Stephen Edwin King(eng. Stephen Edwin King) - American writer, working in a variety of genres, including horror, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, drama. Not only due to his consonance with his surname, but primarily due to his outstanding literary achievements in the genre, he received the nickname “King of Horror”.
Stephen King was born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine, into the family of merchant marine captain Donald Edward King and trained pianist Nellie Ruth Pillsbury (by this time there was already an eldest in the family, adopted child- David Victor). The writer's father had Polish roots and decided to change his own surname Spenski to the sonorous English "King". In 1949, when Stephen was two years old, Donald King left the house one day to buy cigarettes and did not return. His fate remained unclear for a long time, and only in the late 1990s did the children learn that their father had started another family (his second Brazilian wife gave birth to four children) and lived nearby until his death in 1980.
After her husband left, Stephen’s mother had to take on any job, mostly doing unskilled, low-paid work, and the family had to frequently change their place of residence. In 1949-1958 they lived in Chicago, Fort Wayne (Indiana), Malden (Massachusetts), West De Pere (Wisconsin), Stratford (Connecticut), until they finally settled in West Durham, a town 30 miles from Scarborough, Maine. King recalled: “Ever since I was a child, I felt that life was unfair. My mother raised me alone, my father abandoned us, and she had to work a lot and hard. We were poor, living paycheck to paycheck, and didn't know anything about equal opportunity society or any of that bullshit.<…>Something of this feeling of injustice still remains and is reflected today in my books.”
Due to frequent moves and poor health, Stephen was seriously ill for a long time, which is why he had to remain in first grade for the second year. To escape from the pain, the boy, encouraged by his mother, began writing at the age of 12. short stories. The first of them was called "Mr. Sly Rabbit" and was about a white rabbit and his three animal friends driving around the city to find children in trouble and help them out. His mother liked what he read, and Steve wrote four more stories about the rabbit, receiving 25 cents each, which became his first writer's fee. At the same time, the boy is passionate about reading books, comics (such as “Tales from the Crypt”, “Tomb of Horrors”, “Crypt of Horror”, “Madness”, “Spider-Man”, “Superman”, “Hulk”), often watches movies (black and white as part of the TV show “Million Dollar Movie” and horror films in cinemas - the first was “Creature from the Black Lagoon”). Stephen remembers being truly frightened by the forest fire scene from the cartoon Bambi - the boy had nightmares for weeks afterwards - and listening to a radio play based on the works of Ray Bradbury, Mars is Heaven. King said: “I liked the feeling of fear, I liked the feeling of completely losing control over my feelings.”
In January 1959, David and Stephen King decided to publish their own newspaper. The brothers created a newsletter called "Dave's Paper," printing each issue on an old mimeograph machine and distributing it to neighbors for 5 cents a copy. Dave was responsible for local news, and Stephen wrote reviews of his favorite TV shows and films, as well as short stories. Around the same time, the boy became acquainted with the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, who became one of his favorite authors. In his interviews, King expressed his firm belief that the age of 13-15 is ideal for reading Lovecraft, and told how he himself accidentally found a collection of his stories, “Lurking in the Shadows,” in a paperback yellow cover, rummaging through a pile of his father’s old books in the attic, and how, while reading all these ominous stories, I experienced a feeling of “coming home.”
As a teenager, King changed several schools, often getting into conflict situations either because of his passion for the horror genre - inappropriate for a teenager, according to the director, or because of writing stories about the fictional adventures of teachers using black humor. But school years were also remembered by others - for example, the release of a homemade collection together with friend Chris Chesley in 1960 short stories"People, Places and Things" a short stint as editor of the school newspaper; finally, the first real publication: in 1965, in the magazine “Comics Review” under the title “In a Half World of Terror”, Stephen’s story was published, based, among other things, on personal experience, “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber.” As a reward, the aspiring writer received a couple of author's copies of the issue.
