Stephen King is a creative and massively popular author of horror fiction with the ability to make his readers squirm. Rated one of the best writers since early 1970s due to his prolific work, which is immensely intriguing. Stephen King is acknowledged for producing a novel each year or more. Some of his best sellers comprise the “The Shinning” (1977), “Salem Lost” (1975), “Carrie” (1974), and “Dead Zone” (1979). Even though, Stephen King’s writing style is bizarre and bloodcurdling, his characters have become iconic, because he has acquired a technique that makes him masterful. Additionally he has written several books that have become number one sellers. His books have spawned a multimedia franchise laying a basis for TV shows, movies, and best-selling novels.
King has an infinite number of short stories, published novels and movies created from his originality. Additionally, he keeps the use of vibrant and vivid detail that is set in a pragmatic each day place (Bloom 54). King was born in Portland Maine in 1947 (Schweitzer 9). Commonly known as the master of horror, his books have been published in over 35 countries and translated into 33 different languages (Schweitzer 25). He adds a dazzling effect in his work more than the standard easy-to-read bestsellers thus making his books fly off the shelves.
I choose to nominate Stephen King, an established author as one of the Today’s Literacy Cannons for several reasons. Despite being one of today’s masterful writers and best-selling authors, he combines elements of the science fiction, paranormal, detective themes, and psychological thrillers into his stories, he has developed a skill that makes him masterful. Stephen King has a point about maintaining his audience in suspense. E...
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...er or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one’s own growing inner self. Reading deeply in the Canon will not make one a better or a worse person, a more useful or more harmful citizen. The mind’s dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. (Bloom)
“All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one’s own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s confrontation with one’s own mortality.”(Bloom)
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. New York: Riverhead Books, 1994.
Hoppenstand, Gary, Ray, Browne. The Gothic World of Stephen King. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987.
Joshi S.T. The Modern Weird Tale. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2001
Schweitzer, Darrell. Discovering Stephen King. Mercer Island: Starmont House, 1985:102-108. Print
http://www.stephenking.com/index.html
students. He continues to be one of the bestselling novelist and one of the most financially successful horror writers in history (Lusted 17).
that constant reading can improve writing ability, whether if it’s a fine literature or a poor literature.
Stephen King was born 9-21-47 in Portland, Maine. King has black hair that is thick, he has blue eyes and wears glasses. Stephen’s parents are Donald and Nellie Pillsbury King, and they split up when King was very young. King also has one brother who is older than him named David. During the time he was little, Stephen was into scary things from the start and he had always watch and listen to scary stories, which later inspire him to create his own. King then grew up and attended school at the University of Maine in Orono.
Writers have changed the lives of many people over the years. In times of situation that people do not want to be in, times of wars, poverty, near death experience causing one to be immobile, or even just to get out of this world the works they create gives people those opportunities to do so. Stephen King is a big contributor of his published works to people in every on every continent. He is a writer of both novels and short stories, a film director, actor and even screen writer of most of his novels that turn into movies, but is he mainly known because of his works in the genre of horror. Going from his first published novel, Carrie and one of his famous selling The Shining King have made history as the king of
Stephen King was born in Maine in 1947. His father abandoned him when he was 2 years old. His mother and brother was all he ever knew. Him and his brother were raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana where his father lived at the time. He was also raised in Connecticut too. His mother decided to move them back to Maine for their own good. There he got a job at Kitchens of Pineland. A kitchen of Pineland was by a mentally challenged hospital. He went to a Durham grammar school then attended Libson High School. In 1966, He graduated. At University of Maine of Orana, he was a sophomore that wrote for The Maine Campus, the school’s newspaper. He became a member of the Student Senate in Student politician. He also attended an Anti-war movement. In 1970, he graduated. His examination was a 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums. From his examinations, he got a diploma to be a full time teacher.
King, who has explored almost every terror-producing theme imaginable, from vampires, rabid dogs, deranged killers, pyromaniac ghosts, to telekinesis, biological warfare and even a malevolent automobile was known for his horror stories, and strange deaths.
