84, NG42, M44, E78, /WG42, F38, MF2, B1, D6, C0, NA1

Stephen King, Billy Summers

Ein neuer King ist immer ein wahres Fest für mich und dieses Buch war wieder so packend und faszinierend, dass ich es kaum aus der Hand legen mochte und es sicher noch einige Male wiederlesen werde. Besonders die Konstruktion von dem Buch im Buch und wie King sie für den finalen Twist am Ende benutzt (auf den ich natürlich voll reinfiel) ist genial.

He started writing Benjy's story on a laptop he's pretty sure (no, positive) has been cloned because it was a challenge, and because it's that fabled last job, but he now understands there was a deeper, truer reason: he wants to be read. By anyone, even a couple of Vegas hardballs like Nick Marjarian and Giorgio Piglielli. Now he understands - he never did before, never even considered it - that any writer who goes public with his work is courting danger. It's part of the allure. Look at me. I'm showing you what I am. My clothes are off. I'm exposing myself.
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He thinks writing is also a kind of war, one you fight with yourself. The story is what you carry and every time you add to it, it gets heavier.
All over the world there are half-finished books - memoirs, poetry, novels, surefire plans for getting thin or getting rich - in desk drawers, because the work got too heavy for the people trying to carry it and they put it down.
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Did you know that could happen? Did you know that you could sit in front of a screen or a pad of paper and change the world? It doesn't last, the world always comes back, but before it does, it's awesome. It's everything.
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Und über diese kleine Verbeugung vor John D. MacDonald freute ich mich besonders:
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Hoff with a glass of wine, Billy with a diet soda, Hoff broadcasting a slightly desperate vibe even then. Although along with it, like a fraternal twin, was the mindset that had gotten him in so much trouble and was about to get him in even more. It was the core belief, maybe inculcated in childhood, that he was the star of a movie called 'The Fabulous Life of Ken Hoff', and no matter how bad things got, in the end he would come out with the girl, the gold watch, and everything.
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(Stephen King, Billy Summers, 2021)