Charting Habitus: Stephen King, the Author-Protagonist and the
Field of Literary Production
Amy Joyce Palko
A thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of English Studies
University of Stirling
2009
ii
Abstract
While most research in King studies focuses on Stephen King?s contribution to the
horror genre, this thesis approaches King as a participant in American popular culture,
specifically exploring the role the author-protagonist plays in his writing about writing.
I have chosen Bourdieu?s theoretical construct of habitus through which to focus my
analysis into not only King?s naratives, but also into his non-fiction and paratextual
material: forewords, introductions, afterwords, interviews, reviews, articles, editorials
and unpublished archival documents. This has facilitated my investigation into the
literary field that King participates within, and represents in his fiction, in order to
provide insight into his perception of the high/low cultural divide, the autonomous and
heteronomous principles of production and the ways in which position-taking within
that field might be effected.  This approach has resulted in a study that combines the
methods of literary analysis and book history; it investigates both the literary construct
and the tangible page.
King?s part autobiography, part how-to guide, On Writing (2000), ilustrates the
rewards such an approach yields, by indicating four main ways in which his perception
of, and participation in, the literary field manifests: the art/money dialectic, the dangers
inherent in producing genre fiction, the representation of art produced according to the
heteronomous principle and the relationship between popular culture and the Academy.
The texts which form the focus of the case studies in this thesis, The Shining, Misery,
The Dark Half, Bag of Bones and Lisey?s Story demonstrate that there exists a
dramatisation of King?s habitus at the level of the narative which is centred on the
figure of the author-protagonist. I argue that the actions of the characters Jack
Torance, Paul Sheldon, Thad Beaumont, Mike Nonan and Scot Landon, and the
situations they find themselves in, offer an expression of King?s perception of the
literary field, an expression which benefits from being situated within the context of his
paratextually articulated pronouncements of authorship, publication and cultural
production.
iii
Contents Page
ABSTRACT...........................................................................II
CONTENTS PAGE......................................................................III
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................................................IV
DECLARATION........................................................................V
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS................................................................V
INTRODUCTION......................................................................1
Historical Contextualisation: Herman Melville..........................................12
Method and Structure...............................................................23
CHAPTER 1 ? ON WRITING...........................................................35
Concerning Capital................................................................38
Textual Entrapments...............................................................47
Commercial vs. Folk Cultural Production..............................................57
King and the Cultural Custodians.....................................................67
CHAPTER 2 ? THE SHINING..........................................................79
Controlled, Corrupted and Consumed.................................................83
Staging Literary Anxiety............................................................94
Po?te Maudit or Hired Scribe?......................................................105
CHAPTER 3 ? MISERY AND THE DARK HALF........................................117
A Miserable Entrapment...........................................................122
A Tale of Two Halves..............................................................130
Caught in the Carnivalesque........................................................139
CHAPTER 4 ? BAG OF BONES........................................................154
Writing for Mass Market? I Prefer Not................................................157
Folk Culture, the Carnivalesque and the Negation of Hierarchy...........................167
The Two Ages of Reproduction: Maternal and Mechanical................................178
CONCLUSION - LISEY?S AND OTHER STORIES.......................................193
King and the Incunks..............................................................196
Duma Key and the Artist-Protagonist.................................................209
Just After Sunset and The Best American Short Stories...................................216
WORKS CITED......................................................................224
iv
Acknowledgments
Throughout the years that it has taken to complete this project, there have been many
who have helped me along the way.  I would like to express my gratitude for the
support that they provided as this thesis could not have been written without them.
Firstly, I would like to thank the Carnegie Trust for funding my visit to conduct
research at the University of Maine. The research that I undertook during that trip
proved indispensable to the thesis as it evolved, and it could not have been achieved
without the generosity of this organisation. I would also like to extend my thanks to
Stephen King, for granting permission to access the entire archive held at the Fogler
Library, and the staff at that library whose help and patience were a breath of fresh air
during that hot and humid summer.
I wish to thank the University of Stirling?s Department of English Studies for funding
my attendance at various conferences over the years, allowing me the invaluable
opportunity to present and discuss my research.  I also want to thank the staff and
postgraduates for their support, advice and their willingness to lend an ear or helping
hand throughout my time at Stirling University.  Particular thanks go to Prof. Glennis
Byron, Dr. Elizabeth Andrews, Kerstin Pfeifer, Brian Rock and Elizabeth Fuler; my
experience at Stirling University would have been all the poorer without you.
However, this thesis would never have achieved altitude without the tireless support of
my supervisor Dr. Adrian Hunter.  He has kept me on track when I felt compelled to
follow a tangential path, pushed me to produce work I did not know I was capable of,
and chered me on to the finishing line. For the advice given, books lent and drafts
read: thank you.
I also want to extend my thanks to my parents for al their love, suport and
encouragement; they never once doubted that I could do this, and for their unwavering
faith in me, I will be forever grateful. Thanks also go to my grandparents for all their
help over the years. Their constant encouragement and generosity gave me the strength
to finish this project.
My children, Aurora, Sebastian and Alexander, also deserve thanks, as it is they who
have given me the motivation to pursue this path of enquiry.  I find their innate love of
learning deply inspiring, and I hope that my work inspires them to continue on their
path of life-long learning.  They make my world a brighter and happier place.
Finally, I wish to thank my husband, Ferenc Palko, who has made many sacrifices to
support me on my academic journey.  My appreciation for your unending support is
greater than my ability to articulate.  You have helped me endure hardship, bounce
back from disappointment and always strive for better, and for all that and more,
k?sz?n?m sz?pen, a f?rjemnek.
v
Declaration
I declare that this thesis is my own work and that all critical and other sources (literary
and electronic) have been specifically and properly acknowledged, as and when they
occur in the body of my text.
?????????????????????????? 30 January 2009
List of Abbreviations
BASS Best American Short Stories 2007
BB The Bachman Books
BoB Bag of Bones
DH The Dark Half
DK Duma Key
DM Danse Macabre
DS Different Seasons
GM The Green Mile
EE Everything?s Eventual
JAS Just After Sunset
LS Lisey?s Story
M Misery
ND Nightmares and Dreamscapes
OW On Writing
SC Skeleton Crew
SL ?Salem?s Lot
TG The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger
TS The Shining
TSt The Stand
1
Introduction
Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary
fiction (King, 2003).
In 2003 an event occurred which not only shocked the author at the centre of the
controversy, but also his fans, his publishers, his critics and his contemporaries:
Stephen King was awarded a National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution
to American Leters.
1
  The decision of the National Book Foundation
2
 elicited a
variety of responses.  For instance, Jeff Zaleski, forecasts editor for Publishers
Wekly, stated that the decision had ?divided the publishing community like no
previous board action? (Zaleski, 2003), but went on to state his conviction ?that our
literary heritage has benefited markedly from the work of this master storyteller?
(Zaleski, 2003).  Harold Blom, on the other hand, damned the decision as ?another
low in the shocking proces of dumbing down our cultural life? (Bloom, 2003) and
condemned the publishing industry for stooping ?terribly low to bestow on King a
lifetime award that has previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Philip Roth
and to playwright Arthur Miler? (Blom, 2003).  King, in his aceptance spech,
made it clear that he was aware there were those ?who have spoken out passionately
about me receiving this medal? (King, 2003) and that there were some ?who think
it?s an extraordinarily bad idea? (King, 2003)
3
 and some ?who think it?s an
                                                  
1
 In an interview with Esther B. Fein for the New York Times (1992), King states that ?No one ever
gave any of my books to Martin Amis to review? And you can?t entirely ignore that attitude.  In a
way, sales are transient.  Opinions last? (Fein, 1992), leading Fein to speculate that King ?knows, for
example, that he will probably never be sitting on a stage, waiting to hear himself named the winner
of a National Book Award? (Fein, 1992).
2
 It should be recognised that by choosing to award King this honour, the board had increased ?the
buzz about the NBA ceremonies, something the publishing industry has been desperately trying to do
for years? (Milliot, 2003).
3
 In an interview in 2006 for The Independent (2006), King singled out Harold Bloom for his
condemning of King?s recognition, stating that:
2
extraordinarily good idea? (King, 2003).  But after acknowledging the controversy,
King moved to take the role of peacemaker; he stated: ?I want to say it doesn?t
matter in a sense which side you were on.  The people who speak out, speak out
because they are pasionate about the book, about the word, about the page and, in
that sense, we?re all brothers and sisters? (King, 2003).
This conciliatory note became the dominant theme of King?s spech as he
championed the cause of bridge building ?between the popular and the literary?
(King, 2003); and it is this statement that provides the impetus for what folows in
this thesis, as I propose a new way in which to view King?s work and his strategies
for position-taking within the field of literary production.  Building on the ideas of
Piere Bourdieu, my study has at its centre an exploration of the writer?s habitus,
and considers the way in which King?s habitus is dramatised in his fiction, in
particular, through the recurrent figure of the author-as-protagonist.  I do not
suggest that this is achieved consciously by King, as the habitus is ?collectively
orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor?
(Bourdieu, 1980, p. 53); it generates and organizes ?practices and representations
that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presuposing a conscious
aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain
them? (Bourdieu, 1980, p. 53).  As Randall Johnson, the editor of Pierre Bourdieu?s
The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (1993), explains,
habitus is that which ?inclines agents to act and react in specific situations in a
manner that is not always calculated and that is not simply a question of conscious
                                                                                                                                             
