I'm unsure as to whether I'm writing an article I genuinely want to write, or if I'm just procrastinating. My 'To Do' list which I have blu-tacked next to my Lord of the Rings poster glaces angrily down at me.
'1. Complete UCAS
2. 3 posters for CHEM
3. Read to pg106 in WH.'
It screams. Sure, 'past Alex who thought it was a good idea to create a To-Do list' - later.
So instead, I'm going to copy out a large chunk of Stephen King's monster (in two senses of the word) book, 'IT' to try and prove a point. This section of the novel comes fairly early on, when author Bill Denbrough is reminiscing on his university life and how he came to write novels.
Page 149
'Here is a poor boy from Maine who goes to the University on a scholarship. All his life he wanted to be a writer, but when he enrolls in the writing courses he finds himself lost without a compass in a strange and frightening land. There's one guy who wants to be Updike. There's another one who wants to be a New England version of Faulkner - only he wants to write novels about the grim lives of the poor in blank verse. There's a girl who admires Joyce Carol Oates but feels that because Oates was nurtured in a sexist society she is 'radioactive in a literary sense.' Oates is unable to be clean, this girl says. She will be cleaner. There's the short fat grad student who can't or won't speak above a mutter. This guy has written a play in which there are nine characters. Each of them says only a single word. Little by litter the playgoers realize that when you put the single words together you come out with 'War is the tool of the sexist death merchants'. This fellow's play receives an A from the man who teaches Eh-141 (Creative Writing Honors Seminar). This instructor has published four books of poetry and his master's thesis, all with the University Press. He smokes pot and wears a peace medallion. The fat mutterer's play is produced by a guerrilla theater group during the strike to end the war which shuts down the campus in May of 1970. The instructor plays one of the characters.
Bill Denbrough, meanwhile, has written one locked-room mystery tale, three science-fiction stories, and several horror tales which owe a great deal to Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Richard Matheson - in later years he will say those stories resembled a mid-1800s funeral hack equipped with a supercharger and pained Day-Glo red.
One of the sf tales earns him a B.
'This is better', the instructor writes on the title page. 'In the alien counterstrike we see the vicious circle in which violence begets violence; I particularly liked the 'needle-nosed' spacecraft as a symbol of socio-sexual incursion. While this remains a slightly confused undertone throughout, this is interesting.'
All the others do no better than a C.
Finally he stands up in class one day, after the discussion of a sallow young woman's vignette about a cow's examination of a discarded engine block in a deserted field (this may or may not be after a nuclear war) has gone on for seventy minutes or so. The sallow girl, who smokes one Winston after another and occasionally picks on the pimples which nestle in the hollows of her temples, insists that the vignette is a socio-political statement in the manner of the early Orwell. Most of the class - and the instructor - agree, but still the discussion drones on.
When Bill stands up, the class looks at him. He is tall, and has a certain presence.
Speaking carefully, not stuttering (he has not stuttered in better than five years), he says: 'I don't understand this at all. I don't understand any of this. Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics...culture...history...aren't those all natural ingredients in any story, if it is told well? I mean,...' He looks around, seeing hostile eyes, and realizes dimly that they see this as some sort of attack. Maybe it even is. They are thinking, he realizes, that maybe there is a sexist death merchant in their midst. 'I mean...can't you guys just let a story be a story?'
No one replies. Silence spins out. He stands there looking from one cool set of eyes to the next. The sallow girl chuffs out smoke and stubs her cigarette in an ashtray she has brought along in her backback.
Finally, the instructor says softly, as if to a child having an inexplicable tantrum, 'Do you believe Shakespeare was just interested in making a buck? Come now, Bill. Tell us what you think'.
'I think that;s pretty close to the truth', Bill says after a moment in which he honestly considers the question, and in their eyes he reads a kind of damnation.
'I suggest,' the instructor says, toying with his pen and smiling at Bill with half-lidded eyes, 'that you have a great deal to learn'.
The applause starts somewhere in the back of the room.
