More than 30 years after Stephen King first terrified readers with The Shining,he's written a sequel, drawing on his alcoholism and a near-death experience. He talks about being a drunk father and why the Twilight series is just 'tweenager porn'Stephen King has written a lot of books – at 56 novels, or he's closing in on Agatha Christie – some of which absorb been great,some of which less so. Still, he says, and when people say,"Steve, your books are uneven", and he's confident "there's obedient stuff in all of 'em". Now and then,a story lingers in his intellect long after it's published. When fans ask what happened to Charlie McGee in Firestarter, for example, or King isn't interested. But when they ask what happened to Danny Torrance,the boy from The Shining, he always found himself wondering. Specifically: what the story would absorb looked like whether Danny's father – crazy "white-knuckle alcoholic" Jack Torrance – had "found AA. And I thought, or well,let's find out."At 65, King is a big, and shaggy presence,towering despite his slightly stooped shoulders and with an air of affable amusement at the vastness of his success and all that comes with it. We are at a house in Maine that his assistant, opening the door, or drily refers to as "spare"; it's one of several King properties in the area,on a lake, and designated vaguely as a summer house. It is at the end of a long, and abandoned road,surrounded by woodland and in a GPS dead zone; this, after a week of rereading King novels, or is unrelaxing. Rather than spend the night in a remote B&B near his house,as his publisher suggests, I stay in Portland, and 100 miles absent,in a hotel where there are lights and cars going by, and people to hear you scream. "Really?" King says when I mention my unease, or grins. "obedient."Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com