The (Stephen) King of Horror Feat. Lindsay Ellis | It’s Lit
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
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Few writers have had the sheer staying power, popularity, and prolific output as Stephen King. From insatiably flesh-hungry clowns and sentient cars to telekinetic teenagers and mystical gunslingers, if there’s one author who has taken up valuable real estate in that part of our imaginations, it’s Stephen King. But it’s not just his monsters that have lasting power-it’s also the very human and very psychological elements in his work that linger.
So come with me, Constant Reader, while I lead you through the dark and twisted world of Uncle Stevie, the King of Horror…
Hosted by Lindsay Ellis and Princess Weekes, It’s Lit! is a show about our favorite books, genres, and why we love to read. It’s Lit has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.
Hosted by: Lindsay Ellis
Written by: David McCracken
Director: David Schulte
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Producer: Stephanie Noone
Editors: Derek Borsheim, Sara Roma
Writing Consultants: Maia Krause
Executive Producer (PBS): Adam Dylewski
Editorial Producer (PBS): Gabrielle Ewing
Produced by Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios.
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"How the f*ck do you write so many books so fast?"
- George RR Martin
For the 80's, cocaine.
@@themalcontent298 Beat me to it lol
Why does he write like he's running out of time? Why does he write like he needs it to survive?
When you write the same story over and over again, you get pretty fast at it.
Well Martin has to stop to top up his waistline at the buffet counter where as King does a waist high line off the counter.
Ahem, Pennywise the Dancing Clown, not just Pennywise the Clown
He didn't spend four years in Clown College majoring in Dance just to become some clown.
Kind of like how Diana was technically never Princess Diana but rather Diana, Princess of Wales.
Hey, don't make fun of Yale like that!
clown college?? pff... you can't eat that...
"He eats children just like you"
... I don't eat children :(
THAT’S PRECISELY WHAT SOMEONE WHO EATS CHILDREN WOULD SAY!
She meant you were a child in the story.. I think
@@dennisfischer4838 what child is reading IT though?
Goth kids if I had to guess but you make a good point
But you can it if you really want to! I believe in you!
LINDSAY ELLIS, YOU CAN'T HINT AT AN ENTIRE TH-cam CHANNEL DEDICATED TO STEPHEN KING LIKE THAT, NOW I NEED IT!
HEAR, HEAR!
Yes, please!
this is the channel I've always wanted to make but she would do it better
YAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Same
For me the element of his writing that makes me revisit his work time and time again is his love for his characters and humanity as a whole. As gruesome as a lot of his stories are, you can just tell how empathetic he is towards even the most unlikeable characters. There are no villains in his books. Just tragic heroes. That is his true genius in my opinion. He actually makes me remember to always ask why someone is behaving the way they are before judging them
I felt flabbergasted as I read Misery, when I got to the point at which both Paul Sheldon and I, the constant reader, begin to feel bad for Annie Wilkes. We still want her out, but she becomes more than just the big-bad.
It felt so weird, but also like amazing storytelling.
@@edisonlima4647 YES! That is exactly what I was trying to communicate
I agree completely.
the guy writes so much he doesn't even have to be properly thinking to finish a whole book.
I like the “Constant Reader” pull. And the rest of the video! Stephen King is in my top 3 favorite authors, and it’s nice to see someone exploring his work with nuance, since it’s true depth is so often overlooked :)
I have had trouble reading Kings book for the past year despite the fact I’m a huge fan. For the first time in 15 years I’ve been away from my stepdad. King’s themes of abuse and trauma are bringing up feelings I’m not ready to deal with yet lmfao.
"...so come with me, Constant Reader"
I GET IT
Nobody seems to mention it too much but Dreamcatcher is one of my favourites. It was just so abjectly horrific and I love the slide into sci fi. Plus, there's a great little moment where the MC finds graffiti saying 'Pennywise Lives' which gave me chills the first time I read it.
The timing of this video is crazy, I was just rereading the shining.
I’ve been waiting my whole life for a Lindsay video on the king
As King puts it, the real monsters are really within us and sometimes we become them. That’s the truly horrific and darkly humorous aspect of things.