King graduated in 1966 high school and attended the University of Maine. Among King's teachers was the famous literary critic Carroll Terrell, who subsequently published a book about his student, Stephen King: man and artist (1990). In 1970, King graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree, he was declared unfit to military service. In the fall of 1971, King began working as a teacher. English language at school in Hampden, Maine. He writes the novel Carrie, which he considers unsuccessful and even throws out the draft, but at the insistence of his wife, he completes it, and in 1974 Doubleday publishes Carrie, then sells the copyright to the novel to NAL. The fee he receives allows King to leave his job at school and pursue creativity seriously: “There’s nothing else I’d rather do... I really can’t imagine doing anything else, and I can’t imagine not doing anything else.” what I do,” the writer later said. In 1977, the novel "The Shining" was published, and also - under the pseudonym Richard Bachman and under the title "Rage" - King's early novel "Getting It On" was published. However, after things began to happen in Kansas real cases school shootings, and a copy of “Fury” was found in the possession of a juvenile offender who killed three of his classmates, the author himself decided to withdraw the book from sale.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stephen King published a number of other works under the pseudonym Richard Bachman (“The Long Walk,” “Road Work,” “The Running Man,” “The Thin Man”). The writer is trying in this way to check whether he can repeat his success again, fearing that it is only an accident, a coincidence. According to another version, the use of a pseudonym was dictated by the publishing standards of the time, which allowed the publication of only one book per year. King chooses a surname for his “literary double” in honor of his favorite band “Bachman-Turner Overdrive” and invents a biography. However, the hoax was exposed by a Washington bookstore clerk who noticed similarities between King's old works and Bachman's new works, and who also discovered King's name on one of Bachman's novels in the Library of Congress - and soon Bachman was declared "deceased", but his books were still being published by him as well. fictional widow, Claudia Innes Bachman. In 1985, Stephen King would reveal the real authorship of Bachman's books, and subsequently in the novel The Dark Half (1989) he would tell a similar story about how the pseudonym “took flesh” and “took the place of the writer”,
In 1982, King's novel The Gunslinger was published, which marked the beginning of the Dark Tower series, which will end in 2012 with the eighth volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole.
On June 19, 1999, in Lovell, Maine, while walking, King was hit by a minibus driver, as a result of which the writer received severe injuries and multiple fractures, and underwent a number of reconstructive surgeries. He subsequently described this event in his memoirs “How to Write Books” and in the seventh part of “The Dark Tower”, and the numbers 19 and 99 become “sacred” for him and repeatedly appear in the plots of his works. In 2002, King announced that he would stop writing, apparently due to injuries he had suffered that left him unable to sit still.
Later, he does return to work, and when asked: “Is it true that you resigned?” responds like this: “I write, but I write at a much slower pace than before... there is a lot to do outside of creativity, which is great, but creativity still plays a huge role in my life and in my daily routine.” In the 2000-2010s, a number of King’s novels were published, including “Dreamcatcher”, “Under the Dome”, “11/22/63”.
King developed his own formula for success as a writer: “read and write four to six hours a day,” set a standard for himself—2,000 words daily—and didn’t stop until it was met.
To date, Stephen King is the author of 55 novels, 5 popular science books, and about 200 short stories, most of which are collected in nine author's collections. The circulation of his works is more than 350 million copies. About 100 short films and feature films, television and animated films, series, in almost two dozen of which the author himself played episodic roles.
According to critics, "the sharpness of his prose, attention to dialogue, disarmingly casual and frank style of presentation, passionate, furious denunciation of human stupidity and cruelty, especially of children, all together make him a truly popular writer."
In his 1990 book The Philosophy of Horror, Noel Carroll speaks of King's work as a model modern literature in the horror genre. Analyzing narrative style King’s fiction and his other works not related to fiction, reflecting on the art of presenting his thoughts, he writes that for King “horror is always a competition between the normal and the abnormal, in which the normal will again become dominant in the finale.”
For his work, King received many prestigious literary awards, including the Bram Stoker Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the British Fantasy Society Award. His story "The Way Station" was nominated for a Nebula Award, and his short story "The Man in the Black Suit" received an O. Henry Award. Throughout its literary career he received numerous awards for his contributions to literature. In 2003 awarded a medal National Book Foundation, in 2014 - the US National Medal of the Arts with the wording "for combining compelling stories with analysis of human nature."
