Before vampires and haunted hotels, before killer clowns, cars and killer dogs, before Shawshank and that green mile, there was Carrie. A teenage girl, bullied to the extreme, who discovers she can move things with her mind and uses that power to massacre her classmates.
When “Carrie” was released in April 1974, Stephen King had already written several unpublished novels. But none of them gave any real indication that they would dominate horror fiction, and arguably all popular fiction, for the next half century.
In his review of “Carrie” in The New York Times Book Review, columnist Newgate Callendar (who was actually the music critic Harold Schonberg writing under a pseudonym) marveled, writing, “That this is a first novel is amazing. King writes with the kind of certainty usually associated only with veteran writers.” Eight years later, Time magazine would call him “the master of descriptive prose.” Four years later, in the same publication, King would call himself “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and French fries.” In 2003, he received a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Awards. It’s now 2024 and he’s about to publish another collection of short fiction.
That means critical acclaim has waned and waned, but the books have continued apace — more than 70 of them, with no sign of stopping. If you’re like me (committed? concerned?) you’ve had a chance to read them all, sometimes more than once. And if you’re not, and you’ve always been curious, you’re lucky to find a writer who can write short and long (and long!), outside of the horror genre as well as within it. Few authors are more famous, and few authors have as many accessible entry points.
Where do I start?
You’ll find those who suggest jumping right into King’s pool with one of his classics, like “The Stand,” the post-apocalyptic adventure story about the survivors of a plague that decimates much of the world’s population, or “It,” story of a group of friends who are being chased by a killer supernatural clown. And while both are great, they can also be intimidating for beginners.
Instead, try “Salem’s Lot” (1975), his second novel and first true horror book. This riff on Bram Stroker’s Dracula sees a novelist return to the small town he lived in long ago at the same time as an ancient vampire and his human companion. It contains many of King’s most recognizable elements: a writer protagonist, a Maine town full of quirky blue-collar characters, echoes of genre fiction standards, and memorable creepy scenes (the school bus, God, the school bus).
I want to read another King classic
Few writers have spoken as damningly for so long about an adaptation of their work as King has about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Despite being regarded as one of the greatest horror films, King seems genuinely offended by the book-to-screen changes.
This is likely why “THE SHINING” (1977) is particularly personal to the author. Jack Torrance is an alcoholic writer who finds one last job as a winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, a resort high in the Rocky Mountains. He is joined by his wife, Wendy, and young son, Danny, whose psychic abilities make him vulnerable to the evil spirits that haunt the Overlook.
For King, Jack was a sliding-door version of himself, what he might have been if “Carrie” hadn’t been a hit — an addicted and unpredictable novelist who can’t even cut it as a high school teacher and resents (some sometimes violently) family. Where the movie version (Jack Nicholson in what remains one of his most memorable roles) is a psycho from the jump, the novel’s Jack feels human. He loves his wife and child. We want them all to make it out alive. The book is scary because, as King said, “You’re not afraid of monsters. you fear for the people.”
I’m a scaredy cat, okay?
You better not like scary things! That doesn’t mean you can’t read a little Stephen King. Although he is most famous for his novels and horror stories, at this point, he has written a lot outside the genre. Early in his career, less than a decade after “Carrie” was published, King came out “Different Times” (1982), a collection of four novellas.
Three have nothing to do with the supernatural. Two were made into top King films: “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” became, well, you know, and “The Body” was made into “Stand By Me.” Both are set in Maine in the early 1960s, and both give a sense of how lovingly King can draw his characters.
Actually, I’m not a scaredy cat, okay?
Relax! No one said you are. “It” is perhaps King’s purest horror book, but it’s also one of his longest and densest, and… the ending has some issues. Let’s call this a part of your graduate study. This startup guide will follow “Pet Notebook” (1983).
There’s something elemental about its simplicity: A young family moves into a new house and terrible things happen after they discover an ancient burial site deep in the woods. Contrary to what you might think of King’s novels, given the way he usually works, many of them end with a sense of hard-earned victory and optimism. Not this. It’s as grim as ever.