I?m just a creature of my culture, and there are people who?ve damned me for that.  Harold
Bloom is one of them.  He?s described me as desperately inadequate, but then there are
people who see the culture itself as desperately inadequate.  I think if you love Stephen
King then you?ll love the culture and if you hate Stephen King you probably hate the culture
(Thorne, 2006).
3
obedience to rules. Rather, it is a set of dispositions which generates practices and
perceptions? (Johnson, 1993, p.5).  Habitus is both ?the historical and cultural
production of individual practices? since contexts, laws, rules and ideologies all
speak through individuals? and ?the individual production of practices? since the
individual always acts from self-interest? (Webb, Schirato and Danaher, 2002, p.
14).  For my purposes, habitus is a way of understanding the construction of
knowledge and the adoption of ?attitudes, values or ways of behaving? (Webb,
Schirato and Danaher, 2002, p. 38), ?constituted in moments of practice? (Web,
Schirato and Danaher, 2002, p. 38).  It explains why King perceives ?the
posibilities from which? he choses, as ?necesities, comon sense, natural or
inevitable? and why other ?posibilities are ruled out precisely because they are
unthinkable? (Webb, Schirato and Danaher, 2002, pp. 38-39).  By employing this
theoretical construct in my analysis of King?s work, I move away from past research
that has sought to position King as a horror writer, in order to approach his fiction
as textual products of popular culture.
In asuming the role of bringing together the two ?sides? of the literary divide, King
confirms his belief in the divide while simultaneously recognising his position
within the hierarchical organization of the field of literary production. In
Bourdieu?s terms, he recognizes that the literary ?field is at all times the site of a
struggle between the two principles of hierarchization: the heteronomous
principle? and the autonomous principle? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 40).  Authors who
produce according to the ?heteronomous? principle, Bourdieu argues, ?dominate the
field economically and politically? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 40), while those who
produce according to the ?autonomous? principle ?identify with degree of
4
independence from the economy, seeing temporal failure as a sign of election and
suces a sign of compromise? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 40).  I would sugest that the
autonomous/heteronomous dialectic has been a feature of King?s work and intrinsic
to his understanding of his own career from the outset.
4
  As I demonstrate through
the chronological ordering of my analysis, King has adopted many strategies for
position-taking within the field of literary production both within and outside the
text, from experiments with genre and authorial pseudonymy, to forays into e-
publishing, serial novels and limited editions. When directly questioned by
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt for the Paris Review (2006), if these phenomena
amounted to ?any kind of larger strategy at play? (Lehman-Haupt, 2006, p. 92),
King responded: ?No, I?m just curious to se what hapens, like a kid with a
chemistry set: What if I pour these two together?it?s a way of keeping things fresh?
(Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p. 92).
That denial notwithstanding, it is possible to discern within King?s work and career
a concerted and consistent interest in the question of his own status and position
within the ?field? as it is constituted culturally, economically, and institutionally.
Decisions that King has made throughout his career, from the artistic to the
commercial, from the choice of narrational point-of-view to the choice of
dustjacket,
5
 can be read, I would suggest, as strategies which reflect the author?s
own understanding of the field of literary production, his position within it, and the
                                                  
4
 It has also featured in his interviews, reviews and articles and it is present in those documents
chosen for inclusion in the Stephen King archive at Fogler Library as demonstrated by the presence
of a 1978 transcript of a review written for the Maine Times in which reviewer David Chute suggests
?What makes? authors seem respectable, while others are consigned to some sub-literary oblivion,
may only be a certain elevated tone, a dryness or elegance, which suggest an affinity with high art?
(Chute, 1978, p. 1).
5
 In an extensive discussion with Bhob Stewart (1980), King revealed his thoughts about the
dustjackets of Carrie (1974), The Shining, ?Salem?s Lot, The Stand, Night Shift (1978) and The Dead
Zone (1979), largely admitting his dissatisfaction with Doubleday publications.
5
ways in which such position-takings are effected.  In Bourdieu?s terms, these
decisions, and the textual products which evolve from them, are emanations of
King?s habitus: that is, the set of dispositions, which generates practices and
perceptions? (Johnson, 1993, p.5) of which, the author is only partly conscious, and
that determines his textual practice within the field of literary production.  Unlike
Bourdieu, however, I am also interested in the extent to which that habitus is
discernible at the level of narrative, and specifically in the figure of the author-
protagonist
6
 who apears so frequently as the central character or narating
intelligence of King?s fiction.
The figure of the author-protagonist first materializes in King?s second novel
?Salem?s Lot (1975), and reappears, in various guises, in The Shining (1977), The
Stand (1978), The Tommyknockers (1987), Misery (1987), Desperation (1996), The
Regulators (1996), The Dark Half (1989), It (1986), Bag of Bones (1999), and
Lisey?s Story (2006) as well as in his novellas and short stories, including ?Secret
Window, Secret Garden? (1990), ?The Body? (1982), ?Umney?s Last Case? (1993)
and ?Word Processor of the Gods? (1983).  My argument is that through these
author-protagonists King stages an analysis (and at times a self-justifying critique)
of the field of literary production in which he himself participates.  In the chapters
that folow, I sugest that through characters such as Jack Torrance, Paul Sheldon
and Gordon Lachance,
7
 King dramatises the work of writing and textual production
as a means of explicating his own position in the field.  The kinds of questions we
find King repeatedly asking in his editorials, afterwords, forewords, introductions
and aceptance speches, as wel as his two extended non-fiction texts, Danse
                                                  
6
 By using the term ?author-protagonist,? I am referring to the central character who is either in the
process of becoming an author or who has already established a career as a published writer.
7
 The author-protagonists in The Shining, Misery and ?The Body?.
6
Macabre (1981) and On Writing (2001), are recycled in fictional form through the
figure of the author-protagonist - questions such as what it means to write popular,
bestselling fiction?  How is the authenticity of a cultural product retained when
mass-produced?  Is it possible to write genre fiction and be considered a serious
author?  Can a text survive commodification and gain cultural legitimisation? How
should a novelist best engage with the Academy in order to attain their work?s
sacralisation? Should one forsake the quest for one kind of capital for another, or
could one demonstrate the enviable capability of attracting both?  By reflecting on
these questions, and on the answers to them that King?s fiction provides, it becomes
possible to release King from the confines of the horror genre and regard him
instead as a writer of popular fiction who is deeply preoccupied with exploring and
questioning the cultural forces and processes that give rise to such designations as
?popular? or ?literary? writing in the first place.
In displacing King from the potentially limiting context of the horror genre,
8
 my
thesis builds on the recent work by Linda Badley, Andrew Schop, and Kathlen
Lant, among others, but goes much further than these critics in exploring the
cultural-commercial domain in which King?s work occurs and to which it so
frequently makes reference.  Badley, for example, in Writing Horror and the Body:
The Fiction of Stephen King, Clive Barker and Anne Rice (1996) argues that King
?literalizes the notion of the text as a body and the body as text? (Badley, 1996, p.
                                                  
8
 In his article, ?Horror Fiction: In Search of a Definition,? published in A Companion to the Gothic
(2000), Clive Bloom proposes that the ?horror tale proper refuses rational explanation, appealing to a
level of visceral response beyond conscious interpretation? Horror is the literature of disjunction
(Bloom, 2001, p. 165).  King himself has stated that the horror genre, ?beneath its fangs and fright
wig, is really as conservative as an Illinois Republican in a three-piece pinstriped suit; that its main
purpose is to reaffirm the virtues of the norm by showing us what awful things happen to people who
venture into taboo lands? (DM, pp. 442-443).  In this way, the horror genre conforms to the principle
that all popular generic fictions ?are produced according to the criteria of profitability and
marketability, and provide what audiences are familiar with, although not in ways which are
completely predictable? (Strinati, 1995, p. 77).
7
12), and yet despite this acknowledgement of the importance of the material text in
the work of King, she does not engage in any analysis of the proces of textual
production.  Similarly Andrew Schopp, in his article, ?Writing (with) the Body:
Stephen King?s Misery? (1994), also chooses to concentrate his analysis on horror
and authorial control being exacted upon the body, by arguing that horror is evoked
in those scenes in which ?Anie uses Paul?s body as a means of apropriating
authority; scenes in which Paul?s body becomes the text that reflects Annie?s lack of
aces to male power? (Schop, 1994, p. 41).  His aproach engages with the isue
of an author/reader relationship; however, his analysis focuses on the gendering of
this relationship as it is articulated in Misery, an approach which is further explored
in the edited collection, Imagining the Worst: Stephen King and the Representation
of Women (1998), by Kathleen M. Lant and Theresa Thompson.
In Lant?s own contribution to the collection, ?The Rape of Constant Reader:
Stephen King?s Construction of the Female Reader and Violation of the Female
Body in Misery?, she sugests that Misery ?is probably King?s most thorough and
complex exploration of the powers of his own mind, of the powers of the artist, of
the presures of the audience, and of the workings of creativity? (Lant, 1998, p.
162).  While Lant recognises Paul Sheldon?s situation as an expression of anxiety
pertaining to his status as a popular author of genre fiction, and that this anxiety can
similarly be found in King?s paratextual enunciations regarding his own popularity,
she, too, takes a necessarily limited approach which does not seek to view Misery as
a literary product, or to position the publication of Misery in the context of King?s
oeuvre.  One book length study that does provide contextual analysis of the sort I
am pursuing is Jonathan P. Davis? Stephen King?s America (1994), which takes into
8
account ?recurrent American themes? (Davis, 1994, p. 117) present in King?s
fiction. He claims that his ?research began? with the intent of proving Stephen
King?s literary greatnes? but that he then ?decided to centre [his] thesis on [King?s]
American themes? (Davis, 1994, p. 117).  In this way his work agres with King?s
statement that ?my novels taken together, form an allegory for a nation that feels it?s
in a crunch and things are out of control? (Peck, 1990, p. 132), by exploring themes
such as capitalism, childhood and technology throughout King?s work.  However,
surprisingly, there is no reference to the theme of literary production, which, I
argue, is prominent in many of King?s texts.
9
There are other studies, too, which position King?s fiction in a variety of different
contexts with most chosing to situate King?s work within a specificaly gothic
context. This is evident in works such as Joseph Grixti?s chapter ?Language, Modes
of Seeing, and the Magic ? The Covenant of Stephen King? in Terrors of
Uncertainty: the Cultural Contexts of Horror Fiction (1989) in which he recognizes
that King ?writes in a griping and calculatedly popular maner? (Grixti, 1989, p.
46) before aserting the ?mixture of ?camp? taste and concern for the genre
maintaining or achieving some sort of intellectual or ?cultured? respectability? that
King displays, ?is symptomatic of the ambiguous standing of contemporary horror
fiction in general and of King?s approach and attitudes in particular? (Grixti, 1989,
p. 47).  While Grixti makes a point of illuminating this ?mixture? his attention
remains on King?s contribution to the horror genre.  Another example is present in
David Punter?s article ?Problems of Recollection and Construction: Stephen King?
                                                  
