A Brief Guide to Stephen King (20 page)

King was also inspired by his anger over the Iraq War of 2003, and the US administration headed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. ‘Sometimes the sublimely wrong people can be in power at a time when you really need the
right
people,’ he told
Time
. In the novel, Rennie controls the First Selectman, Andy Sanders, who King explained ‘wasn’t actively evil, he was just incompetent – which is how I always felt about George W. Bush. I enjoyed taking the Bush–Cheney dynamic and shrinking it to the small-town level.’ While writing the first draft, King was so convinced that Hillary Clinton would win the Democrat nomination that all references to the president were female.

The ecological aspect of the situation also influenced King, and he felt he was treating the subject allegorically, in the same way that George Orwell wrote about communism in
Animal Farm
: the story can be read as a simple fable, without ‘whamming the reader over the head’ with the allegory. ‘We’re under the dome,’ he said bluntly. ‘All of us.’

Under the Dome
came to television as a major thirteen-part drama by CBS Studios in summer 2013. The project
was optioned by Steven Spielberg’s Dreamworks on publication, with broadcast expected to be on the Showtime pay TV channel. In 2011,
Lost
writer Brian K. Vaughn was hired as the adapter, and the project switched from Showtime to CBS over the following year, with an official announcement of its new home in November 2012. A teaser trailer aired during the Superbowl game in February 2013 before the series began on 24 June.

Numerous changes were made to the characters and situations, which, King assured readers on his website, were ‘of necessity, and I approved of them wholeheartedly. Some have been occasioned by their plan to keep the Dome in place over Chester’s Mill for months instead of little more than a week, as is the case in the book. Other story modifications are slotting into place because the writers have completely re-imagined the source of the Dome.’ One of the key alterations has been to the length of time the Dome is in place, which, King noted, takes the story back to his original roots for it.

The series was a great success for CBS, and a second thirteen-episode season of
Under the Dome
was commissioned in July 2013 for broadcast in the summer of 2014. Stephen King is penning the script for the opening hour, his first TV work since
Kingdom Hospital
a decade earlier.

11/22/63
(Scribner, November 2011)

Al’s Diner is a very unusual place – not only does it serve fantastic meat, but it also contains a portal to the past, specifically 9 September 1958, at 11.58 a.m. Teacher Jake Epping is told about the portal by Al Templeton when the diner owner realizes that he is not going to be able to carry out his own plan: to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK) on 22 November 1963. Jake initially tries to change history by preventing a tragedy involving one of his students, but his meddling actually leads to his student’s premature death. When he next returns to 2011,
he discovers Al is dead, so decides to carry out his mission. He travels back to 1958, and establishes himself in Texas, falling in love with school librarian Sadie Dunhill. Jake stalks Kennedy’s future assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, in the years leading to 1963, but all nearly goes wrong when he is beaten up because of the way he used his future knowledge. Recovering just in time, he prevents the assassination but Sadie is killed by Oswald instead. Although JFK is grateful, things seem to be going wrong, and when Jake returns to 2011, the world has gone to hell, from both natural disasters and manmade catastrophes. A mysterious man (versions of whom have been near the portal each time Jake travels) begs Jake to set things straight, so he goes back to 1958 once more and this time does nothing. With the future restored, Jake meets Sadie one last time.

As with
Under the Dome
, Stephen King had the initial idea for
11/22/63
(or ‘Split Track’ as he thought of it then) many years before he finally got around to writing it. Forty years prior to publication, he was still a teacher and became involved in a discussion about what the world might be like if JFK had lived. However, he didn’t feel he had the writing ability to carry off such a research-heavy project, and also considered that the assassination was still too current to be a viable choice of topic. In January 2007, he brought the idea up again in an editorial in one of Marvel’s
Dark Tower
comics (reprinted in the hardback edition of the first graphic novel). At that point, the hero would discover that the world was ‘a nuclear slag-heap’ when he returned to current times, and he has absorbed a fatal dose of radiation.

