Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author best known for his highly successful horror novels. A 2003 recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Book Awards, King's books have been enormously successful, and are often featured on bestseller lists.

King's stories frequently involve an unremarkable protagonist such as a middle-class family, a child, or many times, a writer. The characters are involved in their everyday lives, but the supernatural encounters and extraordinary circumstances escalate over the course of the story. King evinces a thorough knowledge of the horror genre, as shown in his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, which chronicles several decades of notable works in both literature and cinema. He also writes stories that cannot be considered horror, including the novellas The Body and Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (later adapted as the movies Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, respectively), as well as The Green Mile.

Biography

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine and is of Scots-Irish ancestry. When King was two years old, his father deserted his family. Ruth raised King and his adopted older brother David by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to Ruth's home town of Durham, Maine but also spent brief periods in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut. King attended Durham Elementary School and Lisbon High School. He grew to stand 6'4" tall.

King has been writing since an early age. When in school, he wrote stories based on movies he had seen recently and sold them to his friends. This was not popular among his teachers, and he was forced to return his profits when this was discovered. The stories were copied using a mimeo machine that his brother David used to copy a newspaper, "Dave's Rag," which he self-published. "Dave's Rag" was about local events, and King would often contribute. At around the age of thirteen, King discovered a box of his father's old books at his aunt's house, mainly horror and science fiction. He was immediately hooked on these genres.

From 1966 to 1971, King studied English at the University of Maine at Orono. At the university, he wrote a column titled "King's Garbage Truck" in the university magazine. He also met Tabitha Spruce; they married in 1971. King took on odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He used the experience to write the short story "The Mangler". The campus period in his life is readily evident in the second part of Hearts in Atlantis.

After finishing his university studies with a Bachelor of Arts in English and obtaining a certificate to teach high school, King taught English at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. During this time, he and his family lived in a trailer. He wrote short stories (most were published in men's magazines) to help make ends meet. As told in the introduction in Carrie, if one of his kids got a cold, Tabitha would joke, "Come on Steve, think of a monster". King also developed a drinking problem which stayed with him for over a decade.

During this period, King began a number of novels. One of his first ideas was of a young girl with psychic powers. However, he grew discouraged, and threw it into the trash. Tabitha later rescued it and encouraged him to finish it. After completing the novel, he titled it Carrie, sent it to Doubleday, and more or less forgot about it. Later, he received an offer to buy it with a $2,500 advance (not a large advance for a novel, even at that time). Shortly after, the value of Carrie was realized with the paperback rights being sold for $400,000 (with $200,000 of it going to the publisher). Shortly after its release, his mother died of uterine cancer. She had the novel read to her before she died.

In On Writing, King admits that at this time he was consistently drunk and that he was an alcoholic for well over a decade. He states that he had based the alcoholic father in The Shining on himself, though he did not admit it for several years.

Shortly after the publication of The Tommyknockers, King's family and friends finally intervened, dumping his trash on the rug in front of him to show him the evidence of his own addictions: beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil. He sought help, and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s.

King fans note that the relative wealth of King's characters has risen through the decades, but not as precipitously as King's wealth itself:

His earliest works (Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, as well as much of the work in Night Shift), deal with working-class families struggling from paycheck to paycheck in minimum-wage jobs.

Late-1980s work involved middle-class people like teachers and authors

Late-1990s work sometimes dealt with airplane pilots, writers and others who can frequently afford a second home.

Car accident

In the summer of 1999, King was in the middle of On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. At the time, he had finished the memoir section and had abandoned the book for nearly eighteen months, unsure of how to proceed or whether to bother. King reports that it was the first book that he'd abandoned since writing The Stand decades earlier. He had just decided to continue the book. On June 17, he had written up a list of questions that he was frequently asked about writing, as well as some that he wished he would be asked about it; on June 18, he had written four pages of the section on writing.

On June 19, about 4:30 PM, he was walking on the right shoulder of Route 5 in North Lovell. Driver Bryan Smith, distracted by an unrestrained Rottweiler moving in the back of his 1985 Dodge Caravan, struck King, who landed in a depression about 14 feet (4 meters) from the pavement of Route 5.

Oxford County Sheriff's deputy Matt Baker recorded that witnesses said the driver was not speeding or reckless.[1] Baker also reported that King was struck from behind. King's official website, however, states that this was incorrect, and that King was walking facing traffic.

