Word: authority
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...neighborhood friend had inexplicably vanished. "It turned out," King later recalled, "that the kid had been run over by a freight train while playing on or crossing the tracks (years later, my mother told me they had picked up the pieces in a wicker basket)." To this day the author has "no memory of the incident at all; only of having been told about it . . ." But at the age of eight he had a very accessible dream: "I saw the body of a hanged man dangling from the arm of a scaffold on a hill. When the wind caused...
...months, replaced by Firestarter (1980), Cujo (1981), a nonfiction investigation of horror called Danse Macabre (1981), and a collection of novellas, Different Seasons (1982). In his spare time he turned out Christine and Pet Sematary (both 1983) by himself, and The Talisman (1984) in collaboration with Peter Straub, author of Ghost Story. Another collection of short stories appeared in 1985. And still that did not exhaust King. Because publishers were wary of overkill, he submitted five other novels under another name. When Richard Bachman's cover was blown, after Thinner climbed aboard the best-seller list, the pretense was shelved...
...great many of the King-Bachman books seem to have been written on a word processor by a word processor. The author often employs three exclamation points !!! where one would suffice, shows a blithe disregard for grammar ("My mother used to tell my brother David and I to 'hope for the best and expect the worst' "), and produces metaphors that obviously embarrass their creator: "He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand into the Great Wasps' Nest of Life. As an image it stank." But all along he displays one talent that never flags -- he is able to convince...
...Shining ("Stanley Kubrick's stated purpose was to make a horror picture, and I don't think he understood the genre") and the summer's Maximum Overdrive ("a stiff"), which King directed. But privately he derives consolation from a James M. Cain anecdote. An interviewer commiserated with the author of Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice because Hollywood had ruined all his books. "Cain looked over at his shelf and said, 'No, they are all still right there.' " Besides, King's work has inspired a bona fide hit in 1986: Rob Reiner's Stand by Me, an adaptation...
...brew tends to be of the lite variety these days. In the past the author could do a pretty fair imitation of a character in Animal House, and remembers writing Cujo under the influence of malt and hops. Then two years ago, physicians picked up symptoms of heart arrhythmia, and these days King tends to watch his solids and liquids and waistline. But he still pays very little attention to externals. Two lawn chairs on the driveway is about as much luxury as he likes to display to the neighbors. "I guard against success," he says, "because you start...