Stephen King

Contains hundreds of alphabetically arranged entries that provide information about various aspects of the life and work of popular novelist Stephen King.

Take a closer look at these subtexts and discover a new dimension in the reading of Stephen King's fiction. By focusing on these issues, and by presenting four rich interviews with men close to the work of Stephen King, Stephen King's America lifts the veil that is the surface of his stories, shining a pleasantly distinct light on the sources that are both his subliminal and apparent strengths as a modern author.

Though often disparaged by literary critics, Stephen King's work has influenced a generation of horror and science fiction writers. Acting as a study guide, this book features the important critical interpretations of the horror master's work.

Take an intimate tour through the life and works of Stephen King, made vivid with rare photos and ephemera from King’s personal collection. Even if you are a die-hard fan, you will find something new in this beautifully packaged Stephen King reference that you will return to again and again. Timed to celebrate Stephen King’s 75th birthday on September 21, 2022, Stephen King: A Complete Exploration of His Work, Life, and Influences reveals the inspiration behind the prolific author’s brilliant works of horror through a combination of photos and documents from King’s archives and an engaging account of the stories behind how his novels, novellas, short stories, and adaptations came to be. It might sound like a tall tale that Stephen King once met a bartender named Grady in an empty hotel in Colorado, or that the celebrated author helped his young daughter bury her cat in a nearby “pets sematary” after it was killed on a busy roadway. In this book, discover how King drew on these and more real personal experiences and mundane life events, then employed his extraordinary imagination to twist them into something horrific. From impoverished university student to struggling schoolteacher to one of the best-selling—and most recognizable—authors of all time, this engrossing book reveals the evolution and influences of Stephen King’s body of work over his nearly 50-year career, and how the themes of his writing reflect the changing times and events within his life. An expansion of Stephen King expert Bev Vincent’s The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, this fully revised, redesigned, and updated book includes: A review of King’s complete body of work, including Fairy Tale, published in September 2022. A wealth of rare memorabilia from King’s own collection, including personal and professional correspondences, handwritten manuscript pages, book covers, movie stills, and never-before-seen excerpts from one of his poems and an unpublished short story. Interludes on specific topics such as real-life settings that inspired King’s writing, the editor who discovered him, his life as a Boston Red Sox fan, and the many awards and honors he has received. Insightful quotes from King from interviews over the decades. Celebrate the beloved King of Horror with this informational and entertaining look inside King’s most iconic titles and the culture they have created.

A biography of writer Stephen King that describes his era, major works, and life.

Stephen King’s Gothic reassesses the writing of this major contemporary Gothic writer through close and detailed readings of key works ranging from his earliest writings (Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining) to recent novels like Duma Key. Informed by and extensively applying concepts deriving from contemporary literary and cultural theory and engaging closely throughout with King’s texts and with his comments in his own critical writings and interviews, the book argues that King’s particular revisions of major Gothic themes, writings, and traditions, can best be understood as being closely related to his recurrent concerns with the act and products of writing itself. These concerns, Sears argues, are detectable across King’s oeuvre and structural to his Gothic vision. Key themes addressed include Gothic traditions and their connections to related genres like science fiction, Gothic representations of time, space, and place, Gothic monstrosity, and the constitution (in King’s versions of it) of Gothic writing itself. Stephen King’s Gothic is the first critical analysis of King’s work to focus fully on his redefinitions and extensions of the Gothic mode, and to deploy the critical tools of contemporary theory, from Derridean analysis to Deleuzian philosophy, to open King’s texts up to new levels of critical scrutiny. Its readings of key works are original and innovative; its focus on canonical King texts enables it also to reread the critical canon of previously available work on King; and it concludes by indicating some directions in which future critical work on King might develop.

As Stephen King has continued to publish numerous works beyond one of the many high points of his career, in the 1980s, scholarship has not always kept up with his output. This volume presents 13 essays (12 brand new) on many of King’s recent writings that have not received the critical attention of his earlier works. This collection is grouped into three categories—“King in the World Around Us,” “Spotlight on The Dark Tower” and “Writing into the Millennium”; each examines an aspect of King’s contemporary canon that has yet to be analyzed.

This companion provides a two-part introduction to best-selling author Stephen King, whose enormous popularity over the years has gained him an audience well beyond readers of horror fiction, the genre with which he is most often associated. Part I considers the reception of King's work, the film adaptations that they gave rise to, the fictional worlds in which some of his novels are set, and the more useful approaches to King's varied corpus. Part II consists of entries for each series, novel, story, screenplay and even poem, including works never published or produced, as well as characters and settings.

Excavating Stephen King: A Darwinist Hermeneutic Study of the Fiction combines approaches from science and literary theory to examine the canon of Stephen King’s fiction work in a single critical study. James Arthur Anderson has devised the concept of Darwinist Hermeneutics as a critical tool to combine evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, biology, and literary Darwinism with other more conventional critical theory, including structuralism, narratology, semiotics, and linguistic analysis. Using this theory, Anderson examines King’s works in terms of archetypes and mythology, human universals, affective emotions, and the organization of story to create maximum suspense. This method brings new insights into King’s stories and broader implications for storytelling as a whole.

This exciting exploration of Stephen King’s digital writing maneuvers and electronic ventures on online platforms and e-readers unravels the author’s latest writing techniques and justifies his unprecedented success in the new millennium. It investigates the latest additions to the Master of Horror’s “toolbox” by studying King’s media presence and writing oeuvre in the twenty-first century through online projects, such as his videogame Discordia. The book closely traces King’s shifts from print to the digital as he crafts his stories to share with his constant readers. Its examination of King’s re-vitalized Gothic sheds light on his shift towards new realizations that take into consideration the needs and tastes of the contemporary consuming public in a constant dialogue with their contemporary fears and anxieties. While exploring King’s literary generic and technological crossovers, the book stresses the need for an encompassing theory that takes into account literary tradition, norms, and motifs adjusted according to the materialities and technological specificities of each medium in specific socio-cultural and economic contexts.

