For my write-up today of Stephen King’s Lisey’s Story, I’ll talk about something that “Zack McCool”/James Dooley says on pages 247-248.
Dooley is a thug who is trying to take from Lisey the manuscripts of Lisey’s late husband, the author Scott Landon, so that he can give them to a professor who wants them. On pages 247-248, Dooley is telling Lisey what the works of Scott Landon mean to him on a personal level. Dooley says that Scott’s books helped him through the worst parts of his experience in jail, and that his favorite Scott Landon book is The Coaster’s Daughter, which he reads every two or three years, and from which he can quote long passages. Dooley says that his favorite scene in that book is the one in which a young man named Gene tells his father that he (the father) never understood the duty of love. Dooley could identify with that passage and felt that it was beautiful.
I can’t say that there is a book that grips me enough that I want to read it every one, two, or three years. But there are movies and TV episodes that are like that for me. And I can identify with the concept of getting through the ups and downs of life while holding on to something that gives me inspiration—-such as books, movies, church, etc. As I look back, I can think of books that have helped me through some pretty difficult times. I think of works by George MacDonald, Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King, and others.