King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family, but in considerable pain. The author was first transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital and then flown by helicopter to Central Maine Hospital. His injuries - a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of the right leg, scalp laceration, and a broken hip - kept him in Central Main Medical Center until June 9, almost three weeks later.

Earlier that year King had finished most of From a Buick 8, a novel where one of the characters dies in an automobile accident. Of the eerie similarities, King says that he tries "not to make too much of it." King's 1987 novel, "Misery", is also of a writer who experiences severe injuries in an auto accident, but that novel focuses on the mental ill-health of a devoted fan who nurses the writer.

After five operations in ten days and physical therapy, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could only sit for about forty minutes before the pain became intolerable. His condition has since improved.

King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to avoid it appearing on eBay. Smith, a disabled construction worker, died in his sleep in September, 2000 at the age of 43.

Template:Spoiler-about King incorporated his accident into the final novel of his Dark Tower series, in which the hero Roland Deschain and his friends try to stop King from being fatally injured by the van. In the story, Roland hypnotized both King and the driver in order to make them forget his appearance.

The series premiere of Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital involved the main character, a painter out for a morning run being hit by a pick up truck, most likely inspired by this event as well.

Writing style

In King's nonfiction book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, King discusses his writing style at great length and depth. King believes that, generally speaking, good stories cannot be called consciously and should not be plotted out beforehand but are better served by focusing on a single "seed" of a story and letting the story grow itself from there. King often begins a story with no idea how the story will end. He mentions in the Dark Tower series that, halfway through its lengthy writing period (nearly 30 years), King received a letter from a woman with cancer who asked how the book would end¹, because she was unlikely to live long enough to read it. He stated that he didn't know. King believes strongly in this style, stating that his best writing comes from freewriting.

He is known for his great eye for detail, for continuity, and for inside references; many stories that may seem unrelated are often linked by secondary characters, fictional towns, or off-hand references to events in previous books. Read as a whole, King's work (which he claims is centered around his "Dark Tower" magnum opus) creates a remarkable history that stretches from present day all the way back to the beginning of time (with a unique creation myth).

King's books are also filled with references to American history and American culture, particularly the darker, more fearful side of these. These references are generally spun into the stories of characters, often explaining their fears. Recurrent references include crime, war (especially the Vietnam War), and racism.

King is also known for his folksy, informal narration, often referring to his fans as "Constant Readers" or "friends and neighbors." He uses this style to contrast with the often gory or scary content of many of his stories.

King has a very simple formula for learning to write well: "Read four hours a day and write four hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer."

King also has a simple definition for 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" (from "Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes").

Shortly after his accident, King wrote the first draft of the book "Dreamcatcher" with a notebook and a Waterman fountain pen, "the world's finest word processor."

World view

King's horror novels often reflect and are constructed upon a consistent view of the world, which is most clearly described in Insomnia and The Dark Tower.

In this view, he describes existence as being metaphorically like a dark tower, set in a huge landscape of red flowers. In this tower are many levels, with entities on each level. Some are hostile, some benevolent. Human life and all that people are aware of, lives on the equivalent of the bottom two levels of the tower.

In Insomnia, King describes these entities as forces of the Purpose (good), and the Random (evil). Most events in life do not interest them, and are relatively unimportant. However a few events matter to their ongoing strategic conflicts, and a very few, such as that described in the above book, are able to shake the entire tower of existence by virtue of their significance.

The concept of the world as a thin facade, with inhuman entities from outside stems back to Lovecraft and his mythos.

Many of his novels seem to take place in the same imaginary universe, since there are several subtle or even obvious references to one story within another. Dick Halloran, the elderly black cook from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, apparently visited Derry, Maine as a soldier in the early 1930's, as recalled in It (over 50 years later). The Overlook Hotel burning down gets a passing mention in Misery as well. The exit off the Maine Turnpike for Jerusalem's Lot, the setting of Salem's Lot, is driven past by some of the characters in Pet Sematary and Dreamcatcher. Further references are made in Dreamcatcher to the catastrophic damage Derry suffers in It, as well as even Pennywise the Clown himself.

Quotes

"In the vast class of victims there is a subclass: the victim of victims."

The Stand

"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk." (King's source for this quip is Robert Bloch.)

King's recent years

In 1996, King won an O. Henry Award for his short story, "The Man in the Black Suit." In 2003, King was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Book Awards. There was an uproar in the literary community over the choice of King.

"He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls. That they could believe that there is any literary value there or any aesthetic accomplishment or signs of an inventive human intelligence is simply a testimony to their own idiocy" – literary critic Harold Bloom.