My introduction to Stephen King was watching the movie Misery with Kathy Bates with my mom. I went down a rabbit hole of his books and movies based on his books shortly afterwards.
If I were to desribe the Dark Tower, it would thus: a wild ride I am not through with yet.
I'm so excited for you!! The first trip around the tower is the best
My favourite series ever. I absolutely love t and wish it was more widely known. Completely captivating and unique.
I was insane enough to read the entire 7 (at the time) book series back to back twice over the years. Still need to read the 8th one, so I guess a third marathon is in order
I loved his cameo in It: Chapter Two. 😅
Second only to Hitchcock for putting himself in his own movies.
Stephen King is the Stan Lee of Horror
Nah, SK didn’t steal most of his work.
For better and for worse.
@@ivorjawa Neither Stan Lee (not exactly).
I first read IT when I was 10 years old, basically the same age as the protagonists, and have read it over and over throughout my life. Reading it now that I'm the same age as the protagonists when they're grown, I can appreciate it on an entirely different level. It's a book about losing your childhood and the fear of growing apart from your friends, losing the other people who make your life better. And THAT is why King is a great writer. Plus I just enjoy his prose.
King storytelling is hard to describe. I sometimes feel like he's old fashion in my mind, I mean in a good way. I haven't read much horror out side of him but it seems from what I have read from writers like Clive Barker and Bentley Little that they are more going for shock, they seemed more interested in being twisted, a lot of sex and violence. King on the other hand while he doesn't shy away from gore, and now and than slips in sex, puts most of weight on characters. The best way I can put it is that his characters feel like they have more going on in their lives than dealing with the monster in front of them. One of things I remember most about The Shining is not the hotel but the flash-backs of Jack as a kid looking up at his dad who was clearly a drunk and violent and Wendy feeling like the third wheel in her own family because her son is closer to her husband.
King's talent at crafting characters is what always draws me back to his work. To reference Tommyknockers, he may have hated that book, and it's definitely a thing with problems, but I adore it for the cast of characters that he brought together in it. He has a real talent for granting even small parts in his stories some width and some weight... even if three paragraphs later that character meets their untimely demise via high speed flying vending machine.
@@lampdevil true, I still remember reading the stand as a kid and how he would tell you minor character's life story before having them die some horrible painful death from something stupid.
I just call him “The King”, as probably everyone does. So, I worship The King. ❤️
Yes please do a 20 hour video on Stephen kings books I'd watch the hell out of that
You know, I used to think Stephen King books were really, really long. But then I read the Stormlight Archives...
as a teen I read every book he wrote through the 70s and early 80s, usually in the hammock in our front yard. Salem's Lot was probably my favorite, it nailed the theme of a whole community falling apart from moral rot, and Barlow was such a great villain (a lot of similarities to Bradbury's Something Wicked.., too). I remember reading Cujo in 3 days during a really bad fever and felt pretty gross afterwards. When I got through Christine I felt like he was bottoming out, all the bittersweet elements that drew me to his earlier work was gone and it seemed like he was just covering pretty ugly, squalid stuff. Didn't read him much after that, really... though I want to read Dolores Claiborne at some point.. that film was amazing.
I'm a huge fan of Stephen King's work. Out of all the books he wrote, one of my favorite and only vampire related novel by Stephen King was that of "Salem's Lot". 😊
Good video, but I feel like at 7:05 there's supposed to be an insert of the Shawshank Redemption? Lindsay mentions "two stories about redemption set in a maximum security prison", but there's a still from the movie of the Green Mile and a shot of the cover of the same book.
King is one of the best fantasy authors
Amazing. Can you make a video about the Biblical Beasts, Leviathan and Behemoth?
And Ziz!
@@zegenrenerd930 Eh, I think Ziz is more like a sibling to Roc
@@kevinobill4818 I just checked. Nope. Ziz is the sky to Behemoth's land and Leviathan's sea. They're a trinity
Here's a great video on Leviathan. He's got another one about the Nephilim that I really like.
th-cam.com/video/wv1l2SqLb7Q/w-d-xo.html
Good video. (And it was a tiny bonus seeing the host's name misspelled in the final credits, because it made me feel a little better about my tendency to typo.)
08:44 yes please!
