An Interview

With Stephen KingWriter, Storyteller, Thriller

by CHP Officer Phil Konstantin, I.D. 11643

Otephen King is the unabashedking of the terror tale. For the last10 years, his stories have consist-antly appeared on every best sellerlist. On many occasions, he haseven had two books simultane-ously on the prestigious New YorkTimes best seller list. His storiesrange from the ghastly and theunworldly, to the realm of neartruth and the terrifyingly possible.

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He has scared the wits out ofmillions and has firmly establishedhimself in modern American liter-ature. Some of his writings include:Carrie, Salem's Lot, Night Shift (acollection of short stores), TheStand, The Shining, Firestarter,Cujo, Dead Zone, Creep Show,Christine and Pet Sematary. Manyof his novels have become majormotion pictures with Dead Zone,

Christine and Carrie being threeof his more popular cinematic of-ferings.

King lives in Maine with hiswife and children. He enjoys the"life of the back woods," as he callsit. King writes about what heknows, consequently, many of hisstories are set in his "own neck ofthe woods."

King is very frank and open, and

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displays a corny sense of humor.He enjoys his work and takes agreat deal of pride in it. Whenasked if he was also a storyteller,he said he didn't think he couldkeep an audience spellbound justby telling them a story. But, in hisdescription of the facts behind oneof his short stories, The Mangier,as told below, you will see howwell endowed he is with the abil-ity to raise the hackles on yourneck with only a brief narration.

/ understand you don't like to beasked why you write the kind ofstories you do. Is this correct:

I have always felt a little bituncomfortable with that question.It's not a question that you ask aguy that writes detective storiesor the guy that writes mystery sto-ries or westerns, or whatever. Butit is asked of the writer of horrorstories because it seems that thereis something nasty about our lovefor horror stories, or boogies, ghostsand goblins, demons and devils.

When did you start writing:I started writing seriously when

I was about 12.

Do you have to be in a specialmood to start writing!

I am always in the mood.

Do you have a certain methodthat you use when you write!

It usually is a set schedule. Iwrite in the mornings, in the brightdaylight. But I get most of my goodideas after the sun has gone downand the dark is on the land.

Do you consider what you write"horror stories"!

There are times when I like tothink of it as mainstream fictionor literature. But in the back of mymind, in the closet where I keepthe truth, I think of them as horrorstories. A lot of them I think of ascreep shows.

/ once read that Salem's Lot isyour favorite book. Why:

In a way it is my favorite story,mostly because of what it saysabout small towns. They are kindof a dying organism right now.

July 1987

King enjoys scaring the bejesusout of his readers. His latest book,Misery, was released on June 8,1987. Photo by Thomas Victor,courtesy of Viking Penguin Inc.

The story seems sort of down hometo me. I have a special cold spot inmy heart for it!

Is the town Jerusalem's Lot(Salem's Lotj a real town!

Yes and no. It is based on a townin upstate Vermont that I heardabout as an undergraduate in col-lege called Jeremiah's Lot. I wasgoing through Vermont with afriend and he pointed out the town,just in passing, as we went by inthe car. He said, "You know, theysay that everybody in that townjust simply disappeared in 1908." Isaid, "Aw, come on. What are youtalking about?" He said, "That's thestory. Haven't you heard of theMarie Celeste where everybodysupposedly disappeared? This is thesame thing. One day they werethere and then one day a relativecame over to look for someonethat they hadn't heard from inawhile, and all the houses wereempty. Some of the houses haddinner set on the table. Some ofthe stores still had money in them.It was covered in mold from thesummer damp and it was startingto rot, but nobody had stolen it.

The town was completely emptiedout."

Is that how you get your inspi-ration for your stories, or does italso come from day-to-day events,a phrase you may hear, or evenfrom suggestions you get from fans!

I get inspiration, a lot of times,from very commonplace thingsthat just strike a cord and developthemselves in the subconscious.Sometimes it's something a littlebit more sensational than that. Asan example, there is a story in thebook, Night Shift, called TheMangier, about a laundry machinethat takes on a sort of malignantlife. I worked in a laundry forabout a year and a half after I gotout of college. It was the only jobthat I could find to support mywife and our first child. There wasa fellow there that had no hands orforearms. He simply had hooks.This is one of the things that theydon't tell you about when youbecome management: You have towear a tie. It was this fellow's tiethat did him in.

