12/31/2023 0 Comments Book insomnia stephen kingStill, at 800 pages, it ain't no coffee-table book - it's a coffee table.įour men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions-as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer-and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. This commingling of the supernatural and the commonplace is what makes this hefty read so enjoyable. King throws in a tender romance, sensitive and often funny portrayals of the ravages of age, and the somewhat loopy presence of Rite-Aid drugstores, Cup-A-Soup, and Port-O-Sans smack-dab in the middle of hyper-reality. In the climax, our oldsters serve as earthly agents to thwart a potentially calamitous disruption in the order of the universe. Atropos takes advantage of a pro-life rally currently polarizing the hamlet and enlists a local crazy to help him make a literal killing in the afterlife futures market. The third, a malevolent sprite named Atropos, represents "The Random" and takes great pleasure in prematurely cutting folks' balloon strings with his rusty scalpel. The first two, whom Ralph and Lois name Clotho and Lachesis - from a Greek myth about three yam-spinning sisters - are benevolent and serve "The Purpose," or natural, timely demise. They are brokers for what we mortals call death. These three, naturally, are not really of this earth. Ah, but 68-year-old gal pal Lois Chasse shares these visions, which by now include three little bald entities in doctors' smocks. In these strings, Ralph believes he can see other people's states of mind and being (e.g., disease, anger, calm). These hallucinations appear as auras, terminating in fine lines of light resembling balloon strings. Since his wife's recent death, Ralph Roberts, age 70, has been beset by insomnia and hallucinations. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.A small town in Maine again serves as King's (Nightmares and Dreamscapes, 1993, etc.) setting in this deft, steady tale, in which two lovable geezers travel through hyper-reality to balance the books of human existence, or something to that effect. In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines. He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students they married in January of 1971. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Stephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King.
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