Happy birthday, Stephen King.
Sep. 21st, 2012 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seanan_mcguireGrowing up in the 1980s means that I can't remember when I first heard of Stephen King, because everyone had heard of Stephen King. I know I giggled with recognition and delight when I saw the shirt that Sean was wearing in The Monster Squad (1987). By that point, I had already seen the "Gramma" episode of The New Twilight Zone (1986), and Creepshow (1982; I didn't see the theatrical release, so you can stop freaking out about what kind of movies my family took the four-year-old to see). Stephen King was my background radiation. Bruce Banner got Gamma Rays. I got a baseball fanatic from the state of Maine.
(Had someone told me when I was eight that Stephen King loved baseball, I might have learned to give a damn about the game. Clearly, the universe missed a bet.)
The first really serious piece of writing I can remember doing was a twelve-page essay, when I was nine, explaining to my mother why she had to let me read Stephen King. It had footnotes and a bibliography. I slid it under her bedroom door; she bought me a copy of Christine from the used bookstore down the street. I had already read Cujo and Carrie illicitly, sneaking pages like other kids snuck looks at dirty magazines, but Christine was my first ALLOWED Stephen King. I devoured it. And then, like a horror-fiction-focused Pac-Man, I turned on the rest.
Stephen King, without ever knowing who I was, helped me through some of the hardest times in my life. I read IT all the way through a court case that seemed like it was going to destroy everything I loved, forever. I was nine. My grandmother bought me his new hardcovers every year for Christmas. I bought tattered paperbacks with nickels I had hidden in my pillowcase, where no one else could find them. I skipped meals to buy more books. I read them all, over and over, and I endured. He taught me that sometimes, dead is better, things change, and you own what you build. He taught me to read if I wanted to write, and to love the words, and to never be ashamed of loving whatever the hell it was I wanted to love.
In a weird way, Stephen King gave me permission for a great many things, and since those things are integral to who I grew up to be, I have to say that he, through his work, was just as big an influence on me as any other adult in my life.
He taught me you can get out.
Today is his birthday; he was born in 1947, and he's still writing today, which I appreciate greatly. I may never meet him, and that's probably a good thing, as I'm not sure I'd be able to speak English if I did. But I surely do appreciate the man.
Happy birthday, Stephen King.
Thank you.
(Had someone told me when I was eight that Stephen King loved baseball, I might have learned to give a damn about the game. Clearly, the universe missed a bet.)
The first really serious piece of writing I can remember doing was a twelve-page essay, when I was nine, explaining to my mother why she had to let me read Stephen King. It had footnotes and a bibliography. I slid it under her bedroom door; she bought me a copy of Christine from the used bookstore down the street. I had already read Cujo and Carrie illicitly, sneaking pages like other kids snuck looks at dirty magazines, but Christine was my first ALLOWED Stephen King. I devoured it. And then, like a horror-fiction-focused Pac-Man, I turned on the rest.
Stephen King, without ever knowing who I was, helped me through some of the hardest times in my life. I read IT all the way through a court case that seemed like it was going to destroy everything I loved, forever. I was nine. My grandmother bought me his new hardcovers every year for Christmas. I bought tattered paperbacks with nickels I had hidden in my pillowcase, where no one else could find them. I skipped meals to buy more books. I read them all, over and over, and I endured. He taught me that sometimes, dead is better, things change, and you own what you build. He taught me to read if I wanted to write, and to love the words, and to never be ashamed of loving whatever the hell it was I wanted to love.
In a weird way, Stephen King gave me permission for a great many things, and since those things are integral to who I grew up to be, I have to say that he, through his work, was just as big an influence on me as any other adult in my life.
He taught me you can get out.
Today is his birthday; he was born in 1947, and he's still writing today, which I appreciate greatly. I may never meet him, and that's probably a good thing, as I'm not sure I'd be able to speak English if I did. But I surely do appreciate the man.
Happy birthday, Stephen King.
Thank you.
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Date: 2012-09-21 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-21 04:02 pm (UTC)Wendy and Richard Pini are kinda the same for me. I hope to meet them, but I have a feeling I will be Yet Another Babbling Incoherent Fangirl when I do.