Bill leaves...but returns the next week, determined to stick with it. In the time between he has written a story called 'The Dark,' a tale about a small boy who discovers a monster in the cellar of his house. The little boy faces it, battles it, finally kills it. He feels a kind of holy exaltation as he goes about the business of writing this story; he even feels that he is not so much telling the story as he is allowing the story to flow through him. At one point he puts his pen down and takes his hot and aching hand out into ten-degrees December cold where it nearly smokes from the temperature change. He walks around, green cut-off boots squeaking in the snow like tiny shutter-hinges which need oil, and his head seems to bulge with the story; it is a little scary, the way it needs to get out. He feels that if it cannot escape the way of his racing hand that it will pop his eyes out in its urgency to escape and be concrete. 'Going to knock the shit out of it', he confides to the blowing winter dark, and laughs a little - a shake laugh. He is aware that he has finally discovered how to do just that - after ten years of trying he has suddenly found the starter button on the vast dead bulldozer taking up so much space inside his head. It has started up. It is revving, revving. It is nothing pretty, this big machine. It was not made for taking pretty girls to proms. It is not a status symbol. It means business. It can knock things down. If he isn't careful, it will knock him down. He rushes inside and finishes 'The Dark' at white heat, writing until four o''clock in the morning and finally falling asleep over his ring binder. If someone had suggested that he was really writing about his brother, Georgie, he would have been surprised. He has not thought about about Georgie in years - or so he honestly believes.
The story comes back from the instructor with the F slashed into the title page. Two words are scrawled beneath, in capital letters. PULP, screams one. CRAP, screams the other.
Bill takes the fifteen-page sheaf of manuscript over to the wood-stove and opens the door. He is within a bare inch of tossing it in when the absurdity of what he is doing strikes him. He sits down in his rocking chair, looks at the Grateful Dead poster, and starts to laugh. Pulp? Fine! Let it be pulp! The woods were full of it!
'Let them fucking trees fall'! Bill exclaims, and laughs until tears spurt from his eyes and roll down his face.
He retypes the titles page, and one with the instructor's judgement on it, and sends it off to a men's magazine named White Tie (although from what Bill can see, it really should be titled Naked Girls Who Look Like Drug Users). Yet his battered Writer's Market says they buy horror stories, and the two issues he has bought down at the local mom-and-pop store have indeed contained four horror stories sandwiched between the naked girls and the ads for dirty movies and potency pills. One of them, by a man named Dennis Etchinson, is actually quite good.
He sends 'The Dark' off with no real hopes - he has submitted a good many stories to magazines before with nothing to show for it but rejection slips - and is flabbergasted and delighted when the fiction editor of White Tie buys it for two hundred dollars, payment on publication. The assistant editor adds a short note which calls it 'the best damned horror story since Ray Bradbury's 'The Jar'.' He adds, 'Too bad only about seventy people coast to coast will read it,' but Bill Denbrough does not care. Two hundred dollars!
He goes to his adviser with a drop card for Eh - 141. His adviser initials it. Bill Denbrough staples the drop card to the assistant fiction editor's congratulatory note and tacks both to the bulletin board on the creative-writing instructor's door. In the corner of the bulletin board he sees an anti-war cartoon. And suddenly, as if moving on its own accord he writes this: 'If fiction and politics ever really do become interchangeable, I'm going to kill myself, because I won't know what to do. You see, politics always change. Stories never do. He pauses, and then, feeling a bit small (but unable to help himself), he adds: I suggest you have a lot to learn. His drop card comes back to him in the campus mail three days later. The instructor had initialed it. On the space marked GRADE AT TIME OF DROP, the instructor has not given him an incomplete or the low C to which his run of grades at the time would have entitled him; instead, another F is slashed angrily across the grade line. Below it the instructor had written: Do you think money proves anything about anything, Denbrough?
'Well, actually, yes', Bill Denbrough says to his empty apartment, and once more begins to laugh crazily.'
