Stephen King is my favourite writer

my beaten up old copy of Carrie

I’m going to prepare for my next post on Eyes of the Dragon by underscoring the fact that I am a massive Stephen King nerd. I used to refer to Stephen King as my ‘guilty pleasure’, because I know that the so-called literary world often looks down on what it labels ‘genre fiction’.

But you know what? Fuck that.

I love Stephen King.

I first discovered Stephen King at around the age of 14 and to this day he has been the single biggest influence on my reading life. Up until my early teens, I hadn’t actually been a big reader, certainly not as a young child. I had started to go to my local bookshop and started getting into Point Horror, which was pretty much absolute trash. But looking back, I’d been fascinated by horror for a while without realising it.

As a younger child, every week my dad would take my brother and I to a video shop at the bottom of our road, which was run out of the front room of a guy called Morris. Morris ran a fantastic little shop. He had made a craft out of video rental and had painstakingly catalogued the shop into different genres; comedy, drama, action, children’s, romance, and, of course, horror. The horror section was the closest section to the door, and it was the only section that I couldn’t tear my eyes from. The covers all had a similar feel to them, and the semiotics of 80s and 90s horror box covers is something that I love to stop and look at to this day. All dark backgrounds and strange blue and red images, with titles like Phantasm, The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, Candyman, Hellraiser, and so many others.

Inevitably, I always ended up renting one of two things: The Dark Crystal, or The Nutcracker ballet. I knew there was no way I’d be allowed to watch any of the horror titles, and more to the point, there was no way I’d actually have the guts to watch any of them - I could barely even look at the screen when Aughra appears in The Dark Crystal. I was, and still am, a massive pussy when it comes to being afraid. I just loved looking at the boxes.

A few years later at the bookshop, I decided to look in the adult horror section, and I spied a book that caused me to do a double take. The reason it caught my eye is that for a split second, I was certain that the title of the book was 'Cassie', and as someone with a moderately unusual name, I had been plagued throughout my childhood by the dearth of things with my name on them. No key rings, friendship bracelets or headbands for me. So, naturally, when I thought I had seen my name on the front of a book, my heart leapt. That book was Carrie.

Even though the title was Carrie, and not Cassie, I picked up the book and read the back. A story about an awkward teenage outcast? I was sold.

From that day onwards, I was hooked. After Carrie I read some classics like Christine, Firestarter, The Stand and Night Shift (which scared me so badly I had to turn the cover away from myself at night) and I kept going back for more. Over the years I gradually accumulated more and more of his books, sometimes tearing through several over the course of a month, and then nothing for several months while I moved onto other things. But I always came back.

To pause for a moment: I’m not sure how I’d feel about Stephen King if I came to him as an adult reader. One of the big reasons I keep going back to his books is the deep connection and affection I have for his stories as anchors to my adolescence. I certainly still enjoy his books now, but if I came to them at 25 rather than 14, how would I receive them? I love remembering the way I felt when I first read a story like The Jaunt, which blew my mind, and Stephen King was the first writer to evoke that feeling of excitement and awe in me, and he's still one of the only writers who gives me that feeling to this day. Now that I think of it, I really ought to credit Stephen King with bringing me to books. Thanks, Steve!

Of Stephen King’s back catalogue, it would probably be simpler for me to tell you which of his books I haven’t read, rather than what I have. I’ll make it quick: the books on my list by Stephen King are (pretty much) the only ones by him that I haven’t read. Of course, there is more; short stories or collections that are out of print, and I haven’t been keeping up with the graphic novels of The Stand, The Dark Tower or The Talisman (I have read ‘N’, and American Vampire, though). So in no way can I claim to have read everything by Stephen King, but I have read a LOT.

I haven’t enjoyed all of it. There are a couple of his books that I can take or leave, and one or two that I haven’t ever been able to finish, though I’ll probably go back to them one day. On the other hand, there are titles that I have read many times, (I’ve probably read Carrie around ten times) and no doubt I’ll revisit them in years to come. My favourite era of Stephen King is probably 70s and 80s King. Classic King. I still love the other stuff, but most of my favourites are from that period.

dreadful photo

I was in New York last year when Stephen King appeared on a panel for the New Yorker festival, talking a bit about the current pop-culture vampire revival and American Vampire, which he had co-written with Scott Snyder (and is how vampires should be written). I was a little nervous about going to the event, partly because I was more star-struck than I have ever been or ever will be in my life. (The night before I bought a copy of American Vampire just in case he was going to sign books afterwards). I was also nervous because, what if he was a dick? That saying about never meeting your heroes was echoing round my head the day before I went to the panel, but I was delighted to find that in this case, it did not apply. Not even a bit of a dick, Stephen King was charming and witty and I was delighted to have finally seen him in the flesh. Unfortunately he didn’t have time to sign anything, but who knows, one day I’m sure it’ll happen. Until then I’ll just keep reading.