Horror Author: Stephen King (Part II)

Analysis

Writing style and approach

King's formula for learning to write well is: "Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met. He also has a simple definition of talent in writing: "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."

When asked why he writes, King responds: "The answer to that is fairly simple—there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do."  He is also often asked why he writes such terrifying stories and he answers with another question: "Why do you assume I have a choice?"  King usually begins the story creation process by imagining a "what if" scenario, such as what would happen if a writer is kidnapped by a sadistic nurse in Colorado.

King often uses authors as characters or includes mention of fictional books in his stories, novellas, and novels, such as Paul Sheldon who is the main character in Misery, adult Bill Denbrough in It, Ben Mears in 'Salem's Lot, and Jack Torrance in The Shining. He has extended this to breaking the fourth wall by including himself as a character in the Dark Tower series from Wolves of the Calla onwards. In September 2009 it was announced he would serve as a writer for Fangoria.

Influences

King has called Richard Matheson "the author who influenced me most as a writer."  In a current edition of Matheson's The Shrinking Man, King is quoted as saying, "A horror story if there ever was one...a great adventure story—it is certainly one of that select handful that I have given to people, envying them the experience of the first reading."

Other acknowledged influences include Ray Bradbury, Joseph Payne Brennan, Elmore Leonard, John D. MacDonald, and Don Robertson.

King's The Shining is immersed in gothic influences, including "The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe (which was directly influenced by the first gothic novel, Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto). The Overlook Hotel acts as a replacement for the traditional gothic castle, and Jack Torrance is a tragic villain seeking redemption.

King's favorite books are (in order): The Golden Argosy; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Satanic Verses; McTeague; Lord of the Flies; Bleak House; Nineteen Eighty-Four; The Raj Quartet; Light in August; and Blood Meridian.

Critical response

Science fiction editors John Clute and Peter Nichols offer a largely favorable appraisal of King, noting his "pungent prose, sharp ear for dialogue, disarmingly laid-back, frank style, along with his passionately fierce denunciation of human stupidity and cruelty (especially to children) [all of which rank] him among the more distinguished 'popular' writers."

In his book The Philosophy of Horror (1990), Noël Carroll discusses King's work as an exemplar of modern horror fiction. Analyzing both the narrative structure of King's fiction and King's non-fiction ruminations on the art and craft of writing, Carroll writes that for King, "the horror story is always a contest between the normal and the abnormal such that the normal is reinstated and, therefore, affirmed."

In his analysis of post–World War II horror fiction, The Modern Weird Tale (2001), critic S. T. Joshi devotes a chapter to King's work. Joshi argues that King's best-known works (his supernatural novels) are his worst, describing them as mostly bloated, illogical, maudlin and prone to deus ex machina endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that since Gerald's Game (1993), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written.

In 1996, King won an O. Henry Award for his short story "The Man in the Black Suit".

In his short story collection A Century of Great Suspense Stories, editor Jeffery Deaver noted that King "singlehandedly made popular fiction grow up. While there were many good best-selling writers before him, King, more than anybody since John D. MacDonald brought reality to genre novels. He has often remarked that 'Salem's Lot was "Peyton Place meets Dracula. And so it was. The rich characterization, the careful and caring social eye, the interplay of storyline and character development announced that writers could take worn themes such as vampirism and make them fresh again. Before King, many popular writers found their efforts to make their books serious blue-penciled by their editors. 'Stuff like that gets in the way of the story,' they were told. Well, it's stuff like that that has made King so popular, and helped free the popular name from the shackles of simple genre writing. He is a master of masters."

In 2003, King was honored by the National Book Awards with a lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Some in the literary community expressed disapproval of the award: Richard E. Snyder, the former CEO of Simon & Schuster, described King's work as "non-literature" and critic Harold Bloom denounced the choice:

The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.

Orson Scott Card responded:

Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite.

In 2008, King's book On Writing was ranked 21st on Entertainment Weekly list of "The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008".

Appearances and adaptations in other media

King tried his hand at directing with Maximum Overdrive, in which he also made a cameo appearance as a man using a malfunctioning ATM.

King produced and acted in a television series, Kingdom Hospital, which is based on the Danish miniseries Riget by Lars von Trier.

In 2010, King appeared in a cameo role as a cleaner named Bachman (a reference to his pen name Richard Bachman) on the FX series Sons of Anarchy.

The Syfy TV series Haven is based on King's novella, The Colorado Kid.