Wow, that took me a fair while. If you haven't read IT, you should; it's a fantastic novel. I tweeted yesterday that you don't just read Stephen King's novels, you live them. That's not just a comment on their length (although, they do often tend to be huge) but because they contain such well drawn out characters. And in more cases than not - normal characters. King creates a world in which these characters inhabit; he will often dedicate large chunks of his texts to back-stories of towns or previous events in minor character's lives and some critics see this as 'padding'; that King gets a little bit carried away and enjoys the sound of his 'words' a little too much. I beg to differ - all this extra information brings his stories to life.
It often surprises me that when I bring up Stephen King in a conversation with literature students that I feel like I have to resort to phrases like, 'Yeah, I like Stephen King. He's like a guilty pleasure'. or 'I guess I should be ashamed by this, but I read a lot of Stephen King. I'd say he's one of my favourite authors.' But why? Why should I be ashamed to read Stephen King? The answer lies, I believe, in our snobbish, stuck up society where literary works seems to be graded on its content.
What do I mean by this? Well, think of a book you would consider 'classic' to you, or to the public eyes. No doubt, many of you (perhaps I am overestimating the number of views this page will get)/one or two of you, will think of Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' or Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights'. Maybe, if you dig the old stuff, you would think of 'The Iliad' or 'The Odyssey'. Maybe even 'Beowulf.' And, of course, you'd be right. These books ARE classics and there's no way I would ever contradict that statement. But when asked that question, has anyone said, 'Classic? Hmm. Stephen King's IT is fantastic. Oh, and The Stand! That book changed my life. And Misery! Oh my God, that one scared me. There's just so many! King writes classic books.'? No, they haven't. But I'd be willing to bet a fair amount of money that if asked the question 'Name one of your favourite books', or 'Name a book that you really enjoyed' and specifically, 'Name one of today's greatest writers', King's name and works would pop up frequently. This is because they are genuinely good books.
I'll probably have to explain why King's books are good first. Or attempt to - it's particularly hard to explain why you enjoyed something to someone who hasn't experienced something. But, I'll take a pretty good guess that a large number of people have read a Stephen King book (his books have sold over 350 million copies). I'd say that the three most important aspects of a book are: the story/the plot, the characters and the author's writing ability. King's books have all three of these in large doses in the majority of his books (author's have 'off days' too!)
Firstly, the character's in his stories. King's characters feel real, is as well as I can put it really. They just fit right into the world that he's created and live in it. In a book like IT, or 11/22/63, once you've started reading it's hard to convince yourself that the characters aren't real. In fact, when you do, it is often saddening. This isn't an analysis into how King create's his novels, just one on the overall impact on King and so I'm not going into much further detail on how he creates his characters the way he does. However, I believe a large part of this comes down to the fact that we know so much about them - we know their childhoods, their likes and dislikes, turn ons and turn offs, family, friends and enemies. King tells us information about the characters which isn't remotely related to the plot but strengthens the character themselves. I think the best example of this is in 11/22/63 - my favourite King novel (a statement which I suppose will shock die-hard fans). I'd say for a good third of the novel, nothing much happens apart from King writing about the central character, Jake, living in the past - making friends/enemies and the such. King does this so that the final chapter is possible the most heart-wrenching thing I've read. The reason being because I know Jake Epping, I have lived his life.
Second, story. King comes under a lot of criticism because his novels deal with the supernatural. Because, of course, fantasy and horror can't possible have any literary worth, can they? To a critic who thinks this firstly, I'd wring your neck for a good few minutes before calmly explaining that if one insists to believe such nonsense, then at least think of his works in a different way. King's novels usually deal with ordinary people in extraordinary situations. His books are character pieces, showing the complexities of human nature that is shown in difficult, sometimes supernatural situations. The fantastical elements in his novels are only the back drop to very real and complex emotional character studies. For instance, yes, IT is about a monster that kills children. But is it all about that? No, it's about the characters that have to face IT, as well as their own fears themselves. Bill has to face the guilt he feels over the death of his brother, as well as his speech impediment. Eddie has to face his overbearing mother and crippling sensitivity, Bev has to face her abusive father and her life in near poverty, Ben is forced to come to terms with unrequited love and Mike is confronted by the 1950s racial views. And more, of course - because characters in a Stephen King novel aren't perfect, they're real. So these children (and their adult counterparts) have to deal with their own demons as well as a very real monster. IT, has everything.
