I recently re-read Stephen King’s 1979 novel The Dead Zone.
Great book. Great movie (the one with Christopher Walken, I mean).
But there was a line in it that really threw me — a line that was much more frightening than anything in his scariest novel, It (1986). A prose excerpt (not in the movie) that really struck home.
The main character, an English teacher, takes a tutoring job at a wealthy family’s house and makes an observation about the parents hiring him to help their son with reading. He observes that he was hired “because it was a reader’s world” and “the unlettered of America were dinosaurs lumbering down a blind alley.”
King states it so matter-of-factly that it’s almost shocking.
Shockingly naïve.
The unlettered of America are now running America.
The unlettered vote prevailed in the last election cycle and the representatives they chose discourage serious reading and literacy at every turn. And not just literal literacy but cultural and historical literacy. The Dead Zone was published 46 years ago, and the ensuing half century has been blatantly hostile to the main character’s pronouncement. Gleefully hostile, in fact.
In terms of literacy, which is the percentage of the citizenry over 15 who can read and write, the United States ranks 125th out of 194 countries, and the only folks who appear to be consigned to “blind” alleys are the literate.
The lettered in this country appear to be the dinosaurs these days, and the MAGA crowd looks more and more like the meteor that took them out. But the most apt parallel is not the extinction of the dinosaurs.
It’s the onslaught of the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages as in an era characterized by sheer and willful ignorance. A period that produces little or no cultural or scientific advancement. An era in which ignorance is not just begrudging bliss but a stated goal. And after this last election cycle, practically governmental policy. Making America Great Again means restoring blissfulness, so 2 + 2 no longer equals four. It equals 3 or 5, or, after choosing a political No. 2 in 2016, the unlettered electorate plunged the country back into No. 2 in 2024, which equals … do I have to really say it?
A gassy, reeking 47. Our 47th commander in chief. An unrepentant turd.
The unlettered demanded a sad, shitty sequel that’s far and away unequalled and both unjust and un-American. The “Dead Zone” today lies between MAGA Nation’s ears, but that’s been an extinction event in the making for years. People elected George W. Bush because he seemed like a guy they’d like to have a beer with. People listen to Joe Rogan because he seems like just a regular dude who doesn’t talk over their heads. And, for the last few decades, the authorities that most of middle and aging America have looked to for news and opinion — i.e., Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones — didn’t just not undertake or complete serious studies of journalism or history. They were entirely unlettered college dropouts.
When Stephen King’s Dead Zone was published way back when, the Department of Education had just been created and the United States adult literacy rate was approximately 99%. Today, it’s 79%. And a harrowing percentage of Americans haven’t read a book in the past year. They get their information from X or TikTok or [insert your favorite social media platform here]. Meanwhile, conservative politicians are bent on gutting the Department of Education and limiting access to books in general. In terms of short-sightedness, they’re playing the long game, and they’re winning. It’s practically a state-sanctioned lobotomy, and it doesn’t require precognition or clairvoyance to see what’s coming.
It’s already here.
When a large swathe of the population votes against their own interests and American ideals, repudiates the established rights of women, limits their daughters’ futures, blames minorities and immigration instead of automation, outsourcing, and corporate greed for economic hardship, and vilifies the huddled masses for our problems more than the obscenely privileged few, the United States is no longer a beacon of hope, justice, and enlightenment. It’s a backwater bro-hole full of the asinine and the assentient, and the unlettered and ill- or hardly literate who voted with and like Nazis unwittingly embrace fascism and voluntarily elevate close-minded louts who display unconcealed contempt for the suckers they’re fleecing.
Mr. King, the story needs an updated sequel. The horrifying Trumpish candidate you described in The Dead Zone, the one your lettered protagonist exposed for the fraud he was, actually ascended to the Oval Office.
Twice now.
I haven’t read all of your books, and I don’t know what you’ve written about zombies. But a zombification of America has already begun, and it’s more frightening than anything I’ve ever read.
Hey, I’m not trying to be presumptuous, but I’ll even help. Thematically and metaphorically. We know the color of the hats. We know the color of the party. Red rover, red rover …
Fort Worth native E.R. Bills is the author of The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas and Tell-Tale Texas: Investigations in Infamous History.
This column reflects the opinions and fact-gathering of the author(s) and only the author(s) and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.
