Stephen King guest of honors Savannah Book Festival

magical inspiring hilarious compelling informative and fun these are the words the text emails that we've had from authors and supporters regarding the fourth annual Savannah Book Festival we've had four days of wonderful events I'm Stephanie Weber board president of the Book Festival thank you for being here at the Georgia power speaker series a new partnership between the Savannah Book Festival and Georgia Power two little housekeeping notes please please turn off your cell phones and also we do have the yellow donation buckets around the auditorium and if you feel like making a donation to the festival we would appreciate it the festival is free most all day on Saturday and on Friday but if you'd like to make a donation we sure would appreciate it first I'd like to thank our presenting sponsor the city of Savannah and the Department of Cultural Affairs I'd also like to thank mr. mrs. Robert Jepsen and dr. mrs. mark Murphy for their support this year I'd also like to thank Molly right for her donation of her beautiful painting lose yourself in books which was donated by my Molly and the protein has been auctioned off and the proceeds have gone to the Book Festival well we're all here because we love Stephen King my husband John included John is such a fan that he's even written to mr. king for four years he's been telling me that when we secured Stephen King then the Savannah Book Festival have reached the big time well ladies and gentlemen and John the Book Festival has reached the big time [Music] but all of us have come together for the steadfast dedication of our 150 plus volunteers and our community sponsors today clothing address but incomparable Stephen King may I say that again today's closing address by the incomparable and extraordinary Stephen King is sponsored by Jack and Mary Romanus and as part of the Georgia Power speaker series Jack is a fellow board member and a true friend of the festival will you please join me in welcoming Jack Romano's [Applause] my own housekeeper I'd like to remind you again to make sure your cell phones are silenced because you know what Stephen King can do in the cell phone if he sets his mind to this afternoon we have a true publishing superstar in the house and it is my honor to introduce him now I've introduced Steven before and I can honestly tell you that he is one of the few people who truly does not need an introduction however in the interest of thoroughness and currency I did spend some time on the internet looking for things to say about Stephen today that you might find informative or new and I did find one post which I think pretty much sums it up I'm gonna read it to you Stephen is of scots-irish ancestry he's saying I am 6 foot 4 waist about 200 pounds he's blue-eyed fair-skinned has thick black hair for the frost of ye most noted most noticeable in his beard which he sometimes we're wears between the end of the world series and the beginning of spring training in Florida occasionally he wears a mustache in other seasons he's worn glasses since he was a child Tabitha king Stephens wife now I just saw Stephen for the first time in five years I have to tell you this must be an old older post my relationship with Stephen King began one day in 1997 when a group of jubilant Simon & Schuster executives burst into my office with the news that Stephen King had just agreed to move from his publisher of long-standing to begin a new relationship with Simon & Schuster's prestigious Scribner imprint a relationship that I am happy to say is still going strong Stephen officially became a writer in 1973 when his novel Carrie was accepted for publication since then he's written 50 60 maybe 70 books you know you can't keep track and it doesn't really matter because he changes the number a couple of times a year as most of you know many of the books have been adapted for motion picture and for television and what you may not know is it's even actually published back I think around 2002 the first original ebook a book called rifle bullet which he did with sign of his Shuster and this was a pre Kindle pre duck pre iPad we released it and in the first day of publication Amazon's computers crash the book went on to sell a million copies and I truly believe that Stephen fired the first round in what became the e-book revolution he's won countless awards culminating with the National Book Award Foundation medal for distinguished contribution to American letters in 2003 ladies and gentlemen a true American literary treasure Stephen King [Music] thank you thank you very much well that's the high point I'll go home now I was talking to a group of college kids before I came here and saying that the most important thing about me is that I'm just a guy and I've been fortunate enough to do this and I just thank you all for coming I mean it's a wonderful thing I'm a guy who works in a little room all by myself and believe me when I say the reason that right is right is because generally when we get in front of a big group of people we get tongue-tied and stumble around and writers are not usually that interesting to listen to but I also like to start off by reminding you that the niña National Insurance Association of America did a survey in 2002 said that one in 50 people at large public events forget to lock their cars and it probably won't be dark when we get out of here but if someone were to find your car unlocked and hide why that would be a crazy thing to do so you would want to check that and that same survey about home safety and the safety that people take when they go out says that one in I think it's like 220 forget to lock their houses when they go out and it will be dark when you get home and if somebody were to creep in they go to the bathroom and hide in the shower I saw it at the movies man it just happens they hide it in the shower and I think that if you're sitting there thinking well it doesn't matter because I have one of those see-through shower curtains then they're behind the door they know that as well but really that's all mostly see I just made all that up the statistics it's all just my wife and I