Summary

In King’s introduction to the short story “Herman Wouk is Still Alive,” King describes a terrible wreck on the Taconic Parkway in which a woman driving a minivan hit an SUV head-on. All three men in the SUV were killed as well as the driver of the minivan and four of her passengers, all children. Her five-year-old son was the only one to survive. The toxicology reports indicated the woman had the equivalent of ten drinks in her system as well as a large amount of marijuana. He husband said she did not drink. King wondered what happened in the car and indicates that it is only through fiction that a person can even begin to imagine what might have happened.

In “Herman Wouk is Still Alive,” the story opens with a copy of a newspaper article describing how...