Writing ability. Am I going to say that Stephen King comes out with the most perfect prose ever written? No, that would be foolish. Stephen King is no Bronte or Orwell or whoever. But he his a decent writer; something that many critics cannot seem to grasp. He isn't a linguist, he's a storyteller and boy, does he tell stories. I think that people criticise King's writing because it is so contemporary and easy to read. But should that really go against King's favour? Is it really a bad thing that my 'To-Do' list still reads, '3. Read to pg106 in Wuthering Heights' while I am happily writing this and ploughing through a Stephen King book? God, I hope not. Because that just shows how elitist literature has become; an author is being looked down upon because people who aren't entirely engrossed by literature enjoy him. King's novels aren't intended to be studied. They aren't meant to be analysed. The symbols and metaphors he uses aren't cryptic, they're necessary to the story. But does that make King any less valuable than other, more 'acclaimed' authors? No, not in my opioin. Because King accomplishes what he intended to do: entertain us. I'm not going to force feed any readers the meaning of the quote above; it's obviously why I included it. King is writing about himself. He is aware that his novels are 'pulp' and are purely for entertainment.
King is quoted as saying, 'My novels are the literary equivalent to a Big Mac and Fries.' Wow, hold on Mr King. In a way, I partially agree with this statement and it backs up my previous ideas. However, I think that not only is King being far too hard on himself, King's books aren't completely trash. Firstly, he's a good writer. You can't deny that at all - he's written so much. Before you can exclaim, 'But Stephanie Meyer has written FOUR books!', King (according to Wikipedia) has written fifty novels, five non-fiction books and over TWO-HUNDRED short stories. Now tell me that someone with no talent can have that many books published. Also, his books have emotional weight, just like, I'd like to point out, well known classics. In a lot of cases, more so, I would argue. I don't think I can do justice to the ending of 11/22/63 so I'm not going to try and explain it. But it's moving. Eye-watering moving. I don't believe pure trash can have that effect on a person. In short: Stephen King's 'trash' novels have worth.
I have a theory. We have classics now and these are well known to be so, but what about in fifty years? One-hundred years? What will the classics be then? 'Serious' authors, of course, will be included, like Cormac McCarthy. I have read 'No Country for Old Men' and 'The Road', and both are, indeed, fantastic books. Classic, no doubt. But, heaven forbid, I prefer Stephen King. It could be argued that McCarthy is a better writer, but I'd argue that King is a better storyteller. My theory is that in forty or fifty years time, a new category of novel will be naturally formed by society. I call this category the 'Entertaining Classic' category (I've yet to come up with a better name). That's not to say that 'our' classics aren't entertaining, but these new classics were written purely for entertainment. They won't be studied in schools, but we will remember them. They will last. These books shouldn't be confused with 'Modern Classics' like A Clockwork Orange or McCarthy novels because these still contain the heavy going nature that accompanies classic novels. Instead, my category includes Stephen King novels (as the forerunner), the Harry Potter novels and perhaps the Millennium trilogy, among others. And no, Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey will not be included in 'Entertaining Classics' for a number of reasons; the main ones being that they are not entertaining and they are not classics. Seriously, though, they're badly written and unoriginal pieces of work that are unlikely to be remembered as more than a brief trend in a teenage girl's life.
In 2030, or whenever I have had children I expect to end up discussing and recommending novels to them. At first I'll suggest The Hobbit and Harry Potter when they're old enough to read by themselves. As they grow, I'll recommend The Lord of the Rings and when they reach their late teens, I will recommend Stephen King to them.
'When was it written, Dad?' asks one of my children as I hand him or her IT to read.
'God, I'd say a good fifty years ago now', I will reply, surprised at old the book is and, in fact, how old I am.
'That's even older than Harry Potter! How has it lasted so long Dad? Why do people still read Stephen King books after all these years?'
And I'll reply
'Because they're bloody good reads'.
