Stephen King

American novelist Stephen Edwin King was born on September 21, 1947, and specialises in horror, science fiction, fantasy, suspense, and crime. Referred to as the "King of Horror," his works have been translated into several comic books, films, television shows, and miniseries. As of 2006, they had sold over 350 million copies. In addition, he has penned almost 200 short stories, the majority of which have appeared in book collections. The novels "Salem's Lot," "The Shining," "The Stand," and "The Dead Zone" were released after his 1974 breakthrough novel, Carrie. The four novellas that made up Different Seasons marked his first significant foray outside the horror genre. The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me were both based on the novellas. King co-authored works with various writers, including his buddy Peter Straub and his sons Joe Hill and Owen King, and he has published under the alias Richard Bachman.

The Bram Stoker & August Derleth Awards have been given to several of King's writings. In addition, he has received honors for his entire literary career, such as the 2014 National Medal of Arts, the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and the 2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Joyce Carol Oates described King as "a brilliantly rooted, psychologically 'realistic' writer, for whom the American scene has been a continuous source of inspiration, and American popular culture a vast cornucopia of possibilities."

Childhood and schooling

King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. Born in Indiana, Donald Edwin King changed his surname to King as an adult. After serving in the military during World War II, he worked as a traveling Hoover salesman. Nellie Ruth King, originally from Pillsbury, was King's mother. On July 23, 1939, his parents tied the knot in Scarborough, Maine. They moved to Croton-on-Hudson, New York, after living in Chicago with Donald's family. In the latter stages of World War II, King's parents moved back to Scarborough, Maine, and settled into a little home. King has Irish and Scots ancestry.

King's father left the household when he was two years old. Occasionally facing severe financial hardship, his mother reared him and his elder brother David on her alone. After leaving Scarborough, they relocated to Chicago, Illinois, and relied on family in Stratford, Connecticut; West De Pere, Wisconsin; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Malden, Massachusetts; and Croton-on-Hudson. King's family relocated to Durham, Maine, when he was eleven years old, and his mother took care of her parents there until their passing. She then started working as a career in a nearby residential institution for people with mental disabilities.

King said in an interview with Terry Gross, "I've been asked a lot of questions about where I get my ideas from or how I became interested in these things. And then, a lot of interviewers just kind of turn like Dr. Freud, plopping me down on the couch and asking, "Tell me about your upbringing." And I say all kinds of things, and I kind of dance around the subject and confabulate a little bit, but in the end, my upbringing was fairly normal, save for the fact that I wanted to be afraid from a very young age. I did that just now." He claims that at the age of "six or seven, I would just copy comic book panels and then make up my own stories," he began writing. Another significant influence was film. I was immediately enamoured with the films. Since it was all I knew at the time, I had a tendency to write in visuals when I first started writing." When King was younger, he read a vast array of books, from Nancy Drew to Psycho. Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man was my favourite; I discovered it when I was eight years old." King tells how he came to understand what he wanted to do for a job when he and his older brother were going through an attic and came across a box containing their father's books: "The box I uncovered that day was a treasure trove of old Avon paperbacks... But the 1947 collection of stories by H. P. Lovecraft titled The Lurking Fear and Other Stories was the best of the lot, so I headed there. Lovecraft, through my father, cleared the path for me."

King remembers inquiring, "Do you have any stories about how kids really are?" to a bookmobile driver. Lord of the Flies was her gift to him. It was the first book I can recall having hands-strong ones that reached out of the pages grabbed me by the throat-and it proved to be formative. 'This is not just amusement; it's life or death,' it said to me. Lord of the Flies has always, in my opinion, embodied the purpose and necessity of fiction." King chose a quote from Lord of the Flies as the epigraph for Hearts in Atlantis and called his settlement Castle Rock after the mountain fort in the novel. Lisbon High School, located in Lisbon Falls, Maine, was attended by King after he finished his education at Durham Elementary. King sold articles to his pals after contributing to Dave's Rag, the newspaper his brother produced using a mimeograph machine. "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber" was his first independently published tale, which ran in four serialized issues of the fanzine Comics Review in 1965. While working as a sports reporter for the Weekly Enterprise in Lisbon, he received some guidance from his editor, John Gould, which he carried with him: "Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."