My dad had nearly the entire works of King (and plenty of Anne Rice) on the livingroom bookshelf. I was entranced by the cover art as a small child, but never got around to actually reading any in full. Sadness
Try one, they're very fast reads (can't put them down, easy to read).
His unflagging popularity throughout the years shows there is something in his writing that speaks to people beyond the mere scary stuff. In Cujo there is another mother trying to save her son from a brutalizing environment. I found that part more interesting and moving. The rabid dog and the trapped mother and child in the hot car is like a metaphor of the other story. King will endure. His best work will endure.
Great content, Lindsay! Thanks!
I will take one Stephen King TH-cam channel, please.
It's kinda sad that, even when talking about King's works, The Dark Tower gets so little "recognition". Between King's fame as an horror writer and the difficulty to categorize the saga, as this video says, it kinda faddes into the background, when it's supposed to be KIng's magnum opus
If it makes you feel any better, it's the only King work I've read.
@@joeldipops Same!
Read On Writing. It's really good, and really inspiring. Also The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
5:15 I have that exact book.
Very concise, well-written summary of the guy's career.
However, it would perhaps have been worth mentioning that he almost universally approves (and claims to like) every single adaptation of his work, including the critical bomb Carrie - the Musical.
Okay, yes...he said that "The Shining" was only a loose adaptation, but he still liked it as a movie...and "The Lawnmower Man" doesn't count as it only really took the title...
I know he's not quite on the same level as King but a video on R. A. Salvatore would be pretty cool I think.
Can't wait for them to cover Edgar Allan Poe
We're not worthy, we're not worthy.
Lindsay, T-bone Burnett is just James Cameron wearing sunglasses. It's like garth brooks and Chris Gaines. WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!
I read SALEM'S LOT when I was 11 and it changed my life. I was a horror movie obsessed kid but that was the first 'grown up' book I had read, and I became a ravenous horror fiction reader from then on.
DREAMCATCHER and ROSE MADDER are probably King's worst books. I still have a weird affection for THE TOMMYKNOCKERS since I read that when I was very young and thought it was great at the time, if completely bonkers.
Only subscribed for Lindsay!!!
I would like to write something like Stephen King and even like Roald Dahl (and perhaps a bit like CS Lewis), but also go back to the dark Fairy tales and Folklore of Brothers Grimm days; a time when people once believed that Fairies and the Other World was a dark, chaotic, wild, amoral and dangerous world, a supernatural wilderness messing with Humans, from mildly harmless mischief at best, to terrorizing malice at worst.
The Fair Folk were like proto-Lovecraftian Horrors, with so many water witches, bogeymen hiding in the basements or cupboards, black dogs haunting the roads at night, headless horsemen, etc. etc.
I love Stephen King, always have. My mother made sure of that.
Most people in their house have a linen closet; my mom has a Stephen King closet.
Not even joking.
Nickelsmart the flossing mime, written by Daniel Queen
After a while, when reading a Stephen King book, I've realized that whenever things go sideways, 8 times out of 10, Randal Flagg is behind it.
Hi PBS? I'll do anything for more Lyndsay $$ awesome thanks
King rocks.
That's all.
So when can i subscribe to a stephen king explained channel???
King might be the King of Horror. I would call his son the Prince of Dark Fantasy
I always have a hard time reading Stephen King.
Not because I can't handle it, but because by some weird coincidence bad things always happen in my life whenever I read his books.
Why does no one talk about The Ladder? Its great.
Yay Walter Mosley!
He is the god father!! I remember reading Shining and god it made me quake
Came here because I watch anything Lindsay does but it was a mistake because I have a mild clowns phobia ahhhh
You missed the DT book between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla. Wind Through the Keyhole. Just sayin 😶
I spent my junior high and high school years (graduated in 91) sitting in the back of each class, devouring Kings novels. Glad to see some are being remade because the 80s versions are notoriously awful.
**Our boy**
Imagine GRRM with Kings ‘over’ - work ethic. I wish.
The dark tower: it's... a series.
Dark fantasy cosmic post-apocalyptic western ... thing.
I really tried
Maybe give it another go some other day. I loved it.
Long live the Stephen King!
What would be a good book for a first timer? I wanna give them a try.