Since 1971, Stephen King has been married to Tabitha Spruce, whom he met while studying at the university. The King family owns real estate in Bangor and Lovell, Maine, and often lives in a mansion near the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida, in the winter. Stephen and Tabitha King have three children (daughter Naomi, sons Owen and Joseph) and four grandchildren. King's wife and sons are also involved literary creativity: Tabitha King posted nine own novels. Owen King published his first collection, We Are All Together: Tales and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hilstrom King writes under the pseudonym Joe Hill; in 2005, he published a collection of short stories, Ghosts of the 20th Century, and in 2007, his debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, was published.
King is a baseball fan. He helped coach his son Owen's Bangor West team to the 1989 Maine Little League championship. He often attends games of his favorite team, the Boston Red Sox, and mentions it in his works. In 1992, the Kings sponsored the construction of Mansfield Stadium, and in 2002, Stephen King made the first pitch at the opening match of the International Senior League Baseball.
Stephen King: books for those who like to titillate
Stephen King, the list of whose best books we offer you, is one of the most popular today modern writers. First of all, it is associated with novels in the horror genre. It’s not for nothing that Stephen King received the title of “king of horror”; the books coming from his pen are filled with a mysterious and gloomy atmosphere, chilling events and exciting plot twists. In fact, among the works of this author one can find a wide variety of directions, so the reader is free to choose what he likes best. If you like Stephen King, best books He has genres of fantasy, thriller, drama, and mystery.
Stephen King: biography of the writer
Stephen King, whose biography is very interesting, was born on September 21, 1947 in Portland (Maine, USA). He began writing at the age of seven, after finding a drawer full of horror and fantasy novels at home. Later, King and his brother begin to create their own newspaper. Thus, before even finishing school, the future writer gains experience as a journalist by writing articles for the school newspaper. Then he decides to become a writer. To go to university and earn money for education, Stephen King works at a weaving factory. In 1966 he entered the University of Maine.
Stephen King's main passion and legacy are books; you can see a list of the best books in this section. The writer focuses on his home state of Maine. Distinctive feature his work is a description of the life of small American towns, where everyone knows each other. King reveals family secrets, looks into the most hidden corners of human consciousness, which attracts most readers.
Meanwhile, its popularity is truly enormous. Over the course of his life, the author managed to sell more than 350 million copies. In addition, King is considered one of the most “prolific” writers of our time: he managed to publish fifty novels and does not stop there. Many films have been made based on his novels, and comic books have also been created based on his stories. His work also includes non-fiction novels, which he wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. For his work, King received the Bram Stoker Award and a number of other prestigious awards.
If you are interested in Stephen King, you can find the books, the list of which is quite extensive, just below.
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Biography, life story of Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American writer.Childhood years
Stephen was born in Portland, Maine on September 21, 1947. His mother Nellie Ruth Pillsbury was a trained pianist. Father Donald Edward King was a merchant marine captain who later, after his marriage, left the seas and found work as a traveling salesman. Nellie and Donald married in 1939. The couple desperately wanted a baby, but they could not conceive a child. Doctors assured that Nellie Ruth was infertile. In 1945, the couple adopted a newborn boy, David Victor. And two years later, despite the doctors' diagnosis, Nellie became pregnant and gave birth to Stephen.
Donald King was not happy with his family life. He was burdened by his father's responsibilities, the need to earn money and keep order in the house. One day in 1949, a man left his house supposedly to buy cigarettes and... did not return. Nellie told her sons that their dad was kidnapped by Martians. It is curious that Donald subsequently started a family with another woman, a Brazilian, and had four children. So he still came to what he so wanted to escape from.
After Donald left, Nellie Ruth had a hard time. She took on any job, even the hardest, to feed her boys. Her relatives helped her cope with difficulties. Nellie, David and Stephen moved a lot from place to place - they managed to live in Chicago, and in Fort Wayne, and in Malden, and in West De Pere, and in Stratford. They finally settled in West Durham, also in Maine.
