NEEDFUL THINGS

[New York]: Viking, 1991. First edition. Very good plus.. Inscribed uncorrected proof, association copy, of King's goodbye to his fictional Castle Rock - signed to Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet and writer Stephen Dobyns, whose work King regularly blurbed and whom King wrote into a later book. Just as Paul Sheldon did in MISERY, King came to feel he had to kill one of his most beloved characters: the town of Castle Rock, Maine that figured in so many of his novels. While he ultimately didn't quite succeed in that regard (the locale does appear subsequently in sporadic King works), this first novel written after King conquered his drug and alcohol addictions is a tale of an antiques store that carries the exact thing each customer secretly wants - a satire, according to the author, of 1980s consumerism and greed.

This copy was signed at the Stephen King Film Festival in Syracuse NY, a benefit for the Syracuse University creative writing department held at the Landmark Theater on April 26th, 1991. King had been invited by Dobyns (who headed the department) and it marked the beginning of a long friendship between the two. King has since frequently cited Dobyns as one of his favorite writers and poets, blurbing his novels ("THE CHURCH OF DEAD GIRLS is a meditation on hysteria, immensely ambitious, but Dobyns tells the tale with the calm-and fearful inevitability-of a man walking down a long hotel corridor to a room where some awful thing is waiting [...] I kept reading, riveted by the plot and rooting with all my heart for Dobyns to pull it off. And he did, in a terrifying climax. I don't expect to read a more frightening novel this year") and mentioning his poetry often in interviews ("The poetry I come back to again and again are the narrative poems of Stephen Dobyns" - interview in THE NEW YORK TIMES). King has even dedicated a poem to Dobyns and wrote the poet into INSOMNIA. In that novel, the character Dorrance Marstellar says of Dobyns: "He reminds me of Hart Crane without the pretensions [...] Of course he doesn't have the music of Dylan Thomas, but is that so bad? Probably not. Modern poetry is not about music. It's about nerve - who has it and who doesn't." The influence goes both ways. Dobyns's 2013 novel THE BURN PALACE was a decidedly King-inflected horror novel (which King also blurbed: "I've read some very good novels this year, but this one is the best of the best"). A warm and wonderful association. 9'' x 6''. Original pictorial wrappers. [xii], 640, [2] pages. Inscribed by King on the title page: "For Stephen Dobyns - / Thank you for having me. It / was a real pleasure to meet you. / I hope the first time won't be / the last, and I hope you like / this story. / Stephen King / 4/26/91." Some minor edgewear and rubbing, touches of shelfsoil here and there, faint foxing to covers. Overall, sound.