Stephen King and the dark corners of Hoang's life spread horror to the world

Stephen brings his personal, community, and cultural fears to America to spread his phobia to readers around the world. Stephen King captivates readers with horror characters but written with genuine concerns of the human heart.

Unlike many other famous authors, Stephen King does not write memoirs about himself, nor publish biographies about his colorful life, but quietly transforms himself into the main character in many novels. , depicting childhood memories, sufferings in life, the mistakes he wants to get rid of, and the upheavals in American society through elements of unreal demons and monstrous crimes. Stephen brings his personal, community, and cultural fears to America to spread his phobia to readers around the world. Stephen King captivates readers with horror characters but written with genuine concerns of the human heart.

With more than 350 million books sold worldwide with countless major awards such as National Medal of Art, British Fantasy Society Award... Stephen King has become the king of horror books as well as of adaptations. .

During his 50 years of service to world literature, Stephen King has received three lifetime achievement awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama in 2015.

King's publications not only bring personal fear to readers but also build a whole culture of horror for the world. He is the only author with more than 30 books that have ever topped the world bestseller list and is also the one who redefines the three main emotions in the horror field: Terror (Terror), Horror (Horror) and Horror (Horror). Fear (Revulsion).

In 2017, a series of horror movies were adapted from Stephen's novels such as IT, The Dark Tower or The Mist.

So what makes a man like Stephen King exploit the darkest fear in every human being, manipulating the reader's mind to ignite the feeling of terror through each work?

From childhood haunts

Stephen King was born in 1947 in Portland, Maine, USA. His father abandoned his wife and children in 1949, and King was raised by his hardworking mother. Student Stephen began writing short stories and satirical articles from high school, until graduating with a bachelor's degree in English language from Main University in 1970. Stephen became an English teacher. , the right profession is trained but still holds the dream of literature.

In 1971, King married Tabitha Spruce and began a career as a teacher in Maine. During this time, he still wrote, but his literary career seemed to be in decline because he suffered from alcoholism. King's family, especially his wife Tabitha, had to work hard to ban him from drugs for many years to change this terrible situation. The first work of the future "horror king" was published in 1967 with the name "The Glass Floor", published in the magazine Startling Mystery Stories. At that time, literature to him was not just a dream but a rice bra. To make a living, the writer had to both teach and write three-cent romance stories to publish in adult magazines like Playboy and Hustler.

Stephen King's efforts paid off when Signet Publishing bought the rights to King's debut novel "Carrie" for $400,000. The novel is about an eccentric girl who is bullied at school and tormented by her fanatical mother at home who suddenly discovers she has superpowers and decides to take revenge on everyone who has hurt her. The format was quickly made into a movie in 1976, grossing $33.8 million with a meager $1.8 million capital, and becoming a legendary horror film. As of today, Stephen King is one of the most popular writers in America with 55 books published and 350 million copies sold.

However, difficulties came to King in 1999 when he was in a traffic accident and seriously injured his entire right side. Doctors diagnosed him with difficulty sitting properly and even unable to walk.

However, difficulties still did not defeat the will of Stephen King. Stephen King's long career and extraordinary creativity have made many readers curious about his ideation process, working style and reason for writing. King himself is a disciplined and hard-working writer, to the point that even when he can't think of many things to write, he still tries to write 2,000 words a day: "I want to write 10 pages a day. , which is about 2,000 words. So in 3 months I will write 180,000 words, which is just enough to make a book. There are days when I can write 10 pages easily and by noon I have it. I can get up to do errands, but there are days when I sit until 3pm and still don't meet the quota."

Every day, the writer would wake up early, walk 5km to relax his mind, then go home to read the last page of a book he wrote the day before, then continue writing until noon and spend the afternoon editing. This rigor can explain the huge volume of works of the king of horror; he believed that the first draft of a novel should be completed in 3 months, otherwise both the characters and the plot would become bland. At the age of 73, the writer admits that he can't write as much and as quickly anymore, but he insists that this is the secret to his success.

However, for readers, what makes Stephen King's work stand out in their eyes is the way he brings himself and his life into the stories.

King's first novel, "Carrie" - is about a girl with superpowers.

"Salem's Lot" - a story about a herd of vampires that rule a small town, stems from the author's love for horror novels that young Stephen found in his father's inventory, especially are the works of master HP Lovecraft, as well as cheap storybooks and 20th-century horror films.

King once admitted that he enjoyed being scared of ghosts as a child, and this shaped many of his early works. In fact, this somewhat peculiar hobby of the writer still has a great influence on the detective novels he wrote later, such as "The Colorado Kid" (2005) and "Joyland" (2013), as evidenced by the fact that both deliberately refer to the three-cent detective stories King had read, printed by small publishers and the covers painted to look like books published in the 1950s. Many critics say, King absorbed and reproduced a whole culture he experienced in his childhood years through these works.