Stephen's childhood was spent in poverty and illness. Not only was he a poor boy, sadly watching his mother struggle to earn money, but he was also often sick. So, Stephen suffered from measles and acute pharyngitis with complications. There was also psychological trauma - the boy became an accidental witness to how his peer died under a freight train. Because of all these troubles, Stephen did not have time to study properly, so he ended up in first grade twice.
CONTINUED BELOW
In his free time from school and homework, little Stephen read books and comics. Most of all he liked horror films and science fiction. The boy also loved films – again in the horror genre. Interestingly, Stephen got real pleasure from the chill of fear running through his skin when reading about terrible events or watching them in the movies, but from the forest fire scene in the children's cartoon "Bambi" he was in such shock that he could not sleep properly - he I had nightmares.
Creative path
Stephen King began writing at the age of seven. Mom supported her son in every possible way, admonished him and praised him. For one of his stories about a rabbit and his friends pulling children out of trouble, Stephen even received 25 cents - his first writer's fee.
In 1959, Stephen and David launched their own city newspaper. The guys sold each copy of “Dave's Leaf” to neighbors for five cents. The newspaper published local news, reviews of television shows and books and short stories. In 1960, Stephen King released his first collection of short stories, People, Places and Things. The young man actively wrote and shared his creations with the public. The director of his school categorically did not like this - he believed that a boy at his age should not write such horrors. Stephen had to change schools. In 1962, he graduated from the eighth grade and became a student at Lisbon High. At the same time, King wrote and sent his stories to various publishing houses. He received many refusals, but his innate tenacity and perseverance did not allow him to give up. In 1965, his story “I Was a Teenage Grave Robber” was accepted for publication.
Stephen King, having started writing while still in school, never gave himself a break. I studied in college and wrote. He worked in a weaving factory as a packer or as a teacher in a high school - and wrote. I attended classes at the university and wrote. King's stories and novels were bought like hot cakes. Many of his works have been filmed. “Carrie”, “Pet Sematary”, “It”, “The Green Mile”, “Under the Dome”... Thanks to his works literally saturated with fear, Stephen King became the king of horror recognized by the people. He is talented - and these words do not fully reflect Stephen's abilities. Whatever project he put his hand to, it became successful. For example, it was largely thanks to King’s script that the series “ X-Files"has become so popular.
Of course, we visited Stephen King and hard times. So, in the 1980s, he experienced creative and personal crises at the same time. He drank a lot and used drugs. Stephen's family had to make incredible efforts to reach the writer and convince him to seek help from doctors.
For some time, Stephen King worked under the pseudonyms Richard Bachman and John Sweeten. Masquerading under fictitious names, the writer checked whether the success of his creations was not an accident, whether he really had established himself as a master of the pen, and whether his works, not signed by his sonorous surname, would be accepted by readers and critics.
Personal life
While studying at university, Stephen met a girl named Tabitha Spruce. In 1971, Stephen and Tabitha got married. Their first years family life were difficult - financial condition it was very deplorable. But the lovers did not despair. They loved each other and supported each other in every possible way. Very soon they had a son, Joseph, then a daughter, Naomi, and later another son, Owen.
Tabitha, like her husband, is a writer. She published nine novels, but, alas, they did not become particularly popular.
Stephen Edwin King was born in the fall of 1941 in the American state of Maine, in the city of Portland. The birth of a boy can be called a miracle. The fact is that Nellie Ruth Pillsbury, the mother of the future writer, was diagnosed by doctors with infertility. And when the woman married the captain of the merchant ship Donald Edward King for the second time, the couple decided to adopt the boy. They named their adopted son David Victor. And two years later, Nellie unexpectedly became pregnant. The couple had a son, Stephen Edwin.
But common child couldn’t make my parents’ marriage strong. The head of the family had a reputation as a ladies' man. As a sailor, he traveled all over the world. After World War II, Donald left the Navy and took a job sales agent, offering vacuum cleaners to customers. Family life weighed on him. When Stephen was 2 years old, his father disappeared from his life. The man left the house to buy cigarettes and disappeared. Mom announced to her sons that dad was kidnapped by Martians. According to some sources, the woman guessed that the “Martians” could be a pretty waitress from Connecticut.