King was granted a scholarship to attend the University of Maine at Orono in 1966. He contributed to The Maine Campus, the student newspaper, while he was there. Burton Hatlen and Edward Holmes, two professors, gave King "solid encouragement," according to Mark Singer. King attended a writing workshop run by Hatlen and became enamoured with Tabitha Spruce there. Naomi Rachel was King's daughter, born in 1970, the year he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English. In 1971, Stephen and Tabitha tied the knot. King praised Hatlen in an afterword to his book Lisey's Story, saying, "Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had." The pool he referred to as "the language pool, the myth pool, where we all go down to drink" was the one he originally introduced me to. That was back in 1968. Since then, I have walked the trail that goes there numerous times, and I cannot imagine a nicer place to spend a day-the fish still swim, and the water remains lovely.

Personal life

King's Bangor residence

On January 2, 1971, Tabitha Spruce and King were married. She writes novels and is a humanitarian as well. Their residences are in Bangor, Maine; Lovell, Maine; and, during the winter, a waterfront estate in Sarasota, Florida, which is situated off the Gulf of Mexico. As of 2019, the pair intends to transform King's Bangor home-which has been called an unofficial tourist attraction-into a facility that would house his archives and serve as a writers' retreat.

In the initial edition of Different Seasons (1982), a portrait of Owen and Stephen, There are two sons and a daughter among the Kings' three children. Along with her companion Thandeka, their daughter Naomi serves as a preacher at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Plantation, Florida. The two sons of the King are writers: We're All in This Together: A Novella and fiction, Owen King's debut collection of fiction, was released in 2005. In 2005, Joseph Hillström King, also known as Joe Hill, released 20th Century Ghosts, his debut collection of short stories.

Career Timeline

In 1967, King sold "The Glass Floor," his first professionally written short story, to Startling Mystery Stories. King obtained a teaching credential from the University of Maine. Still, since he was unable to secure a position as a high school teacher right away, he supplemented his menial salary by selling short stories to publications like Cavalier newspaper. In Night Shift (1978), numerous of these early tales were reprinted. Within Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine, King was employed as an English teacher in 1971. He kept working on novel ideas and sending short pieces to periodicals. He produced the first draughts of both his anti-war book Sword in the Darkness and his futuristic novel The Long Walk between 1966 and 1970; only the latter was published in 1979.

Recalling how his first book, Carrie, came to be, King says, "Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together." Originally meant for Cavalier, it was a short narrative, but King threw the initial three pages out. After his wife Tabitha found them and expressed interest in the next events, he took her advice and developed it into a novel. "You've got something here," she informed him. I really believe that you do." King's phone was unusable in 1973 when Carrie was selected for publication. King received a message from Doubleday editor William Thompson that said, "Carrie is now officially a Doubleday Book. A $2,500 advance was deducted from royalties. Well done, Kid! Bill, the future is ahead of you." The novel Carrie tells the narrative of Carrie White, a high school student who has latent telekinetic powers that she eventually develops as the story goes on, according to The Guardian. It's gory in more areas, violent in others, and affecting in some (Carrie's relationship with her nearly insanely devout mother being one that's particularly affected). The New York Times' review of Carrie stated that "King does more than tell a story. Being a teacher himself, he has insight into Carrie's thoughts as well as those of her peers. He is also well-versed in symbology, particularly blood symbolism."

