Stephen King’s Old Charm

Different Seasons Stephen King ISBN: 978-0451167538

I have many lost books: those I bought, kept, but never finished. This one holds the record. I bought it on a business trip no less than 20 years ago. I read one of the four stories and put it down. The story was too intense that I needed a break. When I found it in one of my boxes in the garage, I was puzzled. Only after flipping it I discovered that it was the very one that I have been searching for. It has the original story that was later made into a best selling movie that shortened the original title: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. For too long, I looked for the wrong book, thinking only the movie title.

The collection really made no sense at all. The other three stories — Apt Pupil, The Body, and The Breathing Method — were forged together with no apparent connection to the namesake seasons. This is probably the biggest flaw of this book: the title. All four stories are masterfully written, but the book title did no justice and probably contributed to my multi-decade search for the wrong book to re-read.

This is the old Stephen King that I was a big fan of. He drifted away from haunting story telling and gradually became formulaic horror, like Dreamcatcher and From A Buick 8. This is the Stephen King I remembered when I read On Writing.

And it has been satisfying. I miss old Stephen King and hope to find a writer as talented as he was today. Any recommendation?