Looking ahead, let's say that the film crew of one of the American television channels, working on documentary film about the biography of Stephen King in the 1990s, I tracked down his negligent parent. As it turned out, he lived nearby, in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania, with his Brazilian wife and four children.
After her husband's escape, Ruth, a pianist by training, had a hard time. She took on any low-paying job just to feed her sons. She worked as a saleswoman in a bakery or as a servant in rich houses. A woman moved from state to state in search of a good job. The family lived in Indiana, Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Connecticut. In the end, she stopped for a long time in the town of West Durham in Maine.
ArtChange.ru Stephen King saw how hard it was for his mother, although she never complained. Even in his youth, he realized that a society of equal opportunities is a myth for naive people. In reality, life is difficult and unfair.
As a child, Steve became an involuntary witness terrible tragedy: before his eyes, a peer died before his eyes when he fell under the wheels of a freight train. King experienced a severe shock, after which the terrible images of death were erased from his memory for some time. They surfaced only a few years later, when he was told about the tragedy. The writer's biographers claim that this event influenced his work and inspired him to write some works.
Frequent moves undermined Stephen King's already poor health. He suffered particularly hard from measles. Then acute pharyngitis happened, which turned into a form of ear infection that is incurable with antibiotics. Three times the boy experienced hellish pain when his eardrum was pierced. Due to illness, King spent two years in first grade.
ArtChange.ru Perhaps all these life difficulties shaped the guy’s gloomy perception of reality and tastes. He loved horror films. The horror films “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, “Asylum”, “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”, “The Palace of Montezuma” and “The Sands of Iwo Jima” had an indelible impression on his psyche. Stephen King was so impressionable in his youth that even watching the cartoon “Bambi” with a forest fire scene caused painful nightmares.
The guy's favorite books included "The Hulk", "Spider-Man", "Superman", novels by Ray Bradbury, as well as comics about evil spirits"Tomb of Horrors" and "Tales from the Crypt". Stephen King later admitted that he liked the feeling of fear and “the feeling of completely losing control over the senses.”
Ru-stephenking.livejournal.com To escape from constant illnesses, the boy, encouraged by his mother, began to write. I tried my hand at writing at the age of 7. Stephen King wrote short story about the adventures of Captain Casey. The source of inspiration was a comic about brave captain. The boy simply retold what he had read. Mom praised the work, but at the same time noted that Steve could well create something of his own. Soon the future writer presented to her court four short stories about a white rabbit. For each of them, his mother paid him the first “fee” of 25 cents.
Creation
From that moment on, Stephen King created without stopping. His first “bestseller” was a story written based on the film “The Well and the Pendulum.” The guy printed out 40 copies of his work on a hectograph.
In 1959, 18-year-old Stephen King, along with his brother David, began publishing an information newsletter called “Dave's Leaf.” The guys distributed it using an old mimeograph machine and sold it for 5 cents to friends, neighbors and relatives. David wrote local news, and Steve wrote film reviews and his own short stories. At the same time, Stephen King first read the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He became the guy's favorite author. According to him, after becoming acquainted with the ominous stories of the collection “Lurking in the Shadows,” he felt a sense of “coming home.”
Bloodserial.deviantart.com In high school, Stephen King could not decide what to do next: go to university or volunteer in Vietnam to collect interesting facts for future work. The fact is that later life will be connected with writing, he no longer doubted. The mother convinced her son, who also had vision problems, to refuse a trip to Vietnam.
King went to college, where he began preparing for university. He also got a job at a weaving factory. Work was necessary to earn money for studies. Steve glued the packaging for the goods and put them in containers. In between work, I drove away the clouds of aggressive rats that lived in the basement. Later, these impressions became the basis for the story “Night Shift.”
Stephen King Universe In August 1966, Stephen King entered the University of Maine, choosing the faculty English literature. At the same time, he studied at a pedagogical college. Steve and Dave had a hard time, because their mother sent her sons only $5 a week for pocket money, while she herself was starving.