Probably a boring answer, but “The Shining” is really good.
@@catherinemorrill4017 i never seen it, so i appreciate your reply Xp
The movies a terrible adaptation. Not bad in itself, but only taking the basic sketch of the plot and characters and doing its own thing. I liked the book much more.
TIL that misery is about cocaine and now it makes so much more sense.
A writer that Stephen King admires, and who is only now beginning to get the recognition she deserves, is Shirley Jackson. She was also labeled as a 'horror writer', primarily based on her short story, 'The Lottery' and her novel, 'The Haunting of Hill House'. But many of her books and short stories are based on women's agency - or the lack thereof - including the latter of these two works. She would be an excellent choice for review here.
I don't know...
'The Lottery' and 'The Haunting of Hill House' have always been very popular.
@@marlonmoncrieffe0728 Yes, I suppose most kids still read 'The Lottery' at some point in an English class, and with Netflix's 'The Haunting', more have (I hope) read the book - even though they have very little in common. But Jackson as a serious writer, has not been giving the kind of literary attention that she should have until fairly recently. When she was publishing her work, following WWII, 'men's' writing was taken so much more seriously - great writers and some not so great - and women tended to be pushed to the side. But she has always had a sort of 'cult' following among certain readers, and that's something. :)
@@beefar0niHa! See? :)
I would like to read her novel The Bird's Nest, though it does not appear to have been reprinted many times. Hopefully with her increasing popularity her lesser known works will be put back into print.
@@chasenewell4590 It's an interesting book, in that dissociative disorder was not well understood at the time. It was made into a film called 'Lizzie' that actually isn't that awful, despite being fairly obscure. The Library of America published a collection of her work a few years ago, which I believe includes 'The Bird's Nest', and an excellent biography/critical analysis of her was written by Ruth Franklin, titled 'Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life', which I highly recommend.
"Our boy." Everyone should read On Writing. I've never read any of his fiction, but that book is a terrific guide and motivator for all kinds of creative people.
Absolute truth! I was enthralled at his writing philosophy and the origins of some of his tales. Danse Macabre is a must if you want to truly understand and appreciate horror movies and books, especially those adapted from the written words. He made me look at the Amityville Horror in a beautifully intellectual way. And he introduced me to Anne Siddons' The House Next Door, a book he praised as the modern haunted house story.
This! There's a very good reason that even people who despise King's fiction have heaped praise upon On Writing. It's a unique mixture of memoir and practical nut-and-bolts instruction on, um... writing. A must-read, regardless of how you feel about Stephen King in general.
Danse Macabre is also worth a look.
I love On Writing.
King is a witty guy, I didn't know he had such fun quotes.
He once quipped in a Playboy interview. "I have the heart of a small child. In a jar on my desk." or words to that effect.
He's a funny guy
Read his book "On Writing"! It's a great book even if you aren't a writer. Many of his quotes mentioned are from this book.
Some of Stephen kings short stories are funny super entertaining sometimes a little bit silly
He’s pretty good with late night interviews
Honestly the best way I can describe the Dark Tower is to say, "Imagine The Chronicles of Narnia, John Wayne/spaghetti westerns, a Lovecraftian horror novella, and a pulpy crime novel with a dash of The Wizard of Oz and Lord of the Rings all fused together."
And somehow, generally it works, and produces some pretty captivating reading.
Actually that’s not a bad elevator pitch for The Dark Tower. Thanks, I might use that myself.
"... and made it all steampunk"
@@safinash2165 hahah more like atomic punk
@@dreamer2260 I found myself really enjoying individual parts of the Dark Tower, but don't agree it really works as a cohesive whole. My favourite book in the series, Wizard and Glass, worked as well as it did for me because of how self-contained it was.
Dreamcatcher was weird but, while I knew he wrote post accident I didn't realize he was dealing with an Oxy addiction and knowing how those effect the body via intense constipation this seems a very apt analogy.
That’s what occurred to me as she described it in the video. Interesting to see these parallels to his life experiences.
damn that's sad...
Ohhh that explains it! I’m a King stan but Dreamcatcher was the only book of his I didn’t finish. I found it way too bizarre, and it didn’t seem to make much sense.
