Why I became obsessed with Stephen King

The man, the myth, the legend

I’ve spoken a little bit about my love affair with Stephen King. It began in adolescence, at my father's urging. On a rainy afternoon in Toowoomba, we went to see Tom Hanks in The Green Mile. Since then, I’ve been enamoured with the author.

I read the corresponding book. Part of his sticking place in my craw is down to my father. King represented a new threshold of literary appreciation. Reading The Green Mile, I told Dad that I loved it, but it was unlike any other book I had read.

‘He’s a genius,’ Dad said. ‘Because you read hundreds of pages where nothing happens, but you’re compelled anyway. It’s character.’

That became gospel. Character is all.

In the intervening years, whenever I read King, I enjoyed it. A few years ago, I began an earnest project to read his books chronologically - all sixty-something of them. Of course, my admiration was also a desire to become as great a writer as he - it seemed within reach because his prose appeared effortless.

His routine is written in stone - or at least, that’s what he says. Sit down and look at yesterday’s pages. Edit. Then write a new six-pages. Then have a beer. Your work is done. And on and on and on and on and on and on…

I’ve tried many times in my life to emulate this process. Other writers I admire - Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dahl - all professed of the benefits of a strict routine. I’ve been rubbish at making them. I prefer to write seasonally, I’ve realised. Something in my temperament gets bored easily. If I’m writing the same thing on day five that I was writing on day one, I’ll have lost all joy. I prefer intense periods where I’m saturated in a work, writing massive amounts in some sparse sittings, and then not thinking about it again for months.

Anyway, I’m writing this partly to give you an update on the King journey. Having finished the doorstopper of IT this month, I’ve read 21 of his published works — almost a third of his complete works.

The shine is wearing off King a bit, although his genius remains remarkable. Reading that many pages of anyone reveals their flaws. Of course, the works are dated - the politics are all over the place. He began as an angry young man saying fuck the system, and grew into a centre left white guy with a lot of money in the Reagan years.

He’s also fat-phobic - appallingly so. Like Dahl and the rest of the culture, he constantly infers that heaviness is equal to a moral imbalance.

Perhaps his most significant flaw is his addiction. He becomes insanely famous, shrugs off the need for an editor, and disappears into cocaine and booze. For many of his novels in the 80’s, you can almost smell the cocaine on the page. IT, said to be his magnum opus by many readers, has long, trailing pages that disappear into the mundane lives of supporting characters.

And yet, in the middle of the cocaine years is one of his tightest novels. Misery is a story about an author who is captured by a psychopathic fan, who holds them hostage until they finish a book. The entire thing is King battling with addiction and creativity.

Out of this first twenty-ish batch, I would recommend Misery, The Long Walk, Pet Semmetary, Carrie and Cujo. All of these are tight thrillers, the work that King is best known and celebrated for. These books are what makes him the heir apparent to Hitchcock.

I have given up on trying to be King, but I’ve learned a lot for him. For the nerds among you, I would recommend reading your favourite author’s work in chronological order. It’s a trip. I did the same thing with Murakami.

What author would you like to read the complete works of? Do you have a favourite Stephen King?

Watch out - tomorrow a free PDF is coming….

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