At the university, the future “King of Horror” got married. After graduating from college with a bachelor's degree, he decided to make a living as a writer. But it did not generate income. So Stephen King and his young family subsisted on his modest wages at the laundromat, his wife's student loan, and small royalties from the writer's short stories in magazines.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen King got a job as an English teacher at one of the Hampden schools in Maine. He continued to write, but seemed to begin to lose confidence in his literary abilities. One day, his wife found the manuscript of the novel “Carrie” thrown out by Steve in the trash bin. He threw out the draft without finishing the work. The wife read the novel and begged her husband to finish it.
Stephen King's novel "Carrie" | Audiobook-mp3.ru In the winter of 1973, Stephen King's mother died. The woman did not live a year to see her son's first success. In 1974, one of the publishing houses began publishing the novel Carrie and paid the writer a fee of $2,500. Unexpectedly for Steve, readers liked the novel. The Doubleday publishing house sold the copyright to the work to another, larger publishing house, NAL, for $400,000. Stephen King received half the amount.
The writer left teaching and moved to the neighboring state of Colorado. His second successful novel, The Shining, was created here in Boulder.
Stephen King's novel "The Shining" | Ozon.ru In the late 1970s, Stephen King worked under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Some biographers of the writer claim that the publication of books under an assumed name was dictated by the novelist's lack of self-confidence. It seemed to him that the success achieved was accidental. By repeating it under a different name, King wanted to make sure otherwise. The book "Rage" was published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. But King withdrew it from sale after his novel was found in the possession of a juvenile offender who had shot his classmates in Kansas.
The name Richard Bachman appeared under several of King's novels: The Long Walk, Road Work, The Running Man and Thinner. It is noteworthy that the surname Bachman was adopted by the writer because he was a passionate fan of the then famous musical group"Bachman-Turner Overdrive".
Stephen King's novel "The Long Walk" | fb2 library Stephen King had to give up his pseudonym after he was exposed by an attentive salesman at a Washington bookstore. Then the novelist announced that Bachmann had died of cancer.
The best Stephen King books appeared in the 1980s and 90s. First of all, this is the novel “The Shooter,” which became the first in the “Dark Tower” series. Also in 1982, in a record 10 days, he wrote the 300-page novel “The Running Man.”
In 1996, the book “ Green Mile" This is one of Stephen King's most beloved novels. A year later, the writer entered into a contract with the publishing house Simon and Schuster, which paid him an advance of $8 million for the novel Bag of Bones, and also pledged to give 50% of the proceeds from the sale.
Many of the works of the “King of Horror” have been filmed. In 1998, Stephen King acted as a screenwriter for one of the most popular TV series of those years - the X-Files project, in which the star roles were played by and.
Still from the series "The X-Files" | EX-FS In the summer of 1999, a writer walking with his dog was hit by a minibus. Stephen King was diagnosed with multiple fractures of his right leg, a hip fracture, and head and lung injuries. The leg was barely saved from amputation. Long time the novelist could sit for no more than 40 minutes, after which the pain in his broken hip became excruciating. This event formed the basis of the 7th part of the Dark Tower series of novels, and was also reflected in one of the films in the Royal Hospital series.
In 2002, Stephen King saddened his fans with the news that he was quitting his writing career. It is still difficult for him to sit, which does not allow him to concentrate on his next masterpiece. But to the great delight of his fans, the novelist broke his promise to stop writing.
In 2004, the last part of the epic “The Dark Tower” was released. And 2 years later, the novelist presented a new work called “Lisey’s Story.”
Stephen King's book "Lisey's Story" | Writing Lab In 2006, mystery aficionado Stephen King announced that he had found Bachman's unpublished novel Blaze. In fact, it was his own manuscript from his student days that he found, which was kept at the university all this time.
From 2008 to 2016, Stephen King pleased readers with the collection of short stories “After Sunset” and the novels “Duma Key”, “Under the Dome”, “Doctor Sleep”, “Mr. Mercedes” and “Renaissance”. In the summer of 2016, the “King of Horror” presented the third part of the novel “Mr. Mercedes,” called “The Post Passed.”