have been married since 1971 which means that we've been married over 40 years and she calls those facts out of Steve's ass and she's used to it because she knows what I do for a living and basically I'm just somebody who has spun in the goal it's like I heard one of the political pundits a couple of weeks ago talking about Ron Paul saying if you guess his real name he has to spin your straw into gold it does so to have that Rumplestiltskin look has nothing to do with anything but here's the thing okay that that I like to point out somebody has to say that the real stars of affairs like this are you guys because you're not here that has anything to do with movies you're not here because it has anything to do with pop music you're not here because of video games you're here because of books and you ought to give you a cellphone I mean you sent my kids to cause and I appreciate the reason that things like this are uncomfortable for me in particular is because I was raised to believe that writers were the secret agents of the arts and that we pretty much went and had to go unobserved and unseen and that way we gathered material we saw what people were doing you know and we were able to bring it back and work it in our stories and for a long time that was my life and then at some point things changed and I know just where that happened it was in Pittsburgh some way are here my friend and collaborator on a book about the Red Sox book called faithful about the 2004 World Series that the Red Sox won Stewart Onan who was from Pittsburgh and I don't know I think that the Red Sox were too rich for Stewart's blood because he returned to Pittsburgh to root for the Pirates and for whatever reason but Pittsburgh was where I ended up on my first real offers for a book called The Shining I've never been on a book tour before I didn't know anything about it and I found out that what you do is scarf medium that's at that time there were a lot of shows like am pittsburgh am atlanta i don't know whether there was an am savannah or not presumably TV has come to Savannah because I checked the weather this morning I saw you guys online there's some guy named Big John or something like that little total school so you go there and you you go and you do the morning TV shows along with the karate kids and the grandma who just won a jitterbug contest or whatever it is you get five minutes and you talk about your book and the bottom line is always the same you know at your bookstore now and somebody goes out and get it and the last thing that you do before moving on to the next city is you do a dinner that's usually put on by the newspapers of course I'm dating myself because in those days newspapers had money to do things like I was a long time ago kiddies but anyway so in Pittsburgh the restaurant where we did this was at the top of this thing called the in kind you went up there on a cable car or something like that I don't know is that ring a bell Stuart are you here the anytime that's it so I went up there and I've done this and it was the last city on the tour and you got to remember I'm a kid on 26 27 years old something like that and I was struck by this this terrible ailment that we've all suffered at one time or another where you don't really want to get too far from the men's room if you know what I mean and this is a very fancy restaurant and I felt really homesick and kind of blue and I had this intestinal discomfort and I had to excuse myself and run to the bathroom which was this sort of Babylonian splendor things like marble and columns and it was a it was a restroom attendant who was a hundred and eight years old ball you know simonize Scully you're getting you know what I need little thin guy with the towel over his arm in the quarters in that little dish this thing had everything but doors on the stalls so I'm in there in the room where even Superman has to sit down and you have to try to be a little bit delicate let's just say everything came out all right but it was sad I mean I was homesick and sitting on the John and sad and I'm thinking things can't get any worse and here comes the 108 year-old washroom attendant with a pad and a pen and for the first time in my life someone said aren't you Stephen King he said I saw you on a in Pittsburgh can I have your autograph now I had given autographs before but that was the first time I gave one to like a total stranger that wasn't that an autograph inning and I did it while I was sitting on the crapper you can make that whatever you will but that's a more or less true story I guess but the second time that that happened to me was in an Athens in in New York Nathan's Hot Dogs and I was at that time probably 29 and I had been asked a couple of times but I'm having a hot dog I'm sitting at the counter and not to belabor the point I my hair really was black then instead of this sort of no covered kind of thing and I had a big black beard and I'm eating my hot dog and reading my book because I go everywhere with a book nerdy but it's me what can I say and I look up and the guys through the pass through and the thing you know cooking the stuff and he's looking at me and he sees me looking at him and right away he's back he's cooking stuff so I read my book and I look up and he's looking at me and he looks away finally I'm thinking myself ok you're gonna come out ask for my autograph cuz and at least I'm not in the you know I've been eating a hot dog and he did he came out and he had the pad and he had the pencil and he said aren't you Francis Ford Coppola because I had the glasses in the beer and I said yes I am and I signed the autograph Francis with such pleasure I can't begin to tell you but what happens to me mostly now is this kind of weird cross connection in people's minds and people will come up to me even to this day and say aren't you Steven Spielberg and I always say that yes I am but they don't really believe it after they they talk to me from in a while but we're supposed to be secret agents and we're supposed to kind of observe culture and we're supposed to observe people when they don't know they're being looked at so I'm a big baseball fan and one of the