As an accidental opioidist of some 30 years longstanding (with, btw, nary a dramatic breakdown, "addiction crisis," or any of the other horrors so predictably & reliably pimped by our tabloid media and our insatiable "curiosity" to not know anything about anything), I can confidently assure you that the constipation experienced by the casual user is the very least and most temporary of your worries. The body adapts. Infinitely worse is the two-headed dragon of habituation and public condemnation that waits in store for every opioidist.
I have an unusual take on all of this because I don't get habituated. Quite rare, but it happens. In 30 years, I have never had to increase my dosage. When it wasn't available--poor man's sad excuse for "insurance," the 3 years I stopped taking all medications (11 different prescriptions, including a bunch of very powerful, dubious crap they feed to folks like me with MS and other neuro-afflictions) and now the reluctance of pharmacies to fill opiod prescriptions in the face of the heightened, scare-mongering drug war hysteria where it's only the law-abiding, fully compliant and responsible patients who are punished, I can truthfully say that I have never once experienced the phenomenon we call withdrawal.
Personally, I think that, to a large extent, we create this thing we call addiction. Which doesn't mean that it's not real for those who suffer from it. Look into it deeply enough and there's no avoiding the uncomfortable truth that consciousness creates reality. Psychosomatic illnesses are every bit as real as shark bites. If only we could understand and train this god-like power we all have within us...just as that angry girl attempted to do in Firestarter.
At the library where I work, the only one who takes up more shelf space than Stephen King is James Patterson (and not to knock Patterson, but you know King typed every word of those doorstops himself). They're still extremely popular checkouts, maybe even more so lately, now that folks are facing plenty of anxiety and adult fears in the real world.
fellow library worker here, I agree.
Not Danielle Steele or Nora Roberts/JD Robb? (Also ex-library staff)
danielle steele takes up a lot of space for us too
We used to have an entire section devoted entirely to Louis L'amor and his western novels.
@@spazzyshortgirl23 They both have a lot of shelf space, but Patterson and King have them beat. Of course, King's books are so gigantic in some cases that they take up three other books' worth of room.
Imagine writing a debut novel as good as Carrie.
He tried to bin it, and his wife pulled it out!
And throwing it away thinking it wasn't good enough...
@@ClearAsCrystal823 yay for mrs king
Still his best book imo
Not to mention how almost 50 years later it's more relevant than ever.
Excellent video.
"I don't care what they call me - as long as the checks don't bounce" -- Stephen King.
Hello! Well said.🙂
King literally beat his keyboard until he went from trash populist writer to GOAT.
He has not changed. He just outwrote his critics. Which is amazing.
He wrote his way out...
I beg to differ. His writing has changed a lot over time. I think he has much deeper, richer characterization now than ever before (though he was always strong at it). I'd also say that he pulls a LOT more punches now that he's sober. He used to have much more gruesome endings (like in Cujo) than he does now (he has even said in retrospect of books like Cujo that he would not end them the same way today, which is sad because his endings were much better in the 80s than they are now). He was always good, but he's definitely grown and changed over the years.
One thing the video doesn't get into, and admittedly it's hard to really do in a visual format, is just how strong King's prose is. He captures the mundane details of middle America so well that it serves as a perfect backdrop for the weirder stuff, and does it in a way that looks easy but really isn't.
I hope Mr. King sees this, given his feels about re-electing his governor. He could use a nice little happy right now.
(Can't we freakin all???)
Rep. Steve King is not returning to the House of Representatives next year, so he has some things to be happy about. He's replaced by another republican, but still.
"It" was the only book I ever read that actually made me scared. It was fear not caused by jump scares or monsters, it was by this strange uncomfortable feeling that followed me all throughout the book.
"The Talisman" is still one of my favorites, part of it is because it is the book that brought me back that addictive "one more page" feeling around the age of 19 after losing it for a few years.
"Different Seasons" still is my all favorite short stories collections
So many other favorites in my list, each for a different reason...
Different Seasons is a favorite in our house. I gave it to my fiancé as a gift and it only took a year for him to wear out the paperback paramour. I then decided to try my hand at King and boy on boy.... I was hooked. I tried reading “The Dark Half” at 18,...I didn’t finish until I was 23. So, thank you for telling about “Talisman”. I think I have a new gift for our family courtesy of you. 🖤 stay well.