In the same year, fans of the talent of the “King of Horror” enjoyed watching a literary evening with the participation of two famous writers– Stephen King and George Martin. The meeting took place in Albuquerque.
Personal life
As mentioned above, the novelist met his future wife Tabitha Spruce at the university. During those difficult years, their son Joseph and daughter Naomi were born. Later a second son appeared - Owen. Tabitha is no stranger literary activity– the woman also tried to create, but her nine novels were not in great demand.
Stephen King's personal life with his beloved wife was happy. Together they went through many trials. At the beginning of family life - through poverty. Later – through the novelist’s alcoholism and drug addiction. In 1999, a letter allegedly written by Stephen King appeared in one of the satirical newspapers, in which he admitted that the period of writing the novel “Tommyknockers” had fallen out of his memory.
Uralbiblechurch.livejournal.com As it turned out, the 1980s were indeed marred by King's addiction to drink and drugs. To convince the writer, who denied his addictions, to see a doctor, his relatives “collected” evidence: they dumped beer cans, Valium, cocaine and marijuana packages found in the trash in front of him. Only then, with horror seeing all this “wealth” on the carpet, did Stephen King recognize the disease and seek help from specialists.
The first work he wrote after his recovery was the novel “Necessary Things.”
Stephen King's novel "Needful Things" | fb2 library Together with his wife, Stephen King owns three estates: in Bangor, Lovell and Sarasota. Last family visits in winter. It is located on the shores of the warm Gulf of Mexico in Florida.
Today the writer and his wife have four grandchildren.
Stephen King's sons also took their first steps into writing. Naomi's daughter is not interested in writing. She is known for being in a relationship with theology teacher Thandeka.
LiveLib IN free time Stephen King attends games of his favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox. In the 1990s, the couple sponsored the construction of the Mansfield Stadium, and in 2014, the writer took part in raising funds for people who suffer from amyotrophic sclerosis.
Bibliography
- 1974 – “Carrie”
- 1977 – “Shine”
- 1982 – “Shooter”
- 1983 – “Pet Sematary”
- 1987 – “Extracting the Three”
- 1991 – “Badlands”
- 1996 – “Green Mile”
- 1997 – “The Sorcerer and the Crystal”
- 2003 – “Wolves of Kalya”
- 2004 – “Song of Suzanne”
- 2004 – “The Dark Tower”
- 2012 – “The Wind Through the Keyhole”
Stephen King was born on September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine, to Merchant Marine Captain Donald Edward King and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury, who were already raising a two-year-old adopted son, David Victor (the Kings went ahead to adopt the newborn boy in September 1945 when doctors reported that Ruth will not be able to bear her children; the diagnosis of infertility, fortunately, turned out to be wrong).
In 1949, when Stephen was two years old, his father left the house one evening to buy cigarettes and never returned. His fate remained unclear for Stephen and David for a long time, until in the late 1990s they learned that their father had started another family and lived nearby with his Brazilian wife and four children until he died in 1980.
From 1949 to 1958, Ruth, David and Stephen King spent several years moving from place to place. They managed to live in Chicago, Fort Wayne (Indiana), Malden (Massachusetts), West De Pere (Wisconsin), Stratford (Connecticut), until they finally settled in West Durham, a town in 30 miles from Scarborough.
In 1950, four-year-old Stephen witnessed the death of his peer, who was hit by a freight train - a circumstance that Steve himself, in his own words, completely forgot, having suffered a state of shock, but remembered several years later when he was told about it.
Due to frequent travel and poor health, Stephen suffered a serious illness from measles, then acute pharyngitis, which eventually spread to his ears and turned into an extremely unpleasant form of ear infection that did not respond to any antibiotics. I had to seek medical help from an ENT specialist, who pierced the boy’s eardrum three times with a sterile needle so that the infected fluid would flow out. According to King’s recollections, what tormented him more than the hellish pain during punctures was the knowledge that the doctor had lied all three times, saying that it would not hurt, and at the same time he did not even bother to remember the patient’s name. Due to illness, Stephen had to remain in first grade for a second year.