Others in the writing community expressed their contempt for the literary elite's attitude. Orson Scott Card wrote "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 (former CEO of Simon & Schuster) really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite." ([[2]].)

Stephen King has also written six books under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. King staged a mock funeral for Bachman after the pseudonym was made public, which in turn inspired the book The Dark Half, in which a novelist stages the burial of his horror author pseudonym after having a "serious" novel published, only to find that his alter ego does not want to leave quite so easily.

King also wrote one short story under the name John Swithen - "The Fifth Quarter", which was reprinted in King's collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes in 1993 under his own name.

King used to play guitar in the band Rock Bottom Remainders but has not joined them on stage for some years. The band's members include: Dave Barry; Ridley Pearson; Scott Turow; Amy Tan; James McBride; Mitch Albom; Roy Blount Jr.; Matt Groening; Kathi Kamen Goldmark; and Greg Iles.

In 2002 King announced he would stop writing. He has apparently abandoned this idea, however, as he has written several books since.

Since 2003, King has provided his take on pop culture in a column appearing on the back page of Entertainment Weekly, usually every third week. The column is called "The Pop Of King", a reference to "The King of Pop", Michael Jackson.

In October 2005, King has signed up with Marvel Comics; this will be his first time writing original material for the comic book medium other than two pages in a benefit comic for African hunger relief in the 1980s. The negotiation will see him expanding his The Dark Tower series. The series will be illustrated by Eisner Award-winning artist Jae Lee. Marvel recently announced the series was delayed until 2007 in order for King to give it the attention it deserves.

In January, 2006, King appeared on the first installment of Amazon Fishbowl, hosted by Bill Maher.

Baseball

Stephen King is a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox, and is frequently found at both home and away baseball games.

In his private role as father, King helped coach his son Owen's Bangor West team to the Maine Little League Championship in 1989. This experience is recounted in the New Yorker essay Head Down, which also appears in the collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. King has called Head Down his best piece of nonfiction writing.

In 1999 King wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which involved former Red Sox team member Tom Gordon as a major character. King recently co-wrote a book entitled Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season with Stewart O'Nan. This work recounts the authors' roller coaster reaction to the Red Sox's 2004 season, a season culminating in the Sox winning the 2004 American League Championship Series and World Series.

In 2002, a Little League stadium opened in Bangor, Maine. This facility was made possible through the efforts and donations of King and his wife Tabitha.

Family

Stephen King lives in Bangor, Maine with his wife Tabitha King, who is also a novelist. They also own a house in the Western Lakes District of Maine. He spends winter seasons in an oceanfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. King recently built a home on Hamilton Reservoir in Union, CT. Their three children, Naomi Rachel, Joe Hill (who appeared in the film Creepshow), and Owen Phillip, are grown and living on their own. Owen's first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories was published in 2005.

Other writers

King is an open fan of the late H.P. Lovecraft and incorporated several of his techniques (such as subtle connections between all of his tales and the use of newspaper clippings, trial transcripts and other "documentary" material, as well the more patent recurring use of afflicted New England towns Castle Rock and Derry for Lovecraft's Arkham, Dunwich and Innsmouth) into his novels but differs most markedly in his extensive characterisation, effective dialogue, and positively resolved endings, all notably absent in Lovecraft's writings.

Edgar Allan Poe, one of the fathers to the contemporary literary horror genre, exerts a noticeable influence over King's writing as well. One of the best examples of this is shown with The Shining. The mangled phrase, "And the red death held sway over all," hearkens back to the original, "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all," from Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." King's novel parallels Poe's short story fairly accurately. The two men also share the common theme of the doppelganger, although one might argue that this is prevalent throughout the entire horror genre and cannot be relegated as specific to one author. In addition, the theme of the short story "Dolan's Cadillac" bears an almost identical comparison to Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," up to and including a paraphrase of Fortunato's famous plea, "for the love of God, Montresor!"

King has also openly declared his admiration for another, far less prolific author: Shirley Jackson. The novel Salem's Lot opens with a quotation from Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Tony, an imaginary playmate from The Shining bears a striking resemblance to another imaginary playmate with the same name from Jackson's Hangsaman. There are also many similarities between the character of Carrie from Carrie and that of Eleanor from The Haunting of Hill House. King claims that Carrie is actually based on two victims of bullying that he knew from school. A pivotal scene in Storm of the Century is based on Jackson's The Lottery.

