The Stephen King Companion
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Thirty years ago I asked
you to stand by me, and you have.
This one’s for you, Mary.
Courtesy of Tim Kirk
A NOTE TO THE READER
This book is the third iteration of The Stephen King Companion. The first edition was published in 1989; the second, in 1995; and this third, in 2015, owing to King’s prolific output during the past twenty years.
In 1989, as reported to Time magazine, King’s publishers celebrated the fact that King had published “20-odd books” that sold 60 million copies earning him 20 million. But by the end of 2015, King will have published, according to his Web site, 74 books (56 novels, 7 nonfiction, and 11 story collections) that have sold an estimated 350 million copies (biography.com).
But his real life is not about the fame or the fortune; it’s all about storytelling.
This book celebrates his storytelling, from the early days when he was self-publishing in a few dozen copies in rural Maine, to Revival, which reached millions of readers worldwide.
My approach to the book is clearly pop culture, not academic; in other words, a college professor, I ain’t. I’ve arranged the contents chronologically and in context, so you’ll get a sense of his life and times; the text herein is spiced with interviews, anecdotes, factoids, and commentary by important figures in the King community. For a retrospective book like this, a wide range of voices is essential.
Because King’s early years in Durham and in college are critical to understanding him and his work, I’ve devoted considerable space to both, to lay the necessary groundwork for the discussions of the books that follow. Consider both skeleton keys to unlocking King’s fiction.
This book is an overview covering four decades, written with King’s new fans in mind, especially younger readers who watched Under the Dome on TV or picked up his latest novel and wondered, Who is this guy, and what else has this guy written?
This book answers that question. But despite its length, it could have been far longer had space not been a consideration: Writing about Stephen’s career requires king-size books: Stephen Spignesi’s 1991 The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia is 780 letter-sized pages, and Robin Furth’s Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance (revised and updated in 2012) runs 688 pages.
Given his popularity and visibility, King will assuredly be the subject of many more books in the years to come.
The text to this book is supplemented by artwork by Michael Whelan and Glenn Chadbourne, and by photos from my files taken since 1988. Both the art and photos herein give a dimension to this book that text alone cannot achieve.
By the way, there is some unavoidable duplication of text in this book because this is a companion book with both original and reprinted material.
One final note: Just as I finished up this book, Rocky Wood—a well-regarded and highly respected King critic—passed on. Unlike some others, Rocky always gave credit when due, and his sudden departure is an immeasurable loss. As Stephen King wrote, Rocky, you rock.
Rock on.
George Beahm
Writers are exorcists of their own demons.
—MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
Now the simple fact of horror fiction in whatever medium you choose … the bedrock of horror fiction, we might say, is simply this: you gotta scare the audience. Sooner or later you gotta put on the gruesome mask and go booga-booga.
—STEPHEN KING, Danse Macabre
FOREWORD
THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER
STEPHEN J. SPIGNESI
This introduction is dedicated to the memory of Rocky Wood
In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
—FRANCIS BACON
It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.
—STEPHEN KING, WOLVES OF THE CALLA
Is writing nature or nurture?
Is the ability to write brilliantly inherent? Is it in the genes? Or is it just a craft that one gets better at with hard work?
Lately, whenever I speak about Stephen King in different venues, I read aloud a brief excerpt from the writings of Joe Hill, Stephen King’s eldest son. I then ask the audience if they believe that Stephen King wrote what they just heard.
King reading from “The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan” for an event with JK Rowling and John Irving in NYC, August 1-2, 2006.
The majority of times, they say yes.
King himself was once asked what would happen to his unfinished works if he unexpectedly, y’know, took a ride on a pale horse. His response was revealing, and boiled down to “Joe could finish them.”
Is it a coincidence that the writers Stephen King and Tabitha King gave birth to a son who ended up being a writer and, more important, a writer whose work reads like that of his father’s?
I don’t think so.
And let us not overlook the fact that their other children are also writers. Owen is a novelist; Naomi writes essays and sermons.
I teach composition at the university level, and I ceaselessly emphasize to my students that writing is, indeed, a craft that can be learned. We wouldn’t attempt to wire a house without learning the skills of an electrician. Language skills and rules; syntax and diction guidelines; and, of course, a voluminous vocabulary need to be learned and fully absorbed before we can use these tools effectively. This is sadly proved by reading the writings of people who may have a terrific imagination, but who never troubled to acquire the fundamentals of grammar and writing. As Irving Berlin said, “Talent is only a starting point.” And King himself weighs in on this in Danse Macabre: “Talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
That said, I also tell my students that no teacher can teach imagination. Creativity cannot be learned from a book, but—and this is key—if you have it, it can be cultivated.
