There are a few four-star stories in here, but overall they did not engage me as much as his other work has. My favorite was probably "Children of the Corn." I also very much enjoyed the foreword. King has always had a certain knack for those. As he often does he advocates the idea that story is more important for him than other aspects of writing. But when reading the stories I did not get the sense that story was central in almost any of them. Rather I got the sense of a writer with more than a few grains of literary ambition. Perhaps not when it comes to style, but certainly with the characters. Reading all these stories in quick succession (and continuing with Skeleton Crew) has also, even more than before, impressed in my mind the image of King as an author afflicted with panophobia. Not only the familiar vampires, aliens and ghost towns are sources for fear in these stories, but virtually everything holds the potential of evoking fear: toys, cornfields, kids, parents, psychiatrists, space, bathrooms, trucks, and all kinds of machines and vehicles. And here, more than with certain tropes or styles, might lie the affiliation with Lovecraft, who was notoriously afraid of many things, from cats to strangers to himself.