9
 Davis does, however, include four interviews that he conducted with Tony Magistrale, Carroll
Terrell, Burton Hatlen and Gary Hoppenstand, academics who ?have either had personal contact with
King or have performed extensive scholarship on his fiction? (Davis, 1994, p. 117), which prove
useful to my own research.
9
in Modern Gothic: A Reader (1996) in which he concentrates his analysis on King?s
?hidden master narrative? (Punter, 1996, p. 121).  He argues that this ?master
narrative? ?hinges psychologically on a swing between two different world-views?
(Punter, 1996, p. 121).  However, while Punter attributes these two ?world views? to
?the child and the adult? (Punter, 1996, p. 121), I contend that the master narrative
present in King?s work stems from his preoccupation with the high/low dialectic.
James Egan?s ?Sacral Parody in the Fiction of Stephen King? (1989) similarly
adopts a decidedly gothic perspective stressing that ?Stephen King?s habits as a
Gothicist have been much discused, but his consistent development of Gothicism?s
parodic tendencies and the direction of his parody deserve more attention? (Egan,
1989, pp. 125-126).
Heidi Strengell, however, does explore King?s participation in the literary
production of other genres in Disecting Stephen King: From the Gothic to Literary
Naturalism (2005), but her emphasis is still on King as a ?genre author?.  Darryl
Jones? ?Stephen King: Writer?s Block? in Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction
and Film (2002) is perhaps the most relevant of these all studies as he directly
addresses King?s early author-protagonists while still remaining firmly within the
horror genre, despite engaging with the importance of popular cultural production to
the work of King as a whole.  Jones states that time ?and time again, King?s novels
foreground his truest subject: himself, or more specificaly his caling and carer as
a writer? (Jones, 2002, p. 139); however, he moves from this consideration of
King?s writing about writing to focus on King?s writing as ?a subject for horror?
(Jones 2002, p. 141).  Even Michael R. Colings? Scaring Us To Death: The Impact
of Stephen King on Popular Culture (1997), while detailing King?s impressive sales
10
figures from 1976 through to 1996, does not define King?s texts as manifestations
?of the field as a whole?, and instead maintains a focus on King?s effect upon
popular culture.  My own research establishes a focus on authorial habitus and the
structure of the field of literary production as esential to an understanding of
King?s work, his decisions pertaining to publication, and his paratextual
enunciations in which he frequently returns to issues of authorship.
That being so, it is from the study of ?book history,? rather than criticism of the
horror genre, that my thesis takes its theoretical and conceptual bearings.  In his
1986 lecture to bibliographers on ?The Book As An Expressive Form? (1986), D.F.
McKenzie confesses that he does not believe in the existence of a border ?between
bibliography and textual criticism on the one hand and literary criticism and literary
history on the other? (McKenzie, 2002, p. 34).  Rather, he asserts, ?we move from
the most minute feature of the material form of the book to questions of authorial,
literary and social context? (McKenzie, 2002, p. 34) and that these ?all bear in turn
on the ways in which texts are then re-read, re-edited, re-designed, re-printed, and
re-published? (McKenzie, 2002, p. 34).  In such a spirit does one read William
Charvat?s work on ninetenth-century American authors in The Profesion of
Authorship in America, 1800-1870 (1968), a key moment in the development of
?book history? in the American context and the branch of literary studies within
which I situate my own research.  To use Leah Price?s terminology, Charvat
addresses texts as ?a tangible object? and ?a verbal structure? (Price, 2002) in order
to analyse the form and the content of the narrative alongside its production,
publication, distribution, circulation and reception. Charvat claims that it is
necessary to take into acount al the agents involved in a text?s publication when
11
conducting analysis, as ?most scholars assume that literary history can be adequately
represented by a line ? with the writer at one end and the reader at the other?
(Charvat, 1968, p. 284).  Instead, Charvat proposes that ?instead of being merely
linear, the pattern is triangular.  Opposite both the writer and the reader stands the
whole complex organism of the book and magazine trade? (Charvat, 1968, p. 284).
He claims that, within ?this triangle, cultural force or influence runs in both
directions.  The book trade is acted upon by both writer and reader, and in receiving
their influence the book trade interprets it and therefore transmutes it (Charvat,
1968, p. 284), with the result that both ?writer and reader dictate to, and are dictated
to by, the book trade? (Charvat, 1968, p. 284).
More recently, Lawrence Rainey has, in Institutions of Modernism: Literary Elites
and Public Culture (1998), broadened the focus of ?book history? to engage with
what one might call the ideology of the commercial, arguing as he does that
?modernism, among other things, is a strategy whereby the work of art invites and
solicits its commodification? (Rainey, 1998, p. 3).  In positing that the modernist
text ?becomes a comodity of a special sort, one that is temporarily exempted from
the exigencies of immediate consumption prevalent within the larger cultural
economy? and as such becomes ?integrated into a different economic circuit of
patronage, colecting, speculation, and investment ? activities that precisely in this
period begin to encroach upon and merge into one another in unexpected ways
(Rainey, 1998, p. 3), Rainey is able to engage with both the textual product and the
mode of literary production in the modernist period, an aproach I propose to
emulate here.  Leah Price and Pamela Thurschwell, likewise, have become
proponents for this method of literary analysis which embraces not only the words
12
upon the page, but the page itself.  In the introduction to their co-edited volume,
Literary Secretaries/Secretarial Culture (2005), they state that the essays of which
their text is composed ?ask not just how the systems of producing, storing,
retrieving, and disseminating information developed over the past two centuries
have changed ideas about authorial agency, attribution, and originality? but also
?how that interplay? has in turn changed understandings of the relation betwen
verbal texts and material objects? (Price and Thurschwel, 2005, p. 2).  In all these
critics, there is a conscious attempt to merge the methods of ?book history? with
literary criticism and history.  The significance and value of such an approach to the
study of King will, I hope, become obvious as my discussion unfolds, but as an
initial exemplification it is useful to consider how the methodology I am proposing
can help elucidate King?s work in the context of a specificaly American cultural
history.
Historical Contextualisation: Herman Melville
Herman Melville and Stephen King may seem an unlikely pairing, and yet the two
authors were linked by King in his foreword to the ilustrated edition of ?Salem?s
Lot (2005):
Did I really think I could combine Dracula and Tales from the Crypt and
come out with Moby-Dick? I did. I realy did. I even planed a section at
the front called ?Extracta,? where I would include notes, clipings, and
epigrams about vampires, as Melvile does about whales at the front of his
book.  Was I daunted by the fact that Moby-Dick only sold about twelve
copies in Melville?s lifetime?  Not I; one of my ideas was that a novelist
takes the long view, the lofty view, and that does not include the price of
eggs.  (My wife would not have agreed, and I doubt Mrs. Melville would
have, either) (?Salem?s Lot: Illustrated Edition, p. x).
This view of Melville as one who was distanced from the economic realities of
literary production corresponds to his position as a canonical author: his
13
disinterestedness is portrayed as key to his success in producing literature worthy of
gaining symbolic capital.  This view of Melville is familiar to those living in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, due to the recuperation of Melville?s reputation
in the early twentieth century, which Paul Lauter addresses in his article ?Melville
Climbs the Canon? (1994).  Lauter looks specifically at the process through which
Melville enters into the American canon, and asks ?what the critics who were
reviving Melville in that period had at stake in constructing his image as they did:
into what contest of cultural authority was Melville being conscripted?? (Lauter,
1994, p. 1).  He argues that the canonical vision of Melville ?was constructed in the
1920s as part of an ideological conflict which linked advocates of modernism and of
traditional high cultural values? (Lauter, 1994, p. 6), and that this construction was
posited ?against a social and cultural ?other,? generally, if ambiguously, portrayed
as feminine, genteel, exotic, dark, foreign and numerous? (Lauter, 1994, p. 6).
Lawrence Levine in Highbrow - Lowbrow: Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in the
History of America (1990)
10
 conects this hierarchical agenda to the period of mas
immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century, during which between ?1901
and 1920 over 14.5 million immigrants? (Lauter, 1994, p. 4) arrived in America.
According to Levine:
these worlds of strangers did not remain contained; they spilled over into the
public spaces that characterized nineteenth-century America and that
included theatres, music halls, opera houses, museums, parks, fairs, and the
rich public cultural life that took place daily on the streets of American
cities. This is precisely where the threat lay and the response of the elites
was a tripartite one: to retreat into their own private spaces whenever
possible; to transform public spaces by rules, systems of taste, and canons of
behaviour of their own choosing; and, finally, to convert the strangers so that
their modes of behaviour and cultural predilections emulated those of the
elites (Levine, 1988, p. 177).
                                                  
10
 Lawrence Levine?s Highbrow - Lowbrow: Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in the History of
America (1988) offers further reading on the bifurcation of popular and serious culture throughout
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in American society.
14
Melville?s adoption by the modernists, through which he could be ?deployed as a
lone and powerful artistic beacon against the dangers presented by the mases?
(Lauter, 1994, p. 6), resulted in a celebration of his role ?not as a transparently
aproachable chronicler of sea tales, but as a densely allusive composer whose most
precious treasures would be yielded up, as with other modernist texts, only to
learned initiates? (Lauter, 1994, p. 18).  This view of Melville?s work chimes with
Jose Ortega y Gaset?s proposal, set out in The Dehumanisation of Art (1925) and
summarised by John Carey in Intelectuals and the Mases: Pride and Prejudice
Among the Literary Intelligensia, 1880-1939 (2002), that ?it is the essential function
of modern art to divide the public into two classes ? those who can understand it
and those who cannot.  Modern art is not so much unpopular, he argues, as anti-
popular? (Carey, 2002, p. 17).  In this sense, ?Melvile?s dificulties appear not as
problems to be overcome but as virtues which place him in the camp of modernist
poets? (Lauter, 1994, p. 15).
By engaging with this canonical figure, King demonstrates the struggle between
?artistic generations? (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 122) that he dramatises in The Shining
through Jack Torance?s play The Little School.
1
  In ?Postmodernism and
Consumer Society? (1988), Frederic Jameson points out that ?the classics of high
modernism are now part of the so-caled canon and are taught in schols and
universities? (Jameson, 1998, p. 143), and argues that ?high modernism and its
dominant aesthetics [have] become established in the academy and are henceforth
felt to be academic by a whole new generation? (Jameson, 1998, p. 143).  King, as
                                                  
