***** Q and A With King ***** ---------►Something to Ponder.........Would you like Stephen King to write a sequel to Christine? How would you have her come back? (R. Lofficier, interviewer, 1984) Q: Do you have any more macabre memories of the fifties? A: No, I dont. All the macabre things that I can remember, and that come out of reality, rather than from something that I made up, started with the Kennedy assasination in 1963. I dont have any bad memories of the fifties. Everything was asleep. There was stuff going on, there was uneasiness about the bomb, but, on the whole, Id have to say that people in the fifties were pretty loose. Q: Do the horror aspects of your writing come from having read E.C. comics and that type of thing? A: Oh, God knows! Some of it has to, sure, because those comics really grossed me out when I was a kid, and they also fired my imagination. They were two different ways in which those things have become really important to me in what I do. The gross-out business isnt nearly as important to me as just sort of flipping people out, so that they say, Jeez! This cars running by itself! Christine is an outrageous kind of riff on one cord. I mean, this cars out there running by itself and getting younger! Its actually going back in time. An audience can relate to a certain degree to something like a haunted house, The Amityville Horror, traditional horrors like ghosts, vampires and things like that. You give them a car, or any inanimate object, and youre suggesting something that is either along the pulpy lines of the E.C. comics, or else obviously symbolic. The car is a symbol for the technological age, or for the end of innocence, when it plays such a part in adolescence and growing up. When you do that, youre really starting to take a risk. But, thats also where the excitement is. If you can make somebody go along with that concept, thats really wonderful. Q: Do you consciously try to put something a little more subliminal into your work? A: No, never subliminal. I think it should be out there where anybody can see it. I dont believe in the idea that symbolism, or theme should be coded so that only college graduates can read it. The only thing that that type of self-conscious literature is good for is for people to dissect it and use it to get graduate degrees or write doctoral thesis. Theme and symbol are a very strong and valid part of literature, and theres no reason not to put them right out front. Q: Do you plan on doing a Christine II, with the car coming back across country? A: God, I dont want to go back through that again! Once was enough! All I can think of would be if the parts are recycled, youd end up with this sort of homicidal Cuisinart, or something like that! That would be kind of nice!
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 16:58:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015