I happened upon Carrie in a bookstore 40 years ago. SK's name was not familiar to me, don't remember what made me carry it to the cash register. At 25 I wasn't that far away from high school and teenage angst so the story resonated. Beyond that, I felt a strong sense of commonality with the author. He must have lived my same childhood, known people just like my friends and relatives. It didn't seem logical that millions of people could have the same visceral connection so when I learned he'd spent time as a boy in Indiana, where I've lived most of my life, like me had a working mother during the Donna Reed years, also had Methodist underpinnings and that we're about the same age, I thought, "Of course. That explains it." Except it didn't. Over the last four decades I came to understand that the same-wavelength thing is part of his genius, likely felt by a majority of his fans.