1
 The importance of Jack?s play will be analysed further in the section Staging Literary Anxiety in
the case study on The Shining.
15
one of the ?new generation?, efectively denies Melvile?s ?unapproachability.? This
denial is perceptible in his attempt to bridge the divide between Moby Dick, ?clasic
of high modernism,? and his own ?Salem?s Lot, ?popular best-seller?, in which he
claims:
My own belief about fiction, long and deply-held, is that story must be
paramount over all other considerations in fiction; that story defines fiction,
and that all other considerations ? theme, mod, tone, symbol, style, even
characterization ? are expendable.  There are critics who take the strongest
posible exception to this view of fiction, and I realy believe that they are
the critics who would feel vastly more comfortable if Moby Dick were a
doctoral thesis on cetology rather than an acount of what happened on the
Pequod?s final voyage.  A doctoral thesis is what a million student papers
have reduced this tale to, but the story still remains ? ?This is what happened
to Ishmael? (DM, p. 346).
In reclaiming the importance of story, over and above ?theme, mood, tone, symbol,
style, even characterization?, King endeavours to reposition Melville by
emphasising his popular appeal, and discounting his reputation as it has become
enshrined within the process of academic sacralization.
12
However, this tension betwen popular apeal and sacralization is far closer to the
reality of Melville?s participation in the literary field than the modernist
appropriation of Melvile with which King engages. While Melvile, and the
canonical authors he is taught alongside, now represent the institution with which
King maintains an agonistic relationship, their position as producers of high culture
was not always so assured, as Melville?s own participation in the nineteenth-century
field of literary production in America confirms.  Although the literary field has
                                                  
12
 Sacralization is an important term derived from Lawrence Levine?s Highbrow Lowbrow: The
Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.  The process of sacralization refers to the results of a
move away from shared culture to one in which ?audiences were to approach the matters and?
works? of serious cultural producers, such as classical orchestras, ?with proper respect and proper
seriousness, for aesthetic and spiritual elevation rather than mere entertainment was the goal?
(Levine, 1990, p. 146).
16
changed dramatically from Melvile?s time to King?s, Melvile was, in fact, plagued
with many of the same insecurities pertaining to his work as King.  He was writing
during a period in which authorship was only beginning to be professionalized in
America. William Charvat, in his posthumously published colection of papers
relating to the economic realities of producing text in the nineteenth century, The
Profession of Authorship in America, 1800-1870, explains the specificity of the
American context through a comparison of the relationships betwen authors and
publishers in both Britain and America. He claims that ?the major cause of the
disparity between the fortunes of British and American authors at the time was the
contrasting maturity of the British system? (Charvat, 1968, p. 40).  This meant that
by maintaining ?retail prices high through collusion? (Charvat, 1968, p. 40),
enjoying a ?predictable market for every type of book? (Charvat, 1968, p. 40),
practicing ?good publicity methods? (Charvat, 1968, p. 40) and benefiting from ?all
the advantages of a geographically smal and homogenous market? (Charvat, 1968,
p. 40), British publishers were able to control competition, thus providing their
authors with a financial security unavailable to their American counterparts.
Charvat goes on:
In America, by contrast, no publisher could reach directly all markets in the
country; few firms had sufficient capital to take the whole risk on their titles;
and money and credit were so underdeveloped that the mere proces of
paying and geting paid was dificult. The result was a system of
distribution so complicated that the publishers were almost as confused as
the historian who tries to read their surviving records and correspondence
(Charvat, 1968, p. 40).
The relative infancy of the American publishing industry, the lack of an established
monetary system and the difficulties related to the logistics of distribution all
combined to create an exceptionaly dificult economic climate for authorship.
This, Charvat explains, had the effect of successful authors using ?publishers only as
17
agents and direct[ing] the busines of manufacture and distribution themselves?
(Charvat, 1968, p. 48), and that, until ?the 1850?s those of our writers who had the
capital took over many of the functions of the publisher in order to protect their
profits? (Charvat, 1968, p. 48).  These economic difficulties were undeniably an
intrinsic component in the production of many of the texts which came to form an
American national literary identity.
To return to Moby Dick, many critics have argued for the text to be read with an
awareness of Melville?s own economic struggles, Charvat among them:
Moby Dick, Herman Melville?s one unquestionably great full-length book,
has never been properly understod as the work of a writer who was in a
state of creative tension with a reading public whose limitations he had at
last defined. Many of its devices, and to some extent its form and its
greatness, can be explained in terms of that tension ? a tension which was a
crucial factor in the creation of Poe?s major tales, Hawthorne?s novels,
Emerson?s lectures, Hucklebery Fin, and The Turn of the Screw.  All were
products of a balance of the author?s wish to express himself and yet be
bought and read and taken seriously (Charvat, 1968, pp. 240-241).
Melvile, in his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne?s Twice Told Tales (1837),
articulates this ?creative tension?, through his claim that ?great geniuses are part of
the times; they themselves are the times; and possess a corespondent colouring?
(Melville, 1987, p. 246) and by reminding readers that ?in his own lifetime,
Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, but only Master William Shakespeare of the
shrewd, thriving business firm of Condell, Shakespeare & Co., proprietors of the
Globe Theatre in London? (Melville, 1987, p. 246).  Melville recognized that all
authors now considered ?great geniuses? once operated within specific fields of
literary production in which there prevailed always the necessity of accruing both
economic and symbolic capital.  This creative tension is also present in Melville?s
fiction where he dramatises the figure of  ?the writer as a kind of alienated worker,
18
turning out texts from which his individuality has been erased? (Gilmore, 1985, p.
52).  This is perhaps most evident in his short story ?Bartleby, the Scrivener? (1853):
a text which I adres in my case study on Bag of Bones (1999).  It is the figure of
the alienated worker, also present in Moby Dick, who facilitates an articulation of
?Melvile?s own disafection from the text as comodity, an object produced for
sale on the market? (Gilmore, 1985, p. 130).  Despite this affinity with the alienated
worker, Melville readily embraced contemporary popular culture: his
?compositional practices reveal[ing] an author indebted to antebellum trends? (Post-
Lauria, 1996, p. xv) through the incorporation of ?topical forms, themes, and styles?
(Post-Lauria, 1996, p. xv).  In this way, Melville, ?attempted both to profit from and
to serve as [prophet] of the literary word? (Post-Lauria, 1995, p. xi).
This is not to say, however, that Melvile was indifferent to the mechanisms by
which his work might acrue symbolic capital, as his participation in Evert A.
Duyckinck?s Young America movement
13
 suggests.  In fact, it is this desire to
create literature worthy of accruing symbolic capital through inclusion in an
American literary nationalism, that problematizes Melville?s writing for a popular
audience.  The need to establish an American literary tradition in opposition to
Europe?s was famously articulated by Emerson:
Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with
foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow
the Past and the Distant? And why ned we copy the Doric or the Gothic
model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expresion
are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope
and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the
soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the
                                                  
13
 For further information, the history of the Young America movement is explored in great depth in
Perry Miller?s The Raven and the Whale: Poe, Melville and the New York Literary Scene (1956),
originally published as The Raven and the Whale: The War of Words and Wits in the Era of Poe and
Melville.
19
government, he wil create a house in which all these wil find themselves
fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also (Emerson, 2001, p. 134).
Emerson?s call for the American artist to produce a literature, which breaks free
from the imported aesthetics of old Europe, by writing that which is specifically
American in both its form and subject matter, is comparable to Melville?s outburst
against ?literary flunkeyism? in his article ?Hawthorne and His Mosses? (1850):
no American writer should write like an Englishman, or a Frenchman; let
him write like a man, for then he will be sure to write like an American.  Let
us away with this leaven of literary flunkeyism towards England. If either
must play the flunky in this thing, let England do it, not us (Melvile, 1987,
p. 248).
This expression of nationalist opposition to the established European literary canon
found its focus in the figure of E.A. Duyckinck,
14
 co-founder, along with Cornelius
Matthews,
15
 of the Young America movement, which Melville supported.
His support did not preclude his endeavours to gain popular success through a
?democratic openes to wild forces within his contemporary popular culture?
(Reynolds, 1988, p. 276).  However, as David Reynolds points out, Melville?s
?openness to sensational popular culture was not shared by his fellows in the Young
America literary movement? (Reynolds, 1988, p. 276), leading Reynolds to surmise
that ?Melville?s literary friends became progressively more elitist in their literary
aims, while Melvile was virtualy alone in his openes to irational forces within
American popular culture? (Reynolds, 1988, p. 277).  Melville was required to write
texts which negotiated a path between the financial demands of his family, on the
                                                  
14
 Perry Miller describes Duyckinck thus:
Evert Augustus Duyckinck, as publisher?s reader and as editor, did more than any man in
his time to get authors published and books reviewed; he was midwife to much of the best
writing and more of the competent, and he helped the cause of literature by giving out of his
no more than adequate income, considerable sums to struggling artist (Miller, 1997, p. 71).
15
 Cornelius Matthews (1817-1889) was a novelist, poet and playwright, whose novel Behemoth: A
Legend of the Mound-Builders (1839) is said to be another of Melville?s influences in the writing of
Moby Dick.
20
one hand,
16
 and the literary nationalist demands of his peers on the other.  As he
famously wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne, ?Dollars damn me?What I feel most
moved to write, that is banned, - it will not pay.  Yet, altogether, write the other way
I cannot.  So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches? (Melville,
1993, p. 191).  While the emphasis apears to rest upon Melvile?s reference to his
books as ?botches?, William Charvat points out that the ?important word here is not
botches ? his books may or may not be that ? but hash, which asserts that he tried to
write both ways at once? (Charvat, 1968, p. 266).  It is this sort of ?hash? that King
hoped to achieve through the writing of ?Salem?s Lot.  The creation of a narrative
which draws upon popular cultural references and canonical texts was a clear
attempt to write for money and cultural kudos, in much the same way as Melville
strugled to apease the twin drives of the heteronomous and autonomous
principles.  Both authors are clearly responding to economic struggles: the desire to
write professionally and the need to compete in order to function within capitalist
society. However, they are also engaging in differing agonistic strugles, as they
both attempt to produce literature capable of accruing symbolic capital.  Melville, in
his eforts to break away from European literary tradition, and King, in his attempt
to gain legitimacy as a serious author, are both subject to the anxiety of influence.
In Melville?s case, he chose to articulate this agonistic struggle to produce ?an
identifiable national literature to rival that of the ?old world?? (Sturgess, 2004, p.
141), through chalenging the prevalence of Shakespeare within antebelum
                                                  