In Breaking Bad, Gale Boetticher, probably without intent, made this exact point when he recited the Walt Whitman poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” to Walter White:
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Knowledge of the empirical world is one thing; an understanding of the human heart is quite another.
The c
reative among us can see beyond the “proofs,” the “charts” and “diagrams”; some can see truth. And then they can create.
And that brings me to Stephen King. Aside from his prolificness (his output amazes and makes most writers’ eyes turn green), his ability to take the classic and timeworn writer’s cliché What if? and create compelling characters and narratives is, oftentimes, a beautiful and wondrous melding of inspiration and creativity, as well as an obvious master’s-level proficiency of the English language.
The first Stephen King book I ever read was The Shining. I finished it, and then rhetorically asked myself, Did I really just read what might be one of the all-time greatest American novels, written while the author was still in his mid to late twenties? Who the hell is Stephen King? (And, yes, I can be prolix when I’m talking to myself rhetorically, truth be told.)
After The Shining, I went back and read Carrie and ’Salem’s Lot. And in 1981, I read Danse Macabre, in which King talks about the three levels of fear: terror, horror, gross-out.
As you can tell, I was hooked, and I have continued to be hooked going on forty years now.
A U.K. review of Revival nailed the King appeal:
Despite the fact that he could comfortably rest on his laurels as the world’s most successful writer of horror fiction, Stephen King continues to demonstrate that his compulsion to entertain remains firmly in place—a fact for which his legion of admirers is extremely grateful. Once more … King is not content simply to repeat himself, and he still possesses the ability to conjure up utterly original scenarios dedicated to his primary purpose: chilling the blood of the reader.
Chilled blood? Where do I sign up? (We should have jackets made.)
The three elements of fear are deep in King’s wheelhouse.
One of the most terrifying scenes King ever wrote was the Lincoln Tunnel scene in The Stand. Just describing it can bring chills: The Lincoln Tunnel is filled with cars containing the corpses of the victims of Captain Trips. Larry Underwood enters this black-as-pitch realm of the dead … and suddenly hears a car door open. Oh, yes.
And can there be a more horrifying scene than little Gage Creed getting pureed by a tractor-trailer after wandering into the middle of the road in Pet Sematary? Oh, no.
And when we talk gross-out, there are a couple that make the grade, so to speak. The cockroach scene in “They’re Creeping Up on You,” from Creepshow, and the “suicide by garbage disposal” scene in Firestarter. (The ax/blowtorch scene in Misery is a seriously close runner-up.) Oh, gag.
This profound ability to frighten is why King has long worn (sometimes uneasily) the mantle of “Master of the Macabre,” “King of Horror,” or “America’s Bogeyman.”
But the truth is that King is much more than just a horror writer. In an October 2013 article in The New Yorker titled “What Stephen King Isn’t,” Joshua Rothman lays out the truth we serious fans and Constant Readers (including George Beahm, the author of this tome) have known for decades: What Stephen King isn’t is just a horror writer.
My good friend George Beahm and I have now come full circle. I was working on my Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia1 in the mid-eighties when George was writing the first Stephen King Companion, and they came out around the same time.
George and I were pioneers. We both recognized very early on that Stephen King was a writer for the ages, and that he was, as The New Yorker seemed to discover twenty-five years later, more than just a horror writer.
I recently spoke about Stephen King at the university where I teach, and there was a very big turnout. The university librarian, in her thank-you note to me, commented on the many hands that went up for the Q&A session at the end of my talk. There were people of all ages at the talk, but most were students (18–21 years of age), and they were the ones asking the questions. Here’s a funny incident: a young man asked me “Where does Stephen King get his ideas?” to which I replied, “Congratulations! You win the prize for asking the question King gets, and hates, the most!” We all laughed, but it’s true. So I said that King, when asked the question, often replies, “Utica,” but then I explained seriously that King is a master at the writer’s classic What if? question. And then I said, “For example, what if Annie Wilkes from Misery suddenly burst through that library door swinging an ax?” King is able to take that What if? scenario and run with it. (And more than a few heads turned to look uneasily at the library door. That was when I knew I had achieved my mission.)