And, finally, King may well owe the most to John D. MacDonald. King was a big fan of MacDonald as he was growing up, and the debt he owes the older writer seems clear enough. Just as King is a popular master of the horror genre, so was MacDonald a peerless master of the crime procedural. King very likely learned much of the art of penetrating deep into character from MacDonald's best work..the ways King and MacDonald develop characters, even down to certain turns of language, are strikingly similar. And both men display an intense love of a good story, told well and clearly and in the vernacular of real people, living in the real world. Even their work-habits, in their respective primes, are similar: both spent a lot of time learning their craft, and a lot of time practicing it every single day. King's comment that you can't be a serious writer until you read four hours a day and write four hours a day could have come straight from MacDonald, who felt much the same way about the matter. MacDonald wrote an admiring preface to an early paperback version of Night Shift, and even had his famous character, Travis McGee, reading Cujo in one of the last McGee novels. King dedicated the novella *Sun Dog* to MacDonald, saying "I miss you, old friend."

Due to their immense popularity, King is often compared to Dean Koontz, and some fans often have wished for the two to jointly write a book. Both writers have declared the impossibility of this, the primary reasons being King's habit of making life miserable for his characters, and Koontz's habit of always creating a vague but happy ending.

King has written two connected novels with acclaimed horror novelist Peter Straub, The Talisman and Black House. King has indicated that he and Straub will likely write the third and concluding book in this series, the tale of Jack Sawyer, but has set no timeline for its completion.

King also wrote the non-fiction book, Faithful with novelist and fellow Red Sox fanatic Stewart O'Nan.

Popular culture

King has been referenced four times on the television show Family Guy.

When Brian runs over a person with a truck, he stops and says, "Oh, my God! Are you Stephen King?" The man replies, "No, I'm Dean Koontz." Brian gets back into his truck and drives backwards, running over Koontz again.
While the Griffin family is at an amusement park, Stewie sees a toy clown, which is one of the prizes at a shooting game. He says, "How deliciously evil, like something out of a Stephen King novel", a reference to It.
In that same episode, just after Stewie mocks the toy clown, the episode moves into a "flashback" mode. King's editor is shown asking King for a summary for his 300th novel. King invents a story on the spot about a couple who are attacked by a lamp monster, then grabs the lamp from the editor's desk and waves it around making strange noises. The editor sighs and says, "You're not even trying anymore, are you?" and then says, "When can I have it?"
In a more recent episode, Stewie Griffin is riding his tricycle through a home (In a parody of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of The Shining) and turns a corner to find two ghostly twins. The twins also appeared in a first season episode. This scene is repeated in other cartoons, as well (such as the episode of Rocko's Modern Life where Heffer becomes a security guard).

In Futurama:

Fry walks in a library and passes a room titled "Stephen King, volumes A through Aardvark"
In another episode, King is referenced on a Wizard of Oz episode. Fry (the temporary Scarecrow) attempts to unsuccessfuly scare away some crows by reading excerpts from Christine.

King makes a small cameo as himself in The Simpsons. In the episode "Insane Clown Poppy," at a book fair, Marge asks King if he has been writing any new horror. King says no: "I'm working on a biography of Benjamin Franklin. He's a fascinating man. He discovered electricity, and used it to torture small animals and green mountain men. And that key he tied to the end of a kite? It opened the gates of Hell!" Marge asks him to contact her when he gets back to horror, and he writes a note to himself: "Call Marge, re: horror."

One of the "Treehouse of Horror" episodes of The Simpsons includes a parody of The Shining called "The Shinning." Bart: "Don't you mean The Shining? Groundskeeper Willy: "Sssh boy! Do you wanna get sued?"

A 1990 episode of Quantum Leap titled The Boogieman involved Sam Beckett becoming a hack 60's horror writer with a teenaged friend named Stevie. Near the end of the episode, Sam discovers the kid's last name and realizes that he may have helped inspire Christine, Cujo, The Dark Half, and other early King novels.

A 2005 episode of South Park involves Cartman, who suffers from a head trauma, claiming that he can now use his psychic abilities to solve murders. A man in a black raincoat is seen at every murder scene. While Cartman isn't the person to put the two together, the man is a reference to Frank Dodd, who is a murderer in The Dead Zone and Cujo. Many South Park episodes also include an ancient indian burial ground-type theme, a reference to "Pet Sematary".