(The only reason I could be moderately coherent when I met Tamara Pierce was because my coworker
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Date: 2012-09-21 04:19 pm (UTC)There were a lot of Stephen King books hidden under the bed at my mom's house over the years. I think mostly he taught me that you could break the rules if you were willing to face the consequences, and that kids could take care of themselves, sometimes better than their parents could.
They were worthwhile lessons.
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Date: 2012-09-22 04:43 am (UTC)And those are awesome lessons.
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Date: 2012-09-21 04:22 pm (UTC)He taught me to read if I wanted to write, and to love the words, and to never be ashamed of loving whatever the hell it was I wanted to love.
And the world is a better place.
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Date: 2012-09-22 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-21 04:29 pm (UTC)Though I did really like On Writing.
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Date: 2012-09-22 04:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2012-09-21 04:33 pm (UTC)In a weird way, Stephen King gave me permission for a great many things, and since those things are integral to who I grew up to be, I have to say that he, through his work, was just as big an influence on me as any other adult in my life.
He taught me you can get out.
Yes. Yes to all of this.
I was always the precocious girl, the smart kid, and I dove into Stephen King hard around fourth grade, when things were really starting to goto shit socially--or, more aptly, I started really being aware of the power structures and what was really going on. And I decided to just read instead of subject myself to further attempts at being a Normal Popular Girl.
My mom, bless her forever, started me on horror young, probably because she had me in her twenties and she wasn't ready to stop watching horror just because she had a six year old. So I got to watch the Exorcist and pepper her with a thousand questions on what I thought was the COOLEST THING EVAR about being Catholic. (It made Catholicism cool for me, for a time. Cause, fighting monsters/demons, yo! Then I found out I couldn't be a priest and that sucked.) When my mom brought home Carrie, it piqued my 4th grade interest because the movie was a part of my extensive favorites list. However, she worked all day as a nurse, so when she came home, she wanted to read. As I had just gotten home from school, this interfered with my plans.
I solved the problem by taking it to school the next day so I could read it and give it back to her when she got home. I was so thoughtful, I know.
My fourth grade math teacher, Mrs. Caputo, saw me reading while in line and pulled me out to kindly ask me, "Honey, does your mother know you are reading that book?"
I replied, "Oh yes! She reads them herself and I am reading it now to keep us from fighting over it!"
Mrs. Caputo, "....oh. Oh, well, when your mom is done with it, could you ask her if I could borrow it?"
Thus became the start of a great friendship with my fourth grade math teacher.
To this day, I also think that It saved me from the horrible depression of middle school. Or at least mitigated it to survivable levels. It was tied with Pet Semetary for my favorite King book. Also? My Master's thesis was on Arthurian legend and the Dark Tower series. Go me.
And now I think I need to go reread It.
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Date: 2012-09-22 04:44 am (UTC)I am glad it got you through. And your Master's thesis rocks.
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Date: 2012-09-21 04:34 pm (UTC)He taught me that it's okay to be afraid of all those things, but that to write about them is to love the things that make you afraid, and that helps.
He taught me about the worst side of people and the best side of people.
He taught me to write unflinchingly.
He taught me to write only what I enjoy and to love horror even more than I already did.
I think King is a writer's writer. He may not be the best writer, but he's one of the best storytellers, and his joy and pain and everything in between comes through in his writing. For all the gore and the awkward sex, Stephen King really is Uncle Stevie for a lot of people. He's just so comfortable.
Happy birthday to him.
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Date: 2012-09-22 04:44 am (UTC)Yes.
This.
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Date: 2012-09-21 06:03 pm (UTC)Happy Spawning Day Mr King, and many more to come.
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-21 06:06 pm (UTC)I picked him up in grad school. I didn't much care for my first king (The Dark Tower trilogy, please don't hurt me), but I liked his style well enough to pick up a few more. Mostly recent, because that's what was handy. Duma Key, Lisey's Story. I liked them enough to dig up older ones. By the time I hit The Shining, I had decided that those people full of disdain for King were complete. And utter. Morons.
I love King because he writes genuinely entertaining fiction and tight stories while also having amazing things to say about the human soul and community and a million other things that dig far deeper than anyone ever gives 'genre' credit for doing. I love him because he keeps doing it, over and over again, because he has things to say no matter what people say about him. I love him because he can take ideas I've read a thousand times and make them new and human and interesting.
