WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.339 Welcome to The Deep Dives, the show where we 00:00:02.339 --> 00:00:05.459 take a huge stack of sources, articles, memoirs, 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:07.960 essays, you name it, and distill it all down 00:00:07.960 --> 00:00:09.580 for you. We do the reading so you don't have 00:00:09.580 --> 00:00:13.500 to. And today we are tackling an absolute giant, 00:00:13.699 --> 00:00:16.960 a name that, I mean, it really defines a whole 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:19.940 era of American literature, Stephen King. Born 00:00:19.940 --> 00:00:23.039 Stephen Edwin King, 1947, in Portland, Maine. 00:00:23.239 --> 00:00:25.399 And you hear that name and your brain immediately 00:00:25.399 --> 00:00:27.219 goes to one place, right? King of Horror. The 00:00:27.219 --> 00:00:29.579 King of Horror, exactly. And he is, there's no 00:00:29.579 --> 00:00:31.940 denying that. But when you actually dig in, I 00:00:31.940 --> 00:00:33.240 mean, we're talking about something like 200 00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:36.939 short stories, over 60 novels. That label starts 00:00:36.939 --> 00:00:40.359 to feel almost laughably restrictive. And that's, 00:00:40.359 --> 00:00:42.159 well, that's really the mission of this deep 00:00:42.159 --> 00:00:44.759 dive. We know he's the architect of fear, but 00:00:44.759 --> 00:00:46.159 we want to understand the architect himself. 00:00:46.579 --> 00:00:48.679 Yeah, we're moving past the monsters to look 00:00:48.679 --> 00:00:52.340 at... the architecture of his anxiety, the sheer 00:00:52.340 --> 00:00:55.299 volume of his work across suspense, crime, sci, 00:00:55.539 --> 00:00:58.600 fantasy. And his personal resilience. That's 00:00:58.600 --> 00:01:00.500 a huge part of it. The story behind the stories. 00:01:00.740 --> 00:01:04.060 It really is. I mean, the output is just staggering. 00:01:04.620 --> 00:01:08.060 But the range, the range is what really gets 00:01:08.060 --> 00:01:09.959 you. You look at his first novel, Carrie, back 00:01:09.959 --> 00:01:12.840 in 1974. That sets the template, right? The horror 00:01:12.840 --> 00:01:15.579 icon is born. It does. But then, just eight years 00:01:15.579 --> 00:01:19.659 later, 1982, he drops... different seasons. And 00:01:19.659 --> 00:01:23.359 that collection is just, it's the immediate undeniable 00:01:23.359 --> 00:01:25.400 proof that there's so much more going on. Not 00:01:25.400 --> 00:01:28.480 a single ghoul or ghost in the entire book. No. 00:01:28.540 --> 00:01:32.239 And yet. It gave us the stories that became The 00:01:32.239 --> 00:01:34.799 Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, two of 00:01:34.799 --> 00:01:36.819 the most beloved dramas, you know, ever made. 00:01:36.980 --> 00:01:39.159 It's a juxtaposition, isn't it? On one hand, 00:01:39.159 --> 00:01:41.359 you have the bloody psychic horror of Carrie 00:01:41.359 --> 00:01:44.040 White at the prom. And on the other, this incredibly 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:47.060 moving story about friendship and death and childhood 00:01:47.060 --> 00:01:48.840 in the body. It just shows you right from the 00:01:48.840 --> 00:01:50.760 start that the real source of his power isn't 00:01:50.760 --> 00:01:53.049 the monster. It's always the human beings he 00:01:53.049 --> 00:01:55.590 puts under pressure. Flawed, real, recognizable 00:01:55.590 --> 00:01:58.170 human beings. Exactly. Okay, so let's unpack 00:01:58.170 --> 00:01:59.569 all of this. We have to start at the beginning. 00:01:59.730 --> 00:02:01.530 To understand the writer, you have to look at 00:02:01.530 --> 00:02:05.209 the foundation. And Kane's early life in Maine 00:02:05.209 --> 00:02:09.069 was defined by this constant sense of financial 00:02:09.069 --> 00:02:12.520 instability. A really profound instability. And 00:02:12.520 --> 00:02:15.120 it all stems back to one single event, right? 00:02:15.240 --> 00:02:18.139 His father. His father, Donald Edwin King. When 00:02:18.139 --> 00:02:20.300 Stephen was just two years old, his dad went 00:02:20.300 --> 00:02:23.659 out for a pack of cigarettes and just never came 00:02:23.659 --> 00:02:26.879 back. Just gone. leaving his mother, Nellie Ruth 00:02:26.879 --> 00:02:29.080 King, to raise Stephen and his older adopted 00:02:29.080 --> 00:02:31.639 brother, David, completely on her own. And the 00:02:31.639 --> 00:02:33.800 sources just paint this picture of a relentless 00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:36.159 struggle. She was always moving, chasing work 00:02:36.159 --> 00:02:38.180 from Illinois to Wisconsin to Massachusetts. 00:02:38.300 --> 00:02:40.719 Before finally landing back in Durham, Maine, 00:02:40.879 --> 00:02:43.460 to take care of her own aging parents. So you 00:02:43.460 --> 00:02:45.759 have this irony, you know, the man who had become 00:02:45.759 --> 00:02:48.680 famous for creating these fictional, deeply rooted 00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:51.580 small towns like Derry and Castle Rock. Spent 00:02:51.580 --> 00:02:54.189 his own childhood as a transient. just watching 00:02:54.189 --> 00:02:56.150 his mom fight to keep their heads above water. 00:02:56.289 --> 00:02:58.789 Exactly. It's that lack of roots, that stress, 00:02:58.810 --> 00:03:01.370 that really fuels what comes next. He talks about 00:03:01.370 --> 00:03:04.050 having an unremarkable childhood, but... It was 00:03:04.050 --> 00:03:07.069 anything but. And it created this incredibly 00:03:07.069 --> 00:03:10.030 active imagination. He was looking for some kind 00:03:10.030 --> 00:03:12.909 of control, and he found it in stories. He did, 00:03:13.110 --> 00:03:15.830 really early on, around age six or seven. He 00:03:15.830 --> 00:03:17.949 started out just copying panels from comic books. 