Rage by: Stephen King as Richard Bachman

 

Rage is the one novel by Stephen King, writing for the first time under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, pulled from publication at King’s request.  This is because it was named by several school shootings directly named as an inspiration, Stephen King having more of a backbone with his power than most politicians and conservative commentators.  Now I read it in The Bachman Books, a copy of which published in the mid-1980s I found in my library.  This review isn’t going to be a question of whether or not Rage should have been pulled from publication, there isn’t really an argument to be made that it should be published anymore because it was pulled entirely by King’s volition.  There was no public pressure to pull it and King has repeatedly stated and implied that he is happy it is no longer in print.  As with any other creative work, if the creator wishes to pull that work there is nothing we can do.

 

Rage, however, is an interesting case of a novella.  It is one of the earliest works by Stephen King, published in 1977 but written several years earlier beginning when King was in high school under the title Getting It On.  After the publication of Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot, while The Shining was being prepared for publication, King edited and submitted Rage for publication but the general practice was that authors would only publish one book a year so King invented Richard Bachman especially for this publication (and to see if he could sell a book without his name recognition since both Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot were optioned for adaptations).  There’s almost a point where the controversy surrounding Rage is more interesting than the novella itself.  Like all the works of Stephen King, it’s quite easy to read stylistically.  The chapters are short and in a first person limited perspective from a high school student as he is expelled, snaps mentally, grabs the gun that he keeps in his locker, shoots a math teacher dead, and holds his class hostage.  The plot is fairly thin, even for the 150 pages, the class eventually succumbing to Stockholm syndrome, one student in particularly being sympathetic to main character Charlie Decker, both ending up in psychiatric care by the end of the novella.  The reason it reads quickly is because it is short and King’s style is simple, but in that simplicity there is a lack of depth here.

 

Perhaps there is some psychosexual read to Rage and Charlie Decker.  He doesn’t know why he does what he does, the flashbacks indicating it is largely from the physical abuse his father that has at the very least developed the violent tendencies.  There’s a lot of talk about sex and sexual frustration in Rage, the original title Getting It On being a particular sexual euphemism.  Charlie Decker asks adults about their sexual relationships with their wives, often uses sexual insults in his own rants, and is generally portrayed as sexually ignorant.  The line ‘getting it on’ repeats quite often and there’s a potential reading that the violence performed is just the sexual act of getting it on.  The trouble is of course, King is writing this as a teenager without the maturity to really unpack any of the ideas he thinks he is using.  It’s very possible that what is present thematically are things King added during the rewriting of the novella for initial publication, and even then they don’t ever coalesce into anything meaningful.

 

Overall, Rage is certainly a fitting title.  It’s a novella that is really just one burst of rage and than an aftermath that doesn’t quite know what it wants to say about teenage angst.  King is clearly inspired by The Catcher in the Rye and even though I am not the world’s biggest Salinger fan, King seems to have taken away even less from Salinger than I have.  This is just a barely mediocre novella from a writer who had an inciting incident without knowing where to go with it.  4/10.