The final blockbuster novel required a great deal of research, not just into Lee Harvey Oswald but also into many small details about life in the late 1950s, since King was determined not to look back at the period through rose-tinted spectacles. This amount of research (something about which he previously had been sceptical) felt odd to
King, ‘like breaking in a new pair of shoes’, and he and his assistant, Russ Dorr, spent time at the scene of the assassination as well as other sites connected to Oswald’s life. In common with many others who have examined the evidence relating to JFK and Oswald, King came to the conclusion that Oswald was not part of a conspiracy theory, and wrote the novel accordingly. He also wrote a strong note to the
New York Times
around the time of publication defending his stance.

Setting
11/22/63
in 1958 allowed some considerable crossover with his earlier magnum opus,
IT
, with Jake interacting with a number of the Losers’ Club during his sojourn in the past. This was also the time that a certain red and white Plymouth Fury was in production, and while the cars may not be Christine herself, their presence never bodes well for characters. Although there is an obvious thematic link with
The Dead Zone
– reading the two books consecutively provides a fascinating insight into the way King’s outlook on matters of predestination and fate have changed over the past decades – there are no direct connections.

King’s original ending for the story, which saw Sadie married with a slew of children and grandchildren, can be read on his website. It was changed at the suggestion of King’s son, author Joe Hill.

The Silence of the Lambs
director Jonathan Demne was connected to a film version of
11/22/63
for some time – indeed, he announced that he was working on it on 12 August 2011, three months before publication. However, by December 2012, Demne had withdrawn from the project. ‘I loved certain parts of the book for the film more than Stephen did,’ he explained. ‘We’re friends, and I had a lot of fun working on the script, but we were too apart on what we felt should be in and what should be out of the script.’ J.J. Abrams’ company Bad Robot – which was linked with various different versions of the ‘Dark Tower’
series – then negotiated for the rights to adapt the book as a TV series or miniseries.

Joyland
(Hard Case Crime, June 2013)

North Carolina, 1973: college junior Devin Jones takes a summer job at the Joyland amusement park, getting to know the carny lingo, and taking his turn inside the swelteringly hot costume for Howie the Happy Hound. There’s a mystery there as well: a murder was committed at the park years earlier, and the ghost of the victim apparently still haunts one of the rides. Devin decides to stay on at the park after the summer ends, and during that time gets to know seriously ill young boy Michael Ross, who has some psychic gifts, and his mother Annie. Devin arranges for Michael to get his dream come true and visit the amusement park, and Annie and Devin get closer. However, the killer isn’t far away, and when he learns that Devin is investigating the murder, and is starting to link it to other crimes, decides he has to rid himself of Devin. A combination of Michael’s abilities and Annie’s own natural talents with a rifle ensure that Devin survives the encounter with the killer. A few months later, Michael dies, and Annie and Devin take his ashes to the spot where he was happiest.

Stephen King’s second book for Hard Case Crime (with the imprint now published by genre specialists Titan Books) was first mentioned in his interview with fellow writer Neil Gaiman in the
Sunday Times
on 8 April 2012, with King noting that, as of February, he was still working on the story, but he was sure that were anything to happen to him, his son Joe could complete it. It was officially announced in May 2012, with editor Charles Ardai calling it a ‘breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book’, explaining that ‘It’s a whodunit, it’s a carny novel, it’s a story about growing up and growing old, and about those who don’t get to do either because death comes for them before their
time. Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved. When I finished it, I sent a note saying, “Goddamn it, Steve, you made me cry.” ’ In an unusual move, particularly given King’s promotion of e-books previously, the author announced that he ‘loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we’re going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being.
Joyland
will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book.’

