Bachman's true identity was revealed, later publicity dispatches (and about the author blurbs) revealed that Bachman died suddenly in late 1985 of "cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia". ![]() In 1982, a brain tumour was discovered near the base of Bachman's brain tricky surgery removed it. Other "facts" about the author were revealed in publicity dispatches from Bachman's publishers: the Bachmans had one child, a boy, who died in an unfortunate, Stephen King-ish type accident at the age of six, when he fell through a well and drowned. His fifth novel was dedicated to his wife, Claudia Inez Bachman, who also received credit for the bogus author photo on the book jacket. Bachman finally settled down in rural central New Hampshire, where he ran a medium-sized dairy farm, writing at night. Known "facts" about Bachman were that he was born in New York, served a four-year stint in the Coast Guard, which he then followed with ten years in the merchant marine. King provided biographical details for Bachman, initially in the "about the author" blurbs in the early novels. (The surname Stark was later used in King's novel The Dark Half, in which an author's malevolent pseudonym, "George Stark", comes to life.) Bachman was inspired by Bachman–Turner Overdrive, a rock and roll band King was listening to at the time his publisher asked him to choose a pseudonym on the spot. Westlake's long-running pseudonym Richard Stark. Richard is a tribute to crime author Donald E. The pseudonym King originally selected (Gus Pillsbury) is King's maternal grandfather's name, but at the last moment King changed it to Richard Bachman. The Bachman book Thinner (1984) sold 28,000 copies during its initial run-and then ten times as many when it was revealed that Bachman was, in fact, King. King concludes that he has yet to find an answer to the "talent versus luck" question, as he felt he was outed as Bachman too early to know. He says he deliberately released the Bachman novels with as little marketing presence as possible and did his best to "load the dice against" Bachman. In his introduction to The Bachman Books, King states that adopting the nom de plume Bachman was also an attempt to make sense out of his career and try to answer the question of whether his success was due to talent or luck. He convinced his publisher, Signet Books, to print these novels under a pseudonym. King therefore wanted to write under another name, in order to increase his publication without over-saturating the market for the King "brand". At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view among publishers was that an author was limited to one book per year, since publishing more would be unacceptable to the public. ![]()
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