IMAGINATION
I have never stayed at Room 217 of any hotel. I once went through quite a lot of trouble in an over-booked hotel to avoid that room number, but the fear of what lurked in that bathroom made me stand my ground. That one scene from The Shining, where little Danny Torrence cycles up to that room in the empty hotel, and the only sound you can hear are his plump legs pumping away furiously before the door creaks open, is the kind that embeds itself in your head forever, and sometimes when you wake up in the middle of the night, you avoid looking at your own bathtub. Such is the magic of Stephen King's horror stories. They stay with you.
Imagine: you are locked in a cabin where a crazed fan of your books threatens to hack off your limbs one by one; or, you are trapped in a car in dead afternoon heat in the middle of nowhere, where the car has stopped working, and your child is sick with thirst, and there is one problem: a rabid dog threatens to attack if you so much as roll down your window; or, you are in a plane and you wake up and see that the whole plane is empty except for ten passengers, and scattered around are wigs, glasses and pacemakers, accessories that were sometimes inside their bodies before they all disappeared into thin air; or, that you live close to an ancient Indian burial ground where they say if you bury your dead, they can come back resuscitated. Very tempting for those who know the grief of loss, but is that what you really want?
Brought up in small town Maine, Stephen King draws most of his plots from real life experiences, and refuses to be typecast as just a horror writer. He says that his books are about “an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it.” Born into a poverty stricken family, with a father who abandoned them, King spent his childhood writing stories and selling them at school for pocket money. Although some critics dismiss his talent as a “claptrap of American nonsense,” his award in 2003 of The National Book Foundation's medal for distinguished contribution to American Letters speak volumes of his recognition as one of the most widely read writers of modern literature.
For me personally, King's work transcends beyond his macabre plots, to his character sketches, which is comparable to the greats of Dickens. Whether a book has only two characters stuck in a bedroom, or a slew of vampires taking over the county, they have the power to hold their own and to reveal multiple layers, that make you relate to them so much so that 'horror' almost ceases to matter. He writes about life. He teases you to think beyond the normal and almost accept the extraordinary, and believe that this could actually happen. Stephen King continues to be popular through out generations because of his power to captivate the imagination. As he says in an interview, poverty may have stripped him of many opportunities except that of: “Imagination. They can't tax it.”
Here are my Top 10 Stephen King favourites:
The Shining – A recovering alcoholic must wrestle with demons within and without when he and his family move into a haunted hotel as caretakers.
It – A promise made twenty-eight years ago calls for seven adults to reunite in Derry, Maine, to do battle with the monster that is lurking in Derry's sewers once more.
Salem's Lot – Author Ben Mears returns to 'Salem's Lot to write a book about a house that has haunted him since childhood only to find his isolated hometown infested with vampires.
Pet Sematary – Recently moved to Ludlow, Louis lives near an ancient Indian burial ground and discovers its sinister properties when the family cat is killed.
Carrie – The story of misfit high-school girl, Carrie White, who gradually discovers that she has telekinetic powers.
Cujo – Donna Trenton and her son Tad find themselves trapped in the sweltering car by a monstrous dog that has turned into a killer after being bitten by a rabid bat.
Misery – Novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued from the scene of a car accident by his number one fan only to find himself prisoner, forced to write a book of her whim.
Fire Starter – The government is trying to capture young Charlie and harness her pyrokinetic powers as a weapon.
Gerald's Game – Trapped and alone, Jessie Burlingame's painful childhood memories bedevil her. Her only company is a hungry stray dog and the sundry voices that populate her mind.
Dreamcatcher – Four lifelong friends find themselves pitted against an alien invasion deep in the woods of western Maine.
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