Hello everyone, welcome to the Stephen King cast, one man's musings on the works of Stephen King.

Each week, I will review one entry in the bibliography of Stephen King and the chronological order

of publication, which brings us to this week.

And while this isn't one of the big ones, you know, the gunslingers, the drawings of the threes,

the it's and the stands of his collections, this is one that I was really looking forward to getting to

simply because of the stigma that's attached to it.

Of Stephen King's published work,

two novels, almost more than the rest, come up in ridicule.

One is a novel that is so despised among portions of his fandom

that even its author doesn't like it,

which says a lot from a man who wrote from a Buick 8 and Mr. Mercedes.

The novel is so discards that despite its 500 pages,

its Wikipedia summary consists of a paltry three paragraphs.

The novel, of course, is 1987's The Tommy Knockers.

The other novel that is equally derided,

maybe even more so, is insomnia. And I'll have a lot to say about that when I get to that,

because that is one book that doesn't deserve any trash talk. But when it comes to the Tommy Knockers, I was very interested in revisiting it. You know, this will make it my third reread of the book.

Now here's my history with it so far. During my first reading of it, I was still a kid

and read it because I was voraciously devouring all of Stephen King's works that had been published at that point.

That type of reading didn't allow for much thought. You know, it was all about the conquering of the text.

Also, my critical senses weren't what they are today, so I wouldn't have known whether it was

a well-written book or a poorly written one. Later, I reread it as an adult, and I don't recall

...