I want to know something about the author
Part-Memoir and Part-Writing Manual, “In writing” (1999) he’s a bit of an odd duck. Somehow, it has become fashionable to single out one of King’s unique non-fiction books as one of his best. (I’m guilty of that.) And it is, but you shouldn’t read it without first dealing with several of the other titles on this list. Work gives life greater meaning.
Written primarily before the 1999 accident that nearly killed King, “On Writing” is clear in its telling of what it was like to be a pop culture-obsessed boy in the 1950s, what it felt like to be a near-damaged youth author who had to support a family, how addiction can quickly imprison you. But the most memorable part may be the 20-page postscript, written after the accident, in which King recalls lying in a ditch on the side of the road, his body pulverized after being hit by a truck. The van driver sits on a rock and looks at one of the world’s most famous writers. “Like his face, his voice is cheerful, only slightly interesting,” King writes. Later, it strikes him that “a character from one of my novels almost killed me. It’s almost funny.”
I want to embark on an epic journey
King has referred to “The Stand” as his attempt to make an American version of “The Lord of the Rings.” But his book seven “Dark Tower” The series (the eighth book was published after the completion of the story) is the truest analogue of King’s Tolkien.
Indeed, it’s one of the great American genre series — a multi-modal epic (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, western) about a knight-errant trying to save his world and ours from total destruction by his enemy , the Man in Black. Published over 20 years, the series has become the center of an extensive King universe, with many novels and stories connected to its characters and locations. The first volume, “The Gunslinger” (1982) is the shortest and will give you a small taste of how weird and inventive the series gets.
I’m looking for non-supernatural suspense
A decent percentage of King’s work features writers as main characters, from “‘Salem’s Lot” and “The Shining” to “The Tommyknockers” and “The Dark Half” to “Bag of Bones” and “Lisey’s Story”.
Paul Sheldon, its star “Misery” (1987) is yet another author, one in a particularly terrifying situation – held captive, after a car accident, by an obsessive fan who wants to write a book just for her. The subtext is clear: Sometimes, fame can feel like a trap. And King, a recovering addict, opened up about the subject, saying: “Annie was my drug problem and she was my No. 1 fan. God, he never wanted to leave.”
But none of that really matters when you’re deep into this novel and Paul is pretty much sleeping and he wakes up and you realize what’s going to happen and your stomach just drops.
I’m looking for a long, thick read
For King, a top baby boomer, the assassination of John F. Kennedy was one of the nation’s highlights: if Lee Harvey Oswald hadn’t fired those three bullets (as King believes), what would the next decade look like like?
In “11/22/63” (2011) King imagines a scenario in which Maine teacher Jake Epping discovers he can travel back to the year 1958 through the cupboard at a local restaurant, eventually using this ability to try to prevent Kennedy’s death .
Much of the book’s pleasures (and at over 800 pages, there are many) come from the procedural way in which Jake must create a new identity in a new era and live in real time without revealing his mission. . In the second half of the book, when he begins to cross paths with real historical figures and events, you are fully engaged in Jake’s work. It’s a secret of King’s success — that we can so easily put ourselves in the place of an ordinary person experiencing the most extraordinary circumstances.
I want a great crime novel
If you haven’t seen the HBO series it’s based on “The Outsider” (2018) – novelist Richard Price was the presenter and Dennis Lehane wrote some episodes – then the twists and turns of this supernatural detective story will remain intact for you. It’s an irresistible setup. In a small Oklahoma town, a teacher and Little League coach is accused of brutally murdering a young boy. The evidence against him is overwhelming. That is, until indisputable evidence comes to light that places him in a completely different city at the exact same time.
One of the book’s main characters, Holly Gibney, only appears halfway through. And while he’s a character in an earlier series of King’s crime novels (the Mr. Mercedes trilogy), it’s not necessary to have read them beforehand, though you might want to after you finish this one.
Give me a deep cut
This story of a group of Pennsylvania state troopers and the strange car they keep hidden in a shed has always seemed mysteriously lost. Released the year before King completed his “Dark Tower” saga in a three-book, two-year rush, “From a Buick 8” (2002) is an often contemplative novel that also happens to feature the fine dissection of an interdimensional bat.
While gross beings make several appearances here, resulting in some of King’s most disturbing descriptions, this is ultimately a book about how events often have no real resolution and life is ultimately inexplicable.