Lilja's Library (6 page)

Lilja:
That’s true…  

Stephen King:
A thing is better looking when it’s useful and…you know, something you just put up on the shelf to just look at it. Isn’t that weird?  

I mean…the worst one in a way and I don’t…this guy is gonna read this and be so bummed. This guy Jared Walters did
’Salem’s Lot
in a limited. He basically fucking wore me down because he would come back every six months or so and say, “Please, please, please, please,” and I’m very vulnerable to that if people, I mean, if he’d come to me and said that he wanted to do a “Dollar Baby” I would say “Yes” immediately, but this guy wants to do this big huge book with this, I don’t know, incredible binding done in some endangered species or something, and finally the books come out and people like Frank Darabont and other collectors just loved that book and he wants to do
The Shining
next and so far I’ve just told him, “No.” Because it’d be another book like
’Salem’s Lot
. It’ll weigh twenty pounds, and people will put it on their shelf and look at it and they won’t actually read it.  

Lilja:
But I have read that book and it was interesting to get a chance to read the parts that weren’t in the first edition.  

Stephen King:
Yeah, I know that, but on the other hand if someone had suggested to me, “Why don’t you put that up on the Net, the stuff that wasn’t in the first edition?” I would have done that. And then people could have gotten it for free.  

It would be the same words. It just wouldn’t be in that fancy thing. It’s like…I don’t know how to say this. It’s like if you see some woman and you’re really hot for her, you know? I mean, you got to say to yourself, is it the woman I’m hot for or is it just because she’s wearing a certain expensive dress? I don’t know…  

Lilja:
What do you think people will think when they hear the name Stephen King, say, fifty or one hundred years from now?  

Stephen King:
I think that they’ll have some vague memory of my work and some of the older ones will have read it and it’s maybe that some of the books will last, it may be that
The Shining
,
’Salem’s Lot
…ahh…I’m hoping
Lisey’s Story
. That some of these books may still be read, but you know what? I think that you never know, you never know what’s gonna happen. You have no clue. Nobody would have believed, people would have laughed in 1910 if somebody would have said Theodore Dreiser was going to be a writer that people remember and read. But I think that my faith might be sort of like Somerset Maugham’s. He was a novelist who was read wildly in his time, everybody read Somerset Maugham and he’s still the record holder in terms of films made from his books. Forty-eight movies from different books and remakes and that sort of things. I’m close to that…  

Lilja:
Yeah, you must be very close to that…  

Stephen King:
I am, I’m close to that. But nowadays if you ask people who Somerset Maugham is they’ll kinda go like, “Well, I guess he was a writer…,” “The name is very familiar…,” so I think that that might be my fate.  

Lilja:
Is that the fate you would like?  

Stephen King:
No, I think any writer would like to be remembered and somebody who’s read, you know, somebody whose work stands the test of time, so to speak. But, on the other hand, as a person, I’ll be dead and if there’s no afterlife then I won’t give a shit, I’m gone. And if there is an afterlife I got an idea that what goes on here is a very minor concern. 

But, you know, I’m built a certain way and the way I’m built is to try and give people pleasure. That’s what I do. I want people to read the books and be knocked out, and I’d like that to continue even after I stop.  

Lilja:
I’m sure it will.  

Stephen King:
No, I’m not sure.  

Lilja:
Definitely. Well, it was very nice to talk to you.  

Stephen King:
Same here, very pleasant. 

Stephen King, Part 1 

Posted: February 20, 2008  

Welcome to the first part of a three-part interview I did over the phone with Stephen King last week. Once again, he was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to talk to me, and for that I’m very grateful.  

This time we talked for about thirty minutes and covered things like the new book he is working on, the upcoming collection
Just Past Sunset
and a script he has written for
The Gingerbread Girl
.  

We also talked about
Duma Key
,
The Dark Tower
comic, his collaboration with John Mellencamp,
The Mist
and
The Talisman 3
.  

This part will be followed by two more, and I really hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did doing them. It was pure pleasure talking to Stephen King.  

Enjoy! / Lilja  

PART 1—
Duma Key
and a really long new book
 

“I have no idea how creativity happens or why it happens or what it does to the person who creates it, except it makes you feel good while it’s going on.”  

“I’m assuming it’s gonna be a long book, a really long book.”  

Lilja:
Hi Steve! How are you? Fine?  

Stephen King:
Yes, I am. I’m very well indeed.  

Lilja:
I just finished your last book,
Duma Key
, and first I wanna say that I really liked it.  

Stephen King:
Well, good, I’m glad.  

Lilja:
Was that one different to write compared to your other books since it was set in Florida?  

Stephen King:
You know, it was a hard book to write because I had a little idea at first of these two little dead girls that I kept seeing on this road at dusk. And that image actually never made it into the book but that was where I started and the rest of it just all sort of came out…for the day-to-day writing it was never a plot, it was never an outline, so by the time I had finished it I had…you know these little sticky notes that people put up on their desks and things?  