Fascinating facts, trivia, and little-known details about the Master of the Macabre’s life from the “world’s leading authority on Stephen King” (Entertainment Weekly). New York Times–bestselling author Stephen Spignesi has compiled interviews, essays, and loads of facts and details about all of Stephen King’s work into this fun and informative compendium for the author’s many fans, from the casual to the fanatical! Did you know. . . ? In his early teens, Stephen King sold typed copies of his short stories at school. King originally thought his novel Pet Sematary was too frightening to publish. King’s legendary Dark Tower series took him more than 30 years to write. Thinner was the novel that revealed his “Richard Bachman” pseudonym to the world. King wrote The Eyes of the Dragon for his daughter Naomi. He has never liked Stanley Kubrick’s film version of his novel The Shining. It took him four years to write what some consider his magnum opus, IT. The 2017 film version of IT has grossed more than $700 million worldwide. In addition to novels, King has written essays, plays, screenplays, and even poetry.

This title explores the creative works of famous novelist Stephen King. Books analyzed include Carrie, The Green Mile, The Stand, and the Dark Tower series. Clear, comprehensive text gives background biographical information of King. “You Critique It” feature invites readers to analyze other creative works on their own. A table of contents, timeline, list of works, resources, source notes, glossary, and an index are also included. Essential Critiques is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.

From The Long Walk to The Outsider, Stephen King’s output reflects the major political concerns of the previous fifty years. This book is the first sustained study of the complex ways in which King’s texts speak to their unique political moments. By exploring this aspect of the author’s popular works, readers might better understand the numerous crises that Americans currently face – the book surveys King’s corpus to address a wide range of issues, including the spread of neoliberalism, the Bush-Cheney doctrine, and the chaos of the populist present. Although the fiction outwardly declares itself to be anti-political (thus reflecting a widespread shift away from democracy in the aftermath of the 1960s), political energies persist just beneath the surface. Given the possibility of a political resurgence that haunts so many of his page-turners, Stephen King produces horror and hope in equal measure.

Stephen King Dollar Baby: The Book by Anthony Northrup In the late 1970s, Stephen King had the idea of selling his short stories for ONE DOLLAR and a contract to let young filmmakers make their own films based on his works. After King’s approval, these films were only available for viewing at film festivals around the world. For the last forty-plus years and over hundreds of films made, The Dollar Baby program has made a serious impact not only on the Stephen King world, but the film industry itself. Unfortunately, for Stephen King fans, unless you attended these film festivals, you basically would never be able to see them. In fact, most Stephen King fans have never even heard of the Dollar Baby program. Well, that’s where I come in. I have been interviewing Dollar Baby filmmakers and reviewing their films for eight years. During that time, not only have I also hosted two Dollar Baby Film fests at Crypticon Horror Con in Minnesota, but I also built a trust, a bond, and a friendship with all of the Dollar Baby community. As a major Stephen King fan, I decided it was time to pull the curtain back and show the fans just what they have been missing. In this book, readers will learn all about the Dollar Baby program, fun facts, trivia, personal stories from the fans themselves, special guests contributors, essays, Where Are They Now?, 55 exclusive interviews with the Dollar Baby filmmakers and reviews of their films, and a whole lot more! I cover every possible angle of the Dollar Baby program and it’s all here to enjoy! So, sit back, relax, and get ready to go behind the exclusive curtain and prepare yourselves to enter...Stephen King Dollar Baby: The Book!

99 dark secrets from the world of Stephen King. The most informative look yet at the dark secrets of the Stephen King world. 48 tales by the master of horror that have never been included in a Stephen King collection; and 51 stories that have never been published.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Trier, course: Der englische Schauerroman, 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Stephen King is one of the most published contemporary authors. He has written more than 50 novels and movie scripts, some of them under the pseudonym of Richard Bachmann. His stories deal with the supernatural, with aliens or the abysses of the human mind. Due to his topics, his books are often regarded as trivial literature by many of his readers and also by people who have never read a single one of his books and who only judge him by his name. But what these critics seem to miss is the fact that Stephen King has adapted many themes and motifs from highly regarded authors of classic Gothic fiction, such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and Bram Stoker, to mention just a few. In each of Stephen King’s books, the reader can identify traces of classic Gothic fiction, although the topics and settings are normally adapted to modern times. Stephen King says of himself that ‘most of my [Stephen King’s] books have been derivative to some extent...’ (Bloom, p.96), which is not surprising regarding his educational background: After studying English at the University of Maine, Stephen King worked as a high school teacher, although he did not get too much teaching practice due to the commercial success of his books. Therefore, it is not very surprising that Stephen King uses the sources he has become acquainted with during his studies. He uses the motifs of Gothic novels in different ways and in many of his books. In fact, he says that ‘what I [Stephen King] try to do...is to pour new wine from old bottles’ (Bloom, p.96). What I would like to do in this term paper is to show some of the Gothic motifs Stephen King uses in his books and in what way he uses them. For this purpose, I have chosen two novels from Stephen King’s earlier working period: Salem’s Lot and The Shining. But before actually beginning the comparison between Stephen King’s books and classic Gothic novels I will give an overview over the characteristic features of Gothic writing in order to enable the reader to identify the tradition Stephen King’s writing stands in.

Looks at censorship in American schools and libraries, and includes a section of the fifty most banned books from 1996 through 2000, including newcomer Harry Potter.