I was a big reader before I discovered Stephen King, but his books pressed a lever in me. The best of his early novels — “The Shining,” “The Stand,” “Carrie” — came out while I was in grade school, and I read them each six times in class tucked under my desk. I thought my enthusiasm made me a horror fan, but then I tried other horror writers and that wasn’t it at all. I was a Stephen King fan. In terms of being able to tell a story, he was all by himself out in the HOV lane. He was hooting as he blew past.

The most realized of these novels, to my tender imagination, was “The Stand.” On the surface, it’s about a virus that wipes out most of the world’s population, but at heart it’s a road novel about the survivors. It taps into that half-corny, half-essential American turnpike mythos I’d locate in Kerouac and Springsteen and Lucinda Williams and others, but with apocalyptic inclinations. Filled with fly-specked AM radio dials and exterminating angels, “The Stand” is Americana by way of one of Goya’s Black Paintings.

I like to think of “The Stand” that way, at any rate. I’ve been afraid to dip back in again. It’s magic I’d hate to spoil. I’ve been hesitant to get too close to any of King’s steroidal novels in the intervening four decades. I’ve mostly grown out of my interest. He’s maniacally prolific. Where would one insert a straw into that fire hose outpouring?

King’s new novel — it is roughly, depending on how you count, his 61st — is titled “The Institute.” It’s a big shank of a book that reminded me instantly of many of the reasons I loved (love?) him. His characters are the kind of people who hear the trains in the night. The music is always good. He swings low to the ground. He gets closer to the realities and attitudes of working-class life in America than any living writer I can think of. In “The Institute” people worry about taking their Prilosec. They’re happy to notice that the Denny’s and the bowling alley are right next to each other.