It was just after World War IIand he was working around themachines. The steam ironer andfolder is the machine that theworkers call the Mangier, becausethat is what it will do to you if youget too close to it or get caught init. This fellow bent down to picksomething up and his tie wentinto the machine. He reached downwithJiis left hand to pull his tieout and his hand went into themachine. Then he put his righthand around his left wrist to try topull it out and his right hand gotcaught. As a result, he lost bothhands and both forearms and waslucky not to have died. His handswere replaced by hooks.

Thirty years later, when I workedthere, he would go into the men'sroom, during the summer and turnon the hot and cold water and runit over his hooks. He would thencome up behind you and lay thehooks on the back of your neck.That's what gave me the inspira-tion for that particular story. Ialways think of the machine atthe end of the story, which sort ofbecomes possessed by a demon

39

and escapes from the laundry andgoes through the streets, as sort ofhaving escaped because it had"pressing" business.

Since you mentioned Night Shift,how was it that John D. MacDonaldcame to do the introduction? Hisfield is so far from your own.

When we were putting the booktogether at Doubleday, my editorasked me who I would like to dothe introduction if I could haveanyone in the world. I said that itwas off the wall, but if I could haveanybody I would like to have JohnD. MacDonald because I had cutmy teeth on his stories. I stillthink that of all the people doingtop fiction today, he is the best.He was my model as a kid. If thereare people ~rjut there that~want towrite, all you need to do is read 20of his stories to get an idea what ittakes to make a story kick over.

Would you ever participate in aseance!

I would NOT participate in oneunder any circumstances. Not evenif my wife died and a medium saidshe had a message from my wife. Icannot conceive of circumstances

under which I would participate inthat sort of thing or stay overnightin a house that was reputed to behaunted or any of those things.We are too close as it is to a worldthat is incomprehensible. And thetime comes when you and I andeveryone who walks the face ofthis earth has to enter that world.We will know then, and I can wait.

Are you interested in psychics,ESP and similar areas!

I am interested in it and I thinknow in the latter half of the twen-tieth century we have enough doc-umentation so that anyone thatdoubts the psychic experience isan actual empiric reality is on thelevel with a person who continuesto smoke two or three packs ofcigarettes a day and denies thatthere is a link between smokingand lung cancer. The documenta-tion is there. It can barely be ques-tioned any further. We have asmuch proof, furthermore, barringsome technological developmentthat does not exist now, as we areever going to have. It is simply thepreponderance of evidence; it pre-cludes the doubt almost entirely.

What is your personal feelingabout reincarnation!

I don't believe in it. I don't likethe idea that I am going to comeback as an ant or a sparrow if Idon't get along in the great karmaof life. As far as where I go when Idie, the concept that I am simplygoing to flick out, like a light bulb,to me is not only spiritually impos-sible to believe, but logically it islaughable — the idea that we sim-ply die and nothing happens. Now,as to what does go on, that issomething else. I am religious inthe sense that I believe in God andI believe that there is an abidinglogical spirit that controls whatgoes on to a certain extent. Now,there is the Watchmaker Theorythat God wound up the universeand let it tick. That may be. Or itmay be that he takes a hand inthings from time to time. But, what-ever it is, I am sure that there issomething out there.

In your own experience haveyou ever come across any ghosts,ghoulies or anything that goesbump in the night!

No.

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Do you get letters from peoplethat say that they have actuallyexperienced things like what youwrite about!

Yes, I've got letters from peoplethat have had peculiar psychic ex-periences, experiences with thedead — sometimes fairly tranquilexperiences and sometimes veryterrifying experiences. I do believethat a lot of them are sincere. I dobelieve, also, that some of themmay be misguided. But, I think themajority of them have experiencedsomething. This is something thatyou and I may stumble over like astone in our paths at any time inour lives. I think everybody hasexperiences from time to time theycan't explain. They are peculiari-ties. Usually we just dismiss thembecause they are uncomfortable tothink about.

As a child, did you read horrorstories and go to see horror movies!

Sometimes. Semi-facetiously,when people ask me why I writethese kinds of stories, I simply saythat I was warped as a child. And,there is some truth to that. Thefirst movie I can remember seeing

July 1987

was "The Creature From The BlackLagoon." And, I can remember hear-ing a radio play of Ray Bradbury's"Mars Is Heaven." And when I cutmy teeth on comic books, theywere not the easy ones of today,like Spiderman, Superman and TheHulk; they were Tales Of TheCrypt, The Vaultkeeper, and thatsort of thing.