While instructing high school pupils on Dracula, King pondered the possible outcomes of Old World vampires invading a little New England community. This served as the inspiration for Salem's Lot, dubbed "Peyton Place meets Dracula" by King. It was King's favorite book, he said in a couple of interviews in the 1980s. (He now states that his favorite book is Lisey's Story.) King's mother passed away from uterine cancer approximately when "Salem's Lot" came out. King moved to Boulder, Colorado, with his family following the death of his mother. He visited the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which served as the inspiration for the novel The Shining, which tells the story of an alcoholic writer his family who stay at a hotel throughout the winter. In 1975, after his family moved back to Auburn, Maine, King finished writing The Stand, a post-apocalyptic book about a pandemic and its aftermath. It took King the longest to write, and as far as he's concerned, "my long-time readers still seem to like the best." The Kings took a quick trip to England in 1977, bringing along Owen Philip, their youngest and third child. That autumn, they moved back to Maine, where King started working as a creative writing instructor at the University of Maine. He wrote his first factual book, Danse Macabre, based on his horror courses. He wrote a book called The Dead Zone in 1979 about a regular man who was given the power of second sight. Castle Rock, Maine, served as the setting for the first time in one of his novels.

1980s

In contrast to the horror literature that had made him renowned, King's collection of four novellas, Different Seasons, was released in 1982. "The final novella is a terrifying little gem, and each of the first three has its hypnotic moments," wrote Alan Cheuse. Four novellas were made into films: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption's The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Body's Stand by Me (1986), and Apt Pupil's 1998 cinematic adaptation. The Breathing Method, the fourth, took home the Best Short Fiction British Fantasy Award. King remembers, "I received the best evaluations I've ever received. It was at that moment that folks realized something wasn't quite as terrifying as they had initially believed."

Throughout the decade, King battled addiction and frequently wrote while under the influence of booze and narcotics; he claims he "barely remembers writing" Cujo. He released Christine in 1983. It is titled "A love triangle involving 17-year-old misfit Arnie Cunningham, his new girlfriend, and a haunted 1958 Plymouth Fury." Subsequently, in the same year, he released Pet Sematary, a book he had written in the late 1970s while living near a highway that, in the words of a neighbor, "used up a lot of animals." The youngsters in the neighborhood constructed a pet cemetery where they interred his daughter's dead cat. Beyond it, King envisioned a cemetery with the capacity to revive the dead partially. At first, he thought it was too upsetting to publish, but he brought it back to finish his Doubleday contract.

Skeleton Crew, a collection of short stories by King, which included "The Reach" and "The Mist," was released in 1985. "I would be questioned, 'What happened in your youth that made you want to write those dreadful things?'" he recollects." I was at a loss for a genuine response to that. I then had the idea, "Why don't you write a final exam on horror and include all the monsters that scared everyone as a child?" Add Frankenstein, the werewolf, the vampire, the mummy, and all the enormous monsters from the B-movies that ate up New York. Place them all inside." These elements came together to create the film it, which tells the story of a shape-shifting creature that haunts the Maine town of Derry and assumes the anxieties of its victims. He declared that he intended to "bring on all the monsters one last time...and call it It," and that he believed his writing on monsters was over. In 1987, it was awarded the August Derleth Award.

Originally written for his daughter, he released his fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon in 1987. In the same year, he released Misery, a novel about popular writer Paul Sheldon, who is kidnapped by his "number-one fan," Annie Wilkes, after suffering injuries in a car accident. King remembers that "Paul Sheldon turned out to be a good deal more resourceful than I initially thought, and his efforts to play Scheherazade and save his life gave me a chance to say some things about the redemptive power of writing I had long felt but never articulated." The first Bram Stoker Award was split between Swan Song, written by Robert R. Mc Cammon, and Misery. King claims that his struggles with addiction had an impact on the book: "My biggest admirer and drug problem was Annie. God, she was never one to want to go." The Tommy Knockers, "a forties-style science fiction tale," he says was inspired by his drug use, was released later in 1987. Following the publication of the book, King consented to receive addiction treatment after his wife organized an intervention. He released The Dark Half, a novel about an author whose literary alter ego takes on a life of its own, two years later. King acknowledges in the author's note, "I am indebted to the late Richard Bachman."

