January 7: A Stephen King Kind of Night

My daughter and wife are at a meeting right now.  My son is in bed.  M*A*S*H is on the TV.  Stephen King is waiting in my book bag.  As soon as I'm done typing this post, I'm going to dive into 11/22/63.  I'm one eighth of the way through the novel, about 100 pages.  That means I've got over 700 pages to go.  I'm hoping to get it done by the end of my vacation.

I haven't read a Stephen King book in ages.  I used to read everything he wrote, bu,t about the time I started grad school, I moved on to Flannery O'Connor and Dante and Chaucer.  This book is my first excursion into King country since Pet Sematary.  I remember reading whole King novels in one sitting, and then rereading them the following day.  That's not going to happen with 11/22/63, unless I want to develop a blood clot in my leg and soil myself.

Tomorrow, I have to spend some time working on my syllabi for this semester.  It shouldn't take me too long, but I always find this kind of preparation a little tedious.  I'd rather be walking through a wormhole with Stephen King than choosing between Slumdog Millionaire or Stranger than Fiction for Intro to Film.  (I'll be choosing Stranger than Fiction.  I already own the movie, and it's one of my favorites.)  At this point in the novel, I'm not quite hooked on the book yet, but I want to keep reading.

11/22/63 isn't typical Stephen King.  It's set in King country, Derry and Shawshank and Bangor, but it   has more in common with Quantum Leap than The Walking Dead.  For me, reading King is like walking into one of my old high school classrooms.  The desks are the same.  One of them may even have my name carved in it still.  However, the room seems a little smaller, the air charged with decades of unfamiliar teenage ions.  I'm getting used to the landscape of the book.

Saint Marty hears his daughter at the front door.  Time to slip into the King wormhole.

Be afraid.  Be very afriad.