places where you observe human nature and its rawest is at the ballpark particularly when the team is losing so I decided that I was going to start wearing this cap pulled down over and I was gonna wear sunglasses and then this eight-year-old kid says to his mother look mother Stephen King sunglasses so anyway I mean to me that all this is is a really kind of a weird thing anyway as to what I'm doing or what I have been doing in terms of the actual work lately it seemed to me like what I'm what I'm up to was cleaning house I did a book a couple years ago called under the dome which I think is going to be a Showtime miniseries sort of like their answer it's a game of Thrones on home box office and I originally had the idea back when I was in college and kind of put it on the back burner because it seemed like it seemed like an awful lot of research I'm a fairly lazy writer I like stuff when I can make it right up out of my hand and this looked like it was actually going to be work but the idea would never completely let go and so finally I decided that I was going to write that and I had a heck of a good time and in fact it worked out so well that I thought to myself okay I'm going to go back to another old idea I had and this was in the 70s III taught high school for a while and it was I think probably eight years after John Kennedy's assassination and we were sitting around in the teachers room and one of the people that I taught was said I wonder what life would have been like if if they hadn't gotten in those days everybody talked about they you know because there was supposed to be this big conspiracy and I knew that what I finally got around writing this book that I would get a lot of people who would say well oswald was passing this and the other thing but i thought to myself what a great chance to actually rewrite history but I was I think in 1971 about 25 years old and I just wasn't ready you know I couldn't the scope was too big and I certainly didn't have the time of the money to go to Dallas and actually research things and the other thing was it seemed to me that it was a little bit too fresh at that time you have to remember that in 1971 a lot of the people who had been involved with 11/22/63 we're still alive and including the widow of the slain president so I just kind of let it go but you know when you get a good idea it never entirely leaves your mom and this one would pop up at odd times the way that under the dome did and finally I think maybe a year or two years something like that after 9/11 I started to really think seriously about the book again one of the interesting things that you talk about history and how fast we forget things when the book was at the publishers scribblers which is a division of Simon and Schuster wishes Jack Ramon decision emeritus around that time the book was done in manuscript and it was in somebody's basket and one of the cubicles is the publisher and one of the younger members of the staff came by and looked at the title 11/22/63 and said what's that day it has no resonance at all for people of a certain age and I was under some pressure to change the title too but I just couldn't think of anything else that that worked that well and besides I think for people of my generation I'm 37 Wow what I say for people of my generation it has the kind of resonance that 911 does today so the idea stuck around and it started to get a little bit warmer again and then it's something that I don't think many people would have foreseen even a year before it happened to happen and that is we elected an african-american to the presidency and I was amazed when I went on the Internet at the outpouring of hate from some quarters and it really brought me back to the days of the Kennedy presidency only then instead of it being prejudiced of a racial nature it was prejudiced of a of a religious nature Kennedy being a Catholic and I started to remember things like some of the billboards and Dallas at the time that the president landed with his wife and I thought you know it seems to me that if you have enough unrestricted hate and if you have enough people who feel it's perfectly okay to use really incendiary language about politics that sooner or later the guns come out and I thought to myself you know maybe I really ought to look back at this this book this book idea 11/22/63 and you know if you accept and I do the idea that Oswald acted alone it certainly never been disproved in all the year since then you have to say to yourself that that was one moment in time when really one ordinary person could have changed the history of the world if one person for instance on the staff the janitorial staff at the Texas book school depository had know that Oswald had a gun in the package where he claimed it was curtain rods for his apartment one person had known one ordinary person everything changes maybe that's that's the thing we don't really know for sure the things would have changed or not would there have been Vietnam we don't really know that would there have been the race riots we don't really know that would the civil rights bill that changed everything about the way we do business and act in this country all this passes in 1964 because many of Johnson had a nuts-and-bolts understanding of the way that the Senate and the House of Representatives work the Kennedy didn't have and again I'm thinking to myself the parallels are amazing instead of a second year senator from Massachusetts you've got a one-term senator from Chicago both young men both with beautiful charismatic wives both with families beautiful children kids I don't think that the current president is maybe quite sexually active as John Kennedy has repeated to thin but there are still a lot of similarities including the polarization between the executive branch and the legislative branch we're all at once he come to a halt and things can't seem to get done which was the situation at the time that that Kennedy was killed and in both cases in the case of the Kennedy administration Kennedy had a vice president who was very savvy about the legislative branch could come from the legislate branch that was Lyndon Johnson sometimes