00:03:18.250 --> 00:03:20.210 So he's not just consuming them, he's trying 00:03:20.210 --> 00:03:22.819 to understand the structure. Right. And his mother 00:03:22.819 --> 00:03:26.280 sees this and she gives him the push that basically 00:03:26.280 --> 00:03:28.599 changes everything. She looks at what he's doing 00:03:28.599 --> 00:03:30.840 and says something like, I bet you could do better. 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:33.740 Write one of your own. And what a thing to say 00:03:33.740 --> 00:03:36.840 to a kid. Oh, it was everything. King said it 00:03:36.840 --> 00:03:38.819 gave him this immense feeling of possibility. 00:03:39.159 --> 00:03:40.780 It was like she didn't just give him a suggestion. 00:03:41.039 --> 00:03:43.919 She handed him a key to this massive secret building 00:03:43.919 --> 00:03:47.599 and said, go open any door you want. Yeah. And 00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:49.819 that's. That's the birth of the writer right 00:03:49.819 --> 00:03:52.439 there. At seven years old, yeah. And that spark 00:03:52.439 --> 00:03:54.860 just sends him into this frenzy of reading. He's 00:03:54.860 --> 00:03:57.199 reading everything. Nancy Drew, pulp horror. 00:03:57.759 --> 00:03:59.800 Psycho. But there are a couple of books that 00:03:59.800 --> 00:04:02.539 really stand out as being truly formative. The 00:04:02.539 --> 00:04:04.919 first one was Richard Matheson's The Shrinking 00:04:04.919 --> 00:04:07.759 Man. He read that when he was eight. And if you 00:04:07.759 --> 00:04:11.099 think about it, it's a story about a man who 00:04:11.099 --> 00:04:14.750 is... Completely powerless, just shrinking away 00:04:14.750 --> 00:04:18.269 while the world becomes this huge, alien, terrifying 00:04:18.269 --> 00:04:20.610 place. And she has to resonate with a kid who's 00:04:20.610 --> 00:04:22.709 feeling a lot of financial and social vulnerability 00:04:22.709 --> 00:04:25.230 himself. Absolutely. But the other book, the 00:04:25.230 --> 00:04:27.310 one that really taught him about the stakes of 00:04:27.310 --> 00:04:30.290 writing, that was Lord of the Flies. How so? 00:04:30.470 --> 00:04:32.470 What was so crucial about that one? It was the 00:04:32.470 --> 00:04:34.910 raw power of it. He described it as the first 00:04:34.910 --> 00:04:36.829 book that had strong ones that reached out of 00:04:36.829 --> 00:04:39.930 the pages and seized me by the throat. It wasn't 00:04:39.930 --> 00:04:42.639 just fun. It was visceral. Life or death. Exactly. 00:04:42.860 --> 00:04:44.899 It taught him that novels are for life or death, 00:04:45.079 --> 00:04:48.100 that the stakes have to feel monumental. It took 00:04:48.100 --> 00:04:50.399 reading from being a hobby to being something 00:04:50.399 --> 00:04:53.060 essential. And he was already getting paid for 00:04:53.060 --> 00:04:55.980 it, in a way. His Aunt Gert would pay him a quarter 00:04:55.980 --> 00:04:58.480 for every story he wrote. Which is so important. 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:01.100 It reinforces this idea that writing isn't just 00:05:01.100 --> 00:05:03.680 a dream, it's work. It's a viable thing you can 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:06.800 do. So he keeps at it. Sells stories to his friends, 00:05:06.899 --> 00:05:10.019 gets a story serialized in a fanzine in 1965. 00:05:10.620 --> 00:05:13.339 This wasn't some overnight success. It was years 00:05:13.339 --> 00:05:16.180 of grinding. Years of work. And then in 1966, 00:05:16.660 --> 00:05:19.079 he gets a smaller ship to the University of Maine 00:05:19.079 --> 00:05:23.060 at Orono, graduates in 1970 with an English degree. 00:05:23.360 --> 00:05:25.000 And he finds some really important mentors there. 00:05:25.339 --> 00:05:28.019 Edward Holmes and Burton Hatlin. Hatlin especially. 00:05:28.100 --> 00:05:31.220 He ran a writing workshop. And that's where King 00:05:31.220 --> 00:05:34.199 met Tabitha Spruce. His future wife. They married 00:05:34.199 --> 00:05:37.839 in 1971. And their partnership. It's pretty clear 00:05:37.839 --> 00:05:39.860 that it became the stabilizing force that made 00:05:39.860 --> 00:05:42.199 his entire career possible. Which brings us right 00:05:42.199 --> 00:05:44.980 to that famous story. The story of Carrie. Right. 00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:47.639 It's 1973. He's an English teacher. They're living 00:05:47.639 --> 00:05:49.939 in a trailer. They're broke. And he has this 00:05:49.939 --> 00:05:53.029 idea. What if you combined adolescent cruelty 00:05:53.029 --> 00:05:55.689 with telekinesis? He writes three pages. And 00:05:55.689 --> 00:05:58.129 he hates it. He thinks the idea is thin, he's 00:05:58.129 --> 00:06:00.269 exhausted, and he throws them in the trash. And 00:06:00.269 --> 00:06:02.709 this is where Tabitha steps in. She pulls the 00:06:02.709 --> 00:06:05.310 pages out of the garbage, she reads them, and 00:06:05.310 --> 00:06:07.509 she sees the potential. She sees the psychological 00:06:07.509 --> 00:06:10.730 trauma he's tapped into. She tells him, you've 00:06:10.730 --> 00:06:13.389 got something here. I really think you do. And 00:06:13.389 --> 00:06:15.850 that single moment. I mean, a wife literally 00:06:15.850 --> 00:06:18.009 rooting through the garbage because she believes 00:06:18.009 --> 00:06:20.480 in her husband's talent. That's the difference 00:06:20.480 --> 00:06:23.160 between a forgotten manuscript and a literary 00:06:23.160 --> 00:06:25.339 phenomenon. It's incredible. He finishes the 00:06:25.339 --> 00:06:28.279 novel and they sell the paperback rights for 00:06:28.279 --> 00:06:32.459 $400 ,000. Half of which went to King. In one 00:06:32.459 --> 00:06:35.079 sale, they went from living in a trailer to being 00:06:35.079 --> 00:06:38.959 financially secure. It just launched him. So 00:06:38.959 --> 00:06:41.160 let's get into the philosophy behind that success. 