16
 Melville?s financial situation is explored in detail in William Charvat?s The Profession of
Authorship in America, 1800-1870, in the chapter, ?Melville?s Income?, pp. 190-203, first published
in 1943 in the journal American Literature.
21
American culture.
17
  He decries those ?who, to teach al noble-souled aspirants that
there is no hope for them, pronounce Shakespeare absolutely unaproachable?
(Melville, 1987, p. 245).  In fact, he states:
You must believe in Shakespeare?s unapproachability, or quit the country.
But what sort of a belief is this for an American, a man who is bound to
carry republican progressiveness into Literature, as well as into Life?
Believe me, my friends, that men not very much inferior to Shakespeare, are
this day being born on the banks of the Ohio.  And the day will come, when
you shall say who reads a book by an Englishman that is modern?  The great
mistake seems to be that even those Americans who look forward to the
coming of a great literary genius among us, they somehow fancy he will
come in the costume of Queen Elizabeth?s day, - be a writer of dramas
founded upon old English history, or the tales of Boccaccio (Melville, 1987,
pp. 245-246).
Rather than cleave to this principle of ?Shakespeare?s unapproachability?, Melville
actively appropriates elements of Shakespeare?s work following his study of the
plays while completing his manuscript of Moby Dick (1851).  Evidence of this
appropriation can be found in Melville?s ?personal copy of Shakespeare [in which]
it is stil posible to read the numerous marginalia he made, including notes about
characters to be developed in Moby Dick? (Sturgess, 2004, p. 159), and in the
narrative of Moby Dick itself, replete with its ?multilayered dramatic interludes and
Shakespearean soliloquies, as well as the metaphysical speculations with which the
text is larded? (Giles, 1998, p. 232).
Melvile?s appropriation of Shakespeare, which simultaneously and somewhat
paradoxically strives to cultivate public support for American authorship, provided
him with a way of developing a strategy through which to acrue economic and
symbolic capital.  Unfortunately for Melville, Moby Dick, upon publication, was not
                                                  
17
 For more on Shakespeare?s prevalence in American antebellum culture, see Lawrence Levine?s
Highbrow-Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America, Michael D. Bristol?s
Shakespeare's America, America's Shakespeare (1990) and Frances Teague?s Shakespeare and the
American Popular Stage (2006).
22
a successful book and it failed to garner either forms of capital.  The reviews were
bad, and previous suporters of Melvile ?turned against [him] or radically qualified
their praise? (Charvat, 1968, p. 242).  The southern states? magazine trade had
grown increasingly partisan and consequently condemned the book.  What is more,
as Charvat argues, by ?1851 women had become the chief consumers of fiction in
America, and it may well be that their mouths may have settled the fate of Moby
Dick? (Charvat, 1968, p. 242) due to its emphasis on masculine pursuits.  In fact,
Charvat goes so far as to say that he believes this to be the reason for Melville?s
?conspicuously increased attention to the female world in his next book, Piere, and
in his magazine stories of what has been called the ?feminine fifties?? (Charvat,
1968, pp. 243).  However, this atentivenes to the market does not corespond to
the canonical figure with whom King is engaged in an agonistic struggle.  King?s
denial of Melvile?s unaproachability, demonstrated in Danse Macabre as he allies
his literary production with Melville?s to underscore Melville?s populism and in
?Salem?s Lot, in an effort to advance his fiction?s literariness, illustrates his
perception of the literary field, his own position within that field as compared to
those authors who form a part of the American literary canon, and his belief in the
way in which position-takings can be effected.  King?s direct invocation of
Melville?s literary reputation reflects his appreciation of the literary hierarchies
which structure, and which are structured by, the literary field.  It is this
apreciation, that stems from ?a set of dispositions which generates practices and
perceptions? (Johnson, 1993, p. 5), which becomes dramatised in King?s fiction, and
it is this process of fictionalising his own understanding of the literary field that
forms the focus of my research.
23
Method and Structure
?It would be fair enough to ask, I suppose, if Paul Sheldon in Misery is me.
Certainly parts of him are? but I think you will find that, if you continue to write
fiction, every character you create is partly you? (OW, p. 225).
In this thesis, my first chapter focuses on Stephen King?s habitus and the way in
which he has participated within the field of textual production to date; in
subsequent chapters, I focus on five novels, The Shining, Misery, The Dark Half,
Bag of Bones and Lisey?s Story, which all have literary production as one of their
central themes.
18
  All of these case studies revolve around the figure of the author-
protagonist.  Stephen King has not created a series of literary equivalents to himself;
to make a case for this would, I believe, be fundamentally flawed. In this thesis, I
explore the extent to which King?s habitus, as delineated in the first chapter,
underpins the function of his author-protagonists, in order to examine precisely the
relation betwen habitus, and the fictional representations of authorship and the
production, circulation and reception of texts. I show that King?s anxiety about the
divide between the popular and the literary is expressed through the figure of the
author-protagonist. As Michel Foucault states in his esay ?What is an Author??
(1969), ?the author function is? characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation,
and functioning of certain discourses within a society? (Foucault, 1991, p. 108), and
it is this representation of the author function, through the figure of the author-
protagonist, that will provide this argument?s perspective.
                                                  
18
 King lamented the perception of critics towards his returning to subjects already explored in his
previous texts stating that:
If you?re taken seriously as somebody who?s practicing literature as art, you?re allowed to
return to what you?ve done before: you?re amplifying previous themes.  But if you write
popular literature and you repeat a theme, the idea is that your head is so empty it?s
produced an echo (Peck, 1990, p. 135).
24
Foucault argues that an author?s name ?performs a certain role with regard to
narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function? in that it can ?group together
a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to
others? (Foucault, 1991, p. 107).  Rather than the author?s name signifying the
presence of authority in the text, that presence which determines the text, its
reception and its interpretation, the author?s name functions in a more practical
sense in that it acts as a unifying factor.  It provides the umbrella under which a
selection of texts can be placed and become differentiated from others.  As Foucault
confirms,
the fact that several texts have been placed under the same name indicates
that there has ben established among them a relationship of homogeneity,
filiation, authentication of some texts by the use of others, reciprocal
explication, or concomitant utilization (Foucault, 1991, p. 107).
It is this fact which, I would like to suggest, is key to understanding the ways in
which the author?s name, and by extension, the author-protagonist?s name,
functions with respect to their role in literary production.  One last point before I
continue on to define the shape my argument wil take: the author?s name does not
only function so as to demarcate a group of texts as a work through its function as a
categorising agent, but it also serves to ?characterize a certain mode of being of
discourse? (Foucault, 1991, p. 107).  Acording to Foucault, this discourse ?is not
ordinary everyday speech that merely comes and goes, not something that is
immediately consumable.  On the contrary, it is speech that must be received in a
certain mode and that, in a given culture, must receive a certain status? (Foucault,
1991, p. 107).  The author?s name plays a crucial role in their discourse?s
legitimisation and its longevity, and yet it is simultaneously controlled by that
name?s cultural significance. The atribution of an author?s name to a text, afects
the way in which that text circulates within culture, and this phenomenon becomes
25
more pronounced as the output of an author increases.
19
  King has often spoken of
being ?typed?, as I explore in depth in the first chapter, and so it is clear that he has
an understanding of the way his fiction either sufers or benefits from the afiliation
with his name. I propose that, rather than atempting to position Paul Sheldon, or
any of the other author-protagonists that I address in the following pages, as a
fictional substitute for Stephen King himself, the author-protagonists allow King to
question the ways in which an author?s name characterizes his texts? ?mode of
being? (Foucault, 1991, p. 107).  The author-protagonists are necesarily rooted in
King?s habitus, and therefore their narratives dramatise the systems of textual
production and cultural clasification as King perceives them, and it is this which
allows us to approach the correspondence between the author and the author-
protagonist.
However, other than to discern the existence of this correspondence, how can this
delineation of the author-protagonist?s function allow a greater understanding of the
individual texts themselves, and ultimately, the work of Stephen King?  I propose
that the plots in which these author-protagonists are embroiled, function to
undermine the high/low divide which the development of King?s habitus has sought
to embed in his understanding of the literary field; they question the validity of the
divide, and therefore subvert the aceptance of its existence. The naratives
destabilise the regular structure of traditional literary hierarchies resulting in an
                                                  
19
 An example of this in relation to King is his practice of writing blurbs.  Stephanie Leonard, writing
for The Castle Rock Newsletter (1986), points out that publishers ?feel that a well-known author?s
?kiss? or stamp of approval, especially an author from the same genre, can sell the books of a lesser-
known writer? (Leonard, 1986, p. 2).  She quotes Stuart Applebaum of Bantam Books claiming that
King was one ?of the great blurb-meisters? (Leonard, 1982, p.2) due to his prolific blurbing.  By
attaching King?s name to texts authored by other ?lesser-known? writers, publishers are recognising
the way in which this particular author?s name can positively affect the sales of whichever texts it
becomes connected with.
26
altering of perspective concerning one?s own literary production.  In the texts which
form the focus for the four case studies, the author-protagonist enters a carnivalized
space in which they experience degradation, ambivalence and the grotesque which
all conspire to invert the hierarchical norms which King?s habitus aserts. Mikhail
Bakhtin declares that carnival time necessitated the ?suspension of all hierarchical
precedence? (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 10).  This temporary effacement of all hierarchical
structure is the condition into which the author-protagonist is propelled, and the
ways in which they negotiate their role, and the role of their work, is redefined
throughout the duration of the text.  However, it would be wrong to assume that this
redefinition is anything other than temporary and superficial.  As I shall show, as
the plot draws to its conclusion and the author-protagonist moves out of the
carnivalized space, the hierarchy, as it was originally conceived by the author-
protagonist, is reaserted, rendering the redefinition finite to the carnival?s
temporary erasure of rank and privilege.  It is superficial in that this ?suspension of
hierarchical precedence? is solely at the level of the plot; when other factors,
including narrative structure, style, and characterization, are considered, it becomes
evident that rather than subvert genre conventions, these texts support and endorse
them. In this way, the texts which folow simultaneously erase hierarchical
structures and reinforce them; in themselves, they are highly problematic in their
subversion of, and their conformity to, genre conventions.  By turning to the
theories of Fredric Jameson, set out in his article ?Reification and Utopia in Mass
Culture? (1979), I show that these texts are performing the simultaneous expression
and containment of anxieties surounding the production of texts for a mas market,
through this complex relationship to genre convention.  In this sense, these
carnivalesque intrusions into the narrative highlight King?s desire to destabilise the
27
hierarchical strata of the literary field, while unavoidably reinforcing it through the
commodification of this radical, subversive element.
For the sake of clarity, I should stress that when I refer to genre, and the
conventions incumbent upon the manifestation of genre, I do not do so in the spirit
of post-structural formalism, in so far as I am concerned with the ways in which
popular fiction genres are circulated, received and interpreted in material form.  I
agree with Jameson?s argument that
the older generic discourses? continue a powerful afterlife in the realm of
mass culture.  Paperback drugstore or airport displays reinforce all of the
now sub-generic distinctions betwen gothic, bestseler, mysteries, science
fiction, biography, or pornography (Jameson, 1979, p. 136).
Both structuralist studies of genre, such as Vladimir Propp?s Morphology of the
Folktale (1928) and Northrop Frye?s ?The Mythos of Summer: Romance? (1957),
and post-structuralist studies such as Jacques Derrida?s ?The Law of Genre? (1980),
provide comprehensive explorations of the term ?genre?; however, they do not take
into account the position occupied by a text in the cycles of publication,
distribution, circulation and reception which is necessary for my own purposes in
this thesis. Underpining my analysis of genre conventions, and the way these
conventions function in the texts chosen for this study, are theories derived from
book history such as those found in Janice Radway?s Reading the Romance:
Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature (1987) and D.F. MacKenzie?s
Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (1986).  By drawing upon book history, I
show that genre functions as an integral component in the production, circulation
and reception of texts, particularly those marketed to the masses.  After all, genre is
not just a set of reading practices acknowledged and enacted by interpretive
28
communities.
20
  It is not just a structural framework providing a basis for the author
to construct their narrative.  It is not just a taxonomic system enabling publishers to
target specific markets, and supplying booksellers with guidance as to product
placement. It is all of these and more, and to reduce our understanding of the
concept to the disembodied words upon the intangible page, does not allow for a
ful apreciation of the role genre plays in the sociology of texts. In my case
studies, I ask questions as to the role of the author-protagonist in the
problematisation of the high/low divide in order to explode the boundaries of the
text traditionally open to analysis, and to assess the roles of texts, genre and cultural
hierarchy in late-capitalist society. In my first chapter, however, I engage with the
multitude of paratextual, epitextual and peritextual, material concerning King?s
habitus and his perception of the field of literary production, so as to assess the
trajectory of his career while simultaneously analysing the choices he has made
concerning the form and content of his production.
 While the focus of the majority of this thesis is on King?s writing about writing as
found in his fiction, the first chapter focuses on his part how-to guide, part
autobiography, On Writing.  By chosing to focus on this text, prior to adresing
some examples of his fiction, and by exploring the correlation between the opinions
expresed there and a history of King?s literary production, I establish a clear sense
of King?s habitus.  This chapter is divided into four sections, Concerning Capital,
Textual Entrapments, Commercial vs. Folk Cultural Production and King and the
Cultural Custodians, each in turn corresponding to the following case studies.  In
the first section, Concerning Capital, I adres King?s complex relationship to
                                                  
