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It is no exaggeration to say that Stephen King is likely one of the most well-known writers working and publishing today. Few other contemporary writers (save possibly fellow speculating fiction master J.K. Rowling) have written books and created creatures and worlds that have captivated such a large worldwide audience. Words and phrases from his novels have seeped into the pop culture, inspiring film, television, and even graphic novel adaptations.
Since publishing his first novel, Carrie, in 1974 (though he had already been publishing short stories in magazines for many years), King has managed to hook millions of readers with his numerous bestsellers. He's won accolades not just for the horror novels which he is most often associated, but also for his short stories, nonfiction, suspense novels, and fantasy novels. His work has earned him such awards as the National Medal of Arts, the Bram Stoker Award, a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, among others. While most people can probably name a few books by Stephen King, here are some other interesting facts about the horror master.
A few years ago, writer and poet Donald Hall was awarded the National Medal of Arts for his lifetime of work. Aside from the respectful tribute, some in the media gawked at just how old the octogenarian writer looked. He came to the platform with bushy eyebrows, an unkempt beard, and stood in a few unflattering snapshots beside President Obama. He was subject to such ridicule as the nickname “yeti,” as well as a “photo caption contest” in the comments below. All this for a former poet laureate of the United States.
If you’ve heard of Ken Kesey but don’t know a lot about his life, chances are you’ve read his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). Just a few years ago, the novel celebrated its 50th anniversary, more than 10 years after its author passed away. As an article* in NPR explained of the book, it “would make its author a literary celebrity, inspire a movie that won the Best Picture Oscar, and help change the way we think about mental health institutions.” The novel depicted a group of patients in an Oregon mental health hospital. The narrative arose out of Kesey’s own experiences as a nurse’s aide in a hospital psychiatric ward in Northern California.
Yet there’s a lot more to know about Kesey than simply his role in creating one of the most widely read novels of the second half of the twentieth century. Since today is the anniversary of his birthday, we wanted to provide you with some more information about the famous novelist. Read on to discover five interesting facts about Ken Kesey.
In a Slate article in 2014*, Ruth Graham argued that adults who read young adult fiction should feel embarrassed. For her, YA meant simplistic story-telling, straightforward characters, and satisfying, unambiguous endings—all things that readers should, for her, outgrown before graduating to the moral, thematic, and structural ambiguity of adult literary fiction. Those who stick with YA ostensibly miss out on these things, as well as all the other benefits that adult literary fiction offers. These claims are not uncommon, and many readers who associate young adult fiction with the likes of Twilight (2005) are inclined toward a certain sort of knee-jerk agreement; but are they borne out by the history of YA literature?
Books inscribed by their authors are exciting additions to any collection. Yet signed books with movie tie-ins can be particularly interesting when they have connections to award-winning films. If you’re lucky, you might find a signed copy of a novel adapted for the cinema by the original author. And in some cases, you might even find a book that’s signed by one of the actors or actresses who brought characters from works of written fiction to the screen. For example, you might seek out a signed first edition of Charles Portis’s True Grit (1968), which has been adapted into two famous films starring John Wayne and Jeff Bridges, respectively. There are far too many novels with interesting film tie-ins for us to mention in just one article, but we’d like to highlight just a few for you to consider adding to your collection.
Along with the Caldecott, the Newbery Medal is the most prestigious children's book award in the United States. Created in 1921 and named after children's writer John Newbery, the award is given every year by the Association for Library Service for Children to a book that exemplifies excellence and is a worthwhile contribution to American children's literature. For some authors, the Newbery Medal is career changing, leading to countless interviews, inclusion in school curriculum and reading lists, and encouraging post-graduate study of the work at author. In 1970, the winner of this prestigious award was William H. Armstrong for his book Sounder.
Some historians consider the printing press the most important invention of the first millennium. Still, the march of technology has since made the innovative device obsolete. Spreading the written word is easier and cheaper than ever before. And it is for this natural and understandable reason we have grown distant from the remarkable labor and beauty involved in printing by hand.
What is the relationship between storytelling and clinical psychology? That’s a question the South African Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee recently attempted to explore through an extended conversation with British clinical psychologist Arabella Kurtz. According to an article in the New Republic*, Kurtz invited Coetzee to engage in this written dialogue despite Coetzee being “notoriously publicly averse.” Yet Coetzee did end up joining in correspondence with Kurtz for around five years, and those letters were published in a book entitled The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy. The correspondence began back in 2008, and it concluded only a few years ago. The text became available just last year through Viking, and we urge any readers interested in Coetzee to pick up a copy today.
There comes a point in every artistic endeavor when an artist grows tired of the very creation that once thrilled them, that took them from struggling nobody into the stratosphere of fame and fortune. For James Bond creator and author Ian Fleming, that moment of doubt, frustration, and uncertainty finally reared its ugly head with the fifth novel in the James Bond 007 series, From Russia with Love.
Published in April 1957, the novel—widely considered to be one of Fleming most interesting and captivating Bond novel—represents a moment in Fleming's career where he seriously considered giving up the Bond mantle. In writing to friend and fellow crime writer Raymond Chandler, Fleming lamented his perceived lack of originality and staleness with where the Bond series had gone and his desires to end the series with From Russia with Love in favor of moving on to other novels, stories, or projects.
