Reflections Of A Boomer — Stephen King

Historical November 1994 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.

There he was. Blue plaid flannel shirt, jeans, white sneakers.

He was a tall, bespectacled fellow with dark mid-length hair and a slight paunch over his black leather belt. Such an ordinary guy, with a good sense of humor. So approachable, so normal. Yet many of his readers know his dark side— via his novels: Carrie, The Shining, Lawnmower Man and Needful Things, to name a few. Stephen King recently came to St. Louis to promote his new tome, Insomnia, and to speak on behalf of bookstores, the kind without chain status, who don’t brag about deep discounts – with names you’ve not seen in the malls. King, who says he’s a better writer than a talker, isn’t a bad public speaker.

He told his audience about his start in writing, family life, his work— past, present and future — and took questions from the audience. He’s not the ghoulish human being you might have expected — actually a quite personable guy, who would probably make a good drinking buddy.

But he sure has a real knack for horror.

As a great storyteller who coaxes readers into the depths of his pages, King seems to be an admirable student of human nature.

He knows what makes people tick — and what frightens them too. You might wonder what makes people like King tick, what makes him dream up this stuff.

But to share such dreams, I’d have to become an extra in Night of The Living Dead for lack of sleep. ” Cool costume, but Halloween’s over Mom,” my son would say. • King says he had a normal childhood, but his favorite storybook tale as a youth was Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. Maybe that’s not so surprising.

But why do we so love a good scare? Is it a primal thing? Instinct? Something that we need to appreciate our normality or mundaneness? Or is it our deepdown hope to retain some of our childlike wonder? Maybe all those years in Maine bring out the craziness in those like King, who grew up in a small Maine town and still lives in his home state. Quite frankly, I don’t know how much more grief the good people of Castle Rock, Maine — the setting for many of his surreal stories — can take. There’s certainly more to this guy than meets the eye.

I don’t know what it is. Churning out best-selling page turners sounds like a great time to a common garden-variety writer…especially if you get to ride your Harley across the country to promote your most recent work, as King just did.

A virtuoso writer makes what he does look easy.

As we witnessed this fellow under bright auditorium lights, his ease with those who had come to eyeball him might not have been what appeared to us. Deadlines, quotas, agents, lawyers, having to “up” the manuscript of your novel in progress to top the one you just published, are probably just a few of the pressures this guy lives with regularly. It’s only natural to wonder.

But maybe some things should just not be explained.

Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November 1994.

Read this article in the original newspaper issue.

Original source: SD_Times1994_11.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.