20
 This is a term derived from the work of Stanley E. Fish and shall be discussed in greater detail in
Chapter 4.
29
economic capital through an exploration of King?s early days when the publication
of short fiction became an economic strategy, through to his decision whether or not
to endorse products such as Miller Lite and American Express, to his defence at the
NBA award ceremony of his ability to generate large profits.  It looks forward to the
case study on The Shining, in which King?s eforts to reconcile his ability to accrue
economic capital become expresed through the tragic character of Jack Torance.
In the second section, my focus shifts to issues of stereotyping and genre
clasification. Textual Entrapments draws upon childhod experiences of cultural
classification as articulated in the unpublished article ?Culch? (1975) and the
foreword to ?Salem?s Lot, before moving on to consider this cultural classification
in light of King?s popular success.  This section corresponds to the case study on
Misery and The Dark Half which both explore textual entrapments of one type or
another.  My third section, which tackles the production of culture according to the
heteronomous principle, focuses on commercial and folk cultural production and the
way in which King attempts to emphasise his work?s affinity with folk culture
through the metaphors he employs in On Writing and his practice of publishing
limited editions.  It is a section which anticipates the upcoming case study on Bag of
Bones, in which King juxtaposes the two types of popular cultural production
through the figure of the author-protagonist, his deceased wife and a nineteenth-
century blues singer. The final section, King and the Cultural Custodians, explores
the relationship between King and academia as expressed by King in On Writing,
Danse Macabre, and the foreword to the revised edition of the first of the Dark
Tower series, The Gunslinger (2003).  However, it also engages with the
relationship as expresed by those from within the Academy: Burton Hatlen and
Gary Hoppenstand.  The aim of this chapter is to establish the authorial context for
30
the thesis and to provide the architecture for the case studies which folow: the first
of which is an analysis of The Shining.
Published in 1977, The Shining is the earliest of King?s novels that I concentrate on
in the case studies.  Written on the back of King?s economic success from the
publications of both Carie and ?Salem?s Lot, The Shining hearkens back to a more
impoverished time when, working as a high school teacher, he supplemented his
income with the publication of his short stories.  Featuring author-protagonist Jack
Torrance, the narrative dramatises the tension that exists between the need for
economic profit and the desire for literary credibility through Jack?s financial
difficulties and his aspirations ?of becoming a major American writer in the next
decade? (TS, p. 294).  I argue that, while Stanley Kubrick?s film The Shining (1980)
gained significantly more critical attention, and therefore, cultural consecration,
than King?s novel received, the novel actively engages with many of the issues for
which Kubrick?s film received acclaim.  The relationship between the novel and the
film is a subject King is frequently questioned about, and his responses to those
questions in interviews ranging from the 1980s to 2006 necesarily inform my
analysis.  Despite King?s first author-protagonist featuring in ?Salem?s Lot, The
Shining marks King?s first narrative to develop the participation in the literary field
as a central theme of the text, and it is this which also characterises the two novels
which form the focus of the following case study.
In the second case study, my analysis of King?s Misery and The Dark Half centres
on the way popular fiction is perceived and produced by their author-protagonists,
Paul Sheldon and Thad Beaumont respectively.  In both these novels, the author-
31
protagonists articulate their anxiety pertaining to their entrapment, an entrapment
which extends beyond their narrated predicament, as they strugle for freedom from
their antagonists, and includes a textual entrapment efected through their own
choice to write and publish popular genre fiction.  I address both of these texts in
one case study in order to emphasise the many crossovers between them: they both
feature an author-protagonist who writes fiction that is perceived either by
themselves or by others as either serious or popular, both author-protagonists suffer
entrapment at the hands of an antagonist motivated by the author-protagonist?s
production of popular fiction, they both feature elements of the carnivalesque, and
both novels are directly linked to King?s experimentation with the pseudonym,
Richard Bachman.
21
  Published only two years apart, they offer a fascinating insight
into the world of popular authorship and the benefits and restrictions that it brings as
experienced firsthand by the author who wrote them.  By combining my study of
both novels in this case study, I provide strong, compelling analysis of King?s
portrayal of the popular author?s role as he perceived it at the end of the eighties: a
decade which saw King become an economic force within the world of
publishing.
2
                                                  
21
 Richard Bachman was a pseudonym employed by King between the years 1977 to 1984, when he
was revealed as the true author of the novels.  Despite King?s admission to writing under the
Bachman name, he continues to publish as Bachman as recently as 2007 with Blaze (2007).  The
source for the name and his reason for his employment of it are discussed in Chapter 2.
2
 As Michael Collings confirms:
At the end of Stephen King?s first ten years as a regular on the national bestsellers lists in
1986, he had already set a number of sales records for his novels, including several weeks
with an astonishing five titles occurring simultaneously on the hardcover, mass-market
paperback, and the trade paperback lists; a slightly larger number of weeks with four titles;
and occurrences of two or three titles so frequent as to barely elicit comment.  His
collectibles were commanding extraordinary prices; his new books were literally lining
bookstore walls on the first days of release; and in some senses he was undeniably among
the hottest literary phenomena of the mid-80s (Collings, 1997, p. 44).
32
In my next case study I adres Bag of Bones, which was published following his
move from NAL to Scribner at the end of the nineties.  My approach to Bag of
Bones focuses on the ways in which mass and folk culture are compared within the
text by focusing on oposing methods of production, and on the circulation of the
resulting products.  Drawing upon Bakhtin?s theory of the chronotope
23
 and Walter
Benjamin?s theory of mechanical reproduction, I explore isues of authenticity in
cultural production. I also analyse the presence of the intertextual referencing of
Melville?s ?Bartleby, the Scrivener? to posit some ideas as to its relevance to author-
protagonist Mike Noonan?s experience of literary production as a popular novelist.
In my conclusion, I focus on King?s most recent output, specificaly Lisey?s Story,
Duma Key (2008), the anthology The Best American Short Stories 2007 (2007), and
his newest collection of short fiction, Just After Sunset (2008).  In each of these
texts King continues to demonstrate his understanding of hierarchical strata,
position-taking and the literary field, and yet, the anxiety that is dramatised in his
earlier fiction becomes articulated through naratives that focus on cultural
producers that attract significant symbolic capital.  Both Scott Landon of Lisey?s
Story and Edgar Fremantle of Duma Key are extremely successful as they are
awarded cultural kudos and financial gain in equal measures, and it is through their
narratives in particular that King explores issues of legitimacy, legacy and the role
of cultural custodians.  However, as I shall show through my analysis on the
paratextual material that accompanies both the short story anthology and Just After
Sunset, he continues to engage with these same concerns outwith narratives
                                                  
