Stephen King reflects on his iconic career and latest release ‘You Like It Darker’

Fifty years ago, a 26-year-old rural Maine school teacher wrote the horror novel “Carrie.” That man, Stephen King, has gone on to write more than 60 books and many have been turned into such films as “The Shining” and “Shawshank Redemption.” Jeffrey Brown spoke with King about his latest book, “You Like It Darker,” and the long arc of his career. It’s part of our arts and culture series, CANVAS.
Amna Nawaz:
Fifty years ago, a 26-year-old rural Maine schoolteacher wrote a horror novel titled “Carrie.”
That man, Stephen King, has gone on to write more than 60 books since. They have sold between 400 million to 500 million copies worldwide and have been turned into films like “The Shining,” “Shawshank Redemption,” “Stand By Me,” and many more.
King invited our senior arts correspondent, Jeffrey Brown, to his main home to talk about his latest book of short stories called “You Like It Darker” and the long arc of his career. It’s part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.
Jeffrey Brown:
In his new collection, Stephen King writes of the eerie, the unsettling, the otherworldly raising its head in this one.
He calls it “You Like It Darker,” and he clearly does.
Stephen King, Author:
Darker means spooky. It means scary. It means let’s exercise our unpleasant emotions for a while, because I think that people like the idea of opening the door and saying, I want it darker. Do you want it darker? OK, we’re in agreement, and now let’s go into the woods together.
Jeffrey Brown:
Millions of readers have taken that dark walk with King, but we had our own lighter one with the now-76-year-old.
Stephen King:
I feel a little bit like, if I was a car, I’d trade, you know?
(Laughter)
Jeffrey Brown:
Near his woods in Maine, a state where so many of his tales have been set.
Stephen King:
I love Maine. I love the country. I’m not much of a city kid. I know the people. And I think that they are stand-ins for people everywhere.
I’m going to write about regular people, ordinary people, in the best way that I know how.
Jeffrey Brown:
In the best way, even in their dark moments?
Stephen King:
I’m interested in what happens when regular people are suddenly confronted with something that’s totally out of their wheelhouse, something that’s entirely different.
I think that literature in quotation marks is about extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances. And what I do are ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.
Jeffrey Brown:
King himself grew up mostly in working-class rural Maine, his mother raising him and his brother after his parents divorced.
He began writing columns for his high school newspaper and then stories and more at the University of Maine, where he met Tabitha, another young writer, now his wife of 53 years. Early on, the young couple took on a variety of jobs to make ends meet.
Stephen King:
I just wanted to support my family, to be able to say, I’m doing work. My wife also worked. She worked at Dunkin’ Donuts. She would come home smelling like a cruller.
(Laughter)
Stephen King:
And she looked so cute.
Jeffrey Brown:
“Carrie,” the 1974 horror novel, and two years later, Brian De Palma-directed film changed everything, with Sissy Spacek as a shy, bullied high school girl with telekinetic powers. Unforgettable revenge ensues.
In his 2000 book “On Writing,” King tells of battling his own demons, early on with alcohol and drugs, later after a van hit him on one of his local walks, leading to years of pain and physical difficulties felt to this day.
Can one write darker without having a kind of darkness himself?
Stephen King:
Basically, I’m a perfectly nice fellow, good family man, good husband, good father, and all of this stuff that’s on the dark side, it comes out in the stories.
And so it doesn’t have to come out in life. I used to think to myself, I could have been a very bad person, except for the stories that I tell takes off a lot of the pressure.
Jeffrey Brown:
Maybe that’s how his stories work for all of us. Whatever it is, Stephen King is as much a cultural icon as any American writer today.
So we got all these movie posters from your…
Especially when you consider the number of films and series made from his stories, around 100.
Stephen King:
My first editor, Bill Thompson, used to say, “Steve has a movie camera in his head.”
Jeffrey Brown:
Oh, really?
Stephen King:
And the story…
Jeffrey Brown:
Like you see the story in — yes.
Stephen King:
Yes, the stories are very visual.
I grew up the first generation with movies and TV, and they made a big impression me. So I have a tendency to see things, and that’s part of the pleasure, is the seeing.
Jeffrey Brown:
More pleasure has come at times from rock ‘n’ roll, the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band King formed in the 90s with other writers, including Dave Barry and Amy Tan.
For all his success, King admits he wasn’t always happy with the critical reception he got.
Stephen King:
There was a time when I felt like nobody will ever take me seriously as a writer’s writer, just as somebody who makes money. And it did make me angry, because it seemed to me that there was an underlying assumption about popular fiction, that if everybody reads it, it can’t be very good.
I have never felt that way. I have felt that people can read and enjoy on many different levels.
Jeffrey Brown:
But you got over worrying about that at some point, clearly.
Stephen King:
I got old. And I think that probably a lot of the critics who didn’t like my stuff are now dead, so (expletive deleted) them.
(Laughter)
Jeffrey Brown:
Bleep them.
Stephen King:
Yes, bleep them.
(Laughter)
Jeffrey Brown:
You also wrote in your book “On Writing,” you wrote about not only being the story’s creator, but its first reader. You want to feel the suspense of the story yourself?
Stephen King:
Not only do I want to feel the suspense of the story, I want to relish the good parts.
(Laughter)
Jeffrey Brown:
You want to enjoy the good parts.
Stephen King:
Every now and then, you will say to yourself, I wrote a really good line there. Oh, boy, that’s really cool.
Jeffrey Brown:
But how does he do it and how generate so many ideas?
Stephen King:
I can’t explain it.
That’s the beautiful thing about what I do. It’s just like being belted by an idea.
Jeffrey Brown:
He cites the example of the story “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” in the new collection.
Stephen King:
I was getting out of bed one day, and I thought to myself, what if an ordinary guy had a psychic vision in a dream about where a body was buried, and actually went out there and found that body? Would anybody believe that he had that vision, or would they think that he did it? And…
Jeffrey Brown:
All right, but wait a minute. You just woke up thinking that?
Stephen King:
Yes. Well, no, I didn’t wake up thinking that. I was putting on my pants when I had this idea, you know? And I put them on one leg at a time. And I had one leg in my pants. And I had this idea. And by the time I got the other leg in, I had almost the whole story.
See, and who wouldn’t want to do something like that? I mean, that’s so trippy, but it is just the way that my mind works.
Jeffrey Brown:
Trippy, dark and clearly having a hell of a writing life.
Stephen King:
I’m very fortunate to be able to do what I do. I love to tell stories. And, in a way, I get paid for something that, in the words of the late John D. MacDonald, I would do for free.
OK, that’s good.
Jeffrey Brown:
Coming soon in the Stephen King universe, several new film and TV adaptations of his work.
From the darker side in Western Maine, I’m Jeffrey Brown for the “PBS News Hour.”
Amna Nawaz:
And, online, we have more from Stephen King, including what he watches and reads when he’s not writing.
That’s on our YouTube channel.