Photo: BERTRAND LANGLOIS
Stephen King published his first novel Carrie 50 years ago and it became an instant horror classic.
Since then, the prolific King has written 64 novels and 200 short stories, many of which have been made into hit movies.
Now two critics and horror fans have taken it upon themselves to read every single Stephen King book in order of publication and talk about them on a podcast called Just King Things hosted by Cameron Kunzelman and Michael Lutz.
The pair have so far got through half the King canon, they told RNZ's Afternoons.
"It's gonna take forever, I think we're a little bit beyond halfway right now."
The book that launched King, Carrie has all the King trademarks, Kunzelman said.
"You read Carrie, you can see this fascinating little pot-boiler of a horror novel in there, but also kind of a lot of John Dos Passos and other early 20th century American writers.
"King's a really interesting combination of the horror imaginary, and then also a lot of experimentation and a lot of borrowing from storied and loved American literature."
As an observer of the human condition, King is a master, Kunzelman said.
"I think a lot of horror writers are very good at giving you the scary thing, going for the gross out, that's his language for when you really go for it. I think a lot of people are very good at that. But not everyone is as good at triggering those kinds of emotions of empathy and sympathy."
Early reviews of his work were not particularly favourable, and King initially regarded critical and academic dissections of his work with suspicion, Lutz said.
"But starting in the early '90s, King's attitude toward academic perspectives and more literary perspectives on writing in general, they loosen up a bit.
"At the end of the 90s, he writes Bag of Bones, which is a book that is constantly having the characters discuss Thomas Hardy and Somerset Maughan and just talking about the literary books that they themselves are reading and then sort of reflecting that back through like Daphne du Maurier and classic gothics."
During the 1980s, King struggled with drug and alcohol addictions and is on record saying he does not remember much of his output from this period. But Lutz said there are underrated gems form this era.
"When I first read the Tommyknockers in my teens, I just found the whole thing rather miserable.
"Because it is a novel about drug addiction and in large part, using psychic dominance by alien forces as a metaphor for that. And it just was not the adventure that I had been hoping to read that summer."
Now it is a favourite, he said.
"Precisely because I now have this context to see how that novel is really the culmination of so many things he had been thinking about from the start and told in a way that is very personal to him and about things that are very personal to him.
"And ultimately, it's a very strange book, I'm not going to say that it does not have its idiosyncrasies. And at the same time, as the as the culmination of kind of this one dude's artistic vision and his preoccupations, it's an incredible book that only Stephen King could have written."
Some quickfire King reckons
Best Stephen King villain?
Cameron Kunzelman
"Oh, Randall Flagg. Come on, he's the guy, he shows up in the stand and lots of other Stephen King works he gets shared over and over again. Although maybe Cujo as a close second."
Michael Lutz
"I will always go to bat for the Overlook Hotel. I love that big, haunted hotel, but also, I'm just ultimately a sucker for a haunted house or even a little bit later, a haunted car. I really liked the Buick 8."
Best Stephen King movie
Cameron Kunzelman
"Graveyard Shift is the least regarded of all of them, I would say it's at the bottom 10 for most people. We did it for the show and I was astonished by it. I think it is the greatest film made about the American working class - full stop."
Most overlooked Stephen King book?
Michael Lutz
"Cujo is one of the most surprisingly solid novels that Stephen King has ever, ever written. And I say solid in the sense of every single piece you want from a Stephen King novel is there and it is polished to a sheen, all the pieces locked together.
"And it is ultimately a really dark and heart-rending novel about middle class desolation, and just tragedy and heartbreak and the things that can happen in the span of one really bad day."
