This is a story about a popular young woman named Elizabeth Rogan, who finds herself inexplicably attracted to a social misfit named Ed Hamner, Jr.

Take, for example, the story “I Know What You Need”. The stories in Night Shift accomplished this just as adroitly as King’s novels. Stephen King’s forte, I had already discovered, was to transform the ordinary into something dark and magical. Night Shift was–and still is–filled with short stories that grab you from the get-go. Nevertheless, I took a chance on Night Shift. (Hemingway really isn’t the best choice for younger readers.) But at that time, my readings of literary short fiction had convinced me that short stories were little more than pretentious vignettes in which nothing much happens. I’m a bit older now, and I’ve acquired some appreciation for the short stories of Hemingway. And at that age I hadn’t even had sex for the first time yet, so the roundabout conversation between the man and the woman in “Hills Like White Elephants” left me cold, too. I couldn’t relate to the old man in the cafe in “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”. Hemingway’s short stories bored me to tears. Another Hemingway story, “Hills Like White Elephants”, consists of an oblique conversation about how an unmarried couple will handle an unwanted pregnancy. This is a story in which an old man has a drink in a cafe, and two waiters talk about him. He particularly loved “A Clean, Well Lighted Place”. I had a teacher that year who was obsessed with Ernest Hemingway. My experience with short stories thus far had been limited to assigned readings in my high school English class. I was a bit skeptical–as much as I already loved Stephen King. Night Shift, I immediately discovered, was not another novel, but a collection of short stories.

(There was no Wikipedia, no Internet, in 1984, you’ll remember.) After I’d read all of the Stephen King novels I could find, I came across this other book: Night Shift. I mostly did this by going through the books on the library shelves. I was methodically working my way through the King oeuvre. I read The Dead Zone and Cujo, The Shining, and (of course) The Stand. My initial instinct was to focus on King’s novels. I set out to read everything King had published to that time–which was considerable, even in 1984. I discovered Stephen King in 1984, when I serendipitously picked up a copy of ‘Salem’s Lot in my high school’s library.

Night shift short stories