Stephen King is one of a mere handful of authors to have sold hundreds of millions of books. Though he has written across multiple genres, he is best known for his horror fiction and more specifically as the author of: The Shining (1977), Carrie (1974), ’Salem’s Lot (1975), Misery (1987), Pet Sematary (1983), and his apocalyptic masterpiece, The Stand (1978, republished in 1990). King was born in Portland (Maine), in 1947, and will be turning eighty next year. He began writing fiction at a very young age and made his first professional sale, a short story called ‘The Glass Floor’, to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967, nearly sixty years ago. He is currently completing Other Worlds Than These, which is the final instalment of a trilogy that began with The Talisman in 1984, continued with Black House in 2001 (both of which were co-authored with the late Peter Straub), and is due for publication in October. My mother was a great fan of King so the house was full of his novels when I was growing up and I’ve been reading his work for about forty years now. I’ve also become an unreserved and unashamed fan…why?
Lots of reasons. First, I must give my mother credit for never forcing King on me. Unfortunately, she didn’t live long enough for me to thank her, but she clearly knew my teenage self very well; that my curiosity would be more of a motivation than any recommendation. Second, King seems like a really (and rarely) decent human being. At least from his public persona and autobiographical writing. His to-and-fro with Trump on Twitter was particularly entertaining. So are his responses to book burners. I could go on. Also, King doesn’t have to be that way – he has sufficient celebrity to be as obnoxious as he wants without losing his fanbase. Third, he has written the best book on writing that I’ve ever read and am ever going to read, titled, simply, On Writing (2000). As such, I regard him as a writer’s writer (whatever, precisely, that may mean). Fourth, in spite of all the money and fame, he’s an underdog, ignored and even despised by the literary establishment and academia until very recently and then recognised with reluctance. Even champions of genre fiction like S.T. Joshi seem to have taken great pleasure in deriding almost everything about his writing. I almost always agree with Joshi, but he tears King to pieces in The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of Horror Fiction (2001), setting him up as a kind of anti-Ramsey-Campbell, who is represented as the second coming of Lovecraft. (I don’t object to the comparison between Campbell and Lovecraft, but to King as an inferior binary opposite.) While I’m not going to pretend that I’ve loved every word of his that I’ve read (on which, more below), given that, at the latest count, he’s published sixty-seven long and two hundred short works of fiction, there are bound to be at least some mediocre or subpar offerings. There are also, however, many great offerings and perhaps even a work of two of genius.
In spite of my lengthy acquaintance with and enjoyment of King’s oeuvre I’ve only very recently completed all six of the novels for which he is famous. Misery is my favourite, a great narrative that succeeds on multiple levels and is essential reading for anyone who enjoys books about writing and the writing life, whether fiction or nonfiction. The Shining is excellent, especially the effortless changes of perspective from father to mother to child and back again. This is King doing what he does best, exploring either the traditional or nuclear family in all its complexity of love, hate, joy, sorrow, comfort, and anxiety. At its most basic, The Shining is the tale of a haunted house, the house being a giant hotel isolated in the winter snows. I’ve seen the novel criticised for its lack of internal logic (a recurring complaint from King’s detractors), but as someone who pays a great deal – probably too much – attention to such things, I don’t see the problem. The supernatural elements make sense, they move the plot along…what’s not to like? Carrie and Pet Sematary are competent and maybe even original outings in the horror genre, with King playing to another strength of his, the representation of the worlds of children and teenagers, but neither are favourites of mine. Salem’s Lot and The Stand were, regrettably, too long for me, which was a shame regarding the latter because I really wanted to like it. There just wasn’t enough story to sustain either novel all the way to the end and with respect to the former, I thought the short story ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’ (which was first published in Night Shift in 1978) far superior. It is probably not surprising that the two of the six I like the most are about writers and, more specifically, writers with addictions, as King reveals in his discussion of his own struggles with addiction in the autobiographical part of On Writing.
Surely this is faint praise if I’m recommending no more than two of King’s six most successful novels? I’m not alone in this assessment because in an interview in Far Out magazine in 2022, he listed his favourite five stories, only one of which is from the six: ‘Survivor Type’ (1982), Misery, Lisey’s Story (2006), ‘The Body’ (1982), and Billy Summers (2021). What is particularly interesting about this list is that only one of his favourites has a supernatural element (Lisey’s Story), much of which is presented with great subtlety. I think King is at his best without the supernatural and in his shorter work, albeit with several exceptions that prove the rule. My own list of favourites also includes only one of the six (mimicking King’s choice) and one other from his list: ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ (1982), Misery, ‘Survivor Type’, ‘N.’ (2008), and Cycle of the Werewolf (1983). One novel, two novellas, and two short stories, in the first three of which the supernatural is absent. I was lucky enough to read ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ before I saw the film (which I also enjoyed, but is not as good) and without any spoilers, both of which contributed significantly to my reading experience.
I think I’ve already justified my enthusiasm for both King and his work, but let me say one more thing to make this a genuine appreciation. His own list of favourites covers forty years of writing and mine twenty-five. Since his big break with Carrie in 1974, the quality of King’s work has remained consistent, in spite of the life-changing injuries he sustained when he was run over by a reckless minivan driver in 1999. Since then he has published, among others, Lisey’s Story, Just After Sunset (2008), The Outsider (2018), and Billy Summers. The first of these is an epic love letter to his wife, the second one of his best short story collections to date, the third an excellent occult detective story, and the fourth a great crime thriller. I hope there are more to come and I hope we’re both around for his eightieth birthday…
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