OF A GOLDEN AGE

Stephen King, personal hero, wrote the introduction for a new edition of Lord of the Flies, in which he discloses his feelings on the purpose of novels:

In the best novels, the writer’s imagination becomes the reader’s reality. It glows, incandescent and furious. I’ve been espousing these ideas for most of my life as a writer, and not without being criticised for them. If the novel is strictly about emotion and imagination, the most potent of these criticisms go, then analysis is swept away and discussion of the book becomes irrelevant.

I agree that “This blew me away” is pretty much of a non-starter when it comes to class discussion of a novel (or a short story, or a poem), but I would argue it’s still the beating heart of fiction. “This blew me away” is what every reader wants to say when he closes a book, isn’t it? And isn’t it exactly the sort of experience most writers want to provide?

I can’t speak to any writer’s intent, but as a reader (and English major), this is what I want to find in a book no matter what. Part of letting your taste mature as you get older is recognizing your limits — there are whole parts of literature from which I may never read anything, and the time in my life when I would punish myself for feeling that way is over. It’s behind me. That’s not to say there aren’t fifty (or five hundred? thousand?) books backed up on my “I want to read this next” list.

King’s oft-used fictional locale Castle Rock is taken from Lord of the Flies.

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