Donuts landslides later then because his first election he won by 47 votes and those were kind of skeevy and with the current president's presidency you've got a guy in the vice presidency Joe Biden who was also very wise about the ways of the House and Senate could he have gotten more accomplished had he been president that's an open question and hopefully we'll never see a situation in the current in modern times where a succeeding vice president says to a previously warring House and Senate passed this legislation in that legislation in the name of the slain president which is what Johnson did God God please that doesn't have to happen whatever year a political affiliation might be we hope that the history won't repeat itself but I saw enough signs of it repeating itself including Vietnam at the time of Kennedy and the business in Iraq and Afghanistan with a current administration so I thought to myself I want to write this book and I want to try to say something about how fragile history is and how things turn on a dime but I also wanted to use an ordinary Joe as the protagonist during the case of this book an ordinary jade so I sat down and read a lot of stuff I watched a lot of old kinescopes what I like best is God back then everybody smoked doctor smoke you really they had delivered babies come out and light a cigarette I mean the woman's in labor and she's small gonna see her but I tried to get away from that all that rose-tinted nostalgia there's such a tendency you know to think that things were better and in a lot of ways they really weren't but the other aspect of the book was the whole the whole question of time travel it's at our be like in the Brer Rabbit story the more you hit it the more you stick there are so many different so many different paradoxes that you can stumble over in this business with the butterfly effect if you change one thing how much change and the most famous I decided the best way to deal with this was to avoid it if I possibly could avoid it completely so that there's a Jake's friend that the cook brings up that the most famous parrot Jake brings up the most famous paradox to him and he says well what if he went back into the past and killed your own grandfather and the cook says why the would I want to do that so you're able to get kind of past that way why would you why don't you do that and of course I kept everybody away from themselves you know because you could possibly meet yourself marry your mother I don't know a lot of different possibilities but I tried to steer clear the best of course the best time-travel novel is the one where the guy goes into the future like with the hg wells but I did the best I could with it and I had a lot of fun but boy time travels a i I did it once I'm not going there anymore so I did dome and I did 11:22 and by the way they make terrific Mother's Day gifts Father's Day gifts I can't imagine a better gift to give somebody just kidding not so I really think I am cleaning the closet because I've got a book coming out of June's another dark terrible I never thought that is so weird it's like now I'm supposed to sing free bird it's great anyway it's a book called to win through the keyhole and I had this idea for a book between let's see let's see it comes just before wolves of the collar so it's dark teller 4.5 so it comes after the waste lands and before well anyway Jesus I don't know don't ask me but it's a pretty good story and it's like these Russian nesting dolls so that it has a story about Roman and his friends and then a story about Roman as a boy and that one's a world story actually and I just don't as monsters go I don't care for world's very much the vampires were okay until you know Stephanie Mayer kind of spoiled I need to put down anybody's taste but they were all lovey-dovey you know and he got all sparkly but anyway I the thing about werewolf stories is that they always become mystery stories and I'm not very good at that because you always have a cast of suspects in it one of them is turning into the world wall thing but I did have this pretty good idea for a story and I thought I can tell this and then I can put another story inside it so that they look like Russian nesting dolls so there's that and I got it done and I thought alright now I'm going to move on to an actual new thing never mind going back to the Dark Tower that I started when I was like 22 or under the dome which the idea originally came in then I was 25 11:22 I will think of something entirely new to do and with that in mind I wrote a sequel to The Shining [Laughter] it's called dr. sleet but you know what I always wondered what happened to that kid you remember the kid I mean I know how many of you read that book do you know that book well this is this is gonna be good I've never done this before my I could be so damn sorry I did this clap if you've read the book clap if you see the movie clap if you've read the book but haven't seen [Applause] this is an idea clap if you've seen the movie but haven't read the book see you're the guys I want your you're the guys that I want because because it's like it's like Stanley Kubrick was like the coldest guy in the universe I have lived in though didn't I oh man I even got hit by a car and I still have lived it god I'm sure he's a good guy so it's it's I don't know number I think it's like 1976 something like that and I'm hungover out of my mind at 7 o'clock in the morning and I'm shaving hungover out of my mom and my wife comes into the bathroom it says Stanley Kubrick is on the phone from London and I'm like this and the blood is coming through the shaving cream and I'm like is this a joke cabbie no it's really Stanley Kubrick I think so I go out 7 o'clock because why not call the guy at 7 o'clock it's like doing where he is in London so and I know that he's bought the rights but I never figured I've actually make the film you know so you got a picture me I'm in my skivvies I'm hungover the kid is bawling in the other room I'm bleeding I got shaving cream on half of my face I pick up the phone and I say hello this is Stephen King and he says hello Steve I think most ghost stories are fundamentally