I am a wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, a sister, and a daughter. I have worked in the manufacturing world for seventeen years. It is, however my writing, my poems and my art that truly define who I am. All the rest are just hats I have worn and names I have answered to.
Ok, so I have a question. I frequent the book stores a lot. Meaning that my idea of a treat is new reading material. I lived in Maine for several years and my late husband was a native. He enjoyed Stephen Kings books and we owned them all.
Now for my question. Ann Rice writes fairly horrific novels, I’ve read them all and enjoy them, but let's face it, Lestat is a vampire and a blood sucker, no matter how you word it, it is horror. So why is Ann Rice's Vampire series in the Literature department and Stephen King in the Horror department. Is this simply PR? Am I missing something here?
I admit, I enjoy Rice's books. I also admit that Stephen King is one of the few author's that truly scares the bejesus out of me. I know why he scares me. I have lived in Orrington, Maine. The house I lived in was a dead ringer (excuse the pun) for the house in Pet Semetary. I have driven over the bridge featured in the Hitchhiker, and been to a lake that is damned close to the Raft. The water tower in Bangor looks like the one in IT. I have also been in the Bangor library, multiple times. Maybe it's just close proximity, but somehow, I don't think so.
I was in Mr. Paperback at one time, looking for a new read and ran into a man. I looked up and almost fainted. It was him. All I could do was stammer "Excuse me Mr. King." and go outside and make a total fool out of myself by jumping up and down and telling my daughter. "Guess who’s in the store?" We actually waited outside till he left. Wimp that she is, she wouldn’t go inside. (Like I could talk).
Stephen King is a normal person. Husband, father, grandfather. Alright, so he has a not so normal imagination. We are both of the same generation (baby boomers) and grew up watching a lot of the same stuff. Lon Chaney, Christopher Lee, and Bela himself. I have to admit though I was more into Tarzan than the Fifty Foot Woman. Gender stuff, you understand (Johnny Weismuller in a loin cloth) oh my.
Edgar Allen Poe, one of King's favorites was one of my favorites too. He scared the crap out of me. Poe's stuff though is definitely a work of fiction. King's writing could describe the guy next door. Who, just happens to be a werewolf, vampire, zombie, ghost, take your pick.
His characters are normal neighborhood folks, that's why they give us such fright. We're all afraid of the dark, the unknown. We tend to lean more to the "those that bump back"crowd. In real life though that isn’t always true. Take 9/11 as an example.
Sometimes the bad guys do get away with some outrageous shit. Sometimes innocents suffer, sometimes the hero dies. I think Stephen King awakens the true nature of the beast in all of us. As a race, humanity is capable of some truly nasty things. Most of us tend to sweep that under the rug and use the universal "they"did it.
Didn't WE? The great United States of America drop not one but two bombs on Japan in 1945? Instantly reducing the populations of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki to burning dust. Not military installations, not bases, but entire innocent populations. Women, children, elderly. Whole families wiped out forever, gone from the face of the earth.
Stephen King's the Stand, gives us a different view of this type of catastrophe but within our own borders caused by our own people. The results being ultimately, intimately, the same. Death, destruction, decay. Of course civilization survives.
We always have an out. We always survive. If no one survived what would be the point. We are never saddled with more than we can bear. Sometimes that seems outrageous. It is true though. Even though we don’t always see it, it’s there. In the Stand I just knew the whole entire world was going to go to the dogs, literally. Man dies, dog eats man, dog dies, cats inherit the earth, kind of thing. He pulled it off though and I do believe I have read the entire thing at least four or five times. Believe me if you've never read it, it's a monster.
Stephen King's writing is horror, it is also damned fine reading.
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