00:06:41.560 --> 00:06:45.100 Because his longevity, it's not just luck. It's 00:06:45.100 --> 00:06:48.360 rooted in this very consistent, almost blue collar 00:06:48.360 --> 00:06:52.000 approach to writing he lays out in on writing. 00:06:52.100 --> 00:06:54.240 A very disciplined approach. And it all starts 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:56.519 with the seed of the idea. For him, it's almost 00:06:56.519 --> 00:06:58.519 always that simple question. The what if. The 00:06:58.519 --> 00:07:00.240 what if. It's the little disruption that gets 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:02.060 the whole engine running. So let's break that 00:07:02.060 --> 00:07:05.100 down. Like, what are some classic King what ifs? 00:07:05.100 --> 00:07:07.420 Well, they're usually a blend of something supernatural 00:07:07.420 --> 00:07:10.639 with something painfully mundane. What if an 00:07:10.639 --> 00:07:12.939 alcoholic writer struggling with sobriety gets 00:07:12.939 --> 00:07:15.379 stuck caretaking a haunted hotel in the dead 00:07:15.379 --> 00:07:17.980 of winter? That's The Shining. What if a man 00:07:17.980 --> 00:07:20.600 gets the ability to see the future and has to 00:07:20.600 --> 00:07:23.079 make these impossible moral choices? The Dead 00:07:23.079 --> 00:07:26.040 Zone. Or, you know, much later. What if you could 00:07:26.040 --> 00:07:28.240 go back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, 00:07:28.439 --> 00:07:30.300 but you had to deal with all the consequences? 00:07:30.639 --> 00:07:33.740 1 -1 -2 -2 -6 -3. The story isn't about the monster. 00:07:33.920 --> 00:07:38.060 It's about how the what -if affects a real person. 00:07:38.779 --> 00:07:41.459 Precisely. But his philosophy on where that story 00:07:41.459 --> 00:07:43.100 comes from, that's what's so fascinating. He 00:07:43.100 --> 00:07:44.939 doesn't believe stories are invented. Right. 00:07:45.019 --> 00:07:47.639 This is the stories as relics idea. He says they're 00:07:47.639 --> 00:07:50.800 found things like fossils in the ground. I love 00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:52.620 that analogy. So if the writer isn't an inventor, 00:07:52.819 --> 00:07:55.319 they're more like. An archaeologist. Exactly. 00:07:55.319 --> 00:07:57.980 The story already exists out there. Your job 00:07:57.980 --> 00:08:00.319 isn't to create it from nothing. Your job is 00:08:00.319 --> 00:08:03.160 to excavate it carefully. You use your tools, 00:08:03.279 --> 00:08:06.160 grammar, vocabulary description to chip away 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:09.339 all the rock and dust to reveal the fossil completely 00:08:09.339 --> 00:08:12.100 intact. So the technique is the same, whether 00:08:12.100 --> 00:08:15.000 you're uncovering a small seashell, a short story, 00:08:15.199 --> 00:08:18.680 or a giant T -Rex skeleton like the stand or 00:08:18.680 --> 00:08:21.720 it. The method doesn't change. It takes the pressure 00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:24.800 off of... being original and replaces it with 00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:27.040 the discipline of being a careful discoverer. 00:08:27.040 --> 00:08:30.279 And that idea extends to how he handles his characters. 00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:33.440 He doesn't force them into a plot. This is the 00:08:33.440 --> 00:08:35.539 character autonomy thing. He really lets them 00:08:35.539 --> 00:08:37.940 surprise him. He does, and it's on purpose. He 00:08:37.940 --> 00:08:40.379 says they start out flat and unfeatured, but 00:08:40.379 --> 00:08:42.320 once he puts them in the what -if situation, 00:08:42.600 --> 00:08:44.919 they start to develop their own voices, their 00:08:44.919 --> 00:08:47.519 own histories, and then they dictate the story. 00:08:47.779 --> 00:08:50.279 He never makes them do things his way. He wants 00:08:50.279 --> 00:08:52.399 them to do things their way. Which is why it 00:08:52.399 --> 00:08:54.820 feels so psychologically real, even when the 00:08:54.820 --> 00:08:57.779 situation is completely fantastic. A real person 00:08:57.779 --> 00:09:00.240 dropped into that situation isn't going to be 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:02.100 a perfect hero. They're going to screw up. They're 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:04.269 going to panic. And that realism is... why his 00:09:04.269 --> 00:09:06.169 work gets so much serious critical attention 00:09:06.169 --> 00:09:08.970 from people like Joyce Carol Oates. She pointed 00:09:08.970 --> 00:09:11.549 out that his real subject isn't monsters. It's 00:09:11.549 --> 00:09:14.169 small -town American life. It's the communities 00:09:14.169 --> 00:09:16.850 of Derry and Castle Rock that we all recognize. 00:09:17.210 --> 00:09:20.090 And his big theme is always, in his own words, 00:09:20.289 --> 00:09:22.730 the intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary 00:09:22.730 --> 00:09:25.070 life. Right. It's not about the scary thing. 00:09:25.149 --> 00:09:27.929 It's about how ordinary people cope when the 00:09:27.929 --> 00:09:29.789 impossible crashes through their front door. 00:09:29.970 --> 00:09:33.759 So the monster. whether it's a vampire or a clown, 00:09:33.919 --> 00:09:36.220 it could just as easily be a cancer diagnosis 00:09:36.220 --> 00:09:39.860 or a horrible trauma. The supernatural is just 00:09:39.860 --> 00:09:43.039 the lens. It's what Oates called his gothic imagination. 