23
 The chronotope is a concept discussed in two of the essays collated in The Dialogic Imagination:
Four Essays (1981): ?Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel? (1937-1938) and ?Epic and
Novel? (1941).  In ?Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel?, he states that, ?we will give
the name chronotope (literally, ?time space?) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial
relationships that are artistically expressed in literature? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 184).  It is the connection
between this concept and the products within folk and mass culture that shall be explored in more
detail in Chapter 4.
33
featuring a participant in cultural production, thus confirming that the issues I raise
throughout this thesis persist in his most recent publications.
My intention throughout the chapters which follow is to shift the focus of research
into Stephen King?s fiction from that which has complied with his narrow
typecasting as a horror author to the whole range of fiction King has produced and
the relevance of that work to the wider field of textual and cultural production.
King is an intensely prolific author who continues to produce fiction on an almost
yearly basis, despite his many announcements of immanent retirement dating from
It (1986) onwards.  Due to the sheer bulk of King?s output, both under his own
name and the pseudonymous Richard Bachman, I have had to necessarily limit my
own selection for analysis, which I have done by focussing solely on novels which
directly engage with the process of literary production.  As I have shown in this
introduction, King is not operating within a vacuum, but within the context of a
culture which has experienced increasing sacralization throughout the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, and that his authorial practices should be analysed with
respect to those practices employed by those authors he most frequently references,
such as Herman Melvile. Writers producing fiction in the antebelum period may
have been operating within a field of literary production which is vastly different
from the one King participates within today; but I argue that the need which
developed during that period to accrue both symbolic and economic capital, due to
the agonism experienced as America began to establish its literary identity, and to
the development of the professionalisation of authorship, is ingrained within the
American literary tradition, and it is this tension which continues to reverberate
within the contemporary literary production of American authors such as Stephen
34
King.  This thesis is a charting of habitus through the career trajectory of Stephen
King, the portrayal of his many author-protagonists and his participation within the
field of literary production.
35
Chapter 1 ? On Writing
Introduction
In the first of three forewords to his part autobiography/part how-to guide, On
Writing, King recalls a conversation he once had with his fellow author Amy Tan.
He asked Tan ?if there was any one question she was never asked during the Q-and-
A that follows almost every writer?s talk? (OW, p. x), to which she responded, ?No
one ever asks about the language? (OW, p. xi).  King claims that it is her response to
his question that gave him the permission that he needed to write his ?little book
about writing? (OW, p. xi).  Prior to this conversation, King confesses, ?I didn?t trust
my own motivations ? why did I want to write about writing?  What made me think
I had anything worth saying?? (OW, p. xi).  He continues to fret: ?If I was going to
be presumptuous enough to tell people how to write, I felt there had to be a better
reason than my popular suces? (OW, p. xi).  This projected lack of confidence is
rather undermined once his many articulations upon the topic of writing, authorship
and literary production in both his paratexts and his fiction are taken into account.
Faux modesty aside, it is interesting to note how, as a prelude to his ?memoir of the
craft? (OW, p. v), King seks ?permision? to write about writing from an author
unproblematically regarded as a ?literary? novelist, one whose books have been
nominated for a clutch of prestigious prizes including the National Book Award, the
National Book Critics Circle Award, the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times
Award and who has received the Comonwealth Gold Award, the Bay Area Book
Reviewers Award, the Torgi Award, a New York Times Notable Books and a Bafta.
As his forewords unfold, it becomes clear that King regards himself and Tan as
literary fellow travellers:
36
Amy was right: nobody ever asks about the language.  They ask the DeLillos
and the Updikes and the Styrons, but they don?t ask popular novelists.  Yet
many of us proles also care about the language, in our humble way, and care
passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper (OW, p. xi).
King may claim that his text is ?about the language? and that his book is an ?attempt
to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now,
and how it?s done? (OW, pp. xi-xii), but as this comment implies, his concern is as
much with the cultural politics that govern the field of literary production and that
presume to separate out the artists from the ?proles?.
King?s anxiety around this issue and his desire to establish the terms in which his
own work can be legitimized repeatedly infiltrates On Writing.  His apparent lack of
conscious appreciation of the dispositions which underpin his perception of the
literary fields? hierarchical strata is consistent with the partly unconscious level at
which habitus operates. Through my analysis of On Writing I argue that this text is
best understood as a dramatisation of habitus. By approaching the text in this way, it
becomes aparent that King?s perception of the literary field, its structured
structures and its structuring structures, and the way in which position-takings can
be efected, finds articulation through this autobiographical narative and his advice
on writing creatively.  The dispositions which generate ?practices and perceptions?
(Johnson, 1993, p.5) are expressed through different but interrelated principles
affecting positioning and position-taking within the field.  As with all fields, the
field of literary production is not ?structured in a flat linear fashion, with aesthetics
at one end, economics at another, and practitioners distributed in betwen? (Webb,
Schirato and Danaher, 2002, p. 169), but rather as a
more complex, multi-dimensional model? that distributes positions not
only according to whether work is autonomous with respect to the social and
economic fields, but by considering a whole range of other principles ?
37
forms, styles, media, the degree of ?consecration? claimed and the relation to
artistic tradition (Webb, Schirato and Danaher, 2002, p. 169).
In the course of this chapter, which establishes the architecture of my central
argument throughout this thesis, I engage with four key themes: the distribution of
capital, the writing of genre fiction, the distinctions between commercial and folk
cultural production, and finally the role of those charged with the responsibility of
legitimising literature and King?s own relationship to them.  In each of these
sections, and their corresponding case studies, I address not only the binary
definitions fundamental to the differentiation of the autonomous and heteronomous
production of art, but also the differences inherent at either pole: popular and
commercial within heteronomous production, and consecrated and avant garde
within autonomous production, all of which feature in King?s work.  On Writing, I
suggest, both addresses and embodies the career-long anxieties King has fostered
about his fiction, and in his fiction.
The interaction of these principles and their textual expresion within King?s
writing raise many questions concerning the stability of these binary positions and
King?s own interest in perpetuating them.  In what way does King assert his
authorship while simultaneously recognising his stigmatised role as popular author?
How does he attempt to reconcile his pursuit of both symbolic and economic
capital? Through his many paratextual enunciations concerning the practice of
writing fiction, does he undermine or suport the position he maintains in On
Writing?  As his interpretation of Amy Tan?s response indicates, the answers are
considerably more complex than they may first appear, and frequently require
investigation into texts outwith the main focus of this chapter in order to gain a
broader contextual appreciation of the relevant factors. Just as Tan?s response was
38
not ?a very simple and direct? (OW, p. xii) permission to King to publish On
Writing, so On Writing is not ?a very simple and direct? articulation of ?how one
author was formed? (OW, p. 4).  It is, in fact, a text of many contradictions,
complexities and complicities.
Concerning Capital
I was convinced ? deeply convinced ? that somewhere deep inside me was a money
machine waiting to be turned on.  And that when I found the dials and the
combinations, the money would just pour out (Wiater and Anker, 1990, p. 214).
Despite his extensively demonstrated ability to generate enormous economic capital
from his literary production, King maintains an uneasy relationship to money and
his texts? capacity to acrue it. Nowhere is this more evident than in his production
of fiction as articulated in On Writing.  One primary example of this can be found in
King?s relation of his experience selling his plagiarised edition of Edgar Allan Poe?s
?The Pit and the Pendulum? (1842) to his schoolmates.  Upon discovering one of the
hand-printed documents, his teacher, Mis Hisler, exclaimed, ?What I don?t
understand, Stevie? is why you?d write junk like this in the first place. You?re
talented. Why do you want to waste your abilities?? (OW, p. 45).  Even although
King had sucesfuly produced a work of fiction which covered his costs of
production and gave him a sizable profit, King identifies this experience in On
Writing as the point at which he became ?ashamed about what I write? (OW, p. 46).
King?s next efort confirmed his ability to produce comercialy profitable
literature, as he wrote an original short story, ?The Invasion of the Star Creatures? of
which he ?sold all but four or five? (OW, p. 46) of a print run of four dozen.  His
earlier experience, however, remained an important one.  As he states, ?I guess that
means I won in the end, at least in a financial sense. But in my heart I stayed
39
ashamed.  I kept hearing Miss Hisler asking why I wanted to waste my talent, why I
wanted to waste my time, why I wanted to write junk? (OW, p. 46).
Whether shame is necessarily the most appropriate term for the unease King
purports to have felt in producing popular, economicaly viable fiction, is les
important here than the fact that he has chosen to include this memory amongst the
?assorted snapshots? which together form ?a kind of curriculum vitae? (OW, p. 4).
This articulation of ?shame? is rooted within the attribution of literary worth and the
acrual of symbolic capital: a kind of capital only available to ?those who can
recognize the specific demands of this universe and who, by concealing from
themselves and others the interests at stake in their practice, obtain the means of
deriving profits from disinterestednes? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 75).  The autonomous
principle, which underpins the production of art that is capable of accruing symbolic
capital, depends upon ?temporal failure,? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 40) as ?temporal
failure? is viewed as ?a sign of election and success as a sign of compromise?
(Bourdieu, 1993, p. 40).  The immediacy of King?s economic success, as intimated
by his memories of these early commercial ventures, automatically precluded him
from ?deriving profits from disinterestednes?. His ability to generate income
through his literary production signifies a fundamental incompatibility between
King?s literary production and the distribution of symbolic capital.
His narrative, which charts the development of a bestselling novelist, is one in
which the financial realities of a poverty-stricken childhod and early adulthod
loom large, and this is particularly evident in his depiction of his short story
publications as a necessary economic strategy.  Between the years of 1970 and
40
1975, King published ?Graveyard Shift? (1970), ?I Am the Doorway? (1971),
?Battleground? (1972), ?The Mangler? (1972), ?The Boogeyman? (1973), ?Trucks?
(1973), ?Grey Mater? (1973), ?Sometimes They Come Back? (1974), ?Night Surf?
(1974), ?The Lawnmower Man? (1975) and ?Strawberry Spring? (1975) in Cavalier
magazine.  The money generated from the publication of these and other stories in
men?s magazines was, as King states, ?just enough to create a rough sliding margin
between us and the welfare office? (OW, p. 72).  He recalls in particular the cheque
he received for ?Sometimes They Come Back?, a ?long story that [he] hadn?t
believed would sel anywhere? (OW, p. 74), for five hundred dolars, providing
them with the finances to take their sick daughter to the doctor and to purchase her
necesary medications. This narrative of economic impoverishment not only
informs King?s work, but also serves as a justification for the type of fiction he
produced.  King?s literary production, then as now, is a consciously commercial
concern and yet, as this justification reveals, it is not an aspect of his work that he
feels particularly comfortable with. He is extremely keen that these short stories are
acknowledged as not primarily produced for economic profit, and that it is
recognised that there is a degre of intrinsic literary worth within them. In his
ilustration of a composite early-carer writer, Frank, whose journey towards
publication is included in the how-to section of On Writing, he describes Frank?s
first publication of a short story for which he receives twenty-five dollars.  As King
states, ?Twenty-five bucks won?t pay the rent, won?t even buy a wek?s worth of
groceries for Frank and his wife, but it?s a validation of his ambition, and that ? any
newly published writer would agree, I think ? is priceless? (OW, pp. 291-292).
Despite their role in keeping King and his young family afloat during their lean
41
years, King perceives that the money the short stories generated is not solely a
component within his economic strategy, but also a ?validation of his ambition?.
1
This art/money dialectic is explored further in his foreword to Skeleton Crew (1985)
in which he discuses the financial details regarding his short story, ?Word
Processor of the Gods? (1983).  He divulges a conversation he had with a friend
who was arguing that, while King?s novels ?were making very good money? the
short stories were actualy losers? (SC, p. 1).  His friend reasoned that after agent
fes of ten percent, busines management fes of five percent, and taxes of fifty
percent, with an additional ten percent of that tax bill paid to the state of Maine,
King had generated the same income as a New York plumber for the week?s worth
of work that it took to produce his short story ?Word Procesor of the Gods?. After
divulging his friend?s calculations pertaining to his production of the short story,
King rejoins by contrasting his friend?s initial calculation as to the financial
remuneration King received for ?Word Procesor of the Gods? with his own
calculations, following its incorporation into his second collection of short fiction.
He states that ?my total take on ?Word Procesor of the Gods? ? net ? is now just
over twenty-three hundred dollars, not even counting the $769.50 you hee-hawed so
over at my house at the lake (SC, p. 3).
However, following this demonstration, King proceeds to state that ?you don?t do it
for the money, or you?re a monkey.  You don?t think of the bottom line, or you?re a
                                                  
