The mystical "plot" of the plot of his life was continued by the detective. Steve was only two years old when his father Donald King, a former merchant navy sailor, left the house to buy cigarettes - so he never returned. Left with a bunch of unpaid bills and two children in his arms (older David, stepbrother, there were four), his mother, Nelly Ruth Pillsberry King, unwillingly experienced all the delights of a woman's emancipation, spinning like a squirrel in a wheel. The three of them traveled along the East coast of America, stopping from time to time to live with many compassionate relatives. The vast geography of his children's ordeals King sometimes associated with the desire of my mother to find an escaped father. In that Donald escaped, and was not kidnapped by monsters from other dimensions, the writer, despite his propensity for mysticism, is almost sure of his unplanned birth in 1947, the relationship of the King's spouses reached the boiling point. However, the mystery of the disappearance of the papa is not disclosed to this day.
There is another legend related to the missing parent: ostensibly about 5-6 years old, Stevie dug in his aunt's attic in old things and found his father's suitcase, stuffed up with fantastic magazines and letters from various editorial offices, in which, in standard form, Donald King was refused publications. Perhaps the desire to excel in the writer's craft for the first time woke up in Stephen's father to his father, who threw him to the mercy of fate. Prior to all this Kingu was still oh, how far, but he became a co-owner of his own newspaper at a very early age. It was doubly incredible, given the poverty in which the family of the Kings lived. I did not have to starve at all (thanks to all the same relatives), but many of the benefits of civilization came to Steve's life much later than to many other American teenagers. For example, he first watched TV at the age of 11 years. However, King dismisses the lack of television as a plus to his childhood, repeatedly claiming that those who want to become a literary man would be good to break off the television cord first and, having wound it on a steel pin, poke the plug into the socket. He started writing at the age of 7, and at 12, he and his brother David were already "influential media magnates" in the provincial Durham, who published their own newspaper, "Dow's Dill", in which the King's brothers retold local gossip, sports news, anecdotes, and Steve even wrote a certain "story with a continuation." "Gorchiknik", starting with a circulation of 5 copies during its heyday (when Dave and Steve moved from a slow and primitive hectograph to a rotaprint) reached 50-60 copies. Relatives and neighbors bought "Gorchichnik" for 5 cents per room, which was at least some help to all the earnings of Ruth King.
In addition, the earnings allowed Stephen to indulge in his favorite children's entertainment - trips to the Ritz cinema, in which the edgar-like horror films of Roger Corman were circulating, the "adult" fighters of class "B" and the like in the same spirit. Ultimately, the fascination with the adaptations and stories of Edgar Poe played a cruel joke with the young author - King printed his version of the story "The Well and the Pendulum" in the number of 40 pieces on the home rotaprint. The entire edition was sold out at school the next day, and the price was already solid - 25 cents. By the end of the lesson, the plagiarist earned about 10 bucks and still could not believe in such happiness. And rightly - hardly he left the class, as he was taken to the director. Earnings had to be returned, and from the director's phrase "And you're not ashamed to spend your talent on such nonsense" King earned a long-term complex, from which he got rid of for forty years. The enterprisingness and restlessness of the future writer pushed the director of the school to think of channeling King's energy into a constructive channel - a vacancy of a sports reporter was formed at the Lisbon Wyclie Enterprise. Stephen was not particularly inspired by this prospect, but working with editor John Gould revealed to him two golden rules of the writer: the ideal text is the source code minus 10 percent; a good story is written in two stages - "with a closed door" (for oneself) and "with an open" (with an eye to the reader). Not God knows what revelations, so after all, King was never a clever intellectual. To begin with, this was enough.
His dubious youth
After graduating from high school, short-sighted and not very sporty, King almost did not volunteer to Vietnam to recruit more material for future books. The mother, who called him an idiot, interfered, and convinced that a writer with a bullet in his forehead was unlikely to write a good book. However, the mutual feeling with the literature of King did not immediately arise. University (all the same native state of Maine), after which a young bachelor goes to teach English to school, earning money in the laundry, then at the weaving mill, almost became his literary grave. By that time, he had already got a wife - she was a student of Tabitha Spruce, whom King met at a poetry seminar. Three years later, the Kings had two children, a daughter of Naomi and son John, and a bunch of outstanding municipal accounts. The news of the birth of John, by the way, caught King for his favorite pastime - he watched horror films in an open theater when he was announced by the selector: "Stephen King! Your wife gives birth! Hurry home! "Trying to make ends meet, the young family lived in a cheap trailer, interrupting the head family's rare fees for the stories published in men's magazines, as well as for the small salary of Tabmta, who worked as a waitress in Dunkin Donat. Sometimes King was paid well, a couple of times he and Tabitha could even make a real romantic dinner in a restaurant (and once a check for publication saved King from the month of prison for driving in a drunken state - the penalty to a cent coincided with the amount of the fee), but this was not enough for a normal life. Everything settled the case. Tabitha accidentally found in the trash can several sheets with rough drafts of the story. King at that time was already on the verge of despair and decided to tie up with literature, but Tabitha managed to persuade his writing. Publishing House "Double" took the manuscript, paying the author a fee of 2 thousand dollars, after which a miracle happened - the story was resold to another publisher for $ 400,000, half of which went to Stephen King. A book about a hammered schoolgirl-paranormalke, which became the 74th beginning of the author's rapid rise, was called "Carrie." An unpretentious story written in simple language, clinging to some kind of natural psychology of elaborating characters and authenticity of details.
