The Stephen King Renaissance

Author Stephen King’s career has been marked by enormous output paired with repeated tragedy and recovery. His latest comeback is, to this longtime reader, the most surprising of all.

King has experienced a remarkable burst of creative energy in the last few years. His productivity alone is surprising -- six novels in three years – but what’s even more impressive is the quality of these recent books. I found them to be superior to anything he has produced for decades.

The King renaissance began in 2013 with Doctor Sleep, winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. In this sequel to one of his best-known works, we’re reintroduced to Danny Torrance, who escaped the haunted Overlook Hotel as a child in The Shining (1977). Danny is a troubled adult now, drifting through life in a series of menial jobs but with precognitive powers still intact. 

Also in 2013, King followed this strong performance with Joyland, the story of a college student who spends his summer vacation working in an amusement park. Naturally, the funhouse is rumored to be haunted. “Who dares to enter the Funhouse of Fear?” asks the teaser on the cover. King has said he built the entire 282-page story from a single image he carried in his mind for 20 years: that of a boy in a wheelchair flying a kite on a beach.

The amusement park theme reappears in King’s 2014 novel Revival. It’s the tale of a church pastor who conducts esoteric experiments on unsuspecting subjects culled from carnivals and tent revivals, becoming an amusement park attraction and evangelist along the way. A supernatural element appears at the very end, but even without this nod to his fan base King’s strong storytelling carries book tale along in fine fashion.

That same year, King published Mr. Mercedes (2014) a straightforward crime novel about a retired detective on the trail of a serial killer. Something of a bold departure for King, with no horror elements at all, this novel won the Edgar Allen Poe award from the Mystery Writers of America. The central character and his crew reappear in Finders Keepers and End of Watch, both published in 2016.

Six novels in three years. It’s a marvel that King can keep up this level of quantity and quality at this stage of his career. This is a writer who overcame multiple substance abuse problems in the 1980s, survived a near-fatal car accident in 1999, suffered chronic pain and Oxycontin addiction thereafter, and announced his retirement from writing in 2002. Now approaching age 70, the man is back with a vengeance.  

Listen to Stephen King’s 2013 interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross here.