A Brief Guide to Stephen King

by Paul Simpson

  ‘It was a book that had one bad guy that really wanted to go off the reservation, and I wouldn’t let him. I made him do what I wanted. And as a result, it was tough for me to believe it. And if I can’t believe some of these things, I can’t expect readers to believe them because, let’s face it, they’re pretty out there anyway.’

  And yet it was published in 1994, with King going on a long road trip to promote it, driving around America on a ten-city tour from Vermont to California on his Harley motorcycle to help independent bookstores who were suffering as a result of discounting at the major chain stores. King had left the manuscript alone for some time, and then, as happened when he had his breakthrough on The Stand, when he realized what needed altering, he was able to complete the revisions in a white heat. After two comparatively short books (at least by his standards), Insomnia was another of King’s ‘longer, shaggier’ novels, a description coined by the New York Times’ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, who noted acerbically that ‘the most elusive spectre in this story is a fresh idea or an original turn of phrase’.

  There are links with IT, as well as Pet Sematary and the later Bag of Bones, but the most important connections are with the ‘Dark Tower’ series, of which the first three books had already appeared. Many of the key principles are set out here – the Four Constants of existence: life, death, the Random, and the Purpose; the different forms of life: short-timers, long-timers (enhanced mortals) and all-timers (immortals), all of whom are part of the Tower of Existence, known to Roland as the Dark Tower. The concept of the ka, the Great Wheel of Being, and a ka-tet are all mentioned, and are key to the ‘Dark Tower’ series. The relevance of Patrick Danville becomes clear in the final book, The Dark Tower.

  Contrary to the opinions of a couple of bloggers, Christopher Nolan’s film Insomnia has absolutely nothing to do with Stephen King’s story. A screenplay was prepared for producer Mark Carliner in the period leading up to King’s original TV miniseries Storm of the Century, but King wasn’t happy with it: ‘It didn’t have any pop to it,’ he told Michael Rowe in Fangoria. There was a report on 1 July 2007 that Rob Schmidt, the director of the horror movie Wrong Turn, had announced at a convention that he was directing an adaptation. According to some sources, he had explained that Stan Winston was contracted to provide effects work. Like many other such announcements, it was premature; no film is currently in development. Given its scale, a miniseries would seem a more appropriate format.

  Rose Madder (Viking, June 1995)

  Rosie Daniels has had enough. After suffering for years from beatings inflicted by her cop husband Norman, one of which causes her to miscarry at four months, she decides to leave him. Taking his bank card, she departs for a big city, where she is helped to find a women’s shelter. Eventually she gets an apartment and a job at a hotel. When she discovers her engagement ring is worthless, she trades it for a painting of a woman in a rose madder-coloured gown. Her luck seems to change: a chance meeting gets her a job reading audiobooks, and she begins a relationship with the pawnshop owner where she traded the ring.

  The painting is a portal to another world, and Rose travels through it, meeting a woman called Dorcas, a ‘twinner’ of Wendy Yarrow, whom Norman was accused of attacking some years earlier. She also meets the woman in the painting, whom she names Rose Madder, partly because of her temperament. She helps Rose to recover her baby from Erinyes, a one-eyed bull who lives in a labyrinth. Rose promises to repay her.

  When Norman finally tracks Rosie down, killing and maiming various people along the way, Rosie manages to trick him into entering the painting, where he is killed by Rose Madder. As the years go by, Rosie realizes that she has some of Rose’s violence inherent in her, and plants some magic seeds that Rose gave her. The tree that grows from these is beautiful but deadly, and Rose is able to expunge her anger when she visits it.

  In many ways, Rose Madder combines the best of King’s writing styles to date – the female-oriented look at spousal abuse and liberation from Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne, with the grander mythic scale of stories like IT. Although there are a few links to the ‘Dark Tower’ novels (Rose and Dorcas both make references to the City of Lud, as well as the idea of ka), they are nowhere near as important to the story as they were in Insomnia. In fact, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland, as well as the legend of the Minotaur are far more relevant. (There are also links to The Regulators and Desperation, as well a mention of Paul Sheldon’s novels.)

