The Dark Half by Stephen King

This one of the better books from the period that I tend to think of as the Decline of the Master. Naturally, the bad guy is the most interesting character; the other characters are quite bland and uninteresting. King employs his usual device of supernatural phenomenon without a shred of explanation or plausibility, but we know by now that he is usually able to make this work. It occurred to me while reading this book that the life of a psychopath must be one that is very comfortable and self-satisfied, a life that is untroubled by the thoughts and feelings of other people. Other than this, this was not a book to inspire any deep thoughts or reflections, but it is a reasonably good yarn. As I grow older, more sophisticated, and perhaps more jaded, I grow more conscious of King’s limits as a writer, but he seldom fails to entertain, and this book is as entertaining as one can expect from a writer who self-deprecatingly classifies himself as a “fast food writer.”