Thanks to an early xmas gift from my family, I had the opportunity to attend An Evening with Stephen King in Toronto this week.The event began with a chronological slide show of original covers for many of S.K.'s books. It was then that the impact this man has had, not only on me but indeed on much of western culture, really began to sink in.
As the jacket art for early titles like Night Shift and Skeleton Crew appeared onscreen, I hearkened back to my childhood, when I would swipe my dad's King paperbacks and muddle my way through them. Now I can almost hear the whisking noise as a good deal of the plot and all of the subtext went flying over my naive head, but nevertheless I still remember reading passages like this for the very first time:
From "The Boogeyman":
'"So nice." The words sounded as though they might have come through a mouthful of rotted seaweed.
Billings stood rooted to the spot as the closet door swung open. He dimly felt warmth at his crotch as he wet himself.
"So nice," the boogeyman said as it shambled out.
"So nice," the boogeyman said as it shambled out.
It still held its Dr. Harper mask in one rotted spade-claw hand.'
From "Gramma":
'Now gramma's face gleamed with fell intelligence -- it gleamed like an old, stinking wax candle. Her eyes drooped in her face, lackluster and dead. Her chest was not moving. Her nightie had pulled up, exposing elephantine thighs. The coverlet of her deathbed was thrown back.
Gramma held her huge arms out to him.
"I want to hug you, Georgie," the flat buzzing deadvoice said.'
Heady stuff, especially to a nine-year-old. I'd been a fan of horror practically since birth (well, okay, perhaps not quite that early) but it was Stephen King's work that truly made me say "This is what I want to do. This makes sense to me. Picking good words so you can suck people into your story and scare them, that's what I want to do with my life."
I confess I haven't followed Mr. King's career very closely since the early '90s. In high school I began to plumb the world of the printed word a lot more deeply. I moved past simply browsing the scary books I saw in the drugstore rack. But in many ways, Stephen King stayed with me. Passages like those quoted above draw me back to his novels and stories and remind me of how, when he's firing on all cylinders, King is not only one of the great storytellers of our time but one of the finest stylists too.
Sitting in the audience while this titan of terror read from Under the Dome was an unforgettable experience. I don't know of another author who has influenced virtually every horror author from the 1970s onwards. This influence might be slight, but is there nevertheless. Many of us discovered adult fiction through his books.
Hail to the King, baby.
