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| On Writing : A Memoir of the Craft,
Stephen King |
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| Books,
Matthew Fresco,
15 January 2001 |
Rating: F4
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HG Wells and Stephen King have much in common, neither cares for character nor plot, critical acclaim nor style. Both have huge audiences that turn the serious novelist dollar-green with envy. Perhaps it is for these reasons that they are both disparaged by the serious critics but adored by their fans. For his efforts King draws a salary of more than $50 million a year which must go some way to relieving his artistic sensibilities.
On Writing is in many ways his apology. It is split into three sections. First we are treated to the biography of a dysfunctional modern American who like Elvis collapses under the weight of his own success. King is a recovering alcoholic. He admits that he wrote The Tommyknockers and Cujo while utterly out of his face on a heady mixture of cocaine and booze. He became the monster Jack Torrance from The Shining. With so much money in the bank his bender was a twenty year weekend. Unlike Elvis he survived. He has not had a drink for twelve years and has come to epitomize the hero of the American Dream, saved only by the love of his family.
His work can be confused, even fragmentary. `Often distorted and ill written he is always fascinating. In an unpretentious way he is engaging but above all he grabs our sympathy and turns us into page turning monsters capable of neglecting our mobile phones in a hungry passion to reach oh so predictable conclusions.
HG Wells chose science fiction as way of asking simple 'what if' questions. King does the same with the horror genre. While HG Wells wondered how we would cope with a time machine Steven King wonders how we would cope with a killer car. Michael Crichton asks what if a dinosaur came back to life but King makes us watch it tear the local pharmacist apart. Working with high concepts may attract the Hollywood bucks but big ideas often have little stories. While this may alienate him from the serious literary establishment it has endeared him to millions of readers who simply cannot get enough of this fantasy and escapism.
Running through all his work is a dark seam of midtown American. Both King and his novels are down to earth and friendly. Looking back at the last century's hunt for the great American novel it is King who has probably encapsulated more of what is it is to be ordinary by placing the common man in an extraordinary world.
The horror comes from a deeply wretched and lonely childhood. His father left to buy a packet of cigarettes and never returned. In his latest novel Heart of Atlantis we learn how he hated his mother and found solace in pulp horror and science fiction.
Living in a trailer park, his wife Tabitha supported his early writing by working in a Dunkin' Donuts. With the publication of Carrie in 1974 the rags to riches story was complete. But King is a teacher and in the central part of the book he tempts us to emulate his success. With a blueprint of how to become the worlds most read author he invites us to enter a competition to write in his style and win the chance to be published along side him.
King asserts that "this is a short book because most books on writing are full of bullshit". He eschews character and plot because they do not reflect real life. Like Anthony Burgess he never makes notes, but simply locks himself away and writes without editing, starting from a simple idea. The ideas come from daily walks and he writes listening to maddeningly loud rock music.
The King style bible is not complex, in his view "the adverb is not your friend". But he has little else to say that is not obvious, "in my view, stories and novels consist of three parts narration, description and dialogue". What we have here is a guide to writing for those who know that there is a blockbuster inside them that will never see the light of day. But for King this is a self-help book, written to bolster his confidence after his recent accident.
The best of it is in his description of how the primitive urge to write saved his life after the accident. In the final chapters he relates the gruesome story of how in June 1999 he was on his usual four mile stroll when a blue Dodge mini-van, driven by Bryan Smith rolled out of control over a hill top almost killing him. He is on home territory with this personal horror story, "Smith wasn't looking at the road on the afternoon our lives came together because his rottweiler had jumped from the very rear of his van into the backseat area where there was an Igloo cooler with some meat stored inside". The novelist bounced off the windscreen and lay dying by the side of the road. With his lap turned the wrong way and his legs broken "like so many marbles in a sock", a collapsed lung and a bit of a headache, his first thoughts were that "I have been nearly killed by a character right out of one of my own novels". More bizarrely Smith recently died in suspicious circumstances.
You cannot read any of his novels without liking him. He lavishes praise on his doctors and his family who nursed him through what must have been a terrible ordeal. Most impressive of all King began writing again almost immediately. He wrote while still in a wheelchair using writing as therapy.
Since the accident he has published a novel for the web Riding the Bullet, a teleplay and a 900 page novel Dreamcatcher as well as this memoir. He is not so much an author as a writing machine. He writes 2,000 words a day, every day "that’s 180,000 words over a three month span, a goodish length for a book". He is always working and that "includes Christmas, the fourth and my birthday".
Like H G Wells he is prolific first and good second. With 30 novels and half a dozen collected stories, various screen plays and teleplays to his credit he has redefined the term blockbuster. In a sense that is his appeal. He has written and lived the American Dream. While the critics may shun him he has the reader's imagination always on his side. Like Wells before him his stories may well outlive them all.
Simon & Schuster Audio
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