Style

King typically begins his stories with a "what-if" question. For example, in The Shining, he asks what would happen if an alcoholic writer became stuck with his family in a haunted hotel; in The Dead Zone, he asks what would happen if one could see into the future or travel back in time to change the course of history (11/22/63). "The situation comes first," the author writes. The characters follow, who are initially always featureless and flat. After I've made these mental adjustments, I start to tell the story. Though I have never required a group of characters to perform in a certain way, I frequently have a notion of how things might turn out. Quite the opposite-I want them to go about things their way. In a few cases, the result matches my visualization. Most of the time, though, it's something I never anticipated."

Joyce Carol Oates described King as "both a storyteller and an inventor of startling images and metaphors, which linger long in the memory." When the narrator of The Body recalls a boyhood clubhouse with a tin roof & rusty screen door, it is an example of King's imagery: "No matter what time of day you peered out that screen door, it looked like sunset... Inside the club, the rain felt like you were inside a steel drum from Jamaica." One of the main pleasures of fiction, both reading and writing, is the use of simile and other figurative language, according to King. A well-chosen comparison might bring us joy akin to running into an old friend among a group of strangers.

Ideas

In response to a question about whether fear was his primary theme, King stated, "Every life has its moments when you have to cope with something you can't understand like a doctor telling you you have cancer or receiving a prank call. Thus, the issue that unites all of us is the incursion of the extraordinary into everyday life and how we respond to it, regardless of whether we are discussing ghosts, vampires, or Nazi war criminals residing nearby. A lot more intrigues me than monsters, vampires, ghouls, and ghosts is what that demonstrates about our nature, how we relate with others, and the society we live in." Authors like Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones, adult Bill Denbrough in It, Jack Torrance in The Shining, and Ben Mears in Salem's Lot are just a few examples of the authors that King frequently casts as characters. He has gone so far as to break the fourth wall by putting himself in three of The Dark Tower's novels. This gives King the opportunity to explore themes related to authorship, such as the following: The Dark Half "is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his creative genius, the vampire within him, the part of him that only awakens to raise Cain when he writes," and Misery "is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his audience, which holds him prisoner and dictates what he writes, on pain of death," according to George Stade.

According to Joyce Carol Oates, "Small-town American life, often set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, is Stephen King's characteristic subject; tales of family life, married life, and the lives of children banded together by age, circumstance, as well as urgency, where parents prove obliging or helpless." The human heart is at odds with itself, hiding as the evil other. The 'gothic' imagination sharpens and clarifies the vicissitudes of 'real life' by magnifying them." Coming of age is a theme that King would revisit multiple times, most notably in Joyland and The Body.

Walter Mosley gave the following introduction to Stephen King during the National Book Awards: "Daily life is the frame that makes the picture," King once said. In my opinion, his dedication is to honoring and enabling the common man and woman as they purchase aspirin and manage cancer. He transforms the ordinary lives we lead into something extraordinary. He accepts our mistrust of our reality, lends credence to it, and then shows us that there is hope for rising above the mire. He assures us that despite our failures in life, we are still deserving of being the ones to dedicate our efforts to ensuring human survival." "Frank Norris, the author of McTeague, said something like this: 'What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter?'" King stated while accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. I never lied or truckled. I was honest when I said it. And for me, that's always been the main point. Even though the plot and the characters are fictional, I constantly have to question myself if what I've said accurately represents how actual people would act in a comparable circumstance."

