'Runt of the litter,' he would say, and then cuff Jack lovingly and laugh. A fat man who had towered to six feet two inches, he had been taller than Jack even when Jack got his full growth of six feet even-not that the old man had still been around then.

His mind had slipped from the Overlook to his father, who had been a male nurse at the Berlin Community Hospital. He slipped down further in his chair, still holding a clutch of the receipts, but his eyes no longer looking at what was printed there. He would write it because he felt he had to.įive hundred gals whole milk. He would write it because the Overlook had enchanted him-could any other explanation be so simple or so true? He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. Straight from the shoulder, yes, but it would not be written vindictively, in any effort to get back at Al or Stuart Ullman or George Hatfield or his father (miserable, bullying drunk that he had been) or anyone else, for that matter. The title would be uninspired but workable: Strange Resort, The Story of the Overlook Hotel. He would write the hotel's biography, write it straight from the shoulder, and the introduction would be his hallucination that the topiary animals had moved.

If it meant the end of his association with Al Shockley, that would have to be. It had maybe been a signal that his own sense of self-respect could only be pushed so far before disintegrating entirely. That had been too damned close to some kind of breakdown, and he was convinced that it was his mind in revolt against Al's high-goddam-handed request that he chuck his book project. He had come to grips with Al Shockley's phone call and his request his strange experience in the playground had helped him to do that. If he could find it he would be rewarded with a view of wonders. He felt like a man with a power cord in one hand, groping around a dark and unfamiliar room for a socket. Yet he gave each one a cursory glance, afraid that by not being thorough he might miss exactly the piece of Overlookiana he needed to make the mystic connection that he was sure must be here somewhere. His eyes had begun to get heavy as he leafed through packets of milk bills, a hundred to a packet, seemingly tens of thousands all together.

The shining novel