Some years ago Stephen King announced that he would put his new book online before publication, for anyone to read freely. His publishers were spitting dollar signs and the fans delighted. In my memory he did as he said, and put the entire book on his website, but the 100,000-or-so words of the manuscript, though all there, were in alphabetical order. If you wanted to read the book from beginning to end, in grammatical sentences and plot-wise, you had to pay your money. If it was meaning you were after, it came at a price. Stephen King is far more generous than my psyche, and the second part of the story turns out to be entirely untrue.

LRB 20 January 2011 | PDF Download