optimistic don't you I'm like what are we gonna talk about next whether or not God's real I'm you know how over you at seven o'clock I'm bleeding well I'm saying why is that why do you feel that way he said well if there are ghosts it means we survive death doesn't it and that fundamentally optimistic and I said well mr. Kubrick what about Hell it's just long silence on the other end and then he said in an entirely different voice I don't believe in hell well I mean okay that's what makes horse races right I mean you say potato I say potato tomato tomahto hell no hell whatever survive not but he went ahead any made his movie and I'm a very sort of warm gooey sentimental guy passionate sorta I sound like I'm filling out an ad in Craigslist but I don't really mean that but anyway the difference between two bricks version of shining and my version of shining is mine ends with the hotel burning and his ends with a hotel freezing so when I wrote this book doctor sleeve you have to remember that it's a sequel to the book which was great for me because it sort of canceled out the movie entirely I didn't have to worry about Jack Nicholson who seemed like he was crazy from the very beginning where is the arc in that you're crazy and scene one you're crazy at the end and in between you type a little bit and that's that's it comedians no story in there but that's that's just me anyway I was wondering what happened to the kid and it always disturbed me that of all the things the one thing in the book that seemed missing to me in retrospect was that it's very clear that that Jack Torrance is a dry drunk he's an alcoholic who's just trying not to drink on his own and nobody even brings up the idea of Alcoholics Anonymous or any other sort of program you know when you get a little pebble that sort of thing and I thought to myself well the other thing that I know about drunks is that the children of drunks a lot of times become drunks I heard this joke the other day it doesn't seem like a joke to me at all you know what happens when a codependent die somebody else's life flashes before their eyes and so I thought to myself you know I've always wanted what happened to that kid I used to joke about it I used to say Danny Torrance grows up meets Charlie McGee from firestarter and they have these weird kids who don't like the mutant Expo but I wrote this I wrote this story dr. sleeve and I brought the beginning of it you guys you want to hear all over this no I mean I'm serious diet pepsi baby it's the drink of the gods holy moxie oh my god yes moxie don't even get me started on moxie that stuff sucks so bad but there are people who like it so what do I do anyway I'm just gonna read you the beginning of this because I don't want to go on too long and I want some Q&A and so this is how it starts on the second day of December in the year of 1977 one of Colorado's great resort hotels burned to the ground the Overlook was declared a total loss after an investigation the fire marshal of Jicarilla County ruled that the cause had been a defective boiler the hotel was closed for the winter when the accident occurred and only four people were present three survived the hotel's offseason caretaker John Torrance was killed during an unsuccessful and heroic effort to dump the boiler steam pressure which had mounted to a disastrously high level due to an inoperative relieve now two of the survivors with the caretakers wife and young son the third was the Overlook chef Richard Hamilton who had left his seasonal job in Florida and come to check on the Torrance's because of what he called a powerful hunch that the family was in trouble both surviving adults had been quite badly injured in the explosion only the child was unhurt physically at least Wendy Torrance and her son received a settlement from the corporation that owned the Overlook it wasn't huge but enough to get them by for the three years she was unable to work because of back injuries a lawyer she consulted told her that if she were willing to hold out and play tough she would get more perhaps a great deal more because the corporation was anxious to avoid a court case but she liked the corporation wanted only to put that disastrous winner in collar behind her she would convalesce she said and she did although her back injuries plagued her until the end of her life shattered vertebrae may heal and broken ribs but they never ceased crying out Winifred and Daniel Torrance lived in Maryland for a while then he drifted down to Tampa sometimes Jake Halloran he of the powerful hunches came up from Key West to talk to visit with them to visit with young Danny especially they shared a bond one early morning in March of 1981 Wendy called dick and asked if he could come Danny she said and awakened in the night and told her not to go in the bathroom after that he refused to talk at all he woke up needing to pee outside a strong wind was blowing it was warm in Florida is almost always warm but he did not like that sound and supposed he never would it reminded him of the Overlook where the defective boiler had been the very least of the dangers he and his mother lived in a cramped second-floor tenement apartment Danny left the little room next to his mother's and crossed the hall the wind gusted and a dying palm tree beside the building clattered its leaves the sound was skeleton they always left the bathroom door open when no one was using it because the lock was broken now it was closed not because his mother was in there however thanks to facial injuries she suffered at the Overlook she now snored a soft Qui Qui sound and he could hear it coming from her bedroom well he thought she closed it by accident that's all he knew better even then he was a boy of powerful hunches and intuitions himself but sometimes you had to know sometimes you had to see this was something he had found out at the overworld in a room on the second floor reaching with an arm that seemed too long too stretchy too boneless he turned the knob and opened the door the woman from room 217 was as he had known she would be she was sitting naked on the toilet with her lake spread and her palate thighs bulging her peeling