Here's what I know about Stephen King.
He lives in Maine.
He's a diehard Red Sox fan.
He was struck by a car and nearly killed in 1999, and a little over a year later, the guy who hit him (who also had the same middle name as King) was discovered dead in his trailer. On King's birthday. That kind of stuff doesn't happen to you and me.
He once played in a rock 'n' roll band with other writers, including Scott Turow, Ridley Pearson, Dave Barry, Greg Iles and others (all great writers if not musicians), called the Rock-Bottom Remainders. Funny Dave Barry line (which is redundant): "We play music as well as Metallica writes novels."
Another thing I know about King is that the guy can flat-out write.
As someone who considers himself somewhat of a horror aficionado, it all begins and ends with King. Oh, I know he wasn't the first. Matheson, Lovecraft -- heck, you can go all the way back to Stoker, Poe and Shelley. I've read them all.
But for my generation, King is, well, king.
The author will be the inaugural speaker in the aptly titled Speaker Series at my alma mater, UMass Lowell, on Friday night. (Sorry, it's sold out.)
King was the first horror writer I ever read. Salem's Lot was my introduction as a lad of about 14 -- and what an introduction it was. Since that introduction to the King, I have read 43 of his novels (counting those written as Richard Bachman and with fellow horror writer Peter Straub) and seven of his story collections.
Most are very good (I'm thinking It, Misery, The Shining, Pet Sematary, Dolores Claiborne, The Green Mile, Bag of Bones, Duma Key and the Dark Tower books, in addition to the aforementioned Salem's Lot).
Some are not as good (I'm talking about you, Insomnia, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Tommyknockers, Dreamcatcher and Cell).
But even when the stories were less than satisfying in the end, they are never boring.
And that's because, as mentioned before, the guy can write. He is pigeonholed and perhaps marginalized as a writer of horror, and while he does write horror (It will scare you, I don't care who you are), he has written in other genres, including mystery, fantasy, suspense and nonfiction.
Not that he cares if you want to call him a horror writer. In an interview that appeared in last Thursday's "What Do U Wanna Do" section of The Sun, King characteristically said, "I don't call myself a horror writer, but as long as the checks don't bounce, they can call me whatever they want."
King's books inspired me to seek out other horror writers, of whom I have read many. Of them all, only one approaches King's talent to spin a tale and, most times, make you not want it to end, and that's Robert McCammon, who also became pigeonholed as a horror writer when, in reality, his books are often much more.
Hey, Stephen King doesn't need me to defend him to those who pooh-pooh his accomplishments as those of a mere horror writer. The guy could write a book about a huge glass dome falling onto a Maine town and trapping its inhabitants inside, and it would sell a billion copies. Oh, wait, he already did that. Under the Dome. Another good one.
Find out Friday if he can speak as well as he writes.