  Not everyone approved of this change of pace: ‘When did Stephen King stop being scary?’ Entertainment Weekly demanded, giving the book a very low grade, with Mark Harris adding: ‘I miss the accomplished stories King told when he didn’t mind playing dirty’. The New York Times was ‘a little uneasy by how much [Mr King] seems to relish being inside the head of his racist, misogynist, psychopathic villain’ but noted that ‘Norman’s insane misogyny is balanced by a sensitive portrayal of the way battered women recover their self-respect’.

  King himself described Rose Madder and its predecessor Insomnia as ‘stiff, trying-too-hard novels’ and ‘not particularly inspiring’, blaming this on the fact that they were ‘plotted novels’ in On Writing. In a detailed interview with the Paris Review in 1998, he noted that he’d ‘had bad books. I think Rose Madder fits in that category, because it never really took off. I felt like I had to force that one.’ Even a decade after publication, he was still hard on it: ‘Sometimes I feel like a baseball player in that some books feel like singles and some books feel like doubles and every so often you get a Rose Madder, which feels like a pop out,’ he told fellow author John Connolly. Asked during an online interview in June 2013 if he would ‘unpublish’ any of his work and redo it, he said no, ‘Probably not even Rose Madder, which has always seemed less than successful to me’.

  Around the turn of the millennium, cable TV network HBO was interested in an adaptation, but nothing came of it. However, according to a report in trade paper Variety, Joni Sighvatson’s Palomar Pictures launched a partnership with Grosvenor Park at the American Film Market in November 2011, with an adaptation of Rose Madder at the heart of their plans. The screenplay was being prepared by Naomi Sheridan, best known for the movie In America, and production on this, and the other two films announced, was meant to start within eighteen months. As of July 2013, however, none of them had gone in front of the camera.

  The Green Mile (Signet Books March – August 1996; May 1997 (complete)

  Comprising: The Two Dead Girls; The Mouse on the Mile; Coffey’s Hands; The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix; Night Journey; Coffey on the Mile

  In 1932, Paul Edgecombe is block supervisor on the death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary, nicknamed ‘The Green Mile’ after the colour of the flooring – as he later recounts to fellow resident at the Georgia Pines nursing home, Elaine Connolly. One of the new arrivals is John Coffey, a huge black man convicted of raping and murdering two young white girls. Coffey is the epitome of a gentle giant, and apparently has a gift of healing, which he uses to cure Edgecombe of a urinary tract infection, and later, the warden’s wife, Melinda Moores, of a brain tumour. He is even able to resurrect a small mouse, Mr Jingles, after he is stepped on by sadistic guard Percy Wetmore, the nephew of the governor’s wife.

  Wetmore makes life hell for everyone, staff and prisoners alike. After the guard deliberately ensures that one of the convicts suffers an agonizing death when he is allowed to supervise an execution, Coffey passes the sickness he has taken out of Mrs Moores into him, whereupon Wetmore goes insane, shooting William Wharton, one of the death-row inmates, and then entering a catatonic state.

  Edgecombe is sure that Coffey is not guilty, and learns that Wharton was the real killer. However, Coffey is ready for death, and Edgecombe supervises his execution. Everyone Coffey heals lives for an extended time: Mr Jingles survives sixty-four years, and Edgecombe himself wonders how long he might continue to live.

  Serial novels don’t
work – at least, that seemed to be the accepted wisdom when Stephen King announced that his next project would be released in six monthly parts – a suggestion from his British publisher, according to a New York Times review. It’s a tradition, though, that stretches back as far as Charles Dickens and beyond, and there was no denying that King was capable of writing the sort of story that would keep bringing his readers back to bookstores on a regular basis. As King told readers on his website in 2000: ‘the experiment was a roaring commercial success’ with all six instalments on the New York Times bestsellers list at the same time – as a result, they changed how they operated, so that in future only one instalment would qualify.

