Shana Miller
Intro to Literature
I-search Paper

Choosing a topic for a paper such as this one was really difficult for me. I have always been an avid reader and have always loved so many different authors. There are many questions I have about authors, their works and literature in general. For this paper I choose to write about someone who is a little more modern day; someone who everyone would be familiar with, regardless of whether they are a fan or not. I choose to write about the very famous author, Stephen King. Stephen King has always fascinated me, not only as an author but as a person. This is a man who seems to have an imagination that is never ending, with a soul and mind so dark, is it beyond compare. How else could you write and publish over 60 horror books? All of which are unique, intense, and ultimately terrifying. My question is, who is this person and what is it that inspires this creativity and horror? As a child, I grew up in a household of readers. There was never a time I that I can recall my mother, father, brothers, or myself not having one or more books that each of us were reading. My mother’s favorite author was (and is) Stephen King. There was something that intrigued me about this, though I was not allowed to read most of his works for the longest time; of course my mother was concerned that they would be inappropriate for me to read. This only made the intrigue of the author that much more. Once I was old enough to begin discovering his works, I started to understand the attraction. He’s book were like mental train wrecks; there were times when all you wanted to do was put the book down, but couldn’t seem to do so. Even though I have known what a phenomenal author Stephen King is, I feel as though I have always had the burning question, what is it that inspires and drives him? He was the first thing to cross my mind when thinking of a topic for my I-search paper. Luckily, I have an unlimited resource for information; my mother. Being able to understand a man that is so often misunderstood is definitely a challenge. Doing the research for this paper has been a journey into a great mind and has made me want to read more of his works than ever before. It is my personal opinion that Stephen King is one of the great American authors of our time. While doing the research I worked hard to keep my focus on King himself, rather than the books; however getting to know his characters is a big part of understanding where they came from. Beginning my research was easy, all I had to do was visit my parent’s house. Immediately I was handed multiple books and told nearly everything that my mother knew about him. Going through her rather large collection of his works was more beneficial than a library could ever be. The first book that I began to read was “A memoir of the Craft – On writing.” This was a book that he began working on in 1999. He wanted his readers and fans to understand that his craft is his life and his life is his craft. It let the reader into his head and let them understand his perspective on not only his writing, but where it was coming from. The irony of this book is that he couldn’t have started writing it at a more crucial time in his life, however he didn’t know that when he began writing. Mid-year into this book, Stephen King suffered a nearly fatal accident that nearly jeopardized not only his life, but our understanding of it. After realizing that he was going to be okay, the book became that much more important to him, and that much more revealing. This was the first step to my research on who Stephen King really is. Although this was only the beginning of my research, the may have been the most important step in the process. He begins by explaining how his childhood was the main inspiration of his writing and why that was. He recalls vivid memories from everything from his adolescence through college and how those years and events eventually led up to his first novel, “Carrie.” He begins by talking about his childhood, maybe the most important time of his life, though he’s memories are few and far between. King offers this account on the first page (on his childhood memories), “Mine is a fogged-out landscape from which occasional memories appear like isolated tress…the kind that look as if they might like to grab and eat you.” (King). Sounds like this could be the beginning of one his epic horror novels in itself. This recalling is described exactly how you would expect it to be, terrifying. The metaphorical usage is one that only King himself could bring to life in that particular way he does. On this page he also makes it clear that it is not an autobiography, but a “curriculum vitae,” or rather an attempt to show how it was the he was formed as a writer. This is exactly the type of information I needed and wanted to be able to write this paper. One of the more important memories he shares is the first time he remembers feeling pain. Being stung by a wasp that was hiding in a cinder block he was carrying, at the time he was only two years old. As he recalls this particular memory he says that it was, “poisonous inspiration.” This of one of his first memories that ignited a fear in him that would stick for the rest of his life. Reading this, an event like that seems as though it would be rather insignificant. Though even the smallest thing, such as a bee sting, is one of the many things that has led up to over 60 published horror novels. This in itself is what make an author such as Stephen King stand out among so many others. King goes on to describe may other memories in great detail, those that inspired his writing that is. The next of several accounts, is a baby sitter that he and his siblings had as small children. The sitter he refers to as Eula-Beulah, was somewhat of an inspiration for his literary criticism later in life. Also, the memories that he has of her hold a few terrors. Somewhat more importantly, is his recollection of their first television. Though they didn’t acquire that until 1958. “Robot Monster” is the first thing that he watched on the television at the age of 11. A movie