He is known as “the undisputed master of terror.” And no wonder: with 300 million copies sold worldwide, Stephen King is probably one of the most famous contemporary writers and has had the greatest impact on popular culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Influenced by classics of the genre such as Poe or Lovecraft, this successful author began his brilliant work in the early 1970s; and today, he doesn’t seem to have any intention of stopping. Although it would not be fair to try to make an in-depth analysis of all his work in a few paragraphs, this paper aims to set out the keys and singularities that will allow the reader to understand what he or she will encounter when immersed in the pages of the King universe.

Stephen King and the Secrets of Terror

Over the course of more than 50 books, including horror, fantasy and science fiction novels; short stories, a literary saga and non-fiction novels, Stephen King explores the way in which the most primal fears, childhood traumas and obsessions penetrate the human psyche, leaving an incurable scar on its protagonists, poisoning their minds and conditioning their future existence.

As the writer rightly said, “the key to terror is that it activates certain points of phobic pressure that are common to everyone.” That’s where his genius lies; and that is that Stephen King knows how to connect the reader in one way or another with that which instills terror. After all, we all have a series of fears that shrink our hearts and keep us awake: some are common in the collective unconscious (fear of death would be quite illustrative), others are more concrete (fear of snakes, clowns, the dark…), while many are born of childhood experiences.

It is worth mentioning the importance that King gives to the latter, since in several of his most famous titles (such as It, The Mystery of Salem’s Lot or The Dreamcatcher), one or several of the main subjects are haunted by the dark memory of an event that took place in his childhood and which they will have to face in order to defeat their personal demons.

Decisive autobiographical facts in his work

If Stephen King is characterized by anything, it is by tinting his narratives with autobiographical dyes . It is not strange to find that authors from various disciplines of the art world use their creations to reference themselves in one way or another, and this case was not going to be any different.

A common denominator throughout his career has been the presence of the main characters of famous novels (The Shining, The Mystery of Salem’s Lot, IT, Misery, and A Bag of Bones, among many others), probably as a wink or a tribute to his career.

A hotel room to inspire

After his first best-seller (Carrie, 1974), King was already a well-known and famous author. Despite being an expert at instilling terror through his novels, he also had his own ghosts. Afflicted by what is known as “writer’s block”, he tried to get away from the deafening noise of the city in a half-uninhabited hotel in the Rocky Mountains , in an attempt to recover lost inspiration.

Unknowingly, it turned out that in the room where she was staying (room 217), the former owner of the hotel had been short-circuited to death in 1911. On the other hand, several guests had complained to the hotel staff that someone was pounding on the door at night, and when the door was opened, there was nothing but silence and the corridor was deserted.

These and other phenomena that apparently took place served as the basis for the arch-known El Resplandor (1977), probably one of his works in which he establishes more parallels with his real life. It is not by chance, then, that the plot revolves around Jack Torrance, a father of a family who has moved with his wife and son to a hotel in the mountains of Colorado to take care of maintenance during the harsh winter, while he waits to finish his latest novel; nor that in that hotel all sorts of inexplicable events occur that have to do with a particular room: 217.

The double edge of success and fame

Another of King’s fears was the fans, or rather the way his work could influence the public for good or ill. On one occasion, during a book signing, a young man approached King with a copy to dedicate to him and said, “I am his number one fan. Those words were decisive for one of his most renowned titles: Misery (1987). In it, novelist Paul Sheldon, following a car accident, ends up lying in bed in a cabin lost in the snowy mountains.

Unfortunately for him, the nurse who rescued him and is taking care of him is also a fervent follower of the heroine who is the protagonist of his books; so he will not take too well the way the writer has decided to finish his last volume…

Hitting

A third event that marked a turning point in his work occurred in 1999 . While walking along the side of a local road, he was hit by a van and was thrown several meters from the spot. Paradoxically, at that time he was writing Buick 8, a perverse car, which, after making some notes, would be published in 2001.

This novel tells the story of a sheriff’s son who is killed in the line of duty and tries to uncover the mystery surrounding an old car that has been parked in a warehouse for years in police custody, while trying to find out if his father’s death has any connection to the vehicle. Later novels are also based on this turning point in Stephen King’s life (Duma Key, 2008).

Anecdotes and curiosities

Many events have taken place during his journey as a Stephen King writer. Not surprisingly, his success began in the seventies and has lasted until today. Let’s see which have been the most decisive and the most striking .

1. Trash papers

During Carrie’s writing process, Stephen King was so unconvinced that he threw the draft in the trash . His wife, when he was not at home, retrieved it, read it in secret and urged him to take it to his editor. The rest, as they say, is history.

2. Autograph

The young man who asked for his autograph and whose words served as the basis for Misery (1987), was Mark David Chapman, notorious for the murder of John Lennon .

3. The Shining and Stanley Kubrick

Many of his books have been transferred with more or less success to the world of cinema . One of the most illustrious is Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining (1980). However, Stephen King has never liked this timeless classic of the seventh art, since it is far from his written version.

4. Repressed Hate

Rabia (1977) is the title of an unpublished novel in your bibliography. The reason? It tells how a high school student kills several teachers and classmates because of the repressed hatred he feels . Sadly, it has certain parallels with later killings, such as those at San Gabriel High School (California, 1988) or Jackson County High School (Kentucky, 1989). Stephen King himself had to ask for the immediate withdrawal of all the copies and issued a press release asking for forgiveness.

5. Fear of clowns

Coulrophobia is the unsurpassed fear of clowns . Several investigations have tried to find out where the origin of this phobia lies and have found that many cases date back to 1986, curiously the year of publication of the bestseller IT. IT tells how every 27 years, in a town in the state of Maine, several local children are murdered. A small group of survivors must face the horror again if they want to put an end to the evil that lives there, an evil that takes the form of a good-natured clown…

6. Tracks that connect your works

Except for the books in the Dark Tower collection, the rest of the stories are independent. Nevertheless, Stephen King takes this opportunity to leave us clues that connect them to each other . In IT (1986), there are references to Christine (1983) and to the Dark Tower saga; the latter is also mentioned in The Dance of Death/Apocalypse (1979). If we read Tommyknockers (1988) or The Dreamcatcher (2003), we will find allusions to IT… What other nods to the savvy reader have Stephen King deposited throughout his work?

7. Against all odds

After a tortuous beginning (a past marked by economic hardship, depression and alcohol abuse), Stephen King managed to rise to the rank of the great literary myth that he is today. As if he didn’t have enough trouble with his personal problems, he also had to face the critics of the time , who considered horror novels to be second rate.

Fortunately for him, the public was unanimous and, in spite of everything, he managed to make his way through the best-seller lists to become number one worldwide on several occasions.

No doubt, a novelist whose work is worth discovering in depth.