  As well as cocking a snook at those who flip to the last page of a book to see how it turns out, King saw the writing of The Green Mile as a challenge to himself. He knew there was no margin for error, particularly since the first two instalments were already in print before he completed work on the last. He told George Beacham that he ‘wrote like a madman, trying to keep up with the crazy publishing schedule and at the same time trying to craft the book so that each part would have its own mini-climax, hoping that everything would fit, and knowing I would be hung if it didn’t’. He also admitted to his fans in an AOL chat that he wanted to ‘stay dangerous, and that means taking risks’.

  King was not impressed with those who accused him of racism for making Coffey black but only allowing him to use his powers to help white people. The reason he made Coffey black in a story set in 1932 was to ensure that ‘he was going to burn . . . It was completely plot-driven and had nothing to do with black or white’, he told Tony Magistrale. ‘That puts him in a situation where the minute he gets caught with those two little blond girls in his arms, he’s a doomed man.’ The author also freely admits that Coffey is a black Christ figure (note his initials). ‘By doing good for white people . . . he is basically exhibiting his saintliness,’ King explained. The story is about the resilience of the human spirit, even under the most difficult circumstances, such as Death Row. ‘The more difficult that life becomes,’ he pointed out in a publicity interview for the movie, ‘the more the human spirit has a chance to shine.’

  There’s a nice in-joke within the story, with two guards working on E Block named ‘Harry’ and ‘Dean Stanton’ – put together making the name of the veteran character actor who played the police officer in John Carpenter’s movie of Christine. The omnibus version corrects a couple of minor errors that slipped through the rapid production process on the separate volumes, and while the individual books were a great experience at the time, the story perhaps works better in its complete format.

  King told Frank Darabont the idea behind The Green Mile long before the first book was published, and when the film director expressed his interest, King made it clear that the rights were his should he want them. Darabont wrote and directed a three-hour-long adaptation of the six-volume story for the big screen in 1999, with Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey, and Tom Hanks playing Paul Edgecombe. Harry Dean Stanton appeared as a character named Toot-Toot. Some minor changes were made – the date was moved forward to 1935 to allow the use of footage from the movie Top Hat – but Darabont remained faithful both to King’s text and his message. King has often been critical of the movies based on his work, but he is equally blunt about Darabont’s film: ‘I was delighted with The Green Mile.’

  Desperation (Viking Press, September 1996)/The Regulators (Dutton Press, September 1996)

  In Stephen King’s Desperation, Nevada cop Collie Entragian is not the sort of person you want to meet on a dark night – or, indeed, in broad daylight, as Peter and Mary Jackson, and the Carver family learn to their cost. Entragian has been possessed by an ancient evil, Tak, which has been released from its prison within the China Pit mineshaft by the Desperation Mining Company. Entragian murders Peter Jackson – he has already been responsible for the deaths of young Kirstin Carver, as well as nearly everyone else in the mining community of Desperation – and the few survivors need a miracle. And since Kristin’s twelve-year-old brother David Carver has a hotline to God (and is even able to perform the odd miracle), they may be in luck.

  Writer Johnny Marinville arrives in town on his motorbike and is also arrested and thrown in jail with the Jacksons and the Carvers, but he has two friends – his assistant Steve and a hitchhiker, Cynthia – nearby who can help. Tak takes over David’s mother Ellen Carver’s body since Entragian’s is collapsing, but the others use the opportunity of his absence to escape and hide in the movie theatre, joined by Steve, Cynthia and another survivor, Audrey Wyler (who is really controlled remotely by Tak). David tells them that God needs them to re-imprison Tak, and after ‘Ellen’ grabs Mary, they decide to face Tak at the mine. David’s father Ralph is killed, and Johnny Marinville sacrifices himself to save the day. David, Mary, Steve and Cynthia escape from Desperation.

  Richard Bachman’s The Regulators is set in Wentworth, Ohio where Tak has been able to take over Audrey Wyler’s nephew, a young autistic boy named Seth Garin whose parents were killed in a drive-by shooting when travelling through the mining community of Desperation, Nevada. When a similar incident occurs in Poplar Street, everyone hides as reality starts to warp, then unusual red vans appear, whose drivers start killing people, including Mary Jackson. The survivors – including former author Johnny Marinville – congregate in two different houses where they try to piece together what is happening.