Taking a break from the pain, the boy, with the encouragement of his mother, began to write short stories - the first of them was called “Mr. Sly Rabbit” and told about a white rabbit and his three animal friends driving around the city in search of children in trouble in order to help them out.
At the same time, the boy is passionate about reading books, mass viewing of horror comics (such as “Tales from the Crypt”, “Tomb of Horrors”, “Crypt of Horror”, “Madness”) and movies (especially black and white and second-rate “horror” films) ). But the very first film that terrified Stevie was the 1953 cartoon “Bambi” - because of the forest fire scene, the boy had nightmares for several weeks.
In the late 1950s, eleven-year-old Steve, like most Americans, was captivated by a series of bloody atrocities committed by 19-year-old Charles Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend Caryl Fugate (together they killed 11 people in Nebraska and Wyoming). Stephen had collected an entire album of newspaper clippings about Starkweather's crimes.
Stephen began his writing career in January 1959, when, together with his older brother David, he decided to publish his own local city newspaper. The brothers created a local newsletter called Dave's Paper, printing each issue on an old mimeograph machine and distributing it to neighbors in West Durham for 5 cents a copy. Dave was responsible for local news, and Steve wrote reviews of favorite TV shows and films, as well as short stories. Around the same time, the boy became acquainted with the work of A.I., who became one of his favorite authors; in a 2009 interview King said that one day, while rummaging through a pile of his father's old books in the attic, he found a collection of Lovecraft stories in a paperback yellow cover. The collection was called Lurking in the Shadows, and Steve felt a sense of “coming home” while reading all these sinister stories.
In 1966 King He graduated from high school and entered the University of Maine, where he met his future wife, Tabitha Spruce.
In 1970, he graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree and was declared unfit for military service. At first, the family experienced financial difficulties; they lived on King's salary from the laundry, his wife's student loan, and King's rare royalties for publishing stories in magazines. At this time, their son and daughter were born.
In 1971, King married Tabitha. In the fall of that year, he began working as an English teacher at a school in Hampden, Maine. His wife found a draft of the novel Carrie, which King considered a failure, in the trash, and insisted that King finish it.
In 1974, Doubleday published Carrie, for which King received an advance of $2,500. The publisher then sold the copyright to Carrie to NAL for $400,000, of which it received half King, which allowed him to leave his job at school. In the fall of 1974, King moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he lived for a year, during which time he wrote the novel The Shining.
In 1989 King signed a contract with the Viking publishing house, according to which he was supposed to receive $35 million for four next books, however, in 1997 he terminated it because he planned to receive $17 million for the book “Bag of Bones”. To do this, he entered into a new contract with the publishing house Simon & Schuster, under which he received an $8 million advance for the book and 50% of the proceeds from sales.
On June 19, 1999, King was hit by a car. The writer received serious injuries. He subsequently described this event in his memoirs (“How to Write Books”) and in the seventh part of “The Dark Tower” (“The Dark Tower”), including introducing “sacred” numbers into the plot - 19 and 99. King also took part in creating a fifteen-episode mini-television series called "Royal Hospital", which featured a similar event.
In 2004, the last part of the epic “The Dark Tower” was released, which, according to the writer’s promises, should become his last job. But King does not keep his promise and continues to publish books.
Some works Stephen King published under a pseudonym Richard Bachman- books “Rage”, “The Long Walk”, “Road Work”, “Running Man”, “Thinner”, “Regulators”, and “Blaze”.
This pseudonym has a fictional biography. The books of Bachman, supposedly deceased (died of "pseudonym cancer"), were published by his also fictional widow, Claudia Innes Bachman. Interestingly, Claudia is mentioned in the Dark Tower series as the author of the book "Charlie Choo-Choo" in the key world (in other worlds the author is the fictional Beryl Evans). In the book, her name is spelled differently (Claudia y Innes Bachman - 19 letters), since she is part of the ka-tet of nineteen. We can say that Claudia Bachman is also King’s pseudonym.