Yeah, it must be subjective. Honestly, to me it has never been apparent. Or maybe my way of looking at it is just really wrong somehow: there sure seem to be a lot of you in agreement.

Anyway, you are are undoubtedly right about the two sides of metafiction, at least, Jean. I actually considered posing more complicated questions regarding the meaning of reality in my last post. If King's point had only been that fiction expresses real things, he could have stuck to his forwards and afterwards. Putting himself into the story forces us to also wonder about the reverse. In fact, he might have been saying that it was at 19 that he started this series because it turns out that the hero had already done it 18 times previously. Maybe. I just still find that so hard to swallow. I think it came in as a signal, probably originating somewhere else. I'll think about it some more... or, hey, come to think of it, this just might come up in The Wind Through the Keyhole. That would make sense, wouldn't it?