Hail to the King – 50 years of the master of literary horror

One afternoon in the early 1970s, the author Tabitha King stopped by her husband’s office and noticed an unusually large pile of pages in his waste paper basket.

They were the first couple of chapters of a novel he was trying to write. She pulled the crumpled pages out of the bin, gave them back to him and said something to the effect of, ‘You’ve got something here. I want to know what happens to Carrie.”

So did a lot of people, because, some time later, fifty years ago to be exact, Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, became a bestseller.

I carred two irrational fears from birth: construction plant equipment and Big Bird’s rubber legs. Rational fears of Dracula and The Mummy on our black & white portable TV in the family caravan also began to haunt me as I got older; not to mention the Daleks and the Wirin from Doctor Who. As I became a youth, I settled out of court with Massey Ferguson, Henson Creature workshop, Universal Pictures and the BBC.

But I will never forgive Stephen King. Because nothing prepared me for Mr. Barlow. Even today I find it difficult to watch the clip of Barlow’s shock first appearance in Salem’s Lot. Much of that televisual impact is down to director Tobe Hooper; but ultimately, I blame the King.

That’s right, Stephen King gave me actual recurring nightmares. Yet still, in the half century since Carrie‘s first publication, I and millions like me, still come back for more.

On Oct 12th 1980, fear spread like fire throughout the underage population of Ireland due to our parents allowing us to watch past the BBC Nine O’Clock News and deep into the mini-series which followed.. It was an adaptation of King’s second novel, Salem’s Lot, about vampirism sweeping through a small New England town in present day America.

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The infection spread over two nights and was repeated again on RTÉ some months later, just in case you wanted a second dose (I did.) Much like Orson Welles’ legendary Harry Lime, Kurt Barlow is much talked about before he finally makes an appearance. When he does, it’s not gracefully, sweeping into a room with a charming smile: It’s a full-faced, green ghoul vampire money-shot for the ages.

That was it. Me and horror were bound to the hip forevermore. It was some years later before I actually read these first two King novels. In 1984, you couldn’t get away from his book Pet Sematary; copies filled the windows of Eason’s on O’Connell Street for months. Despite this bestseller being ubiquitous, I was getting so wrapped up in the world of comics at the time that the first King book I finally did read in full was 1985’s short story collection Skeleton Crew. I was fourteen and had become obsessed with the cover image, which brought with it visions of John Carpenter’s The Fog. (Eighties horror paperback covers are a thing, by the way. Massive Facebook collecting groups.) Alas no zombie sailors were included, but ironically, there was The Mist, one of King’s greatest achievements. From then I started to collect his hardbacks and would lug them all over the shop (no mean feat with It, which clocks in at near 1200 pages). Misery was a joy. Controversially, I did not fall in love with The Stand, when I finally read his uncut version in the nineties. And I have vivid memories of reading The Tommyknockers while queueing for Back To The Future Part 2 outside the Adelphi.

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Watch: Stephen King talks to Stephen Colbert

In the mid-nineties, I had to completely switch to paperbacks as I was now on the road. Sitting in a tent in San Martin de Los Andes deep in Argentina, I read The Dead Zone while suffering from the worst food poisoning of my human existence. I’d seen the movie, was throwing up for my country, but still couldn’t put the book down. I started on The Shining after I recovered. At the end had to admit to myself I kind of preferred the film (Sorry Stephen! King famously hates the Stanley Kubrick version). The suitably titled The Green Mile was all the rage when I returned to Ireland, King electing to publish this story in individual installments, which nobody had done since Charles Dickens.

1999 was primetime King. Now working as an usher in the Screen Cinema I took the opportunity to dive into many of the books I’d missed. There was always a King paperback in my uniform pocket during those night shifts. I was left there alone after 9pm, tasked with locking up the cinema by midnight when all had fled to their last buses. Wandering the rows of seats checking for bodies before I locked up was especially nervy when you’re reading Children of the Corn (‘He who walks between the rows’).

Not long after, I read what remains my favourite piece of Stephen King storytelling to date: Hearts in Atlantis could not be termed ‘horror’ in the traditional sense. But these linked novellas and short stories about the friendship between a young boy, an abused girl and an elderly psychic man, moved me tremendously and somehow, for me, captured the new millennium moment upon us all at the time.

King returned to doorstop novels in the aughts, with both Under The Dome and 11/22/63 cresting a thousand pages – both fantastic journeys, though I enjoyed the time travel rejigging of history with the latter more than the town literally under a glass dome conceit of the latter. Despite more often sticking with the world of crime in recent years (Billy Summers remains my favourite of those), there have been sterling horror outings with The Outsider (also a good TV mini series adaptation) and his sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep (with a not so good movie adaptation.)

And what did happen to Carrie? Well, it’s funny you ask. I finally and with some ceremony sat down last month and read it – first getting my hands on an original 80s paperback edition, for full effect). And what do you know? This Stevie King fella has something! So thank you so much, Tabatha. Without you, who knows, I might still be clam-handed and sweating bullets on passing building sites or waking up in the night from under the rubber foot of a very big bird. No, today I sleep every night under the horrible watchful eye of Kurt Barlow, thanks to the primal fingers of Stephen King.

Stephen King’s latest book You Like It Darker (Simon & Schuster) is out now.