This is a fierce book. I can understand completely why King decided he didn’t want it in print any more…the reality that’s happened that echoes this book is too soon, it makes sense. But it’s too good a book to be lost, and I can see it being dissected and analysed in a hundred years’ time.
The think about this book, is that it confirms to what the very best King does…it rings absolutely pure and true of authenticity. King has a power to convey in words the feeling and mood that feels completely genuine, even when you know that, say, a high-school girl or boy would clearly never, in a million years, say some of the things King puts in their mouths.
Yet King’s writing transcends the need for authentic dialogue by replacing it with authentic mood and the essence of a situation. When he talks about specific things, he has an ability to plug into the mainline of human experience.
King, at his best, is truth. This book, while it’s become a precognitive echo of how things have turned out, conveys something of the horrible, complex truth of certain states of mind.
It’s a shame that to some people ‘King’ equates to ‘hack’. To me, he equates to ‘truthsayer’, and the truth is there, no matter how fantastic the material.