The Talisman is so underrated
The Talisman is my favorite King novel, cried for days for wolf, god pounds his nails...
"It" was really weird. I think I first felt it when the blood balloon popped. There was blood everywhere and the adults just couldn't see it. It wasn't a hallucination that just vanished. It was blood that the kids had to actually clean up and deal with. It was so weird to have what would normally just be a trick of a character's mind be made into something that the characters had to actually deal with.
the first comment in black fled across the desert
and the punslinger followed
You're my two new best friends, embrace the Ka-tet
👆🏼
All follows the path of the beam.
and the replies followed.
“Roadwork” ahead? Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does.
Back in high school my nerdy friends and I had a running joke about King's writing style that was basically "It was a bright and shining day-AND THEN EVIL CAME!!"
You forgot to mention that it takes place in Maine.
"in this 3 hour movie we have to wing some things!"
"chapter 2 is 3 hours long? How long is this book?"
"short by Stephen King standards"
I listened to the audiobook of It and it's around 40 hours! 😅 and I think the book is over 1000 pages.
People give me slack for reading Stephen King, especially since I work at a library but idc. I was very proud of myself of tackling and finishing IT. That's another doorstop book.
I politely request that you do not use images from that "film" to represent The Dark Tower please
Dark Tower is probably my favorite King novel. I found it a long time ago shortly after it was published and mostly forgotten. I kept waiting for the prequel and sequel but King just forgot about the project. I saw it in terms of a Knight of the round table type quest with Camelot and the round table long gone, one jaded knight still roaming the edges of a multiverse dystopia. These are the feelings I remember; the details have mostly eroded over time somewhat like the landscape of the book as I recall. I did watch the movie and wasn't terribly impressed but it's been so long since I read it I can't say how well it captured the book. It certainly didn't make an impression.
That film was the worst adaptation of a novel I've ever had the misfortune to see, and I've watched Eragon. Ugh, such an insult to a subtle, strange, powerful and unique series.
@@dreamer2260 The thing is, the movie's premise is very clever and I was excited for it! Then they executed it in such a half-assed way. I still think about that movie from time to time and wonder what happened, because you can see flashes of creativity here and there smothered beneath the lack of effort. Did the producers lose faith in the project and start to interfere? Did they just run out of budget? What happened? I'll probably never know because anyone in the cast and crew who talks about it will be signing away their career, but it eats at me.
i can't sit through it, i've tried several times. the casting was brilliant, but the story not only wasn't "the dark tower" it wasn't good. in the future i'm sure we'll see many more movies and mini-series treatments and eventually someone will do a decent job of it.
If anything, it should be represented by Michael Whelan's gorgeous paintings.
Came to Storied for Monstrum and found Lindsay Ellis. Glad to see you making videos for PBS Lindsay, been a fan since nostagia chick
yesssss. been a constant reader since i was eleven. commenting for the algorithm gods.
Bump!
And remember, kids, as Stephen king once said: "Yes. Trans women are women"
The King has spoken
I'd like to believe, however, that if you actually asked King to his face if he considered himself "woke" that he'd just laugh at you.
@warrcc c You must not read a lot of King. The dude's pretty cool to the gays and transsexuals.
@warrcc c Suffice it to say, he's an open-minded dude. More often than not, the villains in his books are weird, close-minded creeps.
He can get a bit preachy at times with his wokeness ("Sleeping Beauties" is a good example, though that was co-written with his son, Owen), but it's not an always thing and he more or less just comes off as an open sort of guy.
@Redsiren Beyond the open-mindedness, I'd say that King's greatest strength lies in his ability to write characters that you _want_ to see survive... and then he proceeds to do horrible, awful things to them.
If there's a happy ending in a King story, then dammit, those characters are really going to have to earn it xD .
In short, don't get too attached to anyone. He and George R.R. Martin are good friends, after all.
Stephen King's IT made me want to write horror in the first place (though yeah, he doesn't just do that one genre). A whole bunch of years later, I do have some books out, and King played a huge part in that. For which, obviously, I will be forever grateful.