Influences: According to King, "the two most important things you can do to become a writer are to write and read a lot." He stresses that effective description "begins with clear seeing ends with clear writing, the kind of writing that uses simple vocabulary and new images." I started reading Chandler, Hammett, and Ross Macdonald to start learning my lessons in this area. T. S. Eliot (those ragged claws scuttling across the ocean floor; those coffee spoons), as well as William Carlos Williams (white chickens, red wheelbarrow, the plums that were in the ice box, so sweet and so cold), may have given me even more respect for the power of succinct, descriptive language." Richard Matheson has been dubbed "the author who influenced me most" by King. Ray Bradbury, James M. Cain, Jack Finney, Joseph Payne Brennan, Elmore Leonard, Don Robertson, John D. MacDonald, and Thomas Williams are a few more authors and influencers. King frequently honors traditional horror tales by presenting them in a contemporary setting. He remembers that when he was writing "Salem's Lot," "I decided that I wanted to try to use the book partially as a form of literary homage," following in the footsteps of "classical" ghost story writers like Henry James, M. R. James, and Nathaniel Hawthorne-something Peter Straub had done in Ghost Story. Because of this, there is an intentional resemblance between my novel and Bram Stoker's Dracula. After a while, I felt as though I was playing a fascinating literary racquetball game, at least to me: Salem's Lot was the ball, as well as Dracula was the wall I kept hitting it against, waiting to see where and how it would bounce so I could hit it again.

Perception and impact

Critical Reviews

The way that King uses realistic detail has won him accolades. Editor Jeffrey Deaver stated in A Century of Great Suspense Stories: "Although many talented best-selling authors came before him, King brought realism to genre fiction more than anyone since John D. MacDonald." He has frequently said that Salem's Lot resembled "Peyton Place meets Dracula." And so it did. The intricate characterization, the perceptive and compassionate societal awareness, and the way the plot and character development interacted suggested that authors could breathe new life into tired topics like vampires. Before King, editors often gave their popular writers' attempts to create serious works the cold shoulder. They were informed, "Stuff like that gets in the way of the story." That's what has, in fact, made King so well-known and helped release the well-known figure from the confines of straightforward genre writing. His status is "master of masters." In his review of Bag of Bones, Daniel Mendelsohn stated, "You easily forget Stephen King's true gift is for the everyday since he is as generally recognized as America's maestro of otherworldly terrors. This book is about reanimation-the spirits, of course, but also Mike, and how he wants to re-enter the world of love and work after a protracted period of bereavement-a desire that King captures with a keen eye for the kind of subtle, poignant nuances that don't usually make for big-budget horror novels."

Many reviewers think that King's writing has improved with age. King is the subject of a chapter in S. T. Joshi's 2001 book The Modern Weird Tale, an overview of post-World War II horror literature. Joshi contends that King's best-known works are also his worst, characterizing them as largely overdone, irrational, sentimental, and prone to deus ex machina resolutions. Joshi contends that despite these complaints, King has been reducing the severity of his writing errors since Gerald's Game (1992), making works that are tighter, more credible, and better written.

The Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a lifetime achievement award, was given to King by the National Book Awards in 2003. A few members of the literary world disapproved of the honor: King's work was labeled as "non-literature" by former Simon Schuster CEO Richard E. Snyder, and critic Harold Bloom criticized the selection, saying it was "another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life." Stephen King was given the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution." Though maybe that's being too generous. I have previously called King a writer of penny dreadfuls. He and Edgar Allan Poe have nothing in common. What he is, book by book, paragraph by paragraph, and sentence by phrase, is a terribly inadequate writer."

King addressed the matter during his speech of acceptance: "Some people have expressed strong opinions about me receiving this medal. Some individuals believe it to be an incredibly terrible concept. Some people have expressed their opinion that it's a really fantastic idea. The majority of you present tonight are on my side, and you all know who you are and where you stand. That pleases me. However, I want to clarify that it kind of doesn't matter which side you were on. We are all brothers and sisters in that sense because those who speak up do so out of a passion for the book, the word, or the page. Please extend a hand to oneself." "I accept this award on behalf of such disparate writers as Elmore Leonard, Peter Straub, Nora Lofts, Jack Ketchum, whose real name is Dallas Mayr, Jodi Picoult, Greg Iles, John Grisham, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly, Pete Hamill and a dozen more," King said, arguing that the lines separating literary and popular fiction aren't as clear as we imagine. Past, present, and future National Book Award judges should read these authors; I believe the novels will introduce them to a whole new side of American literature. Just read them; you don't have to vote for them. My point is rather straightforward. If we keep our hearts and minds open, we can create bridges between the literary and the popular. I have attempted to do that with my wife's assistance. I'm about to give her the medal itself, as she'll make sure it doesn't get misplaced amid all the commotion." The National Book Award winner for that year, Shirley Hazzard, said, "I don't think giving us a reading list of those who are most read at this moment is much of a satisfaction." Her book, The Great Fire. Hazzard later admitted that she was not a reader of King.