about a guy dressed in an ape costume with a goldfish bowl on his head, determined to kill the remaining survivors of a nuclear war. How’s that for some horror inspiration? King was immediately drawn to all shows and movies of the kind of nature. What I thought was most interesting about this excerpt from his book however, is that even more inspiring than the movies themselves, was the fact that he was not able to see them right away. Having the opportunity to read and write before he was able to watch television made the connection to those films that much more intense for him. He knew that the material he was seeing was something he was interested in before ever being able to see it firsthand. However, these characters sparked his imagination beyond control and he was able to start creating a few of his own. Though it was these memories and many more that sparked an initial interest in horror and something inside King that would later be revealed as pure literary genius, it wasn’t until he was in college that he had the idea for his first big novel, Carrie. Continuing with the same approach to my research, I came to the second most helpful tool in my research, a book entitled, “The Stephen King Companion.” This book was written to provide a glimpse into the real world of Stephen King himself. It provides the reader with interviews, overviews, trivia, articles, and more. It’s more of a behind the scenes look into what makes him tick. It was written with the intent to show his fans what makes Stephen King, or better known to some: The Boogey Man of Bangor, Maine, the writer that he is today. The question “Who is Stephen King,” remained one of the most unanswered questions for those who wanted to know. Once a more accessible figure, King later became more elusive in fear that his publicity would leave him less time for what was really important, his writing. Though the first book I read gave some real insight into what may have intentionally inspired him as a young boy, this goes even deeper, explaining what is was the kept the drive and ambitious nature that produced so many acclaimed horror novels. Among the top of the list was King’s wife, Tabitha (Spruce) King. Married in 1971, Tabitha quickly became his number one fan and can easily be credited for King becoming famous to begin with. When King began writing Carrie, he was undoubtedly struggling with many trials and tribulations that every author goes through. Knowing in his heart that this is what he was meant to do, yet never having published anything to date, he started to doubt his calling. They were going through a few marital woes and the stress of not having enough money to make a decent living for themselves. The stress was producing a writer’s block, and what he did have written of his first novel was thrown into the trash. Though at the time there were only a few pages written, Tabitha had retrieved the pages from the trashcan and quickly encourage King to continue writing what would turn out to be one of his most famous works. Soon after he has finished the novel, Doubleday bought the book for a mere $2,500. Sometime after the manuscript made it way to the New American Library where the rights to the paperback book were sold for $400,000 dollars. This began what would be a meteoric career for Stephen King. Next came three more popular novels, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror. It seems that his passion and imagination had no limits. King had published nearly 20 more books over the next decade, including Firestarter, Thinner, The Stand, and The Shining. Even after all this, King didn’t like being regarded as a horror writer. His publishers felt that this was the best placed marketing strategy, but King felt that is was a little misleading. Once Different Seasons, The Dark Tower and Eyes of the Dragon were published, it was clear that some of King’s drive was outright fantasy. The truth of the matter was, King’s fans weren’t just searching for a great new horror novel, just a tale that was well told; at this, King was the master. In “The Companion…” King shares this thought about his writing, “For me, if there’s pain sometimes it’s when I come in to start a new day and I sit down and say, ‘I gotta pick up this fish again, and it’s rotted some more and I’ve got to smell it.’ It’s tough to get going, but there can be times, completely the opposite of pain, when suddenly you’ll feel this burst of exhilaration when suddenly you see something with perfect clarity.” (Beahm). This, for King, was the characters that came to him in his mind. This book offered a lot of insight into the mind of King and had an overwhelming about of information for me to offer this research paper. I felt that at this point, I had to move on to more current information; that is when I decided to use the internet for more research on King. There are hundreds of interviews, both article and televised, to choose from. There was so much filtering that I had to do in order to decide exactly which information I wanted to include in this paper. My first thought was of course Wikipedia. This source, though some feel is unreliable, is packed full of so much information there was not a chance I was not going to filter through it. I double checked much of the information through the sources that are listed and the same information seemed to appear. Wikipedia offered an abundance of information, and of course resurrected the question: what inspires an author to write over 50 published novels and sell more than 350 million copies worldwide? There were a few more details of his childhood that offered better insight. As a child, King witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train. Although he says that there is no memories of this, he believes that the terror of this events haunts his subconscious. Another event was King going through his Uncles attic with his older brother. Here he discovered a paperback version of an H.P. Lovecraft collection of short stories entitled, “The Lurker.” King told in a 2009 interview, “I knew that when I’d found home when I read that book.” This was the first