A Brief Guide to Stephen King
Read A Brief Guide to Stephen King Online
Authors: Paul Simpson
Paul Simpson
has been writing professionally about horror and science fiction for the past two decades. As editor of
DreamWatch
magazine and its web spin-off
Scifibulletin.com
, which he still oversees from his home in a small Sussex village just north of Brighton, England, he has visited the sets of numerous TV shows, including
The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
, and Stephen King’s
The Dead Zone
, and interviewed the stars of many of the classic Hammer Horror films.
For
Jenn Fletcher, who always believed that I could,
Brian J. Robb, who helped to open the doors,
and Barbara Holroyd, who has kept the faith.
Stephen King
Paul Simpson
Constable & Robinson Ltd.
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com
First published in the UK by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2014
Copyright © Paul Simpson, 2014
The right of Paul Simpson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
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UK ISBN: 978-1-47211-060-2 (paperback)
UK ISBN: 978-1-47211-074-9 (ebook)
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First published in the United States in 2014 by Running Press Book Publishers,
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Part 1: The Life of Stephen King
Chapter 2 Living the High Life
Chapter 3 Rising from Rock Bottom
Chapter 4 Recovery and Renaissance
Part 2: The Novels of Stephen King
Chapter 5 The Basics of Horror:
Carrie
to
Firestarter
Chapter 6 A Community of Horror:
Roadwork
to
IT
Chapter 7 A New Beginning?:
The Eyes of the Dragon
to
Needful Things
Chapter 8 Up Close and Personal:
Gerald’s Game
to
Desperation/The Regulators
Chapter 9 Wiping the Slate Clean:
Bag of Bones
to
From a Buick 8
Chapter 10 A New Lease of Life:
The Colorado Kid
to
Doctor Sleep
Chapter 11 The Quest Begins:
The Gunslinger
to
Wizard and Glass
Chapter 12 The Wheel Comes Full Circle:
Wolves of the Calla
to
The Wind Through the Keyhole
Chapter 13 The Dark Tower in Other Worlds
Part 4: Short Stories and Novella Collections
Chapter 14 Anthologizing the Past
Chapter 15 A New Horizon: Twenty-first Century Tales
Part 5: Original Stories in Other Media
Chapter 16 Writing for the Screen
Chapter 18 Pumping Out the Music
Appendix: The Works of Stephen King in Public Release Order
‘I’ve been typed as a horror writer, and I’ve always said to people, “I don’t care what you call me as long as the cheques don’t bounce and the family gets fed.” But I never saw myself that way. I just saw myself as a novelist.’
Stephen King,
Parade
magazine, May 2013
‘The Quest is the Quest.’
Doctor Who
‘Underworld’, Bob Baker and Dave Martin
‘It is the tale, not he who tells it.’
From
The Breathing Method
, Stephen King
A few weeks before starting to write this
Brief Guide to Stephen King
, during the period when I was re-familiarizing myself with King’s novels, but hadn’t started to analyse them too closely, I had to walk through a deserted hotel in the middle of the night. It was a newish building, built in a palatial style, with Doric columns and huge vases decorating the hallways, as well as two huge marble staircases sweeping up from the entrance area leading to the reception desk – itself a good thirty yards away from the top of the stairs, near two imposing oak doors. Six hours earlier, the area had been filled with guests queuing for restaurants, children burning off their excess energy from fizzy drinks, and people desperately waving tablets and phones in the air trying to get a Wi-Fi signal. Now, although all the lights were on, it was empty. There were no extraneous sounds at all; no elevator buzzing, no coffee machines whirring. All I could hear were my own footsteps echoing from the marble floor. There wasn’t even any sign of life from the concierge, who was supposed to be on duty all night. I wouldn’t have been in the least surprised – scared, maybe,
but not surprised – if at any moment, a madman with no face had come around the corner looking for someone to sacrifice to the creature that really possessed the hotel . . .
That’s the power of Stephen King’s writing. He takes ordinary people and ordinary situations and gives them a twist – and once you’ve experienced his way of looking at things, you can’t look at anything quite the same ever again. Although I’d read
Carrie
when I was in my late teens, and seen the movie when it was screened by the university film club, my first proper experience of King’s gift as a writer came when I discovered that Switzerland shuts on New Year’s Day – or at least the part of Switzerland that I was in at the start of 1983. Only able to buy food from vending machines, I picked up a copy of a book that someone had left lying around – the original (and much as it may be heresy to say this, the better) edition of
The Stand
, Stephen King’s apocalyptic tale of good versus evil in the wake of a man-made plague. I was nineteen years old, appropriately enough, as ‘Dark Tower’ fans will appreciate.
That was my day sorted – apart from going to get refills of Coke, I sat and devoured the novel, vicariously sharing in Larry Underwood’s nightmare journey through the Lincoln Tunnel, shivering alongside the group travelling to Las Vegas, and feeling their horror when they discover the method by which Randall Flagg intends to kill them. (No spoilers – I wouldn’t want to deprive readers of that shocking moment.) Once I’d returned to the UK, I got hold of the rest of King’s back catalogue (there weren’t anywhere near as many books to buy in those days!), and pretty much from then on, whenever a new book came out I bought it – in paperback initially, but then, whenever I could afford it, in hardback. My library of King books is a pretty good indicator of my income over the years!
You could say, therefore, that this book has been over thirty years in the writing – certainly, it has in terms of research. There have been periods when I’ve not enjoyed
his new books as much as at other times – often coinciding, as I discovered during the writing of this guide, with times when King himself was dissatisfied with his work – and maybe subconsciously, as someone with an addictive personality, I recognized some of the traits that were being highlighted. Slowly I watched as the Dark Tower became ever more prevalent in his writing, and in the last few years I’ve enjoyed his forays into different areas, particularly with crime novels such as
The Colorado Kid
, or
Joyland. 11/22/63
was one of those books that I didn’t want to put down, and like many, I’ve anticipated his sequel to
The Shining
–
Doctor Sleep
– for many years.
This guide therefore is a celebration of King’s work – part aide-memoire for those who have read his stories before but can’t remember it in particular detail; part portal to the many different sides of his writing. The nineteen chapters (yes, that number again – and no, I didn’t plan it that way) start with a brief biography of the writer; we look firstly at his novels in chronological order of publication, starting with
Carrie
forty years ago, and stretching to
Doctor Sleep
in September 2013, incorporating the ‘Richard Bachman’ books as appropriate. This doesn’t include the eight books that comprise the ‘Dark Tower’ series, which receive their own section, along with the short story set in that world.
After that come the short stories and novellas, including the e-book tales that have yet to appear between hard covers, notably King’s serial novel
The Plant
. Stories which have appeared only in magazines at the time of writing are listed at the end of that section; some of these can be found online at the magazines’ websites.
All of these entries include a brief description of the stories, followed by some notes about their genesis, derived from multiple sources, including King’s own works
Danse Macabre
and
On Writing
(both of which are highly recommended for their insights into both King’s thought processes and the whole business of writing). The sections
conclude with a brief rundown of the many adaptations that have appeared – not just the films and TV series, but the comics, stage plays, radio shows, and even ballets and operas inspired by King’s work.