When he received an honour at the National Book Awards, many people expressed fury, as if a well-known author couldn't be taken seriously, according to Roger Ebert. But I have overcome my own snobbery after discovering that his book On Writing offers more insightful and helpful observations about the craft than any other work since Strunk White's The Elements of Style.

Car crash and its aftermath

King was strolling down Maine State Route 5's shoulder in Lovell, Maine, on June 19, 1999, at approximately 4:30 p.m. King landed in a state of sadness on the ground approximately 14 feet (four meters) from the pavement of Route 5 when driver Bryan Edwin Smith was distracted by an uncontrolled dog moving in the rear of his minivan. At the time, witnesses reported the motorist was not intoxicated, speeding, or acting recklessly. However, early reports from Oxford County Sheriff Officer Matt Baker stated King was struck from behind. But Smith was later taken into custody and accused of aggravated assault and driving while intoxicated. He was given a suspended six-month sentence in county jail and a one-year license suspension after entering a guilty plea to the lesser charge of driving to endanger. According to King's book On Writing, he was walking north against the flow of traffic. A bright blue Dodge van passed King and then a woman driving a northbound automobile just before the collision occurred. The woman informed her passenger that she hoped "that guy in the van doesn't hit him" as the van looped from one side of the road to the other.

King was in excruciating pain, but he was cognizant enough to provide the constable with his family's phone numbers. He was taken to Bridgton's Northern Cumberland Hospital, and from there, he was transferred by air ambulance to Lewiston's Central Maine Medical Centre (CMMC). He remained at CMMC until July 9 due to his injuries, which included a fractured hip, multiple fractures to his right leg, a laceration on his scalp, and a collapsed lung. His leg's bones were so badly broken that medical professionals first thought about amputating it but ultimately decided to use an external fixator to stabilize the bones. King returned to work on On Writing in July following five surgeries in ten days and physical rehabilitation. Still, his hip remained broken, and he could only sit for forty minutes until the pain became excruciating. Smith's van was bought for $1,500 by King's attorney and two other people, allegedly to keep it off of eBay. King had fantasized about breaking the van, so he was disappointed when it was later smashed at a junkyard.

Charity Works

In addition to endowing scholarships in honor of another professor, Edward Holmes, King also provides funding for the National Poetry Foundation, which was led by his mentor and lecturer, Burton Hatlen. Mark Singer also points out Bangor's "most monumental testament to King's philanthropy", namely the "Shawn T. Mansfield Baseball Complex, dedicated six years ago in memory of the son of a Little League coach and friend of King's who died at fourteen of cerebral palsy." King has said he gives around $4 million a year "to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts". According to The Grantsmanship Centre, with approximately $2.8 million in awards annually, the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, chaired by King and his wife, is ranked sixth among charities in Maine in terms of average yearly contribution. The Wave Dancer Benefit was a public reading held in 2002 by King, Peter Straub, John Grisham, and Pat Conroy in order to raise money for actor & audiobook reader Frank Muller, who had suffered injuries in a motorbike accident. An audiobook of their reading was made available.

Through his radio station, the STK Foundation provided $70,000 in matching funds in November 2011 to assist families in need in Bangor, Maine, with their winter heating expenses. The children from Lewiston, Maine's Farwell Elementary School, were working on two novels for a number of years until the COVID-19 outbreak in Maine halted it. In February 2021, the King's Foundation gave $6,500 to help the children publish their novels.