When I was young I used to have this armchair in my room. It was where I read all my books. I must have spent weeks, maybe even months of my life curled up in that armchair reading. This is my most vivid memory of reading The Dark Half.
My second most vivid memory was of Thad, the main character, having really bad headaches as a child (if you read my Firestarter post, you will know that I too have really bad headaches). In the story, doctors determine that they have to operate on Thad's head, because there is something in there. When they do, they find a clouded eye, some fingernails and some teeth. Oh, ick!! I remember being so grossed out that I had to read it to my best friend at the time. I knew that twins could be absorbed in the womb, but this was just so yucky.
“In The Dark Half I tried to answer the question ‘Where do you get your
ideas?’ It seems to me that for most writers there really is another
person hiding inside, although it isn’t always dark and it’s hardly ever
as much as a half. I thought it would be fun to write a story about a
novelist whose muse gets totally out of control. There was one problem: I
didn’t how how to end it. Then, one day while I was on the way to my
office, I saw a huge flock of crows—huge enough to darken an appreciable
part of the sky—all take wing at once. They made me think of a poem by
H.P. Lovecraft called “The Psychopomp,” about a bird who is an emissary
of death, and a winged messenger between the land inhabited by mortals
and that of the afterlife. In that instant, I knew exactly how to
dispose of George Stark; all I had to do was go home and write it.”