The place was full of kids, mostlyfrom five to eleven. I have never inmy life, from the time that I was akid until now, been in an audiencewhere children were so quiet. Theywere sitting gape-mouthed; theywere simply stunned. Total silence.It was the best argument for therating system that I have ever seen.I don't have anything against either

"I believe the stories when I'm writingthem, otherwise I couldn't write withany kind of conviction."

What do you think of the newwave in horror films such as Nightof the Living Dead and Dawn OfThe Dead which deal with a greatdeal of violence!

The Night Of The Living Deadis an interesting case because itwas an unrated movied when itcame out. At that time there wereonly two ratings: GP, which is thesame as PC is now, and the unratedmovies. I was still in college whenNight Of The Living Dead cameout, and when I went to see it thefirst time, I went in the afternoon.

of the "Dead" movies, The TexasChainsaw Massacre, none of thosemovies. If it scares somebody, Ithink that it is serving a validpurpose. It is doing what the film-maker intended. But, it is notsomething that you hand to kids.You just don't do it. You have to beold enough to take it. Kids are justnot prepared for it. I think most ofus can remember from our ownchildhood, just in the Disney car-toons, things that frightened usprofoundly. For me, it was Bambi,the scene when the forest was on

41

fire. That was something that Ihad nightmares about. I can't imag-ine being a little kid of eight andseeing Night Of The Living Deadwith living corpses eating the fleshof living people.

How faithfully have your stonesbeen transferred to the screen*

Well, let's take Carrie for exam-ple. Brian De Palma, who directedthe film, did an excellent job on afairly low budget. It was made forabout $2.3 million, which is pea-nuts for the movie industry. But,for instance, when Stanley Kubrickmade The Shining, they wound upspending about $14 million, whichIS big money. In the book Carrie,Carrie ends up destroying her en-tire town on the way home fromher senior prom. She blows up gasstations, and the entire town goesup in flames. That wasn't in themovie, and that was mainly be-cause the cost for the specialeffects was too high for theirbudget.

Do you have much control ofyour material when it comes tosupervising movies!

No. And I wouldn't want it be-

cause I'm a person that writesbooks. I don't make movies. I don'tfeel that I have to have artisticcontrol. Part of this comes fromthe fact that the book lives on nomatter what Hollywood does toyour novel in terms of a film. Now,you try to be careful who youallow to do your film because no-body wants their novel to becomea turkey movie. But, on the otherhand, it is a crapshoot anyway,because even the best people canmake a bad film.

difficulties, and, in essence, youare dealing with human nature.Are you trying to be philosophical!

I don't really get philosophical,but I believe that nice people arestrong and usually in my horrorstories, I don't like to write aboutthe old standard where some rot-ten guy gets chased by a meanspirit that gets him in the end. I'drather write about nice people thatare menaced from outside by somesort of evil power and who sort ofslug it out like foe Frazier and

"I write about nice people who aremenaced from outside by some sort ofwill power..."

Do you actually believe in thethings you write about}

I believe them when I write them.Whether or not I believe themwhen I am not writing them issomething else. I think that a goodpart of me must or I couldn't do itwith any kind of conviction.

Quite a few of your stories dealwith average people beset by great

Muhammad Ali. And I like to thinkthat good poeple win. But evengood people have other sides. Mostpeople will slow down to get agood look at an accident, eventhough they won't admit it. I thinkmost of us are fascinated by themacabre and by the weird and evenby the nastiness that comes along.

Do you really end your stories or

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do you just stop them at somepoint in time!

I've never been asked that before.Well, sometimes there is a placewhere you can tie the story upwith a neat twist. And then thereare other stories, like a story ofmine called Truck. You come to aplace where you can end the story,but in the back of your mind,you're convinced that there areother things to tell but the time isnot-right te-tie things off.

Do you think it is important tokeep your readers guessing/

Yes. This is a form that hasbecome probably less criticallypopular as time has gone by. I liketo end stories where the readershave a little room to run. They canresolve things as they like in theirown mind.

Which do you like better, shortstones or novels!

I like to write short stories morebecause I never met a writer whowasn't lazy. And a short story is,by its very definition, short. It issomething that generally you canturn out in a week to two weeksdepending on how well it goes for

you. But, at the same time, it givessame satisfaction of creating acomplete world.

Since many of your stories dealwith the supernatural, have youever felt in any actual physical orspiritual peril from such beings!