In Stephen King Salem's lot, he brings a brilliantly written storm of force, King brings to life the creatures that have prowled the town of Jerusalem's lot for centuries throughout the local rumors. The book, Salem's Lot takes you through its twisted plot, with vivid characters, and the crazy turns it takes. Steven King has the power to make something so unrealistic very real, he is seen as a gothic literary writer because he expresses the key characteristics of gothic literature throughout most of his stories. King has the ability to bring the key characteristics of gothic literature into the story by adding the ideas of a legend, using a small town feel to add dramatics, and using supernatural beings.
Stephen King is known by many as a successful author, but every author is only as good as his or her works. King has produced various types of works such as short stories, novels, novellas, screenplays, and comics. His work has been the “most important bridge between the horror genre and literary respectability from the late 1960s and 1970s up to the present time” (Hoppenstand 3). Stephen Edwin King was born September 21, 1947 in Portland, Maine. He is the second son of Donald Edwin and Nellie Ruth King. When King was two years old, his father, a captain in the merchant marines, went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned. Nellie, King’s mother, raised King and his adopted older brother David. The family under the care of Nellie experienced many hardships and moved often as she looked for work. The family lived in Maine, Massachusetts, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. When King was six years old, the family finally settled in Stratford, Connecticut (Hoppenstand 8; Stephen King).
Ringe, Donald A. American Gothic: Imagination and Reason in Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Lexington KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1982.
For such a successful writer, Stephen King really had no secret to his writing style. King has credited free writing for his best ideas. He also has a very down to earth way of looking at his fame. Stephen King would read for four hours, and then he would write for four hours or until he reached 2,000 words. In a Time magazine interview, King called this his nine to five approach and that he, “worked until beer o’ clock.” When asked where his ideas came from, King would often reply, “I have the heart of a small boy. . . And I keep it in a jar on my desk.” Also, he does not have just one particular way of writing horror, and what often sets off the terror in his readers most was the vast amount of detail portrayed.
Stephen King is one of the most influential authors of today. His award-winning novels and short stories are known world-wide. His many awards and nominations have created a space for him in the literary world. King is a true “Horror King”, for his books, turned movies, have scared millions worldwide. Stephen King has helped bring America to prominence through his many books, essays, and short stories.
evidence of Stephen King being very interest in horror showed in his work in his early
King owes his success to his ability to take what he says are “real fears” (The Stephen King Story, 47) and turn them into a horror story. When he says “real fears” they are things we have all thought of such as a monster under the bed or even a child kidnapping and he is making them a reality in his story. King looks at “horror fiction...as a metaphor” (46) for everything that goes wrong in our lives. His mind and writing seems to dwell in the depths of the American people’s fears and nightmares and this is what causes his writing to reach so many people and cause the terror he writes about to be instilled in his reader.
Stephen king has been called the master of modern horror his novels have gone to be bestsellers and have been adapted to motion pictures such as the shinning, Carrie, it, Pet semetery, etc. He writes the most riveting stories. His concepts are deprived from observations that normal people wouldn’t think twice and even if we can it we usually can’t effectively apply it. In his memoir describing his childhood it was apparent that he was foreshadowing the future he would eventually have as one of the greatest horror novelist.
While this essay can in no way claim to contain a fully representative sampling of what various scholars have contributed relative to the ongoing debate over the literary canon, I will attempt to highlight three distinct positions which are all informed by John Guillory's critical contributions to the canonical debate. First, I will discuss the concept of ideology and canon formation as Guillory first articulated it in his 1983 essay, "The Ideology of Canon Formation: T. S. Eliot and Cleanth Brooks," and which he subsequently thoroughly revised and included in his 1993 book on canon formation, Cultural Capital: The Problem of literary Canon Formation This essay on the ways ideology and cultural politics complicates and informs canon formation, also discusses Guillory's theory concerning the death Joe Weixlmann who offers his own commentary concerning how ideology and politics of literary orthodoxy in favor of a more democratically situated heterodoxy, and how this concept of a heterodoxy might inform the university's literary curriculum. Next, Christopher Ricks' essay, 'What is at stake in the "battle of the books"?" will be analyzed to determine if his attack on Guillory's assertions relative to his critique of the current status of the canonical debate contributes in any meaningful way to opinions about whether or not the literary canon should be revised. Finally, the several critics who have now offered commentary on Guillory's latest theories on canon formation as articulated in Cultural Capital will be discussed relative to how influential they perceive Guillory's latest work to be as it pertains to the ongoing debate over the nature of the extant literary canon.