Description

MY PRETTY PONY. LIMITED HARDCOVER SLIPCASED.

by Stephen King.

Art by Barbara Kruger.

Nine reproductions of lithographs / silkscreens by Barbara Kruger. Tall, slim 4to, pict. boards in a board printed slipcase. Originally published in a signed limited edition by The Whitney Museum of American Art in 1988. This trade edition is limited to 15,000 printed. Oversized hardcover in matching slipcase.

THE STORY: An elderly man, his death rapidly approaching, takes his young grandson up onto a hill behind his house and gives the boy his pocket watch. Then, standing among falling apple blossoms, the man also gives instruction on the nature of time: how when you grow up, it begins to move faster and faster, slipping away from you in great chunks if you don't hold tightly onto it. Time is a pretty pony, with a wicked heart.

Stephen King notes on the story reprinted in Nightmares and Dreamscapes, says the piece was originally a flashback scene included in a full-length novel-in-progress in which the grandson was now a brutal hitman reflecting on his childhood. The novel was intended to be published under King's Richard Bachman pseudonym, but the author grew disenchanted with the work, and finally scrapped it entirely. King references this concept again in the SORRY RIGHT NUMBER screenplay, also collected in Nightmares and Dreamscapes, where a direction states that a character's "pretty pony has done its fair share of running" (indicating that they have aged relatively rapidly)

Knopf, 1989. 1st edition, 1st printing. Slipcased. Book in Very Good condition. Slipcase is also Very Good, with a minor detachment on the spine on a corner edge. Sealed in acid free archival plastic for complete protection.