00:09:43.340 --> 00:09:45.960 It just magnifies the real -life problem so we 00:09:45.960 --> 00:09:48.139 can see the human drama more clearly. You see 00:09:48.139 --> 00:09:50.399 that perfectly in Carrie. The telekinesis is 00:09:50.399 --> 00:09:53.100 scary, sure. But the real horror, the thing that 00:09:53.100 --> 00:09:56.039 stays with you, is the bullying. It's her mother's 00:09:56.039 --> 00:09:58.519 religious fanaticism. It's the human cruelty. 00:09:59.080 --> 00:10:00.860 And he often explores this stuff through the 00:10:00.860 --> 00:10:03.039 lens of a writer. So many of his main characters 00:10:03.039 --> 00:10:05.600 are authors. Jack Torrance in The Shining, Bill 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:08.200 Denver in it. Mike Noonan in The Bag of Bones. 00:10:08.200 --> 00:10:10.440 It's a constant theme. And it becomes a way to 00:10:10.440 --> 00:10:13.120 talk about the act of creation itself. You get 00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:15.600 novels like Misery, which is this terrifying 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:17.720 parable about the relationship between an artist 00:10:17.720 --> 00:10:20.840 and their audience. Or their addiction. He said 00:10:20.840 --> 00:10:23.279 Annie Wilkes, his number one fan who holds him 00:10:23.279 --> 00:10:26.500 prisoner, she was his drug problem. demanding, 00:10:26.659 --> 00:10:29.740 controlling, never wanting to leave. Or the dark 00:10:29.740 --> 00:10:32.000 half, where a writer's gritty pseudonym literally 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:34.700 comes to life and starts killing people. He's 00:10:34.700 --> 00:10:37.820 always using horror to dissect the creative process. 00:10:38.139 --> 00:10:39.820 And he's always in conversation with the writers 00:10:39.820 --> 00:10:41.980 who came before him. We mentioned Richard Matheson 00:10:41.980 --> 00:10:43.899 as his biggest influence. But he also does these 00:10:43.899 --> 00:10:46.580 direct homages. He calls it literary racquetball. 00:10:46.740 --> 00:10:49.899 I love that. So Salem's Lot is his attempt to 00:10:49.899 --> 00:10:52.440 take Bram Stoker's Dracula. And smash it against 00:10:52.440 --> 00:10:55.019 the wall of a modern 20th century New England 00:10:55.019 --> 00:10:58.159 town to see how it bounces. How does that ancient 00:10:58.159 --> 00:11:01.580 evil work here now? And more recently, his novel 00:11:01.580 --> 00:11:05.100 Revival is basically a modern take on Mary Shelley's 00:11:05.100 --> 00:11:07.659 Frankenstein. It's a conversation with the masters. 00:11:07.899 --> 00:11:10.639 And his own craft is built on reading everything, 00:11:10.919 --> 00:11:13.460 not just horror. He talks about learning description 00:11:13.460 --> 00:11:16.179 from hard -boiled writers like Chandler and Hammett. 00:11:16.220 --> 00:11:19.330 And from poets. T .S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams. 00:11:19.590 --> 00:11:22.309 Yeah, he's looking for that perfect, compact 00:11:22.309 --> 00:11:25.830 image. The simile or metaphor that makes you 00:11:25.830 --> 00:11:28.370 see something old in a new way. It's a very practical, 00:11:28.450 --> 00:11:30.409 technical skill that he applies to this deeply 00:11:30.409 --> 00:11:32.909 psychological material. And that discipline led 00:11:32.909 --> 00:11:36.509 to this absolute explosion of work in the 70s 00:11:36.509 --> 00:11:39.360 and 80s. The Golden Age. This is where he really 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:42.899 cements his place in the culture. And the origins 00:11:42.899 --> 00:11:44.980 of these huge novels are often rooted in these 00:11:44.980 --> 00:11:47.600 really interesting personal moments. We talked 00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:50.159 about Salem's Lot coming from him teaching Dracula. 00:11:50.620 --> 00:11:53.059 What about The Shining? That came from a trip 00:11:53.059 --> 00:11:56.539 in 1974. He and Tabitha were staying at the Stanley 00:11:56.539 --> 00:11:58.740 Hotel in Colorado. It was the end of the season 00:11:58.740 --> 00:12:01.120 and they were the only guests left. So they're 00:12:01.120 --> 00:12:04.120 in this huge, empty, echoing hotel. Exactly. 00:12:04.200 --> 00:12:06.519 And King, who is already struggling with his 00:12:06.519 --> 00:12:09.100 drinking, is sitting alone at the bar. He realizes 00:12:09.100 --> 00:12:12.299 that this is the perfect setup. Isolation, a 00:12:12.299 --> 00:12:14.580 writer failing his family, and a malevolent place 00:12:14.580 --> 00:12:16.740 that just feeds on all that weakness. It's not 00:12:16.740 --> 00:12:18.879 a ghost story. It's a story about a man's mind 00:12:18.879 --> 00:12:22.100 breaking down. Then you get The Stan. The epic. 00:12:22.299 --> 00:12:24.639 The one he says readers still tell him is their 00:12:24.639 --> 00:12:27.740 favorite. A massive world -building novel about 00:12:27.740 --> 00:12:31.139 a pandemic that wipes out almost everyone. It 00:12:31.139 --> 00:12:33.279 really set a new standard for that kind of story. 00:12:33.539 --> 00:12:35.860 But then you have a book like Pet Sematary, where 00:12:35.860 --> 00:12:38.460 the inspiration was almost too real, too scary 00:12:38.460 --> 00:12:40.679 for him. Yeah, that came from when his family 00:12:40.679 --> 00:12:43.080 was living next to a busy highway where lots 00:12:43.080 --> 00:12:46.080 of pets were killed. His own daughter's cat died 00:12:46.080 --> 00:12:48.899 and they buried it in a local pet cemetery. And 00:12:48.899 --> 00:12:51.039 walking home, he had this horrifying thought. 00:12:51.860 --> 00:12:55.120 What if the cat came back? But it was wrong. 