From 1974 to the late 80's King, in the opinion of the majority, created his best works. What is characteristic is that the period of extraordinary creative fertility coincided with a period of unrestrained alcoholism and drug addiction. Some novels, for example "Cujo" or "Tomminker", as the writer himself admitted, were written in a semi-conscious state. To get rid of addiction (caused by both sudden wealth and mother's death), he was able only in 87, ending in something very personal novel "Misery." The image of a crazy nurse holding his beloved writer hostage, personified drugs and alcohol in King's life. How many liters of beer, tracks of cocaine and kosyachkov not used by King, the facts are clear ... "The fate of Jerusalem", "Shining," "Dead Zone", "Ignite the look," "Christina", "It", "Misery, Green Mile "- the largest American publishers have only managed to buy each other rights and lure to themselves the pen of the active author, raising fees in the outrageous multimillion-dollar heights. King wrote about what he saw, lived, what he feared and fantasized about, hence the plot collisions close to one-story America: "Davilka" (experience in the laundry), "It" (childhood memories), "Cemetery of domestic animals" (death a domestic cat under the wheels of a car) and so on. The monsters of Stephen King lurked in office smoking rooms, in provincial libraries, in closets, in used cars, city collectors, in household appliances and even in biotoilets. They surrounded the readers not only in fantasies, they were at arm's length, which frightened them. There were, however, stories of a different kind. For example, the children's fantasy novel "Dragon's Eye" King wrote specifically for the daughter of Naomi, who "had no interest in my ghouls, werewolves and other vile creatures." And, of course, apart from mysticism and psychological thrillers there is a cycle "The Dark Tower", a certain plot-forming axis, to which King eventually strung his entire literary universe. The novel, which is a fusion of the samurai epic, westerns and black fantasy, was written very hard and several times was thrown and a long box in view of its frankly non-commercial format, but after the release of the first part, "Shooter", in the 82nd year ago, It was. Fans of the cycle even threatened to commit suicide, if King throws this story.
That distant day of the year 99 was ordinary. King had lunch and went out to walk along his usual walking route along the side of the highway. And was shot down by a van, whose owner, Brian Smith, at this moment was distracted by his dog in the passenger seat. He did not even notice the walking man, believing that he had knocked the deer away, and only when he saw the bloody glasses that flew into the cabin on impact, Smith suspected something was wrong. The ambulance doctors who arrived at the scene did not expect King to live to see the hospital at least: The King of Horrors received a ninefold fracture of his right leg, broken ribs, broken lung and a dozen cracks in the spine, not to mention the skin of his right collarbone and head. Rehabilitation in the hospital took almost a month, and a little later King again begins to write books - to forget about the constant pain. He writes them in the same glasses, the glasses of which miraculously survived the accident. "When I learned some details from the biography of Mr. Smith, who kindly smeared me on the highway, I thought with an irony: damn it, I was hit by a character from my own books!" - recalled King in his memoirs.
This experience resulted in a novel full of morbid fantasy
"Dream catcher", was detailed in the final part of the "Dark Tower" and some other stories. And all the delights of the post-traumatic syndrome are set forth by the writer in the novel "Dyuma Ki", where it is a millionaire invalid who tries to find a taste for life in the artist's suddenly opened gift. If we consider irresponsible driver Bryan Smith King's character, then his real fate fits perfectly into the mystery of the thriller. The court stripped Smith of his driving license and sentenced him to six months in prison conditionally. King was extremely dissatisfied with such a sentence, but a year later justice triumphed; September 21, King celebrated his 53rd birthday, and the next day Smith was found dead in his trailer. "Do not tell me it's a coincidence. I'm sure that Smith died on the 21st, "said the vengeful King, who later bought the very same" Dodge Caravan "to personally launch him under a mechanical press. Millions did not change the way of life of the writer. He still remains loyal to the beloved state of Maine, where he lives with his wife to this day, once a year, traveling to the island for millionaires off the coast of Florida. He is still passionately ill for Boston Red Soke, he wears jeans and does not use a mobile phone (the reasons for dislike are described in detail in the novel "Mobile"). He is afraid of air travel, eschews black cats, and the number 13 never completely extinguishes the light at night. Despite periodic pains in broken bones, King is full of a variety of creative ideas, including the blues musical "Ghost Brothers from Darkland County" and even the adaptation of some of his novels to children from 3 to 5 years old (the latter is hard to believe in its feasibility). Anyway, things and places are still able to tell him their dark secrets and he is still able to tell them to us, which means that when opening his new book, there is nothing left but to repeat after King: "I believe I believe in crocodiles in the sewerage of New York, I believe in deadly gas inside tennis balls, I believe in invisible worlds around ... And most importantly: I believe in ghosts ... ". And how here not to believe?