I went into this book hoping to get a detailed look at Stephen King’s writing process, something he’s spoken about only a little throughout his carrier, mostly in his book ON WRITING. What I got was…mixed. Caroline Bicks’ own writing feels a lot like King’s: clear, to the point, and illustrative. But often Bicks frames King’s work by relating it to her own life story when I felt more of that time could have been spent charting King’s development over his own life. That is part of the book of course, but to be brutally honest I didn’t really care to learn so much about how Bicks first encountered and later revisited King’s books. But her passion and knowledge for the subject is obvious and appreciated. While I am a lifetime fan of King I fall squarely in the I’ve-forgotten-more-than-I-know camp when it comes to his older books.
She is also a Shakespearian scholar, a perfectly admirable pursuit. But often, very often, she approaches King’s work with Shakespearian-tinted glasses which sometimes totally miss the mark in conversation with King which is frustrating. It’s not a total waste of effort since King does go on to explain himself, but when that (already rare) conversation starts with him saying “No, but…” after pages of Bicks’ speculations in the wrong direction one wonders what could have been.
It’s wonderful to see the scans of the original typed manuscripts with corrections, strike outs, and often humorous penciled-in notes all included. Unfortunately all of these lose a lot of shine because they are reproduced at a strangely small scale and with very low contrast, sometimes making them unreadable. It’s a very odd choice considering those insights are exactly what I thought this book would be about. Often the text is just a re-writing of some of what’s in these pages. Why not just blow them up to a full page size and skip the re-writes? Again, frustrating.
All of these niggling criticisms aside there is a lot for long time fans to learn and maybe come to realize for the first time, like King’s heavy use of rhythm in the words he chooses to use (often against his editor’s wishes) in tense moments, how he writes the way people, often children, would really say certain words, and how often he’s not thinking about Shakespeare. Getting a literal look into his archives and how they operate is also something special. In a perfect world we all would have that kind of access and all the time in the world to pour over the most minute variances from first draft to final. Maybe a publisher like TASCHEN could make this happen. I know I’d throw money at it.
*One very interesting fact I learned is the short story that would become CHILDREN OF THE CORN was first titled NEBRASKAN DEATH TRIP. It’s wild to think that might have stuck as the title of what went on to become shorthand when talking about weird little kids. However, Bicks neglects to make the connection to another book called WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP published right around the time that King would have been working out CotC. I will let you, constant reader, look into that one, but it’s definitely a book that would have been on King’s radar and I am certain it is where he got the working title from.
