Pop Smart - Reading Stephen King, Chapter 3: Reunited in the ’90s

(The first “chapters” are here and here.)

For the first half of the 1990s I studiously avoided Stephen King’s typically prodigious output. I didn’t touch the likes of Gerald’s Game, Dolores Claiborne or Needful Things and instead focused more on “high” literature (particularly English Booker prize-winners for some reason). I did make an exception in 1994 and read his pandimensional airplane novella “The Langoliers.” I got a kick out of the book, but in relationship terms, I suppose it was equivalent to drunk-dialing your ex at a moment of weakness.

In 1996, a glowing Entertainment Weekly review of The Green Mile coaxed me back into the fold. I’m a sucker for a fun gimmick, so I eagerly bought and read the series when King published it as six monthly (more or less) serialized chapters. The book’s botched electrocution may be one of the most horrific scenes he’d ever written, but The Green Mile also offered some intriguing implications about the death penalty and American race relations.

It was The Dark Tower, however, that drew me back in and then some.