The lovable horrormeister

There are several endearing things about Stephen King. When he suspects there's a monster in the closet he opens the door to face it head on. His stories, even when they focus on boys and men, often include a brave and resourceful woman, or a little girl, as in the 1999 The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. A few of his novels could well be considered feminist.

With a new book just out from Simon & Schuster,UR, first available only on the Kindle e-reader, and the Pocket Books re-issue of the 1980 Danse Macabre it's a good time to look at this very prolific and very successful author. UR expands his suspicion (shared by many of us) that our technological toys have a dark side - the e-book reader opens worlds we didn't suspect and don't much like. It's not a new idea; Lewis Carroll did much the same; Alice's adventures in Wonderland were not entirely pleasant.
He has done it before with cars (Christine and From a Buick 8), household appliances (Maximum Overdrive), the cell phone (Cell) and exercise equipment (Stationary Bike). (Why he hasn't treated the home computer as a possible source of unspeakable horror is beyond me.)

Danse Macabre, a long-time favorite of mine, explores the horror theme in folktales and mythology for a University of Maine class on "Themes in Supernatural Literature." Pocket Books will publish a reprint with a 2010 foreword on February 23. It's one of the most accessible and entertaining treatments of the subject, and certainly worth reading now when our television and movie screens drip with the gore of romanticized werewolves, zombies and vampires.

King has been derided by many critics and sneered at both by literary authors whose work wasn't doing so well and by timid readers who preferred romantic fairy tales with guaranteed happy endings.

He doesn't always hit the bull's-eye, and sometimes the quality is all over the place in the same book. His work often seems to be produced by two distinct personalities, one a kid enamored of ripping yarns, the other a thoughtful, even spiritual, adult. It's a topic he has dealt with in Duma Key, The Dark Half and in his autobiographical On Writing, in which he discusses his years of addiction to drugs and booze.

In The Dark Half his writer protagonist is forced to confront his own demons and darkness. In Duma Key a construction worker loses his right arm, and gains artistic and psychic abilities which would be surprising anywhere but in a King book. Both have mesmerizing sections on the sources of creativity, as well as passages I'd just as soon skip on horrors and creepy crawlies. That's not because they scare me – they don't, in fact, I usually find them pretty amusing – but because they seem shallow next to his explorations of relationships and the psyche.
The latter gives us much of the weight of the horrific history of a pioneer Florida family, and some far more cheerful little gems on creation, titled How to Draw a Picture. They could just as well be called How to Write, or How to Live. Samples:
I: “Start with a blank surface.
IV: “Start with what you know, then reinvent it.”
XI: “Don't quit until the picture's complete. . . . Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.”

Find lots more at his website, http://www.stephenking.com/index.html