The central image that inspired the book came to King twenty years earlier. Unlike some of these inspirations, the image did make it to the final story: a boy in a wheelchair flying a kite on a beach. As a child, he loved the county fairs, and their ‘cheesy, exciting feel’. He enjoyed researching the ‘carny’ life and their ‘lingo’ although he was quite happy to employ his usual method where necessary (‘making shit up’): ‘I started to go to websites that had various carny language, some of which I remembered a little: pitchmen called “shy bosses” and their concessions called “shies”, and the little places where they sold tickets and sometimes sat down to rest called “doghouses”, and other stuff I just made up, like calling pretty girls “points”.’

King’s previous book was an addition to the ‘Dark Tower’ saga; the one that followed was a sequel to one of his classics,
The Shining
. Indeed, one of the earliest versions of that story – then known as ‘Darkshine’ – featured a boy with psychic powers in an amusement park. It may have taken forty years, but King eventually told his tale.

For the author,
Joyland
really took off for me when the old guy who owns the place says, “Never forget, we sell fun.” That’s what we’re supposed to do – writers, film-makers, all of us. That’s why they let us stay in the playground.’

Doctor Sleep
(Scribner, September 2013)

Danny Torrance may have hoped that his problems with the Overlook Hotel were over after his father’s death and
the destruction of the Colorado landmark. But he needs Dick Hallorann’s help to banish the spirits that haunt the hotel when they return a few years later. Other spirits also haunt Danny: he follows his father into alcoholism, reaching rock bottom during the mid-1990s. His life starts to pick up when he finds a job in the town of Frazier, and gains a sponsor for Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

As Dan becomes a sober and valued part of the community, gaining the nickname Doctor Sleep for his work at the local hospice, the True Knot – a group of psychic vampires – travel around the United States in camper vans. As they go, they extract a life-giving essence they call the ‘steam’ from those who are psychically gifted, as well as from places experiencing great torment (such as New York on 9/11). And not far from Frazier, a very gifted young girl, Abra, is growing up, sending messages on a blackboard to her imaginary friend, Tony, whose help she is going to need when the True Knot’s leader Rose learns of her existence. The True Knot are facing extinction, and Abra may be able to help them stave off the inevitable end . . .

Although Stephen King has continued the stories of various characters across assorted novels,
Doctor Sleep
marks the first time, outside the ‘Dark Tower’ series and the co-written
Talisman
novels, that he has created a direct sequel to one of his early novels.
Doctor Sleep
picks up events directly from the last page of
The Shining
, and although all necessary references are explained within the text of the sequel, readers wanting to get the most from the book are recommended to reread
The Shining
before embarking on the new story. It’s also important to note that this is a sequel to the novel (the ‘True History of the Torrance Family’, as King describes it), not the Kubrick – or even King’s own – screen adaptation.

As he explains in his afterword, over the years King was regularly asked about Danny Torrance’s fate, and he
used to quip that he married Charlie McGee, the heroine of
Firestarter
. However, every so often, he would wonder about how the younger Torrance was faring, and when he started to be asked questions about why Jack Torrance had been a dry-drunk – i.e. that he had not sought assistance for his drinking or attended AA – he realized that there was a story waiting to be told, relating Dan’s own problems with alcohol, and the co-dependency between Dan and his mother following events at the Overlook.

The other key element to the tale was a news story he saw about Oscar, a pet cat at a hospice in Rhode Island, who apparently knew when people were on the verge of death and curled up on the bed with them, providing comfort as they passed. The hospice cat Azzie in
Doctor Sleep
shares these characteristics.

There are various small references in
Doctor Sleep
to King’s earlier work aside from
The Shining
– both Castle Rock and Jerusalem’s Lot get a mention – but the biggest cross-pollination is with
NOS4R2 (NOS4A2
in the US), the horror novel written by his son, Joe Hill, which appeared earlier in 2013. That book’s villain, Charlie Manx, is mentioned in a flashback, and the True Knot were visitors at Christmasland, the place where Manx takes the children he kidnaps. With the references within Hill’s book to Pennywise, it seems as if the worlds of Stephen King are truly becoming a family affair.