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

Each week I'll 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 aloud from a man who wrote from a Buick 8 and Mr. Mercedes.

The novel is so discarded 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. 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 re-read it as an adult, and I don't recall having much thought about it one way or another.

So here I am, the third time around, and this time I'm reading it with a very specific purpose,

and not as a fan, but as a critic, and it made for a very interesting reread experience

what would i find within these pages that made the author disown it as much as he did what would

i discover this time that i hadn't noticed the first two times that would make me realize the reasons

why it was so universally panned.

What exactly was it about this book that made people laugh at it the way that they do?

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