To my soul, I'm not so sureabout. As far as my physical beingis concerned, so far so good. I sim-ply think that there are things inthis world that are relics. We haveunsettling remnants of Atlantis.They have found things off Ber-muda, great walls and things ofthat sort. This seems to indicatethat there were races and culturesthat went before us. And to me,that's an unsettling idea.

Some people say that horror stor-ies are just cheap shots. All youhave to do is write a very simplestory, put in a lot of blood andguts, and have somebody do some-thing nasty to someone else, andthat's it. What do you think!

It doesn't work like that. Scaringpeople, especially in our day andtime, is one of the hardest thingson earth, as far as I'm concerned.You and I and everyone else in

this world live in what is probablythe most difficult times that haveever been. We are facing totalthermonuclear destruction; and, ifyou can make someone believe ina ghost or a demon or a vampire inthe face of that, you are doingwell. From my own personal pointof view, I don't think just bloodand guts is enough. At least, itisn't for me. Maybe it will turnsomeone's stomach; but, I'm notsure that is literature or even en-tertainment.

A friend once told me that sheactually had to put one of yourstories down because the imagerythat she had built up in her mind"grossed her out." Would you con-sider that a compliment!

Yeah, I would. I'm not a purist inthis field. My feeling of the wholegenre, of the terror tale, is this:The best thing that you can do forreaders in this field is to terrifythem. That's a head reaction. It issomething that is intellectual, ithappens in your mind. It is thesort of effect that Edgar Allen Poegets in the story, The TelltaleHeart, when he starts talking abouta quick beating sound, like a watch.

July 198743

There is something about that thatappeals to the mind more thananything else. The fact that thisfellow is hearing the heart, thedismembered heart under the floor-board beating and beating, and thepolice are there and nobody canhear it but him. It goes on and onand it gets louder and louder. That'sterror!

And then there is horror, that'sthe next step on the ladder. It is aphysical sort of reaction. It is thereaction you have to the idea thata machine could literally, physi-cally come alive and want to suckpeople in and grind them up. Thatis a horrible thought.

And then you finally get down tothe literal, physical "gross out,"which is probablv the, basest humanemotion that we know. But still, itis valid and we have a need for it. IfI can't get terror, and I can't gethorror, I'll be happy with a "grossout."

Do you enjoy reading other peo-ple's horror stories?

Oh, yes. There are a lot of peo-ple in the field that I do read.There is a lot of stuff that is writ-ten in this field, though, that isnot very good. You just have tolook for the good stuff.

Which is harder to write, a story

that appeals to the intellect or onethat hits you at the gut level!

I think it is harder to write astory that appeals to the intellect.But, when you tie onto one, youcan do it quite deeply. It reallydepends on the type of idea youhave to begin with.

You have written several storiesabout rats. Do you have a certainfascination with them!

I write about things that scareme. I've never written a snake storyin my life. I read a good one calledMountain King awhile back; but, Imyself have never written a storyabout snakes because they don'tscare me. I write about rats becausethey scare the hell out of me. Ithink we tend to write out ourphobias.

Have you had a subject that youhave wanted to write about buthave never been able to do it*

Spiders! I want to write aboutspiders. To me, that is the onetheme that cuts right across andscares just about everybody. Spid-ers, to me, are just about the mosthorrible, awful things that I canthink about. I think everyone isafraid of spiders. I have also wantedto write a really good elevator storyabout the fear of heights. A stuck-in-the-elevator story can combine

a fear of heights and also claus-trophobia.

With the tremendous explosionof technological advances, do yousee a time when fact will far sur-pass any kind of fiction you couldconceive?

Yes. I think we are getting intothat situation now. One of theexamples I use is abortion on de-mand. The Supreme Court has saidthat abortion on demand is legalup until the third month of term.Which means for the first twelveor fourteen weeks of a woman'spregnancy, she can abort her fetus.That is her determination. TheSupreme Court has said that thatis not a human being with its ownright to life. The problem is this,we're approaching a point where cfetus of three months, two monthsor even one month can be keptalive. Which is to say that youhave to question the mother's abil-ity to say, "It's my property; it's apart of me. It isn't a living thing onits own." Science is beginning toencroach on every level of ourvolition. And to me, that is a fright-ening social concept. It doesn'thave anything to do with the rightto have an abortion verses theright to life. It has to do with theability of science to keep thingsalive and the ability of science toreally control our lives. ®

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