There are plenty of bad jokes and the odd funny story too, given a group of around 13 year olds.
This book is a combination of the ancient epic of "Gilgamesh" (why must men die?), the "Odyssey" (a series of harrowing adventures leading to self-awareness), "Huckleberry Finn" (male bonding), and "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (incipient author learns about life). Add to that list any of the thousands that fit the bill, and you have a very derivative work. But so is "Hamlet" and therefore the derivations are not necessarily a Bad Thing.
The youngsters who take the Great Journey to find the corpse that gives this work its title are not particularly desirable beings; but King is careful to show how little choice they had in their development up to that point in their lives. On the other hand, they are utterly believable, which puts them many notches above characters in other King novels, let alone most novels by any author. Some of the incidents--the one with Chopper the dog who does not live up to his myth and the one with Lardass who deliberately loses a pie-eating contest in a very Monty Pythonesque way--are hysterically funny, almost in a Jean Shepherd vein.
If you are not put off by the language and do not think that a plot is utterly necessary for novella, you might very well enjoy this mid-20th Century epic prose poem of youth, life, and death.
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