I just returned from a business trip to Dallas. Before heading out, I had finally met my goal of sending out the first three chapters of my first novel to an agent. So, naturally, as I read on the plane, I was acutely aware of all the things I had not done as wonderfully as the author of the book I was reading.

The book in question was Hearts in Atlantis, and the author was Stephen King, and let us be clear on one point from the outset: I know he's had more practice than I have at this whole fiction writing thang. The premise of the five stories that comprise Hearts ("Low Men in Yellow Coats," "Hearts in Atlantis," "Blind Willie," "Why We're in Vietnam," and "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling") is quite different from any of the story lines that run through the novel I just completed. There are, however, some similar themes (about how life passes by, about how good intentions don't always map to good behavior, et al) and there is a strong streak of nostalgia that runs through both books.

In my case, the nostalgia centers upon Buffalo during the early 1980's. Now, don't confuse nostalgia for romanticizing... evoking that town at that time means capturing the details of both the racism and the philanthropy, the pollution as well as the purity. My goal was to bring the reader to a specific moment in time at a specific location in place, so as to let the events of the story unfold against an understandable background. To paraphrase Dickens's excellent observation, they were the best of times and the worst of times because they were, in short, times much like these.

My novel may or may not be, in part, "about" the dawning of the age of Generation X; I guess that depends upon how you read it. While that wasn't one of my main points, however, Stephen King clearly set out to bring us through the coming of age of his generation, The Baby Boomers.

He did a fantastic job of grounding the reader in that time (particularly 1960 and 1966) and in that place (small town Connecticut, a college in Maine, Tam Boi in Vietnam, the streets of New York). The details, dropped with just the right frequency and just the right specificity, made the setting all the more real. It's not just what songs are playing on the radio or what movies are playing at The Empire Theater... it's the way the webbing on Bobby Garfield's Alvin Dark-model baseball glove was starting to come loose, the way Bobby's mother kept pronouncing Ted Brautigan's name as "Mr. Brattigan" in order to show her very New England disapproval of the man.

The two best stories in Mr. King's book are the first two. "Low Men" clocks in at 323 pages -- a novel in and of itself -- and captures the summer of 1960 as seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old. And yet, King manages this without the story becoming a juvenile. I *loved* that. This is a very adult story about a kid. It was while reading this that I was most painfully aware of my concerns about the novel I've just sent off. My story, too, centers primarily in the world of twelve-year-olds, but I can only hope that it is seen as an adult story and not a young adult story.

King accomplishes this feat with apparent effortlessness. It all comes through.

His second story, "Hearts," is only slightly shorter than "Low Men," and it takes place on a college campus in 1966. The peace sign is only just beginning to make the rounds, and a young "Goldwater Republican" is beginning to contemplate Johnson's war in Vietnam. Against this backdrop, a group of college freshmen jeopardize their college scholarships (and, in turn, their place in college, which means they risk being drafted) on the altar of a long-standing card game in the lounge of their dormitory. Hence the title, "Hearts in Atlantis."

As an avid card player (including Hearts) who has been known to get caught up in a game or two, I was completely drawn into this story's excellent feel for how one can know what to do, know what the risk is of not doing it, and yet continue to not do it, anyway. The story also hints at the consequences of events that played out in the first story.

The third story centers upon a Vietnam War veteran who has picked a most interesting form of penance... not for whatever he may have done in Vietnam, but for what he did in 1960 as a high school student in that small town in Connecticut. This was refreshing, because while being a Vet is integral to Blind Willie's character, it is not the ultimate source of his personal hell. Thus is a very tired cliche avoided. And here, too, I can only hope to make a left turn when approaching cliche-ville the way Mr. King has, although only time will tell. (Har, har, har.)

The final two stories have an element of cuteness to them, but they don't ring true. Here, too, I can learn from Mr. King, albeit by way of counter-example. In "Why We're in Vietnam," King has a couple of Vets at the funeral of one of their buddies was philosophical while remembering nasty events in which they took part during the war. Welcome to cliche-ville. I was particularly disturbed to hear the one Vet bemoan to the other something along the lines of, "What happened to us? Our generation could have changed the world, we had it in our hands, but we sold out...." These are not the thoughts of a former soldier who did his time in Vietnam, but rather the thoughts of one of the flower children who had thought he/she knew better. I have known former flower children to talk in these terms (and I therefore assume that King may have been among them), but I have never heard former soldiers or former non-participants (either in the war or in the protests) say as much. Perhaps I haven't been privy to such conversations, but now I'm curious.

The final story ties together a few loose threads and tells us something about how the grown-ups owe their lives, for good or ill, to the children they once were. But it is otherwise inconsequential and not, in and of itself, a complete story.

I learned a lot from reading Hearts -- about writing, about one take on the sixties and the Baby Boomers, about the insidiousness of addiction, etc. -- and enjoyed it immensely, even with the hollow parts toward the end. It may well be some of King's best writing. And like all good writing, it also begs a lot of questions and issues a number of challenges... both for me as a writer, and for me as a child of my own generation.

Hey, any of you Baby Boomers out there: Do you feel like your generation could have changed the world and blew it's chance, instead? Did the Vietnam War define the way you look at the world and your role in it, or was it something that played out in the background? I'd love to hear from you.