A Good Look at the First Half of King's Career, December 22, 2003

Reviewer:

C. T. Mikesell

This collection of interviews with and articles about Stephen King give a very detailed look at his early career. The latest interview was published in early 1989, while King was still working on The Dark Half.

There's a lot of ground covered here, but not all coverage is even. For instance, Stanley Kubrick's film version of The Shining is discussed frequently, first with King discussing how excited he is about the project (pre-release) and then how disappointed he was after the movie came out. King's own directorial project, Maximum Overdrive, gets similar coverage, as does his work as screenwriter for Creepshow. Some of King's work is strangely missing, though: The film Firestarter is discussed much more than the novel; The Dark Tower books (The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three) and The Talisman are mentioned only in passing. An article in Time Magazine where King is referred to as "the master of post-literate prose" is mentioned several times, but the article itself is absent.

The interviews are divided up into nine chapters (plus epilogue), covering his start, early years, "Going Hollywood," recent (late '80s) years, etc. Copyright details for each piece appear at the beginning of the book, but I think it would have been more helpful if they had appeared prior to each interview along with a brief bio of the interviewer (as many interject their own opinions and memories into the interviews and it would be nice to know who these people are).

King is portrayed in fairly glowing terms throughout Feast of Fear; a much franker version of this period of his life - including alcoholism and drug addiction - appears in King's autobiographical memoir, On Writing. Is King entirely truthful in his interview responses? No, but he is insightful - King admits in On Writing that he made up his stock response of writing everyday except for Christmas, the Fourth of July and his birthday, because you have to say *something* and it should at least be half clever. Nevertheless, even if Stephen King the brand-name-and-legend isn't the real deal, the man reflected in these pages is still a heck of an interesting guy with a lot to say about the creative process and celebrity.