The man is gifted.
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:13 pm (UTC)The man is definitely gifted.
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Date: 2012-09-21 07:06 pm (UTC)I remember wondering what the big fuss was, until I went to bed that night. As soon as the lights were out and I was alone, suddenly, the cat climbing on my bed must be Church, and that noise in the floor below must be Zelda. It was a whole other kind of horror, the kind that curls up in your brain to stay a while.
It taught me that fears are best out in the open, and so I wrote out stories where the things I most feared actually happened. My ninth grade English teacher, the first person to read these stories, must've thought I was severely warped, but he was very kind about my early attempts, and is probably why I kept at it. It didn't help much with making me a less fearful person, but it is an outlet.
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-21 07:24 pm (UTC)So...maybe two celebratory toasts at CAN-CON's opening ceremonies tonight here in Ottawa?
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-21 07:30 pm (UTC)He taught me that horror could be in everyday stuff and that there was more to fantasy than elves and orcs.
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-21 07:45 pm (UTC)I met him in 1981 at the World Fantasy Con (Claremont Hotel in Berkeley) and, face to face with him, I could barely speak. At that point in my life he was my favorite author (and he's still in the Top Ten). He was so down-to-earth and approachable! At one point, after a panel, when a bunch of us were at a respectful distance but had books at the ready, he looked around the hallway or side lobby and said something like, "I'll just sit over here and sign until my hand falls off. Someone get me a beer?" And he sat on the floor with his back against the wall and spoke with each person. One of my all-time favorite memories, author-wise.
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:14 pm (UTC)That is awesome.
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Date: 2012-09-21 07:56 pm (UTC)Today: Ginger is no longer in my life. My mom and I talk about all of the books I read, and she encourages me to write whatever I like which is mostly dark.
I think reread the afterward of Full Dark No Stars a zillion times last year. He is just as influential now in my life as he was back then it seems, perhaps more. Back then I was a reader. Now I am both.
Thank you so much for this post.
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-21 08:16 pm (UTC)Come to think of it, that might have been before my mother left my adopted father - so I was about 8? 9?. I read it here and there in hidden snatches, because Stephen King was on my not allowed to read after I read Firestarter at 7 or 8 and my mother found out after I read it what he wrote, from a concerned family friend who thought i was way too young. That might be why I associate that book with change.
When we moved to a new house, and my cat had tried to kill me once - (some cats do not like to be the last things left in the house to move and will go for your jugular when you try to catch the hissing cat to carry it to the new house - we think the empty house freaked him out - he missed and I learned to leave the hissing cats alone) - I was read Pet Cemetary and said entirely black in coat and therefore very sneaky in the dark room (reading by flashlight) kitty decided to jump in my lap for petting right as I got to the point where the cat Comes Back Wrong.
Poor kitty didn't understand my reaction. What with the screaming and the terror and all. No pettings until I calmed down and tracked kitty down to apologize and give him tuna.
I would walk over a mile to the library each way, with a backpack so full of books that it barely zipped, hiking backpacks because normal ones couldn't stand the wear and tear of my every week and half trip to the library. Stephen King books were huge, and the librarians would look at me with concern as I filled the backpack and point out that I had already read that book, but since I didn't own, couldn't own 'cause of the ban on Stephen King... so I would rotate them in and out - the Stand, Carrie, Firestarter, the Eyes of the Dragon... I have forgetton all the ones I used to read as kid.
I can relate to saving to buy books - I went without lunch to buy books. Used books, new paperbacks when I had a birthday or could shovel snow, or run errands or the like. Seriously, I was shoveling now in elementary school to buy GI Joes, My Little Ponies, and BOOKS. New paperbacks only because people didn't tend to read much where I lived, so used books were hard to find. Quarters and nickels and pennies saved to buy books. When I just download a book now to my magic phone, when I can do that and not skip a meal, it's still feels very much like magic.
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-09-22 08:06 am (UTC)So did your mum ask you to write that essay, or was it off your own bat?
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Date: 2012-09-23 06:35 pm (UTC)