GLS 592: Author Focus: Stephen King
Instructor: Mika Elovaara
“King isn't just a writer, he's a true teacher..””
-Tim Appelo
“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”
-Stephen King-
An exceptionally productive writer, often dubbed “The Master of Horror,” Stephen King is one of the best known authors worldwide; his books are bestsellers from his native Maine to Moscow, Manila, and Melbourne, and a significant number of his works have been made into successful, including the Academy Award© winning Misery and Stanley Kubrick‘s Shining, starring Jack Nicholson. Whether you look at the numbers his books sell around the world and the film adaptations they inspire or consider his regular columns in Entertainment Weekly and his role as the editor for The Best American Short Stories 2007, King’s status as an extremely popular and well-respected contemporary American author is unquestionable.
Starting with his first published novel, Carrie, and working through novels, novellas and short stories from different time periods in his career, we will study a variety of King’s works during the course, including some works which were first published under a pseudonym, Richard Bachman. Though a literature course by its course materials and our approach to most class readings, this course is, in fact, a combination of a course in writing and literature. In addition to using the more traditional approaches to analyze literature when we talk about King’s fiction, we will also study King’s own views on writing as discussed in his autobiographical 2000 publication, On Writing. As it is extremely rare for successful writers to publish work on their own practices and methods, it is a wonderful added element in a study of an author’s works to be able to get an insight to how he sees his own work as a process. According to The Washington Post, On Writing “combines autobiography and admonition, inspiration and instruction [and] is an enjoyable mix.” Consequently, reading his autobiographical “memoir of the craft” alongside studying King’s fiction should make our reading experiences with King more interesting and help us develop our own writing skills as well.
The class structure is based on in-class discussions of assigned readings and relevant in-class and homework writing assignments. Course requirements: a reading journal, a mid-term paper, a final paper.
Course reading list:
Bachman, Richard: The Long Walk
King, Stephen: Carrie
King, Stephen: Cell
King, Stephen: Different Seasons
King, Stephen: Everything’s Eventual
King, Stephen: Four Past Midnight
King, Stephen: On Writing
King, Stephen: Pet Sematary
King, Stephen: Quitters, Inc (audio book)
King, Stephen: The Colorado Kid
Last Update: September 24, 2008
