When I read The Man In The Black Suit, I was 6 months post op from emergency heart surgery feeling nothing but tired. I certainly didn't feel like writing. I was in the waiting room to see my cardiologist. The nurse called my name--three times. When I finally heard it, I jumped. I wasn't in the waiting room, I was in the woods running from the Devil!
After I read it, I read it again. The story is simple but sticks to you like burrs on your pant leg and in your brain. I thought about this story for days. Very few short stories can do that and almost nothing on television does. I gloried in the simplicity of it.
Though simple the feelings it evoked were not. It reminded me of Hawthorne, and Serling but most of all like an old fashioned round the fire Grimm cautionary tale. Don't go in them thar woods...
What Mr. King captures better almost anyone is the fantastical mind of a child but like many of his children characters who are naive enough to believe in the Devil this one is also naive enough or brave enough to believe he can out run him.
This little tale is not just about a childhood memory but how these memories can still haunt us when we are old and gray.
After I read it, I read it again. The story is simple but sticks to you like burrs on your pant leg and in your brain. I thought about this story for days. Very few short stories can do that and almost nothing on television does. I gloried in the simplicity of it.
Though simple the feelings it evoked were not. It reminded me of Hawthorne, and Serling but most of all like an old fashioned round the fire Grimm cautionary tale. Don't go in them thar woods...
What Mr. King captures better almost anyone is the fantastical mind of a child but like many of his children characters who are naive enough to believe in the Devil this one is also naive enough or brave enough to believe he can out run him.
This little tale is not just about a childhood memory but how these memories can still haunt us when we are old and gray.