Sure you have. Sure. I never forget a face"2. While in time this does become a part of the overall plot, there at the very start of the novel it seems to serve two purposes.
First, it immediately intrigues the reader and stimulates our interest (where have we been before? When?) but it is also an acknowledgment by King of his fans, because we have been there before. For some, we have been on page one of a Stephen King book almost countless times before (the man is a prodigious author), and in a comforting way we know what to expect. Popular literature is usually read for escapism. To alter that sentence and its meaning slightly, most people who read do so to escape. Taking this to its logical conclusion, we want to escape from our own humble lives to a place where heroes and heroines still thrive. Why, therefore, is JRR Tolkien or Terry Pratchett not the world's bestselling author? This is because the majority of the book-buying public are adults, and the majority of adults dislike the sheer difference of the worlds that these authors present. Even in "Harry Potter", we have the familiar, for some of us all too familiar setting of an English Public School. In Stephen King's novels and short stories (excepting the "Dark Tower" series) we are faced with extremely unusual, often even supernatural events, but they happen in a familiar situation to familiar people.
When we open a Stephen King book, nearly all of us have some idea what to expect. Even if we are not completely aware of it, there is a likelihood that most people in the English speaking world have at some time seen a film written by Stephen King or adapted from a novel or short story. People who have read perhaps only two of his books will be reasonably sure, on purchasing their third, that they will read about themselves, or at least about people who bear a resemblance to themselves. There are no orcs in King, no elves or misty castles; there are people with flaws, bad jobs and romantic troubles.