00:12:55.899 --> 00:12:58.200 And he found the book he wrote from that idea 00:12:58.200 --> 00:13:02.539 so disturbing, so bleak, especially because it 00:13:02.539 --> 00:13:04.519 deals with the death of a child. He put it in 00:13:04.519 --> 00:13:06.659 a drawer for years. He only published it because 00:13:06.659 --> 00:13:08.899 he had to, to fulfill a contract. He thought 00:13:08.899 --> 00:13:10.600 he'd gone too far with that one. And then, of 00:13:10.600 --> 00:13:13.210 course, there's it. his final exam on horror 00:13:13.210 --> 00:13:15.690 as he called it the idea was to take every classic 00:13:15.690 --> 00:13:18.269 monster the vampire the werewolf the mummy and 00:13:18.269 --> 00:13:20.570 put them all into one single shape -shifting 00:13:20.570 --> 00:13:23.389 entity an entity that feeds on the specific fears 00:13:23.389 --> 00:13:25.710 of children right but right in the middle of 00:13:25.710 --> 00:13:28.669 all this horror in 1982 he releases different 00:13:28.669 --> 00:13:32.090 seasons and this book completely changed how 00:13:32.090 --> 00:13:35.129 people saw him because there was no horror and 00:13:35.129 --> 00:13:36.929 the critics were forced to look at the character 00:13:36.929 --> 00:13:39.769 work the human drama Without any distractions. 00:13:40.210 --> 00:13:43.850 And then the movies came out. Stand By Me. The 00:13:43.850 --> 00:13:47.350 Shawshank Redemption. And they were huge critical 00:13:47.350 --> 00:13:49.669 and commercial successes. He said he got the 00:13:49.669 --> 00:13:52.570 best reviews of his life. It was the moment the 00:13:52.570 --> 00:13:54.850 literary world finally had to admit he was more 00:13:54.850 --> 00:13:57.029 than just a horror writer. He was a great American 00:13:57.029 --> 00:13:59.809 writer, period. But all that productivity created 00:13:59.809 --> 00:14:02.710 a practical problem. Back then, publishers had 00:14:02.710 --> 00:14:05.740 this rule. The one book a year rule. Right. They 00:14:05.740 --> 00:14:07.500 thought the public wouldn't accept more than 00:14:07.500 --> 00:14:10.039 that from one author, which, for a writer as 00:14:10.039 --> 00:14:13.019 prolific as King, was a major roadblock. So he 00:14:13.019 --> 00:14:15.679 invents an escape hatch. He creates Richard Bachman. 00:14:15.759 --> 00:14:18.700 A pseudonym. A sheltered place, he called it, 00:14:18.740 --> 00:14:20.940 where he could release more books. He put out 00:14:20.940 --> 00:14:23.620 five novels as Bachman. Rage, The Long Walk, 00:14:23.759 --> 00:14:25.879 The Running Man. And the tone of those books 00:14:25.879 --> 00:14:28.100 was really different. They were darker, much 00:14:28.100 --> 00:14:31.700 grittier, more despairing, really. Less supernatural 00:14:31.700 --> 00:14:35.480 horror, more social commentary and dystopian 00:14:35.480 --> 00:14:37.990 dread. And people bought it. There's a great 00:14:37.990 --> 00:14:40.250 story about someone at the Literary Guild reading 00:14:40.250 --> 00:14:43.529 Thinner and saying it was what Stephen King would 00:14:43.529 --> 00:14:45.870 write like if Stephen King could really write. 00:14:46.090 --> 00:14:48.429 It's the perfect illustration of the bias he 00:14:48.429 --> 00:14:50.470 was up against. They thought Bachman was the 00:14:50.470 --> 00:14:52.789 serious writer because he didn't have King's 00:14:52.789 --> 00:14:55.070 blockbuster horror style. So he keeps the secret 00:14:55.070 --> 00:14:59.250 for five years. But in 1985... The whole thing 00:14:59.250 --> 00:15:01.990 comes crashing down, and it wasn't a journalist 00:15:01.990 --> 00:15:04.110 who figured it out? No, it was a bookstore clerk 00:15:04.110 --> 00:15:06.889 in Washington, D .C., a guy named Steve Brown. 00:15:07.110 --> 00:15:10.190 Just a really smart reader. He notices the stylistic 00:15:10.190 --> 00:15:12.690 ticks are too similar, so he starts digging into 00:15:12.690 --> 00:15:14.610 publisher records. And he finds the copyright 00:15:14.610 --> 00:15:18.309 filing for Rage, and whose name is on it? Stephen 00:15:18.309 --> 00:15:21.710 King. Busted. I just love that story. So how 00:15:21.710 --> 00:15:24.230 does King react? In the most King way possible. 00:15:24.750 --> 00:15:26.629 He holds a press conference and announces that 00:15:26.629 --> 00:15:29.610 Richard Bachman has died from cancer of the pseudonym. 00:15:29.789 --> 00:15:32.330 Of course he did. He just leaned into the meta 00:15:32.330 --> 00:15:34.529 -narrative of it all. Which, speaking of meta 00:15:34.529 --> 00:15:36.970 -narratives, we have to talk about his magnum 00:15:36.970 --> 00:15:39.850 opus. The Dark Tower. His grand unifying theory 00:15:39.850 --> 00:15:42.610 of everything. An eight -volume epic that he 00:15:42.610 --> 00:15:44.990 started in the 70s. And he described the initial 00:15:44.990 --> 00:15:48.340 idea as... what mixing tolkien's middle earth 00:15:48.340 --> 00:15:51.879 with a clint eastwood western exactly the epic 00:15:51.879 --> 00:15:54.220 fantasy quest of lord of the rings meets the 00:15:54.220 --> 00:15:57.580 gritty philosophical vibe of a sergio leone film 00:15:57.580 --> 00:16:00.519 it follows roland the gunslinger on his quest 00:16:00.519 --> 00:16:03.820 to the dark tower which is the nexus of all realities 00:16:03.820 --> 00:16:06.080 and it connects everything so many of his other 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:08.240 books and characters are woven into this one 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:11.500 massive story it gets intensely meta to the point 00:16:11.500 --> 00:16:13.720 where in the later books stephen king himself 00:16:13.720 --> 00:16:16.480 becomes a character in the story He writes himself 00:16:16.480 --> 00:16:19.460 into his own epic. As a crucial, vulnerable part 00:16:19.460 --> 00:16:22.279 of the plot, it's an incredibly audacious move, 00:16:22.399 --> 00:16:25.139 and it solidifies the series as just this unique, 00:16:25.220 --> 00:16:28.100 sprawling masterpiece of modern fantasy. But 00:16:28.100 --> 00:16:30.940 this is where the story gets really intense. 