Lilja:
Yeah.  

Stephen King:
I had those all over my computer. I could barely see the screen. I had them all over my desk. I had them on the walls…so I would try not to forget anything, and when I got done I just had to laugh and I thought, “Boy, I wrote that book by the seat of my pants.” [laughs]  

Lilja:
[laughs] So it was harder to write than your usual book?  

Stephen King:
Ah….yeah, I think it was. You know, I write two different kinds of books. I write books that have a lot of plot, which are difficult, and then there are the ones that are just situations, like
Cell
, where you say to yourself, “What would happen if everyone went crazy at the same time?,” and you just kinda play that out. Those are a lot easier …  

Lilja:
I noticed that Edgar, the main character, is in a lot of pain in the book. Did you draw from your own experience when you wrote that?  

Stephen King:
I did, but I thought that nobody would mistake Edgar for me since his injuries are so much worse than mine were. He loses his arm. But I know enough about pain to wanna write a little bit about that, to wanna write about getting better. The only time I have ever actually written about my own pain was in
On Writing
, so it was a chance to explore some of that and basically what I wanted to write about that, was on my mind was…about three years after the road accident I had pneumonia. This was around the time of the National Book Award and I had an intestinal bug that was a hospital germ that I picked up, and when I was done with all that it was like my memory kinda took a hit. It was hard to remember things and that was really scary and I wanted to write about that.  

Lilja:
You did a really good job. You really feel for Edgar when you read the book.  

Stephen King:
Well, thanks. The other thing is I have a friend, his name is Frank Muller, who read books on tapes, he read a lot of my books on discs and tapes, and he had a motorcycle accident and he really…he is never gonna be normal again. I don’t think he’s ever going to regain his thought processes, but one of the things about Frank is that you have to be careful around him now because he goes into rages. Apparently this is pretty common in frontal brain injuries. To get angry and strike out against the ones they love, so I thought I wanted to write about that too.  

Lilja:
In the book Edgar becomes a painter, and you have also used painters quite often in your later work. Have you developed an interest in painting yourself?  

Stephen King:
I can’t even draw a cat [laughs] but I like pictures and I have had some stuff to do with artists, particularly with The Dark Tower books, and I’m interested in the way they work, but it was also a chance to get away from the idea of everyone saying “All you ever write about is writers.” I like to write about what I know; there is a comfort level there. There are more ways to write about art and the creative impulses than just writing about writers. To me, even after thirty-five years—most of my life—of writing stories, the process itself is a total mystery. I have no idea how creativity happens or why it happens or what it does to the person who creates it, except it makes you feel good while it’s going on.  

Lilja:
So you haven’t started painting your own paintings?  

Stephen King:
No, I haven’t started painting my own paintings, but you know Edgar’s paintings are like my work and that’s one thing that nobody said in the reviews or the discussions of the book. Edgar paints sunsets, which are clichés, and he changes them from clichés to something else by adding one object that has no business to be there. And what I do is that I write about ordinary people and add something that’s surreal or horrible or out of place in the story and that changes everything, so in that sense Edgar really is like me.  

Lilja:
Speaking of paintings. I really like the cover for the book. I think it’s actually one of the best covers for your books.  

Stephen King:
Do you?  

Lilja:
Yes. Do you have a lot to say when it comes to the covers of your books or is that left to the publisher?  

Stephen King:
No, I got quite a lot to say about it and we talked about that and I said that I thought it would be great if they could have the ocean with a big shell in the foreground and some tennis balls, so they got all those things in it.  

Lilja:
Have you done a lot of promotion for
Duma Key
?  

Stephen King:
No.  

Lilja:
No? I thought there was less than usual.  

Stephen King:
I didn’t go out a lot. I’m working on a new book and I wanted to do that and I’m assuming it’s gonna be a long book, a really long book. Like
The Stand
or
IT
or something like that, I think. A very long book. And I talked to the people at the publisher and said, “You have your choice. Either I can work on this book and maybe you can have it in a year or two, or I can go out and promote and do all these things that you want me to do and you won’t.” So, eventually they saw reason. 

You know I did this thing at Radio City with J.K. Rowling and she is a great person, she is very vivacious and she is very lively and very much with it, but when we had a run through for the thing I could see that one of her publishers from Scholastic was talking to her and Jo Rowling came back to me and said, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” and I said, “Sure.” 

And she was really steamed and I said, “What’s the matter?” and she said, “They don’t understand, do they? They really don’t understand. They think these things write themselves.” Because she told them she was coming to New York, she was going to do this benefit reading and then she was going to work on the seventh Harry Potter book, and they took the opportunity to ask her to do all these other things and that’s the fact, this goes back to that whole business of creativity and what it is and what it isn’t. They don’t understand. They think somehow that this stuff just occurs by magic.