One of the most famous living writers, possibly the one who sold the most books too, Stephen King is this chapter's topic. But before I go any further into the matter, you have to know I haven't read a lot of King's writings, although the portion I read of his works far exceeds what I read of H.P. Lovecraft, and I read every single story the latter ever wrote.
My very first experience of Stephen King's writings was a French translation of Firestarter, and it took me about 10 pages before I dropped the book. I thought it was awful. I remember feeling like it read really badly, and that's probably due to the translation, although the plot wasn't too interesting to me either (for the little of it I had discovered of it). For many years, this was all I knew personally of King's writings, and judging by the movies based on his books, and what everyone seemed to say about them, I felt the underlying scorn was justified.
How wrong I was.
One day not too long ago I decided to give this author a more serious try. I picked up a copy of Different Seasons - made of four novellas - and started reading "Apt Pupil", mostly because it had to do with Nazism, and because I had vaguely seen the movies years before, and it didn't seem like a bad story.
I got hooked pretty quickly and read the whole thing in a few sessions. I wasn't sure it was mind-blowingly awesome, but I damn sure knew I wanted to finish it, and that, in my humble opinion, means the story is good at least on some levels. That was my real serious first experience of King in the original text, and I had enjoyed it.
So then I thought I'd read the other novellas in that book. Having seen the Shawshank Redemption movie already, I skipped it (I would read it later) and began "The Body". This one too has been turned into a movie - in the 80's - but I had strictly no idea that it had at the time I read it. "The Body" is the story that made me think King was in truth a great author. There is nothing supernatural in it, but I wouldn't say there is no horror, as a cold hard look at life can be the most horrific vision, and thus realism can be horror too. The story is about a group of friends going on an expedition to see a corpse that hasn't yet been discovered by the authorities. The whole narrative is told by one of these kids, who since then has become a successful and famous writer. To this day, it is my favourite King's longer piece (though I haven't read even a quarter of his work). It's well-written, it's immersing, the characters have... character, without becoming stock, the narrative moves back and forth between a long since dead past (childhood) and a nostalgic present, etc. I have nothing but good things to say about this particular story. It deals with life, death, childhood, the past, writing as a job, friendship, and other important themes. It's a very impressive story, and I can only recommend it.
After this, I read the rest of the novellas in that thick book. Good stuff too.
Then I decided to actually buy a book myself. Since I'm a huge fan of short stories (Poe, Lovecraft, Hemingway, Hawthorne, Buzzati, to name a few) and since King is something like the literary son of Lovecraft and grandson of Poe (although varying in style, they occupy a similar spot in literature, or something), I thought I'd get a book of short stories by King. That's how I got to Night Shift. The first collection of stories by King, to my knowledge; it contains some really good ones, and some not so good ones. If you're familiar with H.P. Lovecraft's work, you'll recognise the influence here and there, in some stories. That is not a bad thing at all, except when it feels like bad fanfiction, which I thought it did in "Jerusalem's Lot", not to be mistaken with the novel of almost the same name. I wrote an amazon review about this book, so I won't rewrite it here, but I can't not show you that King quote to be found in the foreword by the author:
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