Stephen King is a
contemporary author of horror fiction that includes science fiction
and fantasy genre, whose books have sold more than 350 million copies
and he continues to write more. Many of those stories became
adaptations of films, television movies, and comic books. To date, he
has written fifty novels that include early works written under a pen
name Richard
Bachman (seven books) and five non-fiction titles. He has
written 200 short stories that have been put together to make nine
collections. Most of his stories occur in his home state of Maine. He will go down in the history of American literature in the ranks of Poe and Lovecraft; along with the Gothic horror style of Anne Rice. He is well-known in the academic world of literature and has taught university classes and given lectures. His renown is international. I have a complete collection of his works that I passed on to his family; and despite his skewered look at the liberties of the Second Amendment, I admire him as a writer and intellect.
King has won
several awards: Bram
Stoker Awards, World
Fantasy Awards, British
Fantasy Society Awards. His novella The
Way Station was nominated for a Nebula
Award and a short story The
Man in the Black Suit received the O.
Henry Award. The National
Book Foundation awarded him the Medal
for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003. In
2004 he received the World
Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, in 2007, the Canadian
Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Grand
Master Award from the Mystery
Writers of America in 2007.
Stephen Edwin King was born on
September 21st, 1949 (two months older than I am) whose father (Donald Edwin King) was
a merchant seaman from Indiana and his mother, Nellie Ruth Pillsbury
[King] was born in Maine where they married and Stephen was born. When
Stephen was two years old, his father left to buy a pack of
cigarettes and never came back, leaving his mother to raise him and
an adopted older brother, David. The family moved to De Pere,
Wisconsin, then Fort Wayne, Indiana, and to Stratford, Connecticut.
When Stephen was eleven, the family returned to Maine in Durham,
where Ruth King cared for her parents until their deaths. She then
became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally
challenged, raising her sons as Methodists.
When Stephen was a child, he witnessed
one of his friends get killed by a moving train, and he returned home
in such a state of stuck he was speechless. In fact, it was only
later that Stephen's mother learned about his friend's death. King
made no mention of this traumatic experience in his memoir On
Writing (2000). However, he did write a short story entitled
The Body later that involved a death by getting hit by a
train, which was the basis for the film Stand By Me.
In the non-fiction book, Danse
Macabre (1981), he provided details of what inspired his
desire to write horror fiction in a chapter entitled An Annoying
Autobiographical Pause. His inspiration, he wrote, occurred while
browsing through an attic with his elder brother, where King found a
paperback version of H.P. Lovecraft collection of short
stories that belonged to his father.
As a teenager, Stephen was an avid
reader of EC's
horror comics that included Tales
from the Crypt, which he later paid tribute in his screenplay
for Creepshow.
The first of his stories published was
I Was a Teenage Grave Robber.
In 1966, King studied English at the
University of Maine and graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in
English. The same year his daughter Naomi Rachel King was born. He
took part in a writing workshop and took odd jobs to pay for his
education that included an industrial laundry. His first professional
short story The Glass Floor, was published in 1967.
King earned a certificate to teach high
school when he left the university, but could not find a teaching
post that was open. He supplemented his labor wages by selling short
stories to magazines like the Cavalier.
Many of those short stories were put into an anthology entitled Night
Shift. In 1971, Stephen married Tabitha
Spruce, who had been a fellow student at the University of
Maine, a year after Naomi was born. In the fall of 1971, King was
hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Massachusetts and he
continued to contribute short stories to magazines while working on
ideas for novels. During this time he began to drink heavily, which
would continue for more than ten years.
In 1973, he wrote his first novel,
Carrie,
accepted by Doubleday.
His first draft ended up in the trash, but his wife, Tabitha,
retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to complete it. He
received a $2,500 advance. Later King's paperback rights would earn
$400,000. Because of King's mother being seriously ill, he and his
family moved to southern Maine. It was during this time that he wrote
Jerusalem's Lot, which was changed later to Salem's
Lot, published in 1975. King's mother died of uterine cancer
in 1974. King's drinking problem continued and he stated that he was
drunk when he delivered the eulogy at his mother's funeral.
After his mother's funeral, King and
family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where King wrote The
Shining (published 1977). The family returned to Maine in
1975, where King completed his fourth novel entitled The
Stand, published in 1978. In 1977, Owen Phillip was
born, his third and last child, during which time the family visited
England, returning to Maine in the fall, where Stephen began teaching
creative writing at the University of Maine. He has lived
there ever since, as a primary residence.