00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:33.480 Yeah. Because that incredibly productive period 00:16:33.480 --> 00:16:36.940 in the 1980s, it was fueled by something much 00:16:36.940 --> 00:16:39.519 darker. Yeah, this is the period of his most 00:16:39.519 --> 00:16:42.480 intense struggles with addiction, cocaine and 00:16:42.480 --> 00:16:44.919 alcohol. It's a terrifying paradox, isn't it? 00:16:44.940 --> 00:16:47.679 His creative peak happening alongside this deep 00:16:47.679 --> 00:16:50.460 personal dependency. And he's been brutally honest 00:16:50.460 --> 00:16:53.320 about it. He says he barely remembers writing 00:16:53.320 --> 00:16:58.700 Coochie. A whole novel just gone in a haze. But 00:16:58.700 --> 00:17:01.100 what's so fascinating is how he was unconsciously 00:17:01.100 --> 00:17:03.580 processing that addiction in his writing. Misery. 00:17:03.639 --> 00:17:06.240 Misery is the prime example. He said flat out 00:17:06.240 --> 00:17:09.619 that Annie Wilkes was his addiction. This obsessive 00:17:09.619 --> 00:17:12.180 fan who holds him captive and forces him to write. 00:17:12.759 --> 00:17:14.960 That was the drug. And the tawny knockers, too. 00:17:15.240 --> 00:17:17.680 This alien influence that takes over a town, 00:17:17.799 --> 00:17:20.000 making everyone dependent on its toxic power. 00:17:20.140 --> 00:17:22.480 Yeah. That's a direct metaphor for drug dependency. 00:17:22.539 --> 00:17:24.940 He was writing about the demon he was fighting, 00:17:25.059 --> 00:17:28.150 but hiding it inside a horror story. And it went 00:17:28.150 --> 00:17:30.910 on until his family, led by Tabitha, finally 00:17:30.910 --> 00:17:32.809 had to stage an intervention. A huge turning 00:17:32.809 --> 00:17:34.410 point. They confronted him with the evidence 00:17:34.410 --> 00:17:36.349 of his addiction, and he finally agreed to get 00:17:36.349 --> 00:17:38.609 help. And his work after that, after he gets 00:17:38.609 --> 00:17:41.069 sober, has a different kind of clarity. But his 00:17:41.069 --> 00:17:43.250 resilience was about to be tested in the most, 00:17:43.269 --> 00:17:46.190 just the most dramatic way possible. The accident, 00:17:46.390 --> 00:17:49.849 June 19th, 1999. He's on his daily walk on the 00:17:49.849 --> 00:17:53.089 shoulder of a road in Lovell, Maine. And a driver, 00:17:53.230 --> 00:17:56.250 distracted by his dog in his minivan, just... 00:17:56.480 --> 00:17:58.900 veers off the road and hits him. And the injuries 00:17:58.900 --> 00:18:01.839 were catastrophic. A collapsed lung, a shattered 00:18:01.839 --> 00:18:05.319 hip. His leg was so badly broken, they considered 00:18:05.319 --> 00:18:07.660 amputating it. It's just horrific. And he said 00:18:07.660 --> 00:18:10.640 later the irony was just so dark. He was almost 00:18:10.640 --> 00:18:12.480 killed by a character straight out of one of 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:15.359 his own books. Not some monster, just an ordinary 00:18:15.359 --> 00:18:17.900 guy in a minivan, a moment of distraction and 00:18:17.900 --> 00:18:20.180 then disaster. The recovery was just brutal. 00:18:20.319 --> 00:18:23.319 He was in the hospital for weeks, multiple surgeries, 00:18:23.539 --> 00:18:26.240 and it had a huge impact on his writing. A physical 00:18:26.240 --> 00:18:28.960 impact. He tried to start working on writing 00:18:28.960 --> 00:18:31.240 again that July, but he could only sit for maybe 00:18:31.240 --> 00:18:34.380 40 minutes at a time because of the pain. The 00:18:34.380 --> 00:18:36.460 trauma literally shaped the book. And in the 00:18:36.460 --> 00:18:39.130 aftermath... Tabitha did something really unusual 00:18:39.130 --> 00:18:41.250 to protect him. It's such a great story about 00:18:41.250 --> 00:18:42.970 their partnership. She was worried that the minivan 00:18:42.970 --> 00:18:46.210 that hit him would get sold on eBay or something, 00:18:46.410 --> 00:18:49.029 become this morbid souvenir. So she just bought 00:18:49.029 --> 00:18:51.930 it. She bought the minivan from the driver, and 00:18:51.930 --> 00:18:54.230 then she had it crushed, just quietly removed 00:18:54.230 --> 00:18:57.369 it from existence. King said he had these revenge 00:18:57.369 --> 00:18:59.490 fantasies about smashing it with a sledgehammer, 00:18:59.630 --> 00:19:02.609 but her way was quieter, smarter, more protective. 00:19:02.990 --> 00:19:05.269 And the book that came out of that recovery on 00:19:05.269 --> 00:19:08.470 writing was this Instant classic. Part memoir, 00:19:08.710 --> 00:19:12.069 part style guide. Critics loved it. Roger Ebert 00:19:12.069 --> 00:19:14.089 said it was more useful than Strunk and White's 00:19:14.089 --> 00:19:16.789 The Elements of Style. It was King laying his 00:19:16.789 --> 00:19:19.430 entire process bare for everyone to see. Around 00:19:19.430 --> 00:19:21.849 the same time, he also became a real pioneer 00:19:21.849 --> 00:19:24.630 in digital publishing. He really did. In 2000, 00:19:24.849 --> 00:19:27.150 he released a novella called Writing the Bullet 00:19:27.150 --> 00:19:30.089 exclusively as an e -book. It was called the 00:19:30.089 --> 00:19:33.240 world's first mass e -book. Over half a million 00:19:33.240 --> 00:19:35.779 downloads in the first day? It proved the model 00:19:35.779 --> 00:19:37.759 could work, and that led him to an even bigger 00:19:37.759 --> 00:19:39.839 experiment with the plan. Yeah, he released that 00:19:39.839 --> 00:19:41.799 online in installments using an honor system. 