At the time King’s novel is set–late 1950s/early 1960s–women in Texas had been voting for 40-years. Do you have a cite for your other assertions?
https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/governors/personality/hobby-cooper-1.html
In March 1918, a special session of the legislature gave women the right to vote in primary elections in Texas. In the first 17 days after the act passed, 386,000 women registered to vote. When the primary was held in July 1918, the women helped give Hobby a smashing victory and elected Annie Webb Blanton the first female officeholder in Texas as state superintendent of public instruction. Texas women finally won the right to vote in all elections when the Texas legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in June 1919.
In early Texas, men and women were partners in hardship and work, but not in government and politics. Texas granted women no voting rights. Yet in some ways, the rough-and-ready frontier of Texas actually allowed women more rights than the more civilized Northeast.
In Texas a single woman or widow could make contracts, sue or be sued, choose her own home, own property, and retain custody of her children. A married woman was allowed to retain ownership of her own property, was entitled to share equally with her husband any wealth or property earned during the marriage, and could make her own will, leaving her separate property and her share of the community property to whomever she chose.
These differences reflected the reality of life on the frontier, where a pioneer woman might well have to survive on her own. They also reflected the heritage of Spanish law, which allowed more rights for women than the English common law used in many other states.
I wasn’t talking about Texas; I was talking about women’s rights in general. If women had full rights in Texas during the time the book was set, that’s fine, then.
Ah, I can finally come into this thread! I’ve had the book since it came out, but since I was trying to finish something of my own I decided not to read it until I did. It was worth the wait, though. Best SK I’ve read in years.
Most of the things I would have commented on have already been brought up–particularly the Amberson thing. Even I, who’ve never seen the movie or read the book, kept hearing “The Magnificent Ambersons” in my head. I didn’t know the protagonist’s name was George until I looked it up. But yeah–somebody should have noticed that.
One other tiny but glaring anachronism: one character (was it the bookie’s legbreaker? I think so) called another one (Jake/George?) “asshat.” That kicked me right out of my suspension of disbelief. I’m not even completely sure people were calling each other “asshat” in 2003, let alone 1963.
I’d never heard of a Ford Sunliner, either, so I had to go look that one up. Pretty car.
Loved the Bevvie and Richie scene. *It *is my all-time favorite SK book (except for that klunker of an ending!) so it was a nice little treat. As soon as he went to Derry I was thinking, “hey, the timeframe is about right–is he gonna…?” And then he did.
I’m not American, and initially not knowing what the book was about, the title 11.22.63 wasn’t even recognisable as a date to me.
22/11/63 or 22/11/1963 would be obviously, but the disconnect with the UK edition using periods rather than slashes to separate the date, and sticking with the US date format, meant I just interpreted it as a random number.
I enjoyed the book though, but yes, I was confused by the error with Al’s cancer timing too!
Lots of good points in this thread. I just finished the book around 3:30 this morning.
The thing that really took me out of the story is that King seems not to realize just how big Texas is. Today, Killeen is about a three hour drive to Dallas using I-35. In the early 1960’s, with only US81 or US77 to choose from, I can imagine that drive easily stretching to four hours. King has his characters zipping up to Dallas for an evening out. Maybe his fictional Jodie is closer to Dallas, but he keeps referencing Killeen as being close by, so I can’t imagine that Jodie would shave that much time off the trip.
Do not confuse “being able to own property” with “being able to get a mortgage.” Up until the early 1980’s, it was customary for lenders to insist that a single woman have a male co-signer before giving her a loan. Apparently the only qualification the man needed was to have a penis. This lead to some single women taking senile fathers to the bank to get a co-signer.
Them and the associated Jimla stuff were the ominous back-beat of the story for me. The constant undertone of tension and mystery. The reminder that things were not as they seemed. The other shoe the reader was constantly waiting to drop.
I really enjoyed the novel and haven’t read any King previously.
Re: Jake acting out of his time… I was born in 1979, and his character was perfectly believable to me. He had parents, who presumably had musical tastes and spoke about their lives. I know a lot of music from the 60’s and 70’s from my parents tastes - I’ve got an awful lot of Zeppelin, Floyd, and Queen memorized, because those were my dad’s tastes when I was growing up. I love my 90’s grunge, but I still listen to that stuff to this day. My Dad wasn’t much into the Stones or the Beatles, but his older brother sure was - so this is totally plausible to me.
I didn’t find Jake to be out of place - I found him to be a well read English teacher with some basic knowledge of history, and some knowledge of music, who kept (understandably) messing up when he was trying to pretend to be from the past. He used the wrong slang, he sang the wrong songs, he messed up a couple times referencing pop culture that hadn’t yet come to be - all things that someone with only a basic bit of knowledge of the past could easily do. I think it’s worth keeping in mind as well, that Steve’s sons read the book and found it believable… And they’d be the same age(ish) as Jake.