In the Cartoon Network show The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Billy gets a haunted tricycle from a haunted outhouse that leads to another dimension. After Billy gets mocked by his peers, the tricycle, which Billy calls "Trykie," goes a spree across the town, giving wedgies and leaving nasty tire marks, likely inspired by Christine.

The Ramones song "It's Not My Place (in the 9 to 5 World)" from the albums Pleasant Dreams (1981) contains the lyric: "Roger Corman's on a talk show/With Allan Arkush and Stephen King, you know." The band also recorded the song "Pet Sematary" for the 1989 film adaptation of King's novel of the same name.

Eminem references one of Stephen King's novels in his song "Lose Yourself" for the 8 Mile soundtrack. He says "Mom, I love you but this trailer's got to go, I cannot grow old in Salem's Lot"

In the episode "Meatzone" of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Meatwad eats silicon caulk he finds in Frylock's room, and thinks he can predict people's futures by touching their hands, a parody of the novel and movie "The Dead Zone"

Trivia

King is a fan of the Rock Band AC/DC. They did the soundtrack for his 1986 film Maximum Overdrive

Bibliography

1963 The Aftermath (an unpublished novel)
1970 Sword in the Darkness (an unpublished novel)
1973 Blaze (an unpublished novel)
1974 Carrie
1975 'Salem's Lot
1977 Rage (as Richard Bachman)
1977 The Shining
1978 Night Shift (stories)
1978 The Stand
1979 The Dead Zone
1979 The Long Walk (as Richard Bachman)
1980 Firestarter
1981 Cujo
1981 Danse Macabre (nonfiction about horror)
1981 Road Work (as Richard Bachman)
1982 Creepshow (comic book, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson)
1982 The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
1982 Different Seasons (novellas)
1982 The Running Man (as Richard Bachman)
1983 Christine
1983 Pet Sematary
1983 Cycle of the Werewolf (illustrated by Bernie Wrightson)
1984 The Talisman (written with Peter Straub)
1984 Thinner (as Richard Bachman)
1985 Skeleton Crew (stories)
1985 The Bachman Books (novel collection)
1986 It
1987 The Eyes of the Dragon
1987 Misery
1987 The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
1988 The Tommyknockers
1988 Nightmares in the Sky (gargoyle photo book with text by King; photos by f-stop fitzgerald)
1988 Dark Visions
1989 The Dark Half
1989 Dolan's Cadillac (limited edition)
1989 My Pretty Pony (limited edition)
1990 The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition
1990 Four Past Midnight (stories)
1991 Needful Things
1991 The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
1992 Gerald's Game
1993 Dolores Claiborne
1993 Nightmares & Dreamscapes (stories)
1994 Insomnia
1995 Rose Madder
1995 Umney's Last Case
1996 The Green Mile (originally published as a monthly serial consisting of six parts: The Two Dead Girls, The Mouse on the Mile, Coffey's Hands, The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix, Night Journey, and Coffey on the Mile)
1996 Desperation
1996 The Regulators (as Richard Bachman)
1997 Six Stories (stories)
1997 The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
1998 Bag of Bones
1999 Storm of the Century
1999 The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
1999 The New Lieutenant's Rap (limited edition)
1999 Hearts in Atlantis
1999 Blood and Smoke (audio book)
2000 Riding the Bullet (electronically published novella)
2000 The Plant (electronically published) Stephen King (Publishing of 'The Plant')
2000 Secret Windows
2000 On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (nonfiction and autobiography)
2001 Dreamcatcher
2001 Black House (sequel to The Talisman; written with Peter Straub)
2002 From a Buick 8
2002 Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales (stories)
2003 The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (revised version)
2003 The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
2004 The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
2004 The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
2004 Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season
2005 The Colorado Kid, published in October by Hard Case Crime Paperback
2006 Cell
2006 The Secretary of Dreams, a limited edition in two volumes, the first to be released in the first half of 2006
2006 Lisey's Story, to be released in October
2007 the Dark Tower comic book series, to be released by Marvel Comics from February 2007

Films and TV

King has granted permission to student filmmakers to make adaptations of his short stories for one dollar (see Dollar Baby) yet, disgusted with the treatment most of his work had gotten in film, in 1986 he decided to direct Maximum Overdrive himself, using a screenplay he had written inspired by (but not based on) his short story "Trucks." The experience seems to have satiated his desire to direct.

References

¹"On Being Ninteen (and a Few Other Things)" Introduction to The Gunslinger (revised edition) 2003 King, Stephen Viking/Penguin Group pp. XVII-XVIII

External links