00:19:42.099 --> 00:19:44.519 Pay what you want. He asked for a dollar in installment 00:19:44.519 --> 00:19:46.680 and said he'd only keep writing if at least 75 00:19:46.680 --> 00:19:49.240 % of readers paid up. A huge gamble. So what 00:19:49.240 --> 00:19:51.380 happened? People assume it failed, that nobody 00:19:51.380 --> 00:19:54.940 paid. But King said that wasn't it at all. The 00:19:54.940 --> 00:19:58.339 compliance rate was consistently over 75%. The 00:19:58.339 --> 00:20:01.500 experiment worked. So why'd he stop? He just 00:20:01.500 --> 00:20:04.900 ran out of story. The creative well ran dry for 00:20:04.900 --> 00:20:07.480 that particular project, but it proved the commercial 00:20:07.480 --> 00:20:09.759 point. He was always willing to challenge the 00:20:09.759 --> 00:20:12.420 industry norms. And that consistency continues. 00:20:13.220 --> 00:20:15.200 Before we move on, we have to mention the character 00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:17.420 of Holly Gibney. Oh, absolutely. She's one of 00:20:17.420 --> 00:20:20.240 his great recent creations. She started in the 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:24.039 Mr. Mercedes trilogy as this very shy but brilliant 00:20:24.039 --> 00:20:26.700 investigator. And she was so popular, he just 00:20:26.700 --> 00:20:29.599 kept bringing her back. The outsider, if it bleeds. 00:20:29.960 --> 00:20:32.000 and then her own novel, Holly. And she's coming 00:20:32.000 --> 00:20:34.599 back again in 2025. Her evolution shows he's 00:20:34.599 --> 00:20:36.599 still deeply invested in creating these complex, 00:20:36.740 --> 00:20:38.700 grounded characters who can anchor his stories, 00:20:38.819 --> 00:20:40.900 even when they move away from the purely supernatural. 00:20:41.319 --> 00:20:43.940 So his cultural status is just. It's immense. 00:20:44.259 --> 00:20:46.839 Which means the criticism can be just as intense. 00:20:47.380 --> 00:20:50.579 And that all came to a head in 2003. A huge flashpoint. 00:20:50.839 --> 00:20:53.079 He was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution 00:20:53.079 --> 00:20:55.079 to American Letters from the National Book Awards. 00:20:55.220 --> 00:20:57.990 A very prestigious honor. And the literary establishment 00:20:57.990 --> 00:21:01.170 just exploded. It really did. Richard E. Snyder, 00:21:01.269 --> 00:21:04.130 a big -shot publishing CEO, called his work non 00:21:04.130 --> 00:21:06.950 -literature. But the really vicious attack came 00:21:06.950 --> 00:21:09.470 from the famous critic Harold Bloom. What did 00:21:09.470 --> 00:21:11.990 Bloom say? Oh, he called it a dumbing down our 00:21:11.990 --> 00:21:14.569 cultural life. He said King was an immensely 00:21:14.569 --> 00:21:17.009 inadequate writer on a sentence -by -sentence, 00:21:17.049 --> 00:21:19.170 paragraph -by -paragraph, book -by -book basis. 00:21:19.369 --> 00:21:23.579 Wow. That is just brutal. For Bloom? King represented 00:21:23.579 --> 00:21:26.380 everything wrong with modern literature. The 00:21:26.380 --> 00:21:29.380 commercialism, the focus on genre. He saw it 00:21:29.380 --> 00:21:31.940 as a degradation of high art. It was the ultimate 00:21:31.940 --> 00:21:34.339 showdown between the academy and popular fiction. 00:21:34.599 --> 00:21:37.059 So how did King respond? His acceptance speech 00:21:37.059 --> 00:21:39.839 was perfect. He basically said his job, his only 00:21:39.839 --> 00:21:42.099 job, is to tell the truth. And he had this incredible 00:21:42.099 --> 00:21:49.720 line. He said, That's the whole philosophy right 00:21:49.720 --> 00:21:52.710 there. The haunted hotel is the lie. story of 00:21:52.710 --> 00:21:54.789 a family falling apart inside it. That's the 00:21:54.789 --> 00:21:57.069 truth. The lie is just the vehicle to get to 00:21:57.069 --> 00:22:00.230 the truth. Exactly. And he had defenders. The 00:22:00.230 --> 00:22:03.849 novelist Cynthia Ozik called him a genuine true 00:22:03.849 --> 00:22:06.869 born writer. It was a major moment in arguing 00:22:06.869 --> 00:22:09.170 that popularity doesn't automatically cancel 00:22:09.170 --> 00:22:12.670 out literary merit. And he's consistently used 00:22:12.670 --> 00:22:15.269 that massive public platform to talk about other 00:22:15.269 --> 00:22:17.970 things, especially wealth and taxes. Yeah, this 00:22:17.970 --> 00:22:20.829 is a huge theme for him. He has repeatedly publicly 00:22:20.829 --> 00:22:24.470 called for the rich, including himself, to pay 00:22:24.470 --> 00:22:27.609 way more in taxes. He calls it a moral imperative. 00:22:27.970 --> 00:22:29.970 And it has so much credibility coming from him 00:22:29.970 --> 00:22:32.029 because he knows what it's like to be poor. He 00:22:32.029 --> 00:22:33.950 watched his mother. struggle his whole childhood. 00:22:34.130 --> 00:22:36.430 It's not an abstract idea for him. Not at all. 00:22:36.490 --> 00:22:38.369 And politically, he's always been very open. 00:22:38.450 --> 00:22:40.970 He's endorsed Democrats from Gary Hart up to 00:22:40.970 --> 00:22:43.910 Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But in 2022, he 00:22:43.910 --> 00:22:45.970 did something really surprising. He testified 00:22:45.970 --> 00:22:48.250 against his own publisher. It was incredible. 