by Maureen Thomas

Created on: July 03, 2009

I read The Shining thirty years ago. One of my friends told me it was "a really scary book". Which it was. At the time I had no idea I was embarking on a three decade literary love affair with Stephen King.

While to this day, I hesitate to crack open a Stephen King novel when I am alone, his body of work is so much more than the ghoulish. And yes, there are some truly awful books in the mix (have you ever read Cell?), most of his works feature realistic, everyman characterizations, universal themes, honest voice, and above all, plots that unfold dramatically yet naturally.

His works are full of archetypes and allusion. The Stand, an intimidatingly long yet completely compelling saga of the battle between Good and Evil in a post-Apocalyptic America rivets the reader from the first scene. The Stand was originally published in 1978 and re-issued in 1990. To many, King's concept of a pandemic that destroys 99.7% of the world's population seems less far-fetched today than in the seventies. And while his cultural references are somewhat dated at this point, the characters are so vividly drawn the reader will wonder what happens to them after the last page is turned.

His Dark Tower series, written over a span of two decades, features a mythical cowboy, Roland, on a quest to save mankind. Roland, a modern incarnation of Childe Roland, a character from the poetry of Lord Byron, encounters the spectrum of good and evil, courage and cowardice. Some characters make appearances or are alluded to in other books not in the series, and some, such as the flawed priest Father Callahan, from The Shining, are brought back to life in The Dark Tower. The idea of ka, or Destiny, is a theme which also crosses over into many of King's stories..

Interestingly, some of King's most famous works are not always recognized by the public as his. The Shawshank Redemption, a movie on many critical and personal top ten lists, was originally a novella entitled, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Stand By Me, a poignant coming-of-age film that catapulted the late River Phoenix to fame, was called The Body, when King penned it in the same Different Seasons collection. Many are unaware that The Green Mile was a series, published in installment in the manner of Charles Dickens, who published many of his works in this manner. The Green Mile limits its supernatural theme to the Christ like powers of its simple hero John Coffey. It is a powerful tale of moral ambiguity that packs a Southern Gothic punch.

Like The Green Mile, both Misery and Dolores Claiborne were made into successful movies. Both books are among King's most suspenseful, yet the evil element in both is the human sort; the lunacy of an obsessed, psychotic fan, and the darkness that a pedophile creates in his family. These books, with their harrowing depiction of the human condition, are just as scary as the vampires, evil clowns and giant spiders in his more fantastical books.

In 2000, King published On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft. Part of the book is his fascinating autobiography with its rags-to-riches elements, his battle with drug and alcohol addiction, recovery from an auto accident that should have killed him, and above all, his nonstop devotion to his wife, Tabitha. It is also a highly lauded guide to the craft of writing that has become a staple in creative writing courses and workshops. King's no-nonsense approach to the elements of style was the final piece that made many, like Roger Ebert, get over their snobbery about the quality of the writing of arguably the best current American storyteller, Stephen King.

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