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I was going to talk about why Rage was taken out of print, but I think plenty has been said on that subject. I side with King on the decision to pull the plug. Stephen King has stated, "The Carneal incident was enough for me. I asked my publisher to take the damned thing out of print. They concurred."

Rage is about a deeply disturbed high school student who basically has gone through the ringer of life, short as it has been, and came out broken. Charles Decker is the possibly brilliant young man who takes the left turn towards horror town, when all the others would choose the right turn of sanity. At the end of his road lies a gun in one hand, two teachers in his path, and a surreal Lord of the Flies few hours with his fellow students in a classroom.

In Rage, there is some crazy good writing that I did not expect, being one of King’s earliest works. The best parts of the novel were those brief stories told by Charlie and the other students because they were like synapses bridging time, explaining so much in so few words. It’s not only that the stories are interesting, but the way they are worded. Granted, the finale did not capture me as did the earlier scenes. Still, this is good stuff. “Getting it on�, as Decker would say.

Finally, my 1985 copy of The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels includes an intro by Stephen King titled, “Why I was Bachman�. This is one of the many things all King fans find fascinating. I want to include a bit of this with each Bachman book I review. Rage, begun in 1966 was almost published 2 years before Carrie, and was initially called Getting It On. Five novels were actually written before Carrie. King considered The Long Walk to be the other only good book of these five. He had also started writing it as a senior in high school, in 1966. “Being Stephen King in 1977: there is almost nothing to bitch about�. It seems that both the Beatles and Elvis Presley desired a different persona at times.