00:22:48.509 --> 00:22:50.789 He testified for the Justice Department to block 00:22:50.789 --> 00:22:53.210 the merger between Penguin Random House and Simon 00:22:53.210 --> 00:22:55.670 & Schuster. He argued that more consolidation 00:22:55.670 --> 00:22:58.049 would hurt writers, especially new writers, just 00:22:58.049 --> 00:23:01.039 trying to get a start. And his testimony was 00:23:01.039 --> 00:23:04.039 credited with helping to kill the deal. He used 00:23:04.039 --> 00:23:07.599 his power to protect other authors. He did. But 00:23:07.599 --> 00:23:09.859 his political voice is probably loudest when 00:23:09.859 --> 00:23:12.640 it comes to his home state, Maine. Specifically, 00:23:12.799 --> 00:23:15.700 his very public feud with the former governor, 00:23:15.920 --> 00:23:19.700 Paul LePage. Oh, it was a war of words. King 00:23:19.700 --> 00:23:22.039 just went after him, calling LePage a bigot, 00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:25.059 a homophobe, and a racist. And it got really 00:23:25.059 --> 00:23:27.880 personal when LePage went on the radio and falsely 00:23:27.880 --> 00:23:30.000 claimed that King didn't pay his Maine income 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:33.519 taxes. King's response was swift. Oh, yeah. He 00:23:33.519 --> 00:23:35.980 publicly demanded an apology, posted proof he 00:23:35.980 --> 00:23:38.579 pays millions in Maine taxes, and told the governor 00:23:38.579 --> 00:23:40.700 he was full of the stuff that makes the grass 00:23:40.700 --> 00:23:43.400 grow green. It just shows how fiercely protective 00:23:43.400 --> 00:23:46.039 he is of his identity as a Mainer. And that's 00:23:46.039 --> 00:23:48.210 backed up by his philanthropy. He and Tabitha 00:23:48.210 --> 00:23:50.450 give away something like $4 million a year. And 00:23:50.450 --> 00:23:52.250 it's all very targeted at the community. They 00:23:52.250 --> 00:23:54.930 support libraries, schools, local fire departments. 00:23:55.190 --> 00:23:57.789 They'll buy them new Jaws of Life tools. It's 00:23:57.789 --> 00:23:59.849 practical help for the very kinds of small towns 00:23:59.849 --> 00:24:01.789 he writes about. And we should just briefly mention 00:24:01.789 --> 00:24:04.309 his creative energy spills over into all these 00:24:04.309 --> 00:24:07.529 other areas. Absolutely. He wrote the screenplay 00:24:07.529 --> 00:24:11.089 for Creepshow. He directed one movie, Maximum 00:24:11.089 --> 00:24:13.990 Overdrive, which he now freely admits was a disaster. 00:24:14.109 --> 00:24:15.650 A disaster he blames on the fact that he was 00:24:15.650 --> 00:24:17.380 coked out of his mind the whole time. time the 00:24:17.380 --> 00:24:20.019 honesty is just incredible it really is he's 00:24:20.019 --> 00:24:22.279 also written a musical with john mellencamp and 00:24:22.279 --> 00:24:25.220 t -bone burnett and for years he played guitar 00:24:25.220 --> 00:24:27.859 in a charity rock band with other authors called 00:24:27.859 --> 00:24:30.579 the rock bottom remainders he just seems to love 00:24:30.579 --> 00:24:33.619 the act of creating in any form he really does 00:24:33.619 --> 00:24:35.960 so when we pull back and look at the whole picture 00:24:35.960 --> 00:24:39.730 the legacy is just it's undeniable It's not just 00:24:39.730 --> 00:24:42.349 the sales or the movies. It's his commitment 00:24:42.349 --> 00:24:45.410 to combining this incredible, realistic detail 00:24:45.410 --> 00:24:48.569 of everyday life with these wild, imaginative 00:24:48.569 --> 00:24:51.130 genre ideas. And at its heart, so much of his 00:24:51.130 --> 00:24:53.450 work is really about family, marriage, memory. 00:24:54.029 --> 00:24:56.190 It's telling that when you ask him what his favorite 00:24:56.190 --> 00:24:58.690 of his own novels is, he doesn't pick one of 00:24:58.690 --> 00:25:00.369 the big horror ones. Which one does he pick? 00:25:00.529 --> 00:25:03.220 He picks Lisey's Story. Why that one? Because, 00:25:03.299 --> 00:25:05.500 he said, it was the one where he felt he got 00:25:05.500 --> 00:25:08.079 closest to writing about the secret world of 00:25:08.079 --> 00:25:11.220 a long marriage. For him, capturing that internal 00:25:11.220 --> 00:25:13.720 truth was the most difficult and most rewarding 00:25:13.720 --> 00:25:16.380 excavation he's ever done. And his peers see 00:25:16.380 --> 00:25:19.940 that. David Foster Wallace praised his deadly 00:25:19.940 --> 00:25:23.579 ear for the way people speak. And Sherman Alexie 00:25:23.579 --> 00:25:26.000 said that growing up on a reservation, he always 00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:28.299 identified with King's characters because King 00:25:28.299 --> 00:25:30.789 always writes about the underdog. The bullied 00:25:30.789 --> 00:25:33.509 kid, the overlooked person fighting back against 00:25:33.509 --> 00:25:36.170 these huge forces. The person striking against 00:25:36.170 --> 00:25:38.190 something much bigger than themselves. Whether 00:25:38.190 --> 00:25:40.769 that something is a sewer clown or just high 00:25:40.769 --> 00:25:43.690 school society. To bring it all home, King himself 00:25:43.690 --> 00:25:46.529 said that the real test for him, for any story, 00:25:46.750 --> 00:25:49.890 is to ask himself, if I've told the truth about 00:25:49.890 --> 00:25:51.890 the way real people would behave in a similar 00:25:51.890 --> 00:25:54.569 situation. That's the whole game. So after looking 00:25:54.569 --> 00:25:57.509 at this vast, terrifying, and deeply human body 00:25:57.509 --> 00:25:59.789 of work, we have to leave you with this question 00:25:59.789 --> 00:26:02.430 to think about. Is Stephen King's greatest achievement 00:26:02.430 --> 00:26:05.269 not the horrors he created, but the unflinching 00:26:05.269 --> 00:26:07.269 human truth he uncovered while searching for 00:26:07.269 --> 00:26:09.349 monsters? Because that's the difference, isn't 00:26:09.349 --> 00:26:12.130 it? A jump scare lasts a second. But that feeling 00:26:12.130 --> 00:26:14.430 of recognizing yourself in a character's fear 00:26:14.430 --> 00:26:17.809 that lasts forever. The scariest thing is always 00:26:17.809 --> 00:26:20.410 the mirror. Something to think about until our 00:26:20.410 --> 00:26:21.049 next deep dive.