Carrie, 50 years on: Stephen King and the book that made him
Stephen King published Carrie in 1974. (Photo by Eric Feferberg / AFP)
Horror is like a scalpel. In one person’s hand it can hack, slash, and devastate. In another’s it has the precision of an artist. Get you a writer who can do both.
Like one of the most iconic authors of all time, Stephen King, who has just marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of his first book, Carrie, about a teenage outcast with telekinetic powers who destroys an entire town after bullying and being humiliated with a particularly nasty prank.
Reread that sentence and you’ll appreciate how it became popular. How many bullied or outcast kids have entertained some thought of revenge, though perhaps not as catastrophically devastating as Carrie’s. Even if, as one of the characters notes: “Kids don’t know what they’re doing. Kids don’t even know their reactions really, actually, hurt other people.”
The book not only launched King’s career in earnest but made horror mainstream again. And to think it almost didn’t come to pass. King had given up on it until his wife encouraged him to finish the book.
Horror’s adaptability as a genre means it has never wholly gone out of fashion, reinvigorated from time to time with some new or bitingly relevant take (think Halloween, Scream, and more recently Get Out). The filmmaker Dario Argento said, “People are boring. Horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing. And it always comes back.”
Indeed, horror is in a golden era at the moment, with sales of novels soaring since the pandemic in the face of a deeply uncertain and troubling world and new subgenres such as eco-horror thriving. Feminist and neurodiverse authors are publishing an array of innovative books and stories. Ireland even has its own dedicated publisher for speculative fiction from scifi to horror, Temple Dark Books.
Perhaps King’s greatest gift is not just a knack for telling stories in an engaging and accessible way, it’s his ability to integrate the ordinary alongside the horror. The Shining is as much about an alcoholic’s last chance as it is about a haunted hotel. Misery, Dolores Claiborne, and Gerald’s Game are all very much rooted in humans being the horror (something he has in common with the likes of Shirley Jackson).
That doesn’t mean he can’t do supernatural or cosmic horror when he wants to – IT owes a debt to HP Lovecraft, as does the idea of a shared universe where a huge number of King’s stories relate in some way to his Dark Tower series, which he calls “the Jupiter” of his literary solar system. And in recent years he has pivoted more toward suspense novels than horror such as The Outsider, which goes to show you’re never too old or set in your ways to mix things up.
To say he has made an explosive, defining, and indelible cultural impact feels like an understatement. You have possibly read one of his books. You definitely know their names. You have almost certainly seen at least one film based on them (It, Misery, The Shining, Doctor Sleep, The Green Mile). Looking back at his bibliography, it is incredible to see how many iconic books he produced as he exploded onto the scene from 1974.
Imagine one collection of novellas – 1982’s Different Seasons, the first time he wrote non-horror – producing not only some of his finest stories but inspiring two of the finest films of the past 50 years (The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me).
Personally, King wasn’t my introduction to horror – that was a Penguin hardback anthology edited by JA Cuddon – but he was the first horror writer whose novels I read and became a devoted fan of. Like a gateway drug I went on to the wider genre. King, Wollstonecraft Shelley, Lovecraft, Poe: this is the culture that made me, alongside the likes Philip K Dick, Arthur C Clarke, the Eddingses and Neil Gaiman.
Insomnia was the first book of his that I bought; in part, I think, because of my own trouble sleeping. And it’s wonderfully inventive, in that while there are horrible humans in it there is real terror and horror in the role of the three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, who slice a person’s lifeline (with a scalpel, as it happens). A fairy tale it ain’t, but then life isn’t one either.
Where does the genre go from here? Anywhere it needs to really, like King himself. At 76, he is still creating at a prolific pace. And while there is a treasure trove to look back on, both of his oeuvre and the genre’s, there is a lot more to come.
Frankenstein: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was just 18 when she started writing the book that would help define Gothic horror, body horror, and science fiction. A cultural phenomenon from a writer who also wrote an early apocalyptic/dystopian novel, The Last Man. For Frankenstein, favour the 1818 first edition rather than the rewritten 1831 second edition.
In a Glass Darkly (Carmilla): More than two decades before Bram Stoker’s Dracula, there was Carmilla, the lesbian vampire creation of Dublin-born ghost story genius Sheridan le Fanu. Collected with four other stories as In a Glass Darkly it remains one of his most enduring works, haunting and groundbreaking.
Haunting of Hill House: Shirley Jackson made numerous superb studies of the darker or more troubled side of human nature and this endlessly re-readable novel asks the question: What’s worse, a haunted house (it’s not necessarily a ghost) or the loneliness in the human heart?
I Am Legend: Horror meets science fiction in Richard Matheson’s seminal 1959 work, perhaps the first where vampirism is not rooted in the supernatural but in disease. It also deals with survivor guilt and the nature of evil (hint: It depends on what side you’re on).
Ghost Story: Stephen King called Peter Straub’s 1979 book one of the greatest supernatural books of the past 100 years and Straub in turn said he was inspired to write it by King’s 1975 vampire novel ‘Salem’s Lot. A group of friends meets to tell ghost stories, only they don’t just stay stories. Divides readers.
Caitlin Marceau: A gifted Canadian storyteller who has exploded onto the horror scene in recent years with work that can be a delight to read while carrying both nuance and an emotional punch. Her collection A Blackness Absolute is a triumph.
