Pop Smart - Reading Stephen King, Chapter 1: Scary in the ’70s
While I was reading Stephen King’s latest novel, Duma Key (published Jan. 22 by Scribner), I thought about putting together some kind of “Top Five Stephen King” book list. As I reviewed his work in my head, it occurred to me that 2008 marks my 30th anniversary of being a life-long reader of Stephen King. A long-term reader/writer dynamic resembles other kinds of extended relationships: Both individuals can change, grow apart, reconcile and test their loyalties, even if they never meet face to face.
So this week I’ll be doing a decade-by-decade overview partly on my favorite books, but mostly on the experience of reading King during my adult life.
I’m not sure which book marked my introduction to the horror writer from Maine. I definitely recall The Dead Zone as being the first hardback book I ever read as soon as it was published in 1979 – someone in my family bought a copy at the Phipps Plaza bookstore (back when that mall had bookstores). I suspect that I started with his vampire novel Salem’s Lot in 1978 and read Night Shift not long thereafter.
His books caught me up in their narratives like none I’d ever read. Even then, I marveled at his lightning-in-a-bottle gift for building up momentum. Being 13 years old could be the best time to be introduced to a writer like King. I soaked up his novels and short stories without reservations or awareness of irony. As an adult, I probably would have seen some humor in “Gray Matter’s” bad beer causing ravenous mutations, or “The Mangler’s” killer industrial laundry press machine (to name two stories from Night Shift).