101 Books, Number 26

Favorite Books from Throughout My Life

26: The Dark Half, 1989, by Stephen King (1947–)

I’d put off reading Stephen King—

I mean, you can’t ready everything!

But 1990–I had gone

To California in the dawn

Of my obsessive London years

To study with some gifted peers.*

And King was very hot back then—

And so, I thought, Well, I have been

Perhaps a little uppity.

And so I took this King with me.

Now, I’m not such a “horror guy”:

It’s not my genre—cannot lie.

But Stephen King, I learned, can write

And this compounded all my fright

As I read this grim horror tale,

My terror swelling into gale.

Well, I would read more Stephen King—

But couldn’t read, well, everything:

The dude just cranks them out so fast—

My jaw just drops—I am aghast.

I’ve not kept up, I will admit.

(Perhaps I’ve grown, well, tired of it?)

But, oh, that King’s a talent, Yo!

So read a few before you go.

*Six-week summer seminar  on Jack London’s works sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities; Sonoma State Univ.; Rohnert Park, Calif., led by Prof. Earle Labor, the world’s leading Jack London scholar. This seminar led directly to the books I published about London.