I love that you called him Uncle Stevie. That's how I've thought of him since my middle school days in the 80's.
I guess you could say they were.....
LOSIN' TO A BIRD.
With prejudice!
I can hear the voice and everything lol
"Hal...it's about a living car that kills people."
My favorite King novel is Eyes of the Dragon, which was an early dive into the fantasy genre that he wrote for his daughter because she didn't like horror novels.
No one talks about that one and it is a shame, severely underrated in his canon. Everything about the the villain is deliciously, gleefully evil in a very fun way.
@@lifewithoutfudgeNot to mention, the fans initially hated the book and the idea that he broke away from horror and there was some negative fan letters that came with it. So much so that he (partly) wrote "Misery" as a way of saying "I can write whatever the hell I want". Yes, "Misery" is also a metaphor for cocaine addiction but its also a warning of when toxic fandom goes too far.
8:43 YES, YOU SHOULD. Please give us a whole channel about Stephen King please.
Gary, it's your lucky day. As of Halloween this year, the channel now exists. Behold... THE STEPHEN KINGDOM
@@TheStephenKingdom Heck yeah! Insta subbed :)
@@GaryArkham Ahhhhhh yeah!
15 or so years ago, I had never read Stephen King. Then I met a colleague who was an avid fan and the first book she lent me - mind you, this is her idea of an introduction to the world of Stephen King - was "Salem's Lot." Scared the living daylights out of me. I couldn't sleep for months after that without staring at my bedroom window at night expecting to see someone there.
I'd been reading King for decades before I got to 'Salem's Lot - trying to hit all the Dark Tower tie-ins! It's the best damn ghost story I've ever read. Now I want to reread it!
Great vid pushed instantly
Oh saWEET! I live in Maine, I love Stephen King!
My parents made me wait til I was 10 to read Stephen King 😂
I really want to visit your state one day, I am a huge King fan. Plus I grew up in a fishing community and I have a feeling Maine has a few towns that would make me feel right at home.
I've lived in Maine for 10 years now and I read all of his books growing up and as an adult and it makes them even more compelling being in the setting that he grew up in.
His prose and dialog flavors are stronger than most popular genre authors in my opinion
The section on generic indecisiveness made me reflect on Roland Deschain, the gunslinger from The Dark Tower series, complaining about stories from 'our' world being restricted to genres, like a meal only having one flavour. When his companions talk about fairy tales, horror stories, westerns he asks if no-one in 'our' world likes stew, as in a mash up of different genres. I've never thought of it in this light before but i think King, or Gan, was speaking through Roland at that moment.
Interesting video and I always love listening to Lindsay :-)
One of my favorite King addiction analogies was in the Drawing of the Three, when Eddie is described as being a slave to a demon named Heroin. I’ve gone back and read those chapters at least a thousand times, both while I was trying to get clean and long after.
I know a video was engrossing when I look at the duration and think, "no bloody way that was ___ minutes!"
Most of the PBS Digital output qualifies
I love king, and I'm more a fan if his magical reality stuff than his straight up horror, though both are great.
Please do a video on rod serling and the twilight zone really would love to hear you opinion on that topic and somewhat genre
I hadn't know about his addiction problems. That explains a lot about the level of empathy he shows Eddie in the Dark Tower. A character we are introduced to at his lowest point. And whereas he is compassionate to Eddie, Roland is pretty harsh. Maybe the iron hand he thought he needed, or indeed had.
Yes, exactly. I fee just the same way, and very good insight about part of the possible aspiration for Roland's character, who I've long been fascinated with; he has some unique power for me.
@@dreamer2260 the american tragic hero. sure what he's doing is righteous, truly the last light in a dark and dying world, but perpetuating the same cycle of violence that has led the world to this point.
Roland has his own addiction though....
@@viridian5maureen853 eddie even calls him out on it. you're a tower junky
Ooh! Please do a channel analyzing only the complete works of specific writers!!! It'd be so cool to see a video on each of King's works--and you can do works by Isaac Asimov, Neil Gaiman... Oh!!!
Funny you should mention it -- we've just gone and done that exact thing. Check out THE STEPHEN KINGDOM!