In “Finders Keepers” (the second entry in a planned trilogy that began with “Mr. The desire to establish a bond with a beloved writer is a form of communion - or so said Martin Amis, who has acknowledged he did precisely that with Saul Bellow. But whereas Annie Wilkes was nuts, if you’ll excuse the clinical term, fans are not necessarily fanatics. King of course has worked this territory before, most notably in “Misery,” with a writer essentially enslaved by his No. 1 fan. What does a beloved writer owe his fans? Who’s the boss, especially in an era when disenchanted disciples can cyberstalk, tweet their fury at a less-than-cordial encounter or even self-publish fan fiction? Yet by the time the band members returned to their tour bus, there were several people lined up, clutching copies of “The Stand,” eager to meet the band’s undisputed rock star, Stephen King.īut it does illustrate why King has special standing in his new novel, “Finders Keepers,” to examine the reader-writer relationship, which is increasingly a two-way street. This was pre-smartphone, pre-social media, practically pre-Internet. (Now that might be an oxymoron.) The band stopped for breakfast at a small-town truck stop before the sun was up. Or consider this story, one told to me 20 years ago by a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, the writer-rock band. Selling millions of books isn’t enough readers have to feel a profound personal connection to the writer.

Literary celebrity sounds like an oxymoron, but it does happen.

Finders keepers by stephen king