In 2019, King appeared in a cameo role as a thrift store owner in It Chapter Two.

Political views and activism

In April 2008, King spoke out against HB 1423, a bill pending in the Massachusetts state legislature that would restrict or ban the sale of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. King argued that such laws allow legislators to ignore the economic divide between the rich and poor and the easy availability of guns, which he believed were the actual causes of violence.

A controversy emerged on May 5, 2008, when Noel Sheppard posted a clip of King at a Library of Congress reading event on the Web site NewsBusters. King, talking to high-school students, had said: "If you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that."  The comment was described by the blog as "another in a long line of liberal media members bashing the military," and likened to John Kerry's similar remark from 2006.  King responded later that day, saying, "That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt...I live in a national guard town, and I support our troops, but I don't support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career—military or otherwise." King later expressed regret for the remark, saying that he misspoke. King added that during the Vietnam War, serving in the military was a great career for some.

During the 2008 presidential election, King voiced his support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.  King was quoted as calling conservative commentator Glenn Beck "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother."

On March 8, 2011, King spoke at a political rally in Sarasota aimed against Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), voicing his opposition to the Tea Party movement.

On April 30, 2012, King published an article in The Daily Beast calling for rich Americans, including himself, to pay more taxes, citing it as "a practical necessity and moral imperative that those who have received much should be obligated to pay ... in the same proportion".

On January 25, 2013, King published an essay titled "Guns" via Amazon.com's Kindle single feature, which discusses the gun debate in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. King called for gun owners to support a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons, writing, "Autos and semi-autos are weapons of mass destruction...When lunatics want to make war on the unarmed and unprepared, these are the weapons they use."  The essay became the fifth-bestselling non-fiction title for the Kindle.

King has criticized Donald Trump and Rep. Steve King, deeming them racists.

In June 2018, King called for the release of the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov who is jailed in Russia.

Maine politics

King endorsed Shenna Bellows in the 2014 U.S. Senate election for the seat held by Republican Susan Collins.

King publicly criticized Paul LePage during LePage's tenure as Governor of Maine, referring to him as one of The Three Stooges (with then-Florida Governor Rick Scott and then-Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker being the other two).  He was critical of LePage for incorrectly suggesting in a 2015 radio address that King avoided paying Maine income taxes by living out of state for part of the year. The statement was later corrected by the Governor's office, but no apology was issued. King said LePage was "full of the stuff that makes the grass grow green" and demanded that LePage "man up and apologize".  LePage declined to apologize to King, stating, "I never said Stephen King did not pay income taxes. What I said was, Stephen King's not in Maine right now. That's what I said."

The attention garnered by the LePage criticism led to efforts to encourage King to run for Governor of Maine in 2018.  King stated he would not run or serve.  King sent a tweet on June 30, 2015, calling LePage "a terrible embarrassment to the state I live in and love. If he won't govern, he should resign." He later clarified that he was not calling on LePage to resign, but to "go to work or go back home."  On August 27, 2016, King called LePage "a bigot, a homophobe, and a racist".

Philanthropy

King has stated that he donates approximately $4 million per year "to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts."

The Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, chaired by King and his wife, ranks sixth among Maine charities in terms of average annual giving with over $2.8 million in grants per year, according to The Grantsmanship Center.

In November 2011, the STK Foundation donated $70,000 in matched funding via his radio station to help pay the heating bills for families in need in his home town of Bangor, Maine, during the winter.

Personal life

King's home in Bangor

King married Tabitha Spruce on January 2, 1971.  She too is a novelist and philanthropic activist. The couple own and divide their time between three houses: one in Bangor, Maine (set to become a museum and writer's retreat); one in Lovell, Maine; and for the winter a waterfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. The Kings have three children, a daughter and two sons, and four grandchildren. Their daughter Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Plantation, Florida, with her lesbian partner, Rev. Dr. Thandeka.  Both of the Kings' sons are authors: Owen King published his first collection of stories; We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hillstrom King, who writes as Joe Hill, published a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, in 2005. His debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box (2007), was optioned by Warners Bros.

In the early 1970s, King developed a drinking problem which would plague him for more than a decade.   Soon after Carrie's release in 1974, King's mother died of uterine cancer; King has written of his severe drinking problem at this time, stating that he was drunk while delivering the eulogy at his mother's funeral.  King's addictions to alcohol and other drugs were so serious during the 1980s that, as he acknowledged in On Writing in 2000, he can barely remember writing Cujo.  Shortly after the novel's publication, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping on the rug in front of him evidence of his addictions taken from his office including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine) and marijuana. As King related in his memoir, he then sought help, quit all drugs (including alcohol) in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.   The first novel he wrote after becoming sober was Needful Things.

