Like everyone, Stephen King is trapped. The author is in Florida, with his wife, Tabby, and his corgi, Molly, trying to stay sane while sheltering in place. Meanwhile, his life’s work seems to be coming to life around him.
People keep comparing the eeriness of the COVID-19 pandemic to the far deadlier one that swept the world in his novel The Stand. They draw parallels between Donald Trump and Greg Stillson, the egomaniacal, world-threatening politician from The Dead Zone. Even the recent rush on grocery stores has vague echoes of The Mist, where shoppers turned against each other while surrounded by unseen threats.
King doesn’t feel good about seeing the worst things he can imagine coming true. He’d rather remain in the realm of the impossible. “It’s like, okay, the worst thing that could happen, in terms of my career, is that somehow, in our society, we’ve cross-pollinated our Greg Stillson with The Stand,” the author told Vanity Fair.
Even he can’t help drawing comparisons. “I’m working on a book, so in the mornings I forget everything and I just do that. I wanted time to work on a book, I got plenty of time,” he said. “I feel like Jack Torrance, for God’s sakes.”
Unlike the father in The Shining, King hasn’t gone mad yet, but he knows that boredom can push anyone to the edge. That’s one reason he and Scribner decided to release his new book, the novella collection If It Bleeds, this month, a few weeks ahead of its planned May debut. But fair warning—King devises an entire new way of destroying the world in one of the stories. (Maybe we can look forward to that too.)
Read more HERE from Vanity Fair.