In 1985, King wrote a series of stories
for the comic book medium, whose profits were donated to assist
victims of the famine in Africa. In 1986 he wrote Batman
No. 400, an anniversary issue.
In the 1970s, King began what would
become a series of interconnected stories about a lone gunslinger,
Roland, who is in constant pursuit of the Man in Black. It is
a mixture of the American Wild
West in the style of Clint
Eastwood and Sergio
Leone western films mixed in with the surreal atmosphere of
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth
tales. The first of those stories, The
Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, was first published in five
installments in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from
1988 to 1981. The Gunslinger continued as an eight-book series called
The
Dark Tower, which King wrote and published in forty years. In
1987, King released the second installment: The
Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three where Roland draws
three people from the 20th century into his world through
magical doors.
In 2005, King signed a deal with Marvel
Comics to publish a seven-issue limited series called The
Gunslinger Born. In 2007, Lost
co-creator, J.J.
Abrams, had intentions of doing a film adaptation of the Dark
Tower series, but it never happened. The project was taken on by
Avika
Goldsman, Ron
Howard to be the director with Brian
Grazer, Goldsman and Stephen King as producers in 2012.
Russell Crowe
was to play gunman Roland
Deschain. Warner
Brothers backed out of the project in 2012, and Stephen King's
site posted:
...While no single reason was given for the studios withdrawal, it appears that most insiders believe that series would require a strong R rating that would greatly cut into the profitability of creating such an expensive mega-franchise. … When asked about the status of the project, Stephen commented that there is still much interest in the project and that news regarding the series should be announced this fall.
In June of 1999, a man driving a
minivan distracted by an unrestrained dog, struck King as he was
walking early in the morning on Route 5, Lovell, Maine. After five
operations in ten days and physical therapy, King resumed work on his
non-fiction book, On Writing, though his hip was still
shattered and he could only sit for forty minutes before the pain
became unbearable.
During this period, Tabitha redesigned
Stephen's studio and imagined what his studio would look like if he
died, which provided
him an idea for his novel, Lisey's
Story.
In 2002, King announced, because of the
frustration and pain of his injuries, that he would stop writing. He
later resumed writing, but stated on his website:
I'm writing but I'm writing at a much slower pace than previously and I think that if I come up with something really, really good, I would be perfectly willing to publish it because that still feels like the final act of the creative process, publishing it so people can read it and you can get feedback and people can talk about it with each other and with you, the writer, but the force of my invention has slowed down a lot over the years and that's as it should be.
In
2012, during his Chancellor's Speaker Series talk at the University
of Massachusetts, King mentioned he was writing a crime novel about a
retired policeman being taunted by a murderer, the working title
being Mr.
Mercedes.
It was inspired
by a true event about a woman driving a car into a McDonald's
restaurant, originally intended to be a short story.
In
June of 2013, King announced he was working
on his next novel, Revival.
King
has written two novels in collaboration with Peter
Straub, also a horror novelist: The
Talisman
and Black
House.
King has mentioned that he and Straub will write a third book in the
series with no set time of completion. In 1996, King collaborated
with Michael
Jackson
to create Ghosts,
a 40-minute musical video where the singer portrayed a recluse in a
mansion.
King
wrote a musical play with John
Mellencamp
entitled Ghost
Brothers of Darkland County.
King
played guitar for the rock band Rock
Bottom Remainders, several of the members being authors. In June
of 2013, King and the other band members collaborated to release
an e-book called Hard
Listening: The Greatest Rock Band Ever (of Authors) Tells All.
King is a fan of the rock band AC/DC
who did the soundtrack for his 1986 film, Maximum
Overdrive.
He is also a fan of the Ramones,
who wrote the title song for Pet
Sematary
and appeared in the music video.
In
2010, King collaborated
with musician Shooter
Jennings
and his band Hierophant,
which provided narration for their album Black
Ribbons.
Besides
the initial influence of H.P.
Lovecraft,
Richard
Matheson,
Ray
Bradbury,
Bram
Stoker,
Joseph
Payne Brennan,
Shirley
Jackson,
John
D. MacDonald,
Don
Robertson,
Robert
A. Heinlein,
and Elmore
Leonard
have been mentioned by King.
Stephen
and Tabitha King own Zone Radio Corp., a radio station group
consisting of WZON 103.1 FM and 620 AM. King has stated that his
favorite book-to-film adaptations are Stand
By Me,
The
Shawshank Redemption,
and The
Mist.