article that offered more information about King’s published alter ego, Richard Bachman. This alter ego was King’s way of testing his success. He wanted to see if it could be replicated and to put to rest fears that his success and popularity was an accident. From 1977 to 1984, King published five novels under the name Richard Bachman, all were a huge success. There were very few people that knew King and Bachman were in fact the same person. Later he was exposed by a bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, who noticed similarities and was persistent in discovering if they were one in the same. Of course at this point I had read several article and published bits of biographies. The amount of information was starting to become overwhelming. Much of what I read was redundant, but some of the articles I had read gave me more in depth insight into my real focus; what is Stephen King’s inspiration? A few more articles that I chose to pull information from were, The Biography of Stephen King, an NPR interview, the Paris Reviews; “Stephen King, The Art of Fiction No. 189,” and an interview with The Guardian titled, “Stephen King: on alcoholism and the return to The Shining.” All of which filled my mind with my information than I could fit into one paper. In the “Biography of Stephen King,” the article explained that a lot of his writing inspiration comes from a long list of his personal fears. Among these fears were: fear for someone else, fear of others, fear of death, fear of insects, fear of closed-in places, fear of rats, fear of snakes, fear of deformity, fear of squishy things, and fear of the dark. With a long list of fears such as this, inspiration for what could be comes easily, considering he has far more fears than the average person. These fears are a major inspiration for his works. The fears caused an irrational circumstanced in his head, many of which lead to some of his most interesting characters. As many know, his third printed novel was based on his weekend visit to The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO. It’s here that he stayed in room 217, with which he said that he was filled with dread the entire time. Like many times before, King used real life characters from the hotel visit. This included the hotel bartender, Grady. It has been said that this is the novel that set his horror writing stone. In the past, I have had the opportunity to stay at The Stanley Hotel, and the inspiration for the famous novel is clear. In his NPR interview, he expresses his approach on writing as this, “As a writer, I’ve always been confrontational. I’ve never been cool, I’ve never been calculating. My idea is to come to you, grab you by the lapels and say: I have this story. I want to tell you, and when you hear it, you’re not going to want to cook dinner, you’re not going to want to clean your house, and you’re not going to want to go to your job. You’re just going to want to read this story and care about what comes next.” This in itself explains his number one inspiration; his fans. Stephen King is a simple man with a not so simple mind. It is clear that he was destined to become the author is today. His inspirations were many and clear. I feel that all the research that I have did on the subject was very successful. There was almost too much information for me to reign my focus in on the topic. I feel that I did research enough variety of sources to get the appropriate amount of information, and the right information for the specific topic that I chose. It was very helpful that my mother is such a huge fan of his and encouraged my research topic at hand. I don’t feel that after my research I was left with any unanswered questions. As I have stated before, I feel as though the amount of information that I had at hand was nearly overwhelming. Deciphering which information to include in the paper was the hardest part of writing it by far. Stephen King is a cultural phenomenon and a major public figure and inspirational author to many. It was interesting to learn what it was that inspires his writing most. It was interesting to learn that his childhood occurences are something that inspires him the most. There was so information about his childhood memories, I wanted to include the few that seemed to really stand out for me. I was also surprised to learn that King himself had such a long list of fears. After reading that those fears inspired his writing, it all seemed to make more sense. I have always believed that whatever scenarios you can come up with in your mind are far more terrifying than those that others can show you or write down into words. Nothing is scarier than one’s own imagination. King has had the best way of utilizing this to his advantage. Though not everyone’s imagination is quite as active as his seems to be, we can all understand the simple fact of our imaginations running wild. The research that I have accomplished didn’t change what I intended or expected. If anything it only inspired me to want to learn more about Stephen King himself. Though I have not read too many of his books, mainly short stories and The Shining. Now that I have done this research and wrote a paper on the subject, I feel that I will be reading more of his novels in the near future. I would like to be introduced to more of his characters now that I understand a big part of where they are coming from. It makes his works ten times more interesting to me. I am sure that I will continue the research that I have done through reading the published works. It has taken my mother my whole life to read the novels that Stephen King has written, I hope to start the same trend. I can now say that part of me will be devoted to his works and understanding the characters in them. The research that I have done accomplished one simple thing for me; confirming my belief that Stephen King is one of the most gifted and talented American authors of our time.

King, Stephen. A memoir of the craft - On writing. Simon & Schuster, 2000. Print.
Beahm, George. The Stephen King Companion. Kansas City: Universal Press Syndicate Company, 1989. Print