On 11/22/63: PoV, Play, Nostalgia, and the Benefits of Being "Known"

21 August 2026

Back to books, back to books, back to books.

An acquaintance sometime last year mentioned he was reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63. Of course, this caught my attention as a lifelong King fan—a kiddo who realized her love for reading and literature from Carrie, Cujo, Christine, Pet Sematary, and The Shining, and then went on to read at least another dozen or so of King’s books throughout my life, including his memoir, On Writing, about three years ago as I began my own foray into the craft.

Based on this acquaintance’s recommendation, I immediately ordered the book, but then it sat in my TBR for over a year. Maybe because it has an image of John and Jackie Kennedy in their motorcade on the streets of Dallas on 11/22/63, and for some reason (actually, the reason is quite clear to me but will be the subject of an upcoming braided CNF essay so I won’t discuss it here) I was daunted by reading history. Despite my appetite for King’s writing, a satisfying dessert after any other literature (note I’d just read Middlemarch and The Great Gatsby beforehand), this book’s cover design and heft, at a whopping 850 pages, suggested the topic would be too dry to masticate, like cardboard. But finally, the book’s binding stared me down.

My notes in this book are pretty minimal; within the first half, I’d dog-ear a page every 50 pages or so, and then after about page 400, there’s nothing. My guess is that the reading just got to be fun, and that’s good. We all those books that reinspire our joy for reading!

For those unfamiliar with the book, it is—to my knowledge—King’s first (and only?) book about time travel. Written and set in the year 2011, the protagonist finds a wormhole through which he can travel from the present to 11:58am on 9 September 1958. Each trip to 1958 lasts as long as the traveler chooses to stay, but only two minutes ever pass in 2011. This, and the idea to go back and save JFK from assassination, constitute the novel’s premise.

Again, mostly, this read was candy-like, but what follows are a few thoughts and notes about King’s choice of PoV, the IT universe, thoughts on nostalgia, and the benefits of being a “known” writer.

The Point-of-View for 11/22/63 is first person, and the perspective only strays from first person limited when a minor character is telling our protagonist, Jake Epping, what happened to them (either in conversation or by letter). They say, “write what you know,” and whilst also writing about all sorts of wild worlds and personalities, one trend I have noticed over the years in King’s writing is that he writes what he knows best: the life of a writer. Protagonists for The Shining, IT, Salem’s Lot, Misery, and now also 11/22/63, are all writers/authors with published books. The benefit of this choice, in 11/22/63, is that King can be playful with the perspective/point-of-view, infusing it with fun details about writing and breaking the fourth wall so that it sometimes feels like King is talking directly to the reader. The effect is a sense of the author’s personality and a building of rapport between author and reader—which is delightfully light and playful.

Another aspect of this book I found playful was that it is set in the same universe as IT. For a few weeks, Jake Epping stops off in the town of Derry, Maine, where IT takes place, and gives IT protagonists, Richie and Beverly, a dance lesson. There is a lot of discussion about the recent disappearance of many children in the town, and even some language carried over from IT:

Come in and see, that something seemed to whisper in my head. Never mind all of the rest of it, Jake—come in and see. Come in and visit. Time doesn’t matter in here; in here, time just floats away. You know you want to, you know you’re curious. Maybe it’s even another rabbit-hole. Another portal. (180)

IT was among the first Stephen King novels I consumed as an adolescent—that reading inspired specifically by its tv miniseries release in the 1990s starring Tim Curry as Pennywise. So this trip down memory lane to re-encounter Richie and Beverly during that horrible period of their lives was enjoyably nostalgic, which brings me to my next point.

11/22/63 might be the dose of nostalgia we need in our detached, tech-riddled world of 2026, perhaps even more acutely than it was needed when the story was penned in 2011. Throughout the novel, Jake waxes poetic about living in the past. He buys a 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 Sunliner despite its conspicuous appearance just for the joy of the drive. Jake relishes a cream soda made with real cream and real soda. When, at one point, Jake cannot seem to re-locate the wormhole back to the present (2011), he thinks,

And did I feel disappointment? Terror? Outright panic? None of those, actually. What I felt was a sneaking sense of relief. What I thought was, I could live here. And quite easily. Happily, even.

Was that true? Yes. Yes. (219)

Per my own experience with social media and Generative AI, I have opted for a simpler life. My husband and I recently moved to North Carolina, into a log cabin on the remote arm of a rural lake. This past month, I have deleted most of my Meta accounts and removed Facebook and Instagram (my personal addictions) from my smartphone. Instead of Google with its new AI-Overview feature powered by Gemini, I use Duck-Duck-Go. When I told a friend that I actively avoid GenAI-developed content, he said, “You must not read anything since 2023 then”—and although I think he was trying to make some kind of point about my knowledge and reading base being archaic/outdated, the actually made quite the opposite point for me: what is really worth reading since 2023? I walk 3.4 miles through the woods every day and stop to listen to birds, inspect fairy rings, and watch beetles. Frequently, I reminisce about my analog upbringing, and I’m grateful that my children had the opportunity, as military children living on USAF installations, to run free and wild as I did in the 1980s and 90s. King’s nostalgia for the 1950s and 60s in 11/22/63 feels even more relevant today than it possibly could have in 2011.

And King waxes nostalgic about a lot in 11/22/63—often to the point that I wondered whether the details he was providing of the years between 1958 and 1963 were even necessary, or whether he was taking some exorbitant liberties as a “known” bestselling author. If you weren’t aware already, the first version of King’s book The Stand was published in 1978 at just over 800 pages—but the publisher, Doubleday, forced king to cut over 300 pages from the original manuscript before publication. 12 years later, in 1990, after much success as a writer, after selling dozens of best-selling novels, King was permitted to restore the 300 cut pages and re-publish the full-length novel at nearly 1200 pages. And while I have not yet finished reading the uncut version (only started and needed to set it aside), I can’t help but wonder what specifically was cut in those 300 pages, and whether it was something akin to the excruciating detail that appears in 11/22/63. Perhaps I was first made aware of The Stand’s publication issue via King’s memoir, On Writing, but also according to Wikipedia, Doubleday believed the novel’s original length would be cost-prohibitive. Yet it turns out, it seems, that nothing King writes is cost-prohibitive—and this is the benefit of being a known bestseller: the author can take extreme liberties with their writing. Honestly, I don’t begrudge King this allowance. He’s earned it, and he deserves it. Still, it is interesting to note and reinforces the theory that known authors receive more publication opportunities. It’s like starting a snowball rolling down a hill. And maybe that sucks for emerging authors, but maybe that’s fine, too. Writing was never meant to be easy. Read about King’s own difficulties breaking into the field as an emerging writer in his book, On Writing, and you’ll see he paid his dues.

Okay. I have some thoughts, too, about how the subject of time travel provides these awesome opportunities for literary craft features like foreshadowing and flashbacks, and about King treatment of the ethics of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” but this review feels long-winded enough.

Overall, 11/22/63 is a delightful read, and through it King guided this tech-weary reader back to a place where reading and writing became opportunities for joy and play. Indeed, Jake Epping’s early reference to going home to “dive into the new John Irving novel” made me laugh out loud (if you’re not familiar with the rivalry between Irving and King, do look it up)—and these days, that feels all too rare an ask for a novel.