‘It gives me great pleasure that I’ve outlived most of my critics’
Born in Maine, USA, in 1947, Stephen King wrote his first published novel, Carrie, in 1974 and has spent the subsequent half-century documenting the monsters and heroes of small-town America. His rogues’ gallery of characters runs the gamut from killer clowns and demonic cars to psychotic fans and unhinged populist politicians.
The author talks about his upcoming book, The Institute, in the excerpts from a Guardian interview.
Carrie was published against the backdrop of Watergate, Vietnam and the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Is America a more or less scary place to write about now?
The world is a scary place, not just America. We’re in the spooky house — on the ghost train, if you prefer — for life. The scares come and go, but everyone likes make-believe monsters to stand in for the real ones.
The Institute is about a concentration camp for children, staffed by implacable factotums. To what extent did Trump’s immigration policies affect the book?
Trump’s immigration policies didn’t impact the book, because it was written before he became president. Children are imprisoned and enslaved all over the world. Hopefully, people who read The Institute will find a resonant chord with this administration’s cruel and racial policies.
For all the terrors in your work, there’s an underlying faith in basic human decency. This suggests you think most people are basically good.
Yes, most people are good. More people are anxious to stop a terrorist attack than to start one. They just don’t make the news.
You started out being dismissed by the literary establishment as a lowly peddler of cheap horror. You’re now a lauded national treasure...
It feels good to be at least semirespectable. I have outlived most of my most virulent critics. It gives me great pleasure to say that. Does that make me a bad person?
Isn’t it also partly because the boundary between literary fiction and genre fiction has become more porous?
Well, there’s still a strange — me, anyway — and tally subjective line etween high culture and w. An aria from Rigoletto, a donna è mobile, for stance — is high culture. ympathy for the Devil by e Stones is low. They’re oth cool, so go figure.
e heard that you like to write loud music. Isn’t that really stracting?
m listening to Fine Young annibals [right now]. Soon be followed by Danny and e Juniors and the Animals. I ve rock — the louder the etter.
But does the music leave n imprint on a book’s tone or pace?
The music I happen to be listening to can sometimes affect word choice, or cause a new line, but never affects style.
You’re astoundingly prolific. What’s your feeling about those novelists who spend years crafting and rewriting a novel?
Some writers take years; James Patterson takes a weekend. Every writer is different. I feel that a first draft should take about four months, but that’s me. And I go over my work obsessively. Here’s another thing — creative life is absurdly short. I want to cram in as much as I can.
Have you ever forced yourself to go slower?
Deliberately go slower? No, never. I’ve written longhand [Dreamcatcher], but poke along and obsessively polish? No. You keep picking a scab, you’re gonna make it bleed instead of heal.
You’ve said your characters sometimes speak in your head to the point where they blot out the real world. That makes writing fiction sound like a close cousin to mental illness...
I don’t think writing is a mental illness, but when I’m working and it’s going really well, time and the real world kind of disappear.
If that’s the ideal state of grace, is it sometimes hard to let go? Do you ever find yourself haunted by characters you’ve laid to rest?
Sometimes characters, like Holly Gibney from the Mr Mercedes books and The Outsider, cry to come back but they are the exceptions.
The world is a scary place, not just America. We’re in the spooky house — on the ghost train, if you prefer — for life. The scares come and go, but everyone likes make-believe monsters to stand in for the real ones. STEPHEN KING, AUTHOR