In 2003, Stephen King received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Many in the world of “lit’rachure” were not amused, and a few went all foamy-mouthed bugshit crazy (a pause to imagine many froth-flecked moths batting frantically against a lit window, bump bump flutter flutter bump).
And then Stephen King made his acceptance speech..
The story and the people in it may be make believe but I need to ask myself over and over if I’ve told the truth about the way real people would behave in a similar situation…. We understand that fiction is a lie to begin with. To ignore the truth inside the lie is to sin against the craft, in general, and one’s own work in particular.
— Stephen King, accepting the National Book Foundation Medal
I have read everything King has written. He’s one of my favorite writers because in his work I always find joy (and you know I’m big on joy) and hope and truth. I find real people living real lives, and when the monsters come they heighten rather than diminish that reality. The everyday people in King’s work are laid low or made great, found wanting or given a chance for redemption when the monsters come.
And they take me with them. Their bewilderment and fears and unexpected joys in the midst of their own personal armageddons are mine too. I understand their metaphors and their rhythms of speech. They are quintessentially American people, and their stories are plain and visceral and rooted in the deepest layer of the country’s collective psyche in way that, for my money, the “great American authors” do not routinely achieve. Those people are not my writers. They do not speak for me or about me or to me as a reader. Stephen King does.
And when I re-read his speech yesterday, I found him also speaking to me as a writer:
There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there’s a time when things can go either way.
— Stephen King, accepting the National Book Foundation Medal
I had that time fairly recently. I fire-walked my own hopes and fears and other people’s expectations, and now I am in a place where the air is cleaner and the world is bigger for me. I found my truth inside the lie. It sounds like Stephen King found his a long time ago, and good for him.
I’d love to meet him. Not to make forever friends — just for a beer and a burger and a conversation between two writers who are fascinated by the things people will do if given half a chance. I wish that someone who knows him would give him a copy of Dangerous Space and point him to the title story, because I think he’d like the rock ‘n’ roll of it, the everydayness in which Duncan and Mars find their whole world made new by music… I would like something I wrote to put a smile on Stephen King’s face, the way he has so often put a smile on mine.
Why don’t you mail him a copy? Who knows… the fan-mail sorting goblin may like the custom-made wrapping of your package and forward it to him. It seems like he reads at least as much as he writes, which is quite impressive. So my guess is that even if he has a huge stack of to-reads, he’ll get to Dangerous Space before the end of the month. He also seems to move at the speed of light.
Kelley–
Why wait for someone else? Be bold, says I. Send SK your own copy of Dangerous Space. Include a cheerful note to let him know you are not a writer on the make just wanted to return the favor. Could be the beginning of what you’ve hoped for.
This is right. This is good. I’ve read almost everything Steven King has written and I couldn’t agree more. It’s like sitting around a campfire listening to stories. The shadows are so big and we are so small, brave like children, inexperienced like children and awed like children.
As to the bugshit crazy lit’rachure crowd, well, you know my attitude toward that twaddle. But I recently posted a bit on the inside-out aspect of that. http://marktiedemann.com/wordpress/?p=57
It is a strange, strange world in which we work, doancha think?
Karina, Anonymous (Lindsey, is that you?), it’s not a lack of boldness. I am cheerfully confident that SK gets a thousand pieces of mail a day and has at least two layers of people sort through it. I am confident that he gets a hundred personalized gifty-type books from people like me a month.
If I just wanted to give him a gift — if the gift-energy itself were the goal — the act of sending would be enough. But I actually want the reading connection. And I know from my own experience how much more likely I am to read something that someone I know has recommended.
Barbara, what a lovely way to put it. In some ways I feel like a child hearing a story, totally accepting and totally immersed — and in other ways I feel all the adult recognition of the psychologies and the dynamics of the characters. And the monsters they are facing.
Mark, thanks for the link. I enjoyed what you had to say. And yeah, it’s a pretty fucking weird world sometimes (grin). Especially when, as you point out on your blog, “too smart” can be either a legitimate reason not to publish (!!!) or the last self-delusional refuge of the not-good-enough….
Yikes. (Wanders off, shaking head…).
Nope, it’s not Lindsay, just someone else who thinks you might possibly be hedging.
Okay, fair enough.
I will say that all the times I have gone the “cheerful note and hope for the best” route, it has resulted in absolutely nothing. My experience tells me it doesn’t work. That doesn’t feel like hedging to me, but perceptions vary on this as on everything.