  Tak uses Seth’s mind to turn Poplar Street into a Western town: the boy is a fan of a violent Western film, The Regulators, as well as classic TV shows such as Bonanza and The Rifleman, and a sci-fi cartoon, MotoKops 2200, which is where the red vans derived from. The only time that he releases control of Seth is when he defecates. Seth is then able to communicate with his aunt Audrey, and together they plan to kill Tak.

  Various residents of the street fall victim either to Tak’s attempts at mind control, or the hit squad of Regulators that he uses to patrol the street. Others are killed inadvertently by their neighbours as they try to escape, or by creatures thought up by Tak/Seth. Seth effectively commits suicide by getting someone to shoot his body and both he and Audrey become ghosts haunting a place special to his aunt. After Tak tries to take over another resident, Cammie Reed, he isn’t able to maintain control, and her body explodes, leaving Tak apparently dead. Johnny and the few other survivors resume their lives as everything returns to normal.

  This highly unusual combination of novels – whose links were emphasized by the single cover illustration split between the first editions of the American hardback (although unfortunately never used for British versions) – act as distorted mirror images of each other. Characters who are protagonists in one book become antagonists in the other; the ages and relationships of the Carver family are reversed between books. After reading Desperation, no one expects Collie Entragian to be one of the good guys in The Regulators, but he is. The only real constant is Tak, and his links to the mineshaft in Desperation, Nevada. As King explained in an interview with Joseph B. Mauceri: ‘In a way The Regulators and Desperation are really different books, however, what makes them interesting isn’t the differences but the similarities.’ He regularly compared his characters with repertory theatre: ‘Think of the same troupe of actors performing King Lear one night and Bus Stop the next.’

  Desperation was initially inspired by a trip King made across the Nevada desert in 1991 in his daughter Naomi’s car. As he drove through the seemingly abandoned town of Ruth, an Internal Voice that King often talks about began talking to him. As King thought: ‘They’re all dead . . . who killed them?’, the Voice replied, ‘The sheriff killed them all.’

  The use of God almost as a character within the story attracted some criticism, to King’s surprise, since such readers accepted the idea of ‘demons, golems, werewolves and you name it’ without turning a hair. If discussion of a deity who could ‘take sardines and crackers and turn it into loaves and fishes’ caused them a problem, then
maybe he was doing his job as a suspense and horror writer properly and getting beneath the skin.

  As far as King was concerned, using God in this way was what made the book work. ‘What if you treat God and the accoutrements of God with as much belief, awe and detail as novelists do the “evil” part of it?’ he wondered. This didn’t mean that he was going to show a fluffy, happy God – King’s God is an Old Testament deity, who is cruel. ‘The myths are difficult and suggest a difficult moral path through life,’ he explained in 2008, ‘and . . . they are ultimately more fruitful and more earth-friendly than the god of technology, the god of the microchip, the god of the cellphone.’ The following year, looking back at the novel for Time, he was even more explicit: ‘I really wanted to give God his due in this book. So often, in novels of the supernatural, God is a sort of kryptonite substance, or like holy water to a vampire. You just bring on God, and you say “in his name”, and the evil thing disappears. But God as a real force in human lives is a lot more complex than that. And I wanted to say that in Desperation. God doesn’t always let the good guys win.’

  The Regulators was based on an idea that King had some years earlier. In the late 1970s, he had penned a screenplay called ‘The Shotgunners’ which he showed to legendary Western director Sam Peckinpah at a meeting organized by King’s then-agent Kirby Macauley. ‘It was one of these feverish things that I’d written in about a week,’ King told Mauceri. ‘I really liked it but there was no interest in it. Sam read it, liked it a lot and suggested some things for the script that were really interesting. I thought that I could go back and do a second draft. Unfortunately, Sam died about three months later [in December 1984] and I never worked on the script.’ The level of violence in the story, while not as uncommon for a Bachman novel as a King story, was appropriate for a tale with such a genesis.