breasts hung down like deflated balloons the patch of hair below her stomach was gray her eyes were also gray like steel mirrors she saw him and her decayed lips stretched back in a grin close your eyes to count her and it told him once upon a time if you see something bad close your eyes and tell yourself it's not there and when you open them again it will be gone but it hadn't worked in room 217 when he was five and it wouldn't work now when he was eight he knew it he could smell him she was decaying the woman he knew her name it was mrs. Massey lumbered to her purple feet holding out her hands to him the flesh on her arms hung down almost dripping she was smiling the way you do when you see an old friend or perhaps something good to eat with an expression that could have been mistaken for calmness Danny closed the door softly and stepped back he watched his dinar turned right left right again then still he was eight now and capable of at least some rational thought even in his horror partly because in some deep part of his mind he had been expecting this although he had always thought it would be Horus Derwin who would eventually show up or perhaps the bartender the one his father had called Lloyd he supposed he should have known it would be mrs. Massey though even before it finally happened because of all the undead things she [Music] thank you now I can't see you guys which makes this a little bit easier but they're mostly do you have questions because we have about twenty minutes then I'm gonna sign books when I sign books it's gonna be a real assembly line job I'm afraid I'll sign my name and try to get everybody in that's the best way to do it yes everyone please raise your hand and we'll come with to you with the microphone we have a question right here full nerves the details in your books are astonishing and whenever the talisman back when I was a freshman in college the whole listening to run through the jungle when they were coming across is always resonated with me to where like I actually bought out went out and bought like I said and wore it out please tell me about how you came up with that I can't I can't I mean the stuff just comes when it's going good you put yourself in the story and I think you know when I was talking to the kids I can't sit here I get excited when I was talking to the writing kids also I have to keep throwing up my jeans because I have no ass it's an Irish thing I'm sorry okay when I was talking to these kids I was saying there's nothing magical about me there's nothing mysterious about me I'm just I'm just a guy I get up in the morning I take a shower I walk the dog I do whatever I do and then I sit down to write and that's sort of where the magic is and I don't I can't explain it but you spend a lot of years and you try to UM put yourself in the zone kind of thing and it's kind of like work at first when you sit you start and if you're lucky you know most days I've been really lucky I think I've had a lucky life I really have we're blessed whatever you want to call it but when you do it for a little while it's kind of like you get up you kind of get up and you get in a zone and then you see everything and you hear what's going on and you just see the room and you report for me a lot of times it hasn't been so much like creationist dictation you know so that's that's that's the best I can do I mean there's something here that can't be explained but at the same time what I'm saying to you is that it's a perfectly normal rational processing if I can do it anybody got one right over here hello I mean I've been teaching a high school English for 17 years and I know in a former life you're a teacher as well what book or books would you say our necessity for a high school student to read well the one that I think that's it's really great that it turns kids on to the possibilities of fiction and how exciting it can be as Lord of the Flies by William Golding I love that one and I think it's really important to get kids stuff there's a fine line between what's good and what's so hard that the kids give up I was given Moby Dick to read as a junior in high school and I never got through it I fudged that baby so bad totally did totally did but we also had of mice and men by John Steinbeck I couldn't get enough I just love that there are other books like that that work you can give I think you give any high school sophomore or junior Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and there's no problem with that and I love that book I thought it was terrific I was one of the discipline of the film version of it but you can also give them to kill a mockingbird which is real literature and at the same time you get like totally into that book a question like that what would you give him to read man it's like somebody pulls the fire alarm and everybody jams the revolving door at the same time there's a lot of different stuff but the one that immediately jumps to mind is Lord of the Flies another great one is George Orwell's Animal Farm 1984 is good too but it's too long I think the high school kids and it's also wicked bomber [Music] somebody else sorry what was it okay [Music] what is your favorite book that you've written and why you know it's funny you should say that because I was just thinking the other day isn't it weird your own farts smell better than anybody else's this there's something about any creative process it's excretory so that what I'm trying to say in my own delicate way I'm famous for this sort of Jane Austen form of expression is that I like do I call my books Jesus I'm having an encounter session with myself you know well there are ones that I don't think work very well then I love the wall I guess I love them all in some ways it's easier to love the ones I don't think works so well I was taking a rose matter which is never a book that's it's really worked entirely for me one in that genre that does that I do like this Dolores Claiborne and I like different seasons a lot number of different ones that I like if I had to pick a favorite it would be me see story because it's about the inside of a marriage I don't think it's readers favorites but it's mine