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Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an
American author best known for horror novels. King's books are extremely
popular: among the best-selling books ever.
King's stories frequently involve an unremarkable
protagonist—middle-class families, children, and often writers—being submerged
into increasingly horrifying circumstances. He also produces more typical
literary work, 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. 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.
Biography
Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine to Donald
and Ruth Pillsbury King. When Stephen was two years old, his father (born David
Spansky) deserted his family and Ruth raised Stephen 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 then nearby Lisbon High School.
Stephen King has been writing since an early age.
When in school, he wrote stories based on movies he'd 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 David's newspaper, "Dave's Rag", which he
self-published. "Dave's Rag" was about local events, and Stephen would often
contribute. At around the age of thirteen, Stephen 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 1970, King studied English at the
University of Maine at Orono. There, King wrote a column, "King's Garbage
Truck", in the university magazine. He also met Tabitha Spruce there and they
married in 1971. King took on odd jobs to pay for his studies. One of them was
at an industrial laundry, from which he drew material for 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 took a job as an English teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine.
During this time he and his family lived in a trailer. Making ends meet was
sometimes difficult, and the money that came from short stories, published
mainly in men's magazines, was very useful. 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 them told the story of a young girl with psychic powers. Frustrated, he
threw it into the trash. Later, he discovered that Tabitha had rescued it; she
encouraged him to finish it as Carrie. He sent it to Doubleday and more or less
forgot about it. Some time 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.
Before the book was published his mother died of uterine cancer, in February
1974.
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'd based the alcoholic father in The Shining on himself, though he
didn't admit that 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 will 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, as well as much
of the work in Night Shift) dealt with working-class families struggling from
paycheck to paycheck in minimum-wage jobs; his late-80s work involved
middle-class people like teachers and authors; his late 90s work sometimes dealt
with airplane pilots, writers and others who can frequently afford a second
home. All throughout, his work has remained immensely popular.
Car
accident
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
In the summer of 1999, King was in the middle of On
Writing: A Memoir of the Craft; he'd 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, he
was taking a walk after driving his son to the airport, intending to return home
to go see The General's Daughter with his family. As he walked up a hill, a
Dodge van crested the top on the shoulder of the road and hit him, throwing him
about 14 feet (4.2 m) in the air. Bryan Smith was the driver of the van. King
barely missed the driver's side support post in the van and also barely missed a
spread of rocks on the ground near where he landed, either of which would likely
have killed him or put him in a permanent coma. Unable to get up, King was
rushed to a local hospital, which reported that they could not treat him. He was
then flown to another hospital; in the helicopter he suffered a collapsed lung.
In addition to the collapsed lung, King suffered a leg broken in at least nine
places, a split knee, a broken right hip, four broken ribs, and a spine chipped
in eight places. Coincidentally, that same year King had written most of From a
Buick 8, in which one of the characters dies in an automobile accident, but King
says that he "tried not to make too much of it."
King was released from the hospital after three
weeks, then went through half a dozen surgeries on his leg and the accompanying
physical therapy. In July 1999, he continued On Writing, though his hip was
still shattered and he could sit for barely forty minutes at a stretch before
the pain became intolerable. Over time his condition improved. It was reported
that Mr. King forgave the driver and actually purchased the van in question for
$1,500 (and later had it crushed and disposed to avoid its reappearance on
eBay).
The accident, and subsequent hospitalization served
as an inspiration for the pilot episode of King's ABC
mini-series-turned-full-series, Kingdom Hospital.
King has appeared in his Dark Tower series. King
incorporated his accident into the final novel, 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.
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 half way through its lengthy writing period, nearly 30
years, King received a letter from a woman with cancer who asked how the book
would end as she would unlikely live long enough to hear it. He stated that he
didn't know. King believes strongly in this style, stating that all of his
better books came from freewriting.
He is known for his great detail to continuity and
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. Taken 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, he says, you cannot 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". However, he normally uses an Apple
PowerBook computer.
King's recent years
In 1994, King won an O. Henry Award for his short
story, "The Man in the Black Suit", and in 2003 King was honored with the
Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Book Awards. There was an uproar in
the literary community with King being the choice.
"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." -Harold Bloom, a Yale professor.
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."
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".
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.
King is also a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox,
and is frequently found at both home and away baseball games. In 1999 he wrote
the book "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", which involved former Red Sox team
member Tom Gordon as a major character. He recently co-wrote a book with Stewart
O'Nan chronicling their roller coaster reaction to the Red Sox's 2004 season,
culminating in their winning the 2004 American League Championship Series and
World Series. It is titled Faithful.
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.
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 Nokomis, Florida. Their three children, Naomi Rachel, Joe
Hill (who appeared in the film Creepshow), and Owen Phillip (now engaged), 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. The Kings are now
grandparents.
Naomi shared a "ceremony of union" with her partner
and theology professor, Thandeka, at a Unitarian Universalist Assembly in 2000
in Tennessee.
Other Writers
Due to their immense popularity, King is often
compared to Dean Koontz, and some fans often state their wishes for them to
jointly write a book.
Both writers have declared the impossibility of
this, and it primarily had to do with 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 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 portrayed twice on the television
show Family Guy. In one episode, the character of Brian runs over a person with
a truck. Brian stops and says, "Oh, my God! Are you Stephen King?" to which the
man replies, "No, I'm Dean Koontz." Brian gets back into his truck and drives
backwards, running over Koontz again.
In the second portrayal, King's editor is shown
asking King for a summary for his 304th 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,
"You're not even trying anymore, are you?" and then says, "When can I have it?"
King has also been portrayed in The Simpsons. In
the episode "Insane Clown Poppy", at a book fair, Marge asks King if he has been
writing any new science fiction. 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."
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