Car accident and aftermath

On June 19, 1999, at about 4:30 p.m., King was walking on the shoulder of Maine State Route 5, in Lovell, Maine. Driver Bryan Edwin Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet (four meters) from the pavement of Route 5.   According to Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker, King was hit from behind and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking.  In his book On Writing, King states he was heading north, walking against the traffic. Shortly before the accident took place, a woman in a car, also northbound, passed King first and then the light-blue Dodge van. The van was looping from one side of the road to the other, and the woman told her passenger she hoped "that guy in the van doesn't hit him."

King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family, but was in considerable pain. He was transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by air ambulance to Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC) in Lewiston. His injuries—a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip—kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered that doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but stabilized the bones in the leg with an external fixator.  After five operations in 10 days and physical therapy, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could sit for only about 40 minutes before the pain became unbearable.

King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, to King's disappointment, as he had fantasized about smashing it.

Awards

·         Alex Awards 2009: Just After Sunset

·         American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults

·         1978: 'Salem's Lot

·         1981: Firestarter

·         Balrog Awards 1980: Night Shift

·         Black Quill Awards 2009: Duma Key

·         Bram Stoker Award

·         1987: Misery

·         1990: Four Past Midnight

·         1995: "Lunch at the Gotham Café"

·         1996: The Green Mile

·         1998: Bag of Bones

·         2000: On Writing

·         2000: "Riding the Bullet"

·         2002: Lifetime Achievement Award

·         2003: The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

·         2006: Lisey's Story

·         2008: Duma Key

·         2008: Just After Sunset

·         2010: Full Dark, No Stars

·         2011: "Herman Wouk is Still Alive"

·         2013: Doctor Sleep

·         British Fantasy Award

·         1981: Special Award

·          1982: Cujo

·          1983: "The Breathing Method"

·         1987: It

·         1999: Bag of Bones

·         2005: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower

·         Deutscher Phantastik Preis

·         2000: Hearts in Atlantis

·         2001: The Green Mile

·         2003: Black House

·         2004: International Author of the Year

·         2005: The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower

·         Edgar Award for Best Novel

·         2015: Mr. Mercedes

               

·          Horror Guild

·         1997: Desperation

·         2001: Riding the Bullet

·         2001: On Writing

·         2002: Black House

·         2003: From a Buick 8

·         2003: Everything's Eventual

·         Hugo Award 1982: Danse Macabre

·          International Horror Guild Awards

·         1999: Storm of the Century

·         2003: Living Legend

·         Kono Mystery ga Sugoi! (The Best Translated Mystery Fiction of the Year in Japan)

·         2014: 11/22/63

·         Los Angeles Times Book Prize

·         2011: 11/22/63

·         Locus Awards

·         1982: Danse Macabre

·         1986: Skeleton Crew

·         1997: Desperation

·         1999: Bag of Bones

·         2001: On Writing

·         Mystery Writers of America 2007: Grand Master Award

·         National Book Award 2003: Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

·         National Magazine Awards

·         2004: "Rest Stop"

·         2013: "Batman and Robin Have an Altercation"

·         New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age 1982: Firestarter

·         O. Henry Award 1996: "The Man in the Black Suit"

·         Quill Award 2005: Faithful

·         Shirley Jackson Award 2009: "Morality"

·          Spokane Public Library Golden Pen Award 1986: Golden Pen Award

·         University of Maine 1980: Alumni Career Award

·          Us Magazine 1982: Best Fiction Writer of the Year

·         World Fantasy Award

·         1980: Convention Award

·         1982: "Do the Dead Sing?"

·         1995: "The Man in the Black Suit"

·         2004: Lifetime Achievement

·         World Horror Convention 1992: World Horror Grandmaster

Audiobooks

2000: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (read by Stephen King), Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 978-0-7435-0665-6

2004: Salem's Lot (introduction), Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 978-0-7435-3696-7

2005 (Audible: 2000): Bag of Bones (read by Stephen King), Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 978-0743551755

2016: Desperation (read by Stephen king), Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 978-1508218661

2018: Elevation (read by Stephen King), Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 978-1508260479