Finished THE LONG WALK, We 8/30/17. Also included in this anthology were RAGE, ROADWORK, and THE RUNNING MAN.
For the last several weeks the 'bathroom book' has been THE KINGDOM OF FEAR which is a collection of long essays about the work of Stephen King, and a couple of weeks ago I found THE BACHMAN BOOKS, an ancient paperback, on the shelves downstairs.
I read that King wrote this while he was a freshman at the University of Maine, and over eight years before CARRIE.
I liked the idea that the reader is thrust directly into the action without any background information. You are at 'The Walk' just before it begins, and you soon learn that the young men must maintain a four mile per hour pace or they will be shot. But, you don't know why or who made the rules.
On the other hand, at the end of the book you never really find out the 'how and why'.
Who was 'The Major', and how did he derive his power?
The book's link at wikipedia-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Walk
The brief descriptions of the walkers at the end of the wikipedia entry provide a good sketch of each young man, and that is pretty much all that the novel reveals about the characters.
King's descriptions of sexuality was a big tip-off that the writer of the novel was not very old or aware of 'the ways of the world'.
This is certainly not among King's best works and probably best appreciated only by his rabid fan base.
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