Lilja's Library Read Free Page B

terrific. I’m great.  
    Lilja: I’m glad to hear it. Having a website, I wonder, how do you feel about all the websites about you that are out there on the Internet?  
    Stephen King: Well, I don’t go much. I go to yours because it’s always interesting. There is always a lot to look at.  
    Lilja: Thank you!  
    Stephen King: And sometimes I peek at The Dark Tower sites to see what’s going on there, and every now and then I’ll be like a ghost and sniff around my own website. You know, I tell you what, it’s a fun thing to do to go to those places because, as Amy Tan says, when you go and you check on what people are saying about you it’s like being at a party and overhearing people say things, and the things they say are fairly nice.  
    Lilja: Do you ever feel like contacting the people who have the sites and correcting them if something is wrong or unfair?  
    Stephen King: No, I mean every now and then it’s like…I was looking at the thread on Lisey’s Story on the Stephen King website and there were several people that said, “Well jeez, if Scott was so sick why didn’t he go to that pool and get better?” and I got in touch with Marsha and said, “Will you tell these people that he couldn’t do that because the long boy was lying across the path?” You see stuff like that and you say, “Jeez, do these people really read or not?” Anyway, she put it on there but you could spend your life going to websites and looking at what people are saying about you and it would kind of slow me down and it would make me very self-conscious, so a lot of times I don’t do it.  
    Lilja: I did a Google search on your name and I got about 40 million hits…  
    Stephen King: Wow!  
    Lilja: So, there are a lot of sites out there.  
    Stephen King: See, it is scary to think of that. What can they all have to say?  
    Lilja: Well, you have done a lot.  
    Stephen King: I have. I have done a lot and I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s the way I am.  
    Lilja: It’s definitely a good thing!  
    Stephen King: Well, good. Thank you.  
    Lilja: Do you feel the pressure? I read somewhere that people expected you to respond to questions on your official site. Do you feel a pressure to interact with the fans?  
    Stephen King: I don’t particularly. I would rather that they think of me as Santa Claus. That I’m paying attention to their little lists but I can’t respond to everything in person. I’d like to think that they know that I know what’s going on and to some extent I do, but as I say, if I paid attention to everything I wouldn’t have time to write books and that’s what most people want.  
    Lilja: Yes, I think everyone wants that if they have to choose. I understand that Blaze will be out soon.  
    Stephen King: Yeah. I hope so. I mean, that was a funny thing because I have been thinking about that book off and on for a while and every time I would think about it…you know I did the early books as Richard Bachman books and this is going to be a Bachman because it came from the same time. It was written right before Carrie and finally I thought to myself…the reason I’ve never done it was because, in my memory at least, it was a tearjerker of a book, you know? It was kind of sentimental and just kind of…every now and then I think of what Oscar Wilde said about The Little Match Girl . He said that it’s impossible to read about the little match girl without weeping tears of laughter and…you know, something that is so sad it’s actually funny. 
    And I felt that way a little bit about this Philip Roth book, Every Man . You know, I’m thinking, “That’s ridiculous, this is so sad it’s really quite funny,” but I’ve got a kind of a black sense of humor too.  
    Lilja: Why did you decide to release it as a Bachman book?  
    Stephen King: I read it again. And I thought…well, the first thing that I thought was I’ve got to look at this if I can still find it,