somebody else yes one all the way to your left here hi um for as much as you didn't like the movie version of The Shining I've heard that you really like the television miniseries which I have not seen yet I've read your book is that because you had a creative process in it or yeah sure it's that same thing like your farts know better than anybody else I wrote that and I even had a little part as the bandleader in that so and I got to wear a nice little white cab calloway suit but I had a chance to tell the story my way there it isn't my favorite thing of mine that I've written the favorite of mine is a TV miniseries called storm of the century which I really like I thought that really that really worked and but there are a lot of the different movies don't think I'm a snob Cujo I love that Shawshank Redemption is you know we sit down and in Sarasota which well we shot my wife and I had a modus vivendi she does a big shot once a week and if we need anything through the week I'm the one that's supposed to fight traffic can't go to Publix together so I was there on Wednesday and I came around the house where's that pile and there's this sort of Prachi old lady she took a look at me and she looked back and then she looked at me again and she said I know you you're Steven came you write those horrible books those horrible horrible books well she said that's all right for some people but I don't like that kind of thing I like uplifting things like that Shawshank Redemption and wait for it wait for it I said I wrote that and she said no you didn't so you get outside your comfort zone a little bit it's just so I just said I'm not Stephen King on Francis Ford Coppola no but I'm like unlike a lot of the different movies a frank did the Green Mile and that was a good one it really is like crazy it's like I should play I was wondering who your favorite author is well a lot of people I like I mentioned Stewart oh man he's terrific I love him and he came to the book fair and and he owes me money so I got it he doesn't owe me money but we've been to a lot of baseball games together and I bred I think all of his books and I love Stewart you should love Stewart his books make wonderful gifts well I'm like I'm liking a lot of different people I just discovered you know if I look like I'm walking a little funny I had one of those diseases you laugh that when you're 20 I I had sciatica and it really hurt I couldn't sleep nights and I discovered these wonderful books it's called A Song of Ice and Fire George I knew a little bit about it because I knew that there had been a miniseries on HBO and I thought to myself well I'll read one of these then I'll watch the TV show and I won't have to read any more because as far as I'm concerned if you've got your Lord of the Rings and you got your water shut down you got what you need in the land of fantasy not much David Brooks Terry Brooks I mean and it was Robert Jordan Brooks I'm like what the is going on here too crazy but I just you know Martin is a natural born storyteller and I spent a lot of nights up with those those books and I just absolutely loved them but my all-time favorite man it's impossible to tell there's guys like Johnny McDonald Devin hunter ed McBaine I like those Lee Child books a lot I mean there's just all kinds of people they come out and I grab them we got time for one or two more I have one back to your right okay I used your book in my classes the one you write it on writing and a be on writing again yeah and it was absolutely the best I've ever read from an author that's printed was that your idea or did you know it wasn't my idea it wasn't my idea I've got a couple of women and scriveners that run my life Susan my dolly and nan Graham and generally they take what I write and they published the books they've done a terrific job since bag of balls back in the middle I just love him to death and they came to me with this idea saying would you want to write a book about writing and at first I said no because I say no to all new ideas first because I'm from New England and that's just the way we are but the more I thought about it the more I thought that the best non-fiction book on writing that I had ever read was the elements of style by Strunk and white and I thought to myself well maybe I could write a a little tiny book like this and first start off with how I grew up and when I started to write and then talk about just some some rules some simple rules about adverbs and adjectives and dialogue and dialogue attribution things that I used to talk about when I was teaching high school English so I started to write the book and in the middle of it I was taking a walk one day and a guy hit me with his van kind of busted me up and slowed down the production on that book a little bit but one of the best things was that about I was in the hospital after that for two or three weeks and then I got out and was in a lot of pain and misery and I had a lot of various appliances on my body and my wife who was usually the one who tells me slow down slow down stop you don't have to work all the time when I got back she had set me up with a little writing room in the back hall she was the one who understood that even though I couldn't get upstairs I couldn't get to the bathroom without help then I had an escape hatch from what was his fairly miserable time in my life and that was writing and that's how I finished that book was it in the back hall of a house in Bangor Maine and the temperature was about a hundred and eighty degrees and that was the one time I got away I mean to me that's what this is about if you read to escape I think a lot of us write for the same reason somebody else anything I'll get a question we'll get a microphone up there that'll be our last oh yeah she yeah we're gonna win enough get astride every year hi mr. Canyon from the honor to ask this question I'm right here on your right there was a very dark story that you wrote in skeleton crew called Survivor type and I've always liked it and I read a quote online and I won't ask it was if it was true and if it was if you could elaborate on it but the quote was that you said it was the one time you