I am surprised that The
Green Mile
was not included, which is one of my favorite King story films.
King
has appeared in cameo in some of those films, like Alfred
Hitchcock
used to do. The first was in George
Romero's
Knightriders,
and his first featured film where he is the prime actor was in
Creepshow.
He also appeared in Pet
Sematary,
Thinner,
Rose Red,
The
Stand,
Storm
of the Century,
Shining,
The
Langoliers,
and Sleepwalkers.
King
produced and acted in the television series, Kingdom
Hospital;
and also co-wrote an episode (Season 5) for The
X-Files.
In 1995, King appeared as a contestant on Celebrity
Jeopardy.
Money made on the show was for the benefit of the Bangor
Public Library.
King
provided the voice of Abraham
Lincoln
in the audiobook version of Assassination
Vacation.
Stephen
King has been active politically and is a hard-headed Democrat. In
2008, he spoke out against HB 1423 in the Massachusetts legislature
that would restrict or ban the sale of violent video games to anyone
under the age of 18. He felt that politicians were scapegoating pop
culture and was taking the place of parental responsibility. He
stated that the games reflect violence already established in
society, which would not be changed by a law; yet he stated that the
availability of firearms contributed more to causes of violence.
Stephen King lost some of his fan base because of his political
views, especially when he began recently on his rampage against
firearms and insisting that the federal government ban most of them.
Yet, King also stated he enjoys playing light
gun shooter
arcade games.
On
May 5th,
2008, a blogger posted a clip of King at a Library
of Congress reading event, where he said:
If you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that.
John
Kerry
made a similar
remark in 2006. King commented later about the blog:
That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt...I live in a national guard town, and I support our troops, but I don't support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career—military or otherwise.
He
also defended
his comment in an interview with Bangor
Daily News,
three days later, stating:
I'm not going to apologize for promoting that kids get better education in high school, so they have more options. Those that don't agree with what I'm saying, I'm not going to change their minds.
Many
disagree that it has been a comment only to point out the importance
of education, especially since the US Armed Forces put an emphasis
upon education, that can be much more affordable if attending a
college or university while serving in the US military. He had
sidestepped and denied that he was putting down the military by
saying if people are illiterate or not properly educated they will
have to serve in the military (specifically the Army). Frankly, he at
first stated it was not what he meant as far as an insult to people
serving their country, and then later refused to apologize. He lost
fans after that.
At
King's website it has been emphasized that he is a staunch supporter
of the Democratic
Party, often condemning other political entities and opponents.
King voiced his support in 2008 for Democratic candidate for
president, Barack
Hussein Obama.
On
March 8th,
2011, King spoke against Governor Rick
Scott
(R-FL) and the Tea
Party movement in a political rally in Sarasota. In November
2011, King donated
$70,000 to help pay the heating bills for families in need in the
town of Bangor, Maine during the winter.
On
April 30th,
2012, King published an article in The
Daily Beast,
a progressive leftist media, that called for “rich” Americans,
including himself, to pay
more taxes, stating:
...it is a practical necessity and moral imperative that those who have received much should be obligated to pay … in the same proportion.
Fans
have felt that he has become stranger as time passed since being hit
by a mini-van. Or maybe he was a useful
idiot for progressive socialists all along.
On
January 25th,
2013, King published an essay entitled Guns
on Amazon's
Kindle.
The essay discusses the gun debate after the Sandy
Hook Elementary School shooting. King called for gun owners to
support
a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons, writing:
Autos and semi-autos are weapons of mass destruction...When lunatics want to make war on the unarmed and unprepared, these are the weapons they use.
This
cost him fans who are members of the NRA and those who do not believe
that by ignoring or repealing the Second Amendment that violent
crimes will stop. Indeed, he had something to say against the NRA,
stating
that they should be …
required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander's last meal.
Sounds
like a morbid scene from one of his books, and speaking as though HE
was the one required to clean up or experienced doing so after a shooting. Especially lame because he never served in the US armed forces.