I think an important point to keep in mind is that George and I, as well as all our colleagues who write books about Stephen King and his work, are writing because King’s Constant Readers want to know more. This is not up for debate. They want insights, explications, details, discussions, and other info they don’t possess about King, his writings, and, now, the other published writers in his family. They want expert opinion on the film adaptations; they want conversations and debates; they want to stay in the Stephen King universe just a little bit longer.
Books like The Stephen King Companion and other King-focused volumes remind me somewhat of the special features on DVDs for TV shows and movies. We watch an episode (or 10!), and when we’re done, we want to know more; we want to experience more. This is why the “behind the scenes” features and “making of” features on DVDs are incredibly popular.
Frankly, there are not many popular writers whose work warrants this kind of attention, whose audience wants more. If there were, there would be companion books, encyclopedias, “lost works” books, quiz books, and all other manner of tomes about these writers. For the most part, people read a novel, and then they either put it on the shelf, give it away, or donate it. People rarely do this with Stephen King books. In fact, with King, it’s the exact opposite: If you ask a roomful of King fans, “How many of you have more than one copy of many of your King books?” a multitude of hands would go up.
This is amazing, and mostly unique to King.
Will King’s work survive? It’s a fair question. And the answer is, the best of it, most certainly. Will readers still be reading King fifty years from now? Again, certainly. Books like The Stand, It, Misery, The Shining, ’Salem’s Lot, Revival, and many others do not simply go away. They become part of the culture of new generations. Just like the Beatles. (I have eighteen-year-old students who are Beatles authorities.)
And how do these young people get exposed to King and the Fab Four?
Their parents.
Many college-age students today grew up in homes with Stephen King books and Beatles CDs.
And thus the word is spread to younger generations, and the torch is passed.
A book like the one you’re holding contributes to spreading the word that Stephen King rocks. As did the Beatles, and as did Walt Whitman.
The road goes ever on.
Cover to Sunday supplement, USA Weekend, with King cover story, “35 Scary Years with Stephen King.”
1 Editor’s note: Stephen Spignesi’s The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia was published in two editions. The first, from Popular Culture Ink, was titled The Shape Under the Sheet: The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia; the second, from Contemporary Books, was simply titled The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia. Both were published in 1991. Throughout this book, I refer to Spignesi’s with its simplified title.
INTRODUCTION
THE GOLDEN YEARS
GEORGE BEAHM
I’m closing in on sixty-two. I might have ten productive years left, twenty if I’m lucky and don’t get hit by any more minivans.
—STEPHEN KING, FROM HIS COLUMN, “THE POP OF KING,” ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, JULY 24, 2009
TIME ON MY SIDE
Although King planned to take a break in 2014, he changed his mind and hit the road to promote Revival in November. At an age when most people are retired and enjoying their golden years, King is still hammering down the highway, pedal flat down to the metal. In recent years, he’s settled in on publishing two books annually.
King turne
d sixty-eight on September 21, 2015. He shows no signs of slowing down, much less retiring, which is good news for his millions of fans, whose worst nightmare is that in his golden years he’s going to put down the pen, or turn off the computer, and tend to his garden as did Sherlock Holmes.
King’s forty-year-long writing career—encompassing poetry, screenplays, nonfiction, short fiction, and book-length fiction—staggers the imagination. From his body of work, bibliographies and concordances of his oeuvre have been compiled, as have critical studies of his fiction and nonfiction, and even entire books on single aspects of his output.
Though his life had nearly been cut short by a reckless driver who hit him with a minivan, King miraculously survived, endured a painful recovery, and slowly picked up where he left off. As King realized, nothing can protect you from the randomness of the universe—in his case, a fool behind a wheel who drove on the shoulder of the road where King had gone for an afternoon walk.
King’s near-death experience shook him up. As King vividly recounted in his most personal and poignant essay, in On Writing, he came close to crossing over:
I don’t want to die. I love my wife, my kids, my afternoon walks by the lake. I also love to write; I have a book on writing that’s sitting back home on my desk, half-finished. I don’t want to die, and as I lie in the helicopter looking out at the bright blue summer sky, I realize that I am actually lying in death’s doorway. Someone is going to pull me one way or the other pretty soon; it’s mostly out of my hands.
King fortuitously survived, but his sobering experience understandably affected him deeply, and in his subsequent fiction, he increasingly ponders the greatest mystery of all: What lies beyond this world? What happens when you shuck your mortal coil and cross over?