went too far with the story I've never gone too far now the one time the one time that I thought I had gone too far was I wrote a book called Pet Sematary and I thought this is the most awful thing nobody will want to read this book about this little kid coming back and chow it up on everybody and it was so close to reality the poll the town let alone was a real town it was orange and I was teaching creative writing there at the University of Maine I was on a busy road we really did have a Gary Lewis old neighbor next door and my little boy who's now writer in his own right Owen it was very young and he ran for the road I ran after him the only difference between the book of real life is I caught my son it wasn't Pet Sematary I'll back that house and I did a stupid thing stupid stupid thing in the local paper by telling people where it was the next thing you knew all the markers were gone people took them for souvenirs but it was really there and her cat was buried there so there's a lot of truth in that but it was so awful and so dark with no ray of light at the end that I put it in a drawer and something happened there was a contractual dispute with an earlier publishing where there really had to be a book published for a lot of different reasons and that was what I had and people loved it so you just never know but survivor type is a story about a doctor who's really heroin into the country and his boat sinks like that Italian cruise ship only he's the one survivor and he lands on a rock with absolutely nothing to eat and because he's a surgeon and because he has to heroin he eats himself a little bit at a time I can remember at the time when I wrote that story there was actually an old retired physician living next door torso to us and I asked him how much of a person could that person eat and still will and it gave me this long considering stare and said that would depend on how much of the survivor attorney representing the balcony I first wanted to say that our book club is here from Atlanta and last month we read 11/22/63 which we all thoroughly enjoyed and found to be one of the most pleasurable books we've read in a long time and at the end of the book you mentioned in the notes that you had a different ending in mind for the book but that your son actually suggested the one that you used and we were a little curious about what the original ending was supposed to be well that's my son Joe Hill Joe Hill King he's a novel called heart shaped box and he does a comic series called lock and key and he's terrific writer and I can say that because he gets the reviews as well as fathers and he read the manuscript and he just absolutely loved it and at that time the book ended with an epilogue that had Jake reading the newspaper I want to spoil this for anybody who hasn't read it yet so I'm not gonna do that but he read a newspaper story about somebody that he cared for a great deal that he left behind in Texas and Joe got call me on the phone he said dad I said no no it doesn't suck he said yes it does he ought to go and meet this person so I said you know the books done and it sounds like he's kind of like get your head out of your ass and do your job so he basically said you know if something could happen down there and so I thought up this thing where they're having a centennial and a citizen of the century awarded it worked really well and I'm really glad that he did he did that now we're going to do one more and then you know when you're trying to live your life well that's a good one to end on because I've never heard it put that way before and tonight when I try to go to sleep I'll be thinking where are they you know I've had an idea I tried to write this a couple of times you write it I'm gonna give this to you you guys were this guy breaks his leg or something you know you're like he's he's house bound you see what I'm saying without much in the way of entertainment maybe his wife left him I don't know maybe he's got a dog I can sort of smell old TV dinners in this house you know it kind of was always crap on the counters because nobody really likes this guy the one thing that he has he's a big baseball fan you know what I mean he's there every night he's got that major league extra innings on like cave over satellite whatever and he's watching these games and you know here's what's interesting to me they're showing the guy who's bad right and you're looking at the guy who's batting but they're all these people behind the guy who's bad they're the people in the audience and I started to watch them thought to myself what if this guy started to see all these people in his life that are not dead in the stands and all these different based on James would to be a story in that I can't figure it out you figure it out but that's sort of like your question but it really doesn't address your question but I wanted to tell that story so it was a shitty transition but here's the thing I think the characters come out I'm working on something and they're very vivid I'm working on something now a novel and when it's time to stop they go away except they come back at odd moments and I'm glad to have them come back at that time because sometimes they're doing interesting things and I know where to go next because I'm a very seat-of-the-pants writer I'm the kind of guy John Irving God loved it he says the first thing he does when he starts a new book as he writes the last sentence I'm thinking really how boring is that you know how it comes out I like to leave things plastic and and see how they turn out on their own listen you guys are great you guys are [Music] thank you imagine what it's like to work with this man even we want to thank you so much to cover you see there [Applause]

Channel: Blue Voyage Productions, LLC

Views: 64,192

Rating: 4.8987341 out of 5

Keywords: Savannah, Festival, Book, Special, Stephen king, savannah book festival, Performance (Project), Live, New book, Reading, Books, Library, best stephen king, stephen king latest

Id: UUfeHTK1Nw8

Length: 67min 58sec (4078 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/randyboozer]

... there weren't doors on the stalls? What the fuck?