Profile of Stephen King More movies have been made from Stephen King's novels than from any other writer's. So far, twenty of his thirty best-sellers have hit the screen. His editor says that King's success is partially because he can see the relationship between books and screen. King grew up a poor child of a single mother. His father left the family when King was two, and his mother took whatever jobs she could find. She brought home secondhand paperbacks, which she called "cheap, sweet vacations." Mother and son read murder mysteries. When he was seven, King sneaked into drive-ins to watch horror films. When he was eleven, he and his brother started a local newspaper, which included film reviews and science-fiction stories. By age fourteen, King had submitted several stories to professional publications. After a number of rejection letters, King published a story in Startling Mystery Stories. He was twenty years old and a student at the University of Maine, majoring in literature and taking courses in creative writing and rural sociology. King married his college sweetheart, Tabitha, and had two small children. By the time he was twenty-five, he had typed out five novels and received as many rejections. His few published short stories couldn't pay even the telephone bill. However, in 1973, while King was working at a laundry, his wife fished one of his novels out of the trash. Her intuition was good. Carrie brought a near-record sum of $400,000 in paperback sales. Three years later, the novel was made into a movie. King followed Carrie with Salem's Lot and The Shining, both of which also made it to the big screen. King inspires fierce devotion among his fans, who have a network of Internet sites, including many listed at The Unofficial Web Site for Stephen King. Here is an example of the effort fans put into their such sites. King says that the difference between a talented writer and a successful one is a lot of hard work. He should know. By 1990, he had written twenty-five books; by 1996, he had published forty. King's success is based on talent but also on sheer output: He churns out 2,000 words a day, often before lunch. He writes enough to produce seven novels a year. He composes novellas, comic books, short stories, novels, and literary dissertations. Not all of them are tales of horror. Some of them are published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, which he uses to prove that he can produce good literary work without the Stephen King label. King has so many titles, that one fan site has grown into a virtual bookstore where King's work makes up the bulk of the products. Four short profiles   Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896--1940) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is best known for his book, The Great Gatsby (1925), which captured the spirit of the 1920's Jazz Age. His other novels include The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) and Tender is the Night (1938). He married Zelda Sayre (1900--1947) in 1920 and moved to the French Riviera four years later. For a time, the public's attention was captured with reports of her subsequent mental breakdown and his alcoholism. The University of South Carolina has a web site devoted to Fitzgerald which includes essays, his writing and some clips of Fitzgerald speaking. For more information, see pages 79, 98 of The Media In Your Life.   Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1961) was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and became a reporter for the Kansas City Star. He was decorated for heroism, was wounded and worked in the ambulance unit during World War I. His first noted work was a collection of short stories, In Our Time (1925), and his first highly successful novel was The Sun Also Rises (1926). Other books include A Farewell to Arms (1929) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Visit a Hemmingway fan's web site for photographs and information about the novelist. For more information, see pages 79, 98 of The Media In Your Life.   Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811--1896) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in a strict household. She became a teacher and then married a theological professor in 1836. They lived in poverty until the immediate success of her first and scandalous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which was inspired by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law. She made several tours in Europe in the 1850s, forged literary friendships and continued to write. Other well-known novels include Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, The Minister's Wooing, and Old Town Folks. This site at the University of Virginia has links to Uncle Tom's Cabin and commentary on the novel. For more information, see pages 82-83 of The Media In Your Life.   Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803--1882) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, studied at Harvard and became a teacher. His controversial views led to his resignation as pastor of a Unitarian Church in Boston. He met Thomas Carlyle in Europe and corresponded with him for almost 40 years. Emerson was a philosophical transcendentalist, a rationalist in religion, and a believer of spiritual individualism. He wrote Nature (1836) and many poems and essays. Emerson continues to inspire passions, as can be seen by following some of the numerous links on this Emerson home page. For more information, see page 82 of The Media In Your Life. Return to top