Once
again, blaming guns instead of the true source – society's lack of
morals and values, as well as allowing children and young teens to
constantly play violent video games without parental direction or
discipline. Also, the system is broken, because Adam
Lanza,
the shooter at that elementary school was designated mentally
disturbed but was still allowed to have access to firearms. If anyone
made a complete and thorough (and honest) survey, they would find the
problem is within the society (too many dysfunctional family units),
its morals and values mirroring much of what Stephen
King
and Anne
Rice
write about. It is also a problem with the federal government, whose
solution to end violence is to take firearms away from everybody
except the law enforcement and military. The most recent mass
shooting horror was conducted by a man who had been arrested
previously for violent acts, at least one of them committed with a
firearm, but still was able to purchase firearms legally AND still
had a security clearance to enter the Navy Yard and kill and injure
workers there - and allowed to legally purchase weapons and clearance despite evidence of mental issues. The system is broke and the Second Amendment is not the reason for crime, it is a proven deterrence as had been shown statistic after statistic. In fact, one would think that crime would increase in areas that allow conceal carry and purchase of firearms have increased - but it is the opposite of what the corporate media and its political handlers would have you believe.
Guns are mechanisms of defense or acts of unjustified violence – but the real problem is people who are not responsible or sane; people who are inspired by stories and films of fiction that everybody else views as unreal and fairy tales for entertainment or letting off steam – at least those of sound mind and emotional stability. King stood up against government not allowing violent video games to be purchased under the age of 18, but wants to counter the Second Amendment and take the right to keep and bear arms by lawful citizens. King is a hypocrite because he writes about blood and gore, violence and about things on the dark side of the mind – and then backs up progressive socialists who want to control every facet of our lives under the pretense that it is for our own good. He also believes that people who have become wealthy or wealthier than the average person through hard-work and ingenuity, should pay the way of people with no incentives, wrong goals in life, and the dregs of society who play the welfare system. He may be a creative writer, but he is a naïve useful idiot for the progressive tyrants whose goals are control of the people; demanding what they themselves do not act upon. Too often intellects and talented actors and actresses fall under the spell of promised Utopia via socialists and communist. Remember the days of the Hippies (love, peace, equal everything)? How many communions survived? They did not survive, just as early settlements in the New World (North America) that used socialism as the form of community and civics. When people reap the rewards of productivity and not having to share it, the former is more successful. The reasons are common sense, something that Americans have lost along with their special individuality that made this nation once the greatest.
Guns are mechanisms of defense or acts of unjustified violence – but the real problem is people who are not responsible or sane; people who are inspired by stories and films of fiction that everybody else views as unreal and fairy tales for entertainment or letting off steam – at least those of sound mind and emotional stability. King stood up against government not allowing violent video games to be purchased under the age of 18, but wants to counter the Second Amendment and take the right to keep and bear arms by lawful citizens. King is a hypocrite because he writes about blood and gore, violence and about things on the dark side of the mind – and then backs up progressive socialists who want to control every facet of our lives under the pretense that it is for our own good. He also believes that people who have become wealthy or wealthier than the average person through hard-work and ingenuity, should pay the way of people with no incentives, wrong goals in life, and the dregs of society who play the welfare system. He may be a creative writer, but he is a naïve useful idiot for the progressive tyrants whose goals are control of the people; demanding what they themselves do not act upon. Too often intellects and talented actors and actresses fall under the spell of promised Utopia via socialists and communist. Remember the days of the Hippies (love, peace, equal everything)? How many communions survived? They did not survive, just as early settlements in the New World (North America) that used socialism as the form of community and civics. When people reap the rewards of productivity and not having to share it, the former is more successful. The reasons are common sense, something that Americans have lost along with their special individuality that made this nation once the greatest.
That
anti-gun essay became the 5th-bestselling
non-fiction title for Kindle. Many attribute it to King's
popularity as a writer and not because they agree with what he wrote. He wrote it, and it was only 99 cents, so why not? The essay didn't receive the response that King was looking for, however. King
donated any proceeds he made on the e-book to the Brady
Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. I would have donated it to the people who suffered or left loved ones in the September 11th, 2001 attack or towards the victims of those mass shooters; certainly not an organization that wants to change or repeal the Second Amendment.
All
very strange coming from a writer who has made millions writing about
horror and violence, real and imagined.
King
was an abuser
of alcohol and drugs during the 1980s, and admitted that he
barely remembered writing Cujo.
Finally, in order to show what King was doing to himself, his family
and friends, led by his wife, Tabitha, dumped on the rug in front of
him the evidence of his addictions taken from his office, including
beer cans, cigarette butts, cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil,
dextromethorphan (cough medicine) and marijuana. After that he was
determined to quit, and sought help – and has remained
sober since.