The writer's environment and his personal life began to find their way into the works in the late 1970s, when Stephen King became addicted to drugs. First, he became addicted to alcohol after becoming successful and was subjected to tremendous pressure from publishers, readers, and himself. The writer realized he was a "wine worm" after completing the work "The Shining", about a screenwriter named Jack Torrence, an alcoholic, going crazy because of the cinnamon ghosts in the mansion sunk in the snow and intends to kill his wife and children. For Stephen King, Jack in "The Shining" is himself, the character's alcoholism and murderous rampage are also the devil in him. Throughout his career, the writer has written about himself many times, but "The Shining" is his most sincere attempt to "exorcise" the demon of alcohol.

Although "The Shining" became a hugely successful book and was adapted into one of the most influential horror films of all time, the horror king's attempt to "exorcise evil" was miserably failed. , he even became addicted to many other stimulants, including cocaine. Although 10 years later, he had recovered from addiction, but drugs began to appear abundantly in the writer's works. Many times, King admitted that he did not realize the gravity of the problem and that he let drugs control his work: "There is a part of me that still writes stories, but at the same time realizes that I I was an addict, and I started calling for help the only way I knew: through stories and monsters I created."

His works in this period clearly depict the author's difficulties. First, the book "The Tommyknockers" is about a group of aliens who give humans absolute intelligence and abundant energy, but humans will pay the price with their own souls - just like when using drug use. "Cujo" is about a giant dog with the power to eat mother and daughter stuck in a car - symbolizing King's addiction and the damage he caused to his wife and children. "Misery" - the work that catapulted Kinh's career to new heights - is about a nurse Annie Wilkes who kidnaps a writer she admires to the point of sickness and forces him to rewrite the novel according to her wishes. For King, this work was a transformation in both his writing style and his detox: "I think, 'Misery' is a piece of cocaine. Annie Wilkes is cocaine and she is a digital fan. one of mine."

King successfully rehabilitated in 1987, shortly after "Misery" was published and from then on, his characters changed as well and they represented his journey to recovery: the protagonist in " Doctor Sleep" is a recovering alcoholic, while the main character in "Revival" is a heroin addict. It is clear that King's work is influenced by the setting and experiences of his life, and that the demons he writes about are not only the product of his imagination but also the ghosts that haunt his heart. . Other notable appearances in his books include writer Ben Mears in "Salem's Lot", horror author Bill Denborough in "IT", writer Mike Noonan in "Bag of Bones". , and Scott Landon in "Lisey's Story".

However, the talented writer writes not only about his personal experiences but also about the American society he lives in. Over the decades, American society has undergone many changes, but his work has kept pace with all changes and is always fresh for readers. To foreign readers, King's writings represent distant America itself and can determine their level of empathy for the country.

Stephen King has an ability to understand the American people, and critic Walter Mosely praised King's talent when he awarded him the National Writing Award in 2003: "King has a natural understanding of nature. fear in the minds of the working class in America." Tony Magistrale has made a very accurate statement about the writer and his works: "King's books attract readers with vampires and youkai, but the heart of his works is anxiety. very genuine in the life of the American people."

The huge "memoirs" spanning decades across many of King's works have a happy ending. He appeared in "Susannah's Story" of "The Dark Tower" series and this time, he no longer concealed himself under false names, masking his pain with youkai, but instead came out. in the work under his real name, Stephen King. In this story, he is not an addicted writer, but a powerful creator god who gave birth to the universe and all the characters in the story. Most importantly, Stephen King in "The Dark Tower" is no longer suffering, tormented, pushed back and forth by life, but has fully taken the initiative to decide everything.

Reach the pinnacle of your career

During nearly 50 years of writing books, in addition to the big and small awards won, Stephen King was also honored to receive 3 Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2002, 2004 and 2007. In 2015, he was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama himself. National chapter for the Arts for his contributions to literature. Besides The Dark Tower, IT is considered one of King's most massive works with more than 1,100 pages spanning 3 decades, and is slowly approaching its fourth decade thanks to the success of the movie adaptations. The trailer of the movie IT version 2017 has been confirmed as the most viewed trailer in a day, with more than 197 million views within the first 24 hours of its release.

Now, mentioning Stephen King is referring to an icon, a legend in the horror genre. What he has achieved over the past four decades is far beyond the capacity of an ordinary author. But more than his ability to frighten us, he shows us the dark side hidden deep in the soul like a permanent demon in every human being.

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