Stephen King Talks About His New Novel, 11/22/63

Posted on October 3, 2011

Stephen King talks about his next novel, 11/22/63, which arrives in bookstores on November 8. In the book, a high school English teacher gets the opportunity to travel back in time and prevent the Kennedy assassination through a secret portal in his friend's storeroom.

King says he thinks people today in their 20s and 30s do not realize what a huge event the Kennedy assassination was. He says, "That was our 9/11. It changed everything."

King reveals that he started working on the novel in 1973 when he was a high school English teacher. He says he is glad he didn't go forward with the novel at that time because he thinks the wound from the Kennedy assassination was still too fresh. King also discusses the concept of time travel from a writer's perspective. He says the subject of time travel is very tricky and because of this he has avoided it, until now.

King says, "Time travel is very tricky and tricky is a kind word for it. This is something that I've steered cleared of it in a lot of my work, because I've seen better writers than I'll ever be fall afoul of the time travel story."

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