Tabitha
King has also published nine novels of her own and both of King's
sons are published authors. King's daughter, Naomi, is a Unitarian
Universalist Church minister in Plantation, Florida and a
lesbian, with same-sex
partner, Rev. Dr. Thandeka.
King
is a fan of baseball, especially the Boston
Red Sox and attends games whenever possible, both home and away
games.
A
list of his awards can be found HERE.
As
a personal note about his personal life and beliefs, you can get a
good glimpse in the interview of CBS
News, where he says books and video games don't make people
violent, but guns do. His hypocrisy becomes more evident in the
interview. He is like progressive Hillary Clinton and others of her
mindset who blames everything and everyone except the true source, as
she puts
down Monica Lewinsky but not her husband.
This
isn't the first time that I have been disappointed with a talented
person, usually in the Hollyweird crowd – enjoying their talents,
but when they speak openly and in public, they come across to be
naïve nerds or useful puppets and mouthpieces for the progressive
socialist movement. He also points out he knows little about history
(or reality) when he compares
JFK to Obama. Stick to fiction and fantasy, King.
I
have many of King's books in my library – mostly in hardback
because they last longer. But he has turned me off with his radical
behavior and outbursts that I doubt if I will ever purchase anything
written since 2008. Maybe that accident did mess up his head.
And
finally, Mr. King, after visiting your Haven
Foundation website,
I present this to you -
- While, due to recent mass shootings, gangland slayings in Chicago, and the federal government allowing the Mexican drug cartel to cross our border and establish themselves in American cities – more people are killed by firearms (2013) than vehicles. But a recent article states that the death rates are converging mostly due to better safety regulations for cars. But since you have been a victim of an irresponsible person driving a vehicle, and since you have that train of thought concerning firearms – why have you not advocated a ban against private citizens owning and operating motor vehicles. Your ideology certainly applies.
- In the District of Columbia where the Second Amendment is not allowed – more people are killed by guns than motor vehicles. Of course, the use of firearms in self defense and justified use are also included in those deaths and injuries statistics – so the amount of deaths by motor vehicles are close to deaths by firearms or more often.
- The terrorist bomber on the east coast used a pressure cooker. Should we ban pressure cookers, punishing those that use it for what it was designed for?
- The Center for Disease Control did not include in their report of major causes of death in US the deaths (98,000) and injuries (15,000,000) that are caused by medical malpractice. Would you want to ban medical professionals?
- Obesity has become a problem with more than 400,000 deaths annually. More than 200,000 Americans die from conditions caused by obesity. Should we ban fat people?
Here
is a statistic
of governments that have successfully taken firearms away from
citizens to be only used by the government and its military and law
enforcement:
- Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin: Killed almost 50,000,000 people.
- Nazi Germany, Adolph Hitler: Killed 11,000,000 civilians, not including military actions.
- Communist China, Mao: Killed between 30,000,000 and 70,000,000 people, because of no full access to records, this is only a rough estimate.
- If you added all the deaths due to wars in the 20th century, more people died because of their government than any other reason – and they did not have the means to fight back. In addition, none of these examples reduced the crime rate.
So
based upon Mr. King's and other progressive socialists ideology and
so-called reasoning, if firearms are to be banned, so should cars,
alcoholic beverages, medical professionals, Twinkies, pizza, etc,
etc, etc. When does government intervention and control end? There
was a reason for the framers of the US Constitution to limit the
authority of the government. There was also a reason why they created
the Second Amendment, following the First Amendment.
People
have a right to their opinions, under the First Amendment; but it
does not guarantee that they are being truthful or factual – and
certainly are not free from open and honest criticism.
The
feel good generation has welcomed socialism and the welfare state
with open arms, not realizing that they are throwing away the rights
and liberties that they say they hold dear.
Mr.
King, stick to your fantasy fiction tales and non-fiction works concerning literature, otherwise you are
nothing but a parrot for the propaganda of tyranny when it comes to constitutional-political issues.
FURTHER
READING AND SOURCES
Twitter,
Stephen King
Dread
Central – Stephen King's Revival
Stephen
King: “Beyond the reach
of human range, a drop of hell, a touch of strange ...”
Stephen
King Publishes
Vulgar Attack on Conservatives
STEPHEN
KING QUOTES REFLECTING HIS STRANGENESS
And this quote explains
why King is a progressive socialist:
- I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.
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