1
 The view of economic success as validation is also expressed by King in a review he wrote on
Elmore Leonard?s Glitz (1985), beginning his review with ?How good is this novel?  Probably the
most convincing thing I can say on the subject is that it cost me money.  After finishing Glitz, I went
out to the bookstore at my local mall and bought everything by Elmore Leonard I could find? (King,
1985).  The review, which is extremely positive, begins with this correlation of literary worth with
economic value.
42
monkey.  You don?t think of it in terms of hourly wage, yearly wage, even lifetime
wage, or you?re a monkey? (SC, p. 4), which coresponds to his response in On
Writing, to the question, ?Do you do it for the money, honey?? (OW, p.  301): to
which he responds, ?no.  Don?t now and never did.  Yes, I?ve made a great deal of
dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the
thought of being paid for it? (OW, p. 301).  This same refusal is reiterated during his
acceptance speech for his National Book Award for distinguished contribution to
American letters:
Now, there are lots of people who will tell you that anyone who writes genre
fiction or any kind of fiction that tells a story is in it for the money and
nothing else.  It?s a lie? I never in my life wrote a single word for money.
From those early days to this gala black tie night, I never once sat down at
my desk thinking today I?m going to make a hundred grand (King, 2003).
This rebuttal folows the criticism he received for accepting the award from critics
and academics, including Harold Bloom who stated that, ?By awarding [the NBA
distinguished contribution] to King they recognize nothing but the commercial
value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little more for humanity than
keep the publishing world afloat? (Bloom, 2003).  King?s continued reiterations that
he does not write ?for money? stem from an anxiety arising from the stated beliefs
of cultural custodians, or ?gatekepers? as Bourdieu clasifies them, that popular
literature is compromised by its economic suces. By stating again and again in
his forewords, speeches, non-fiction and interviews that he is not writing for money,
King is attempting to claim a level of ?disinterestedness,? thus validating his worth
as an author deserving of symbolic capital.
Despite King?s supposed disinterestedness, however, his interest in the economic
realities of not only his literary production but also his role as literary producer is
43
rendered explicit during his discusions of marketing and critical attention.  For
example, during an interview with Stanley Wiater and Roger Anker (1984) in which
he discuses his decision to participate in an American Expres commercial and his
decision to turn down a part in a Miller Lite commercial, King explains:
The other day these people called me up from some other agency: ?Saw your
American Express ad.  Loved it! You wanna do a Miller Lite ad??
And I went, ?Jesus, yeah, I do want to do a Miller Lite ad ? those are really
cool!?  Then I thought to myself: ?You know, you?re a writer.  You do about
three more of these things and you can go on Holywod Squares, for all the
reputation that you?ve got.? Not that I?ve got much of a reputation anyway.
But there has to be a point when, before you sel, you say, ?I?m not a
huckster, a commercial object? (Wiater and Anker, 1990, p. 242).
King clearly appreciates that his literary reputation is inextricably bound to his
commercial objectification.  By chosing to participate in comercials that
advertise products such as alcoholic beverages and credit cards, his potential to
acrue symbolic capital risks ireparable damage. The large advances that he has
accepted in the past have already contributed towards his texts? incompatibility with
the accruement of symbolic capital: a fact King recognises when he states that:
?You can always tell a bad review coming, because it will be a review of my check-
book and my contractual agreements? (Spitz, 1990, p. 257).  He claims that a
?review like that will start out saying, ?This is the third book in Stephen King?s
multi-million-dollar contract for New American Library,? and then you know,
well? the trouble?s going to start (Spitz, 1990, p. 257).  King recognises a direct
correlation between his economic success and the critical reception of his work: a
correlation that emphasises his literary production as arising from the heteronomous
rather than autonomous principle.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in 1976 when ?Salem?s Lot made the number
one position on The New York Times bestseler list. The folowing month the same
44
publication featured an article by King in which he attempts to establish his text?s
literary worth regardless of the amount of money its publication generated.  This
article called ?Not Guilty: The Guest Word? (1976) relates a ?bizarre coincidence?
(King, 1976) that saw King read an article caled ?Money Talk? (1976), in which
David Madden?s income for his book Bijou (1975) is discussed, and receive a phone
call to inform him that ?Salem?s Lot was expected to take the top slot in paperback
bestseller list, within the space of a few hours.  This coincidence leads King to
reveal that ?Madden worked on Bijou for six years and made $15,000.  I worked on
?Salem?s Lot for about eight months?and stand to make nearly half a million
dollars, if all falls together? (King, 1976).  Upon making this revelation, King
proceeds to make another:
How does the contrast make me feel?  In a word, guilty.  But in another two
words, not guilty.  The two feelings are perfectly joined at hip and shoulder
like Siamese twins, and I?m going to try to cut them apart before your very
eyes (King, 1976).
The way in which he attempts to perform this excision is to present the possibility
of there being an ?art to acesibility, to, although it may be of a more humble sort
than that which belongs to the artist who will not hew his peg to fit accessibility?s
hole? (King, 1976).  By emphasising the accessibility of his literature King confirms
his role as a producer of heteronomous art.  Madden, by contrast, is portrayed as a
disinterested writer: one who writes autonomously in his production of ?art for art?s
sake?, art which succeeds through ?temporal failure?.  By admitting to writing a text
which is ?easy to slip into, pleasant to stroke around in for the next 400-odd pages?
(King, 1976), King makes it clear that he produces with his market in mind, which
results in his realised potential to make a considerable amount of money.
45
Another point at which King?s dissatisfaction with the correlation of literary worth
with disinterestedness can be discerned is in his derision of university creative
writing classes.  This is raised briefly in On Writing where he admits his preference
for his wife?s poem, ?A Gradual Canticle for Augustine,? over the other poems
produced during a clas he attended while completing his undergraduate degree.  As
he explains, ?there was a view among the student writers I knew at that time that
good writing came spontaneously, in an uprush of feling that had to be caught at
once? (OW, p. 62) in which ?there were no mechanics, only that seminal spurt of
feeling? (OW, p. 63).  In Tabitha?s poem, however, there was ?a work-ethic? which
?had as much in common with sweping the floor as with mythy moments of
revelation? (OW, p. 65).
2
  It is this ?work-ethic? and its connection to money-making
literature that is explored fictively in his epic horror, It.  One of the protagonists,
Bil Denbrough, is a hugely sucesful popular novelist who recals his own
disatisfaction with the way in which creative writing is taught in universities. He
voices his frustration during one such class in which they have spent the last seventy
minutes discussing  ?a sallow young woman?s vignette about a cow?s examination
of a discarded engine block in a deserted field? which is supposed to be ?a socio-
political statement in the manner of the early Orwell? (It, pp. 132-133).  He asks the
class, ?can?t you guys just let a story be a story?? to which his tutor responds, ?Do
you believe William Faulkner was just teling stories? Do you believe Shakespeare
was just interested in making a buck?? (It, p. 133).  Bill admits that ?I think that?s
                                                  
2
 This emphasis on work-ethic and the refusal of ?mythy moments of revelation? seems reminiscent
of E.A. Poe?s ?Philosophy of Composition? (1846) in which Poe confesses that ?I have often thought
how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who would ? that is to say could ?
detail, step-by-step, the process by which any one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of
completion? (Poe, 1846, p. 163) before considering, ?Why such a paper has never been given to the
world, I am much at a loss to say ? but, perhaps, the authorial vanity has had more to do with the
omission than any one other cause? (Poe, 1846, p. 163).  He then states that most ?writers ? poets in
especial ? prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy ? an ecstatic
intuition ? and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes? (Poe,
1846, p. 163).
46
pretty close to the truth? (It, p. 133), leading the tutor and the rest of the class to
publicly deride him for holding such beliefs.
Folowing this experience, Bil receives an F grade on his next story along with the
damning comments ?PULP? and ?CRAP? (It, p. 134).  The description of the actual
process of ?the business of writing this story? (It, p. 133) furthers the connection
betwen ?work-ethic? and literary production.  It is as though ?he is not so much
teling the story as he is allowing the story to flow through him? (It, p. 133),
although not as the ?seminal spurt of feling? King later acuses creative writing
students of producing.  Instead, Bill feels that
after ten years of trying he has suddenly found the starter button on the vast
dead bulldozer taking up so much space inside his head.  It has started up.  It
is revving, revving.  It is nothing pretty, this big machine.  It was not made
for taking pretty girls to proms.  It is not a status symbol.  It means business.
It can knock things down.  If he isn?t careful, it will knock him down (It, p.
134).
While I discus the mechanistic production of literature in a later case study, what is
interesting to note here is that this machine-like literary production, which has
nothing in common with the ?uprush of feeling? (OW, p. 62) King?s fellow students
believed in, is simultaneously incapable of garnering critical validation while
proving deserving of financial recompense.  For the story, Bill receives two hundred
dolars from White Tie, a men?s magazine similar to those which King published in
during his fledgling career, and promptly decides to drop his creative writing class,
with which his incompatibility had been painfully obvious. Stapling his drop card
to the editor?s congratulatory note and pinning them to the department notice board
earned him an overal F for the course and a coment from the tutor asking, ?Do
you think money proves anything about anything, Denbrough?? (It, p, 135).  Bill?s
response is ?Wel, actually, yes? (It, p. 135), although it is this accrual of economic
47
capital rather than symbolic capital which later prevents him from being appreciated
as a writer of serious autonomous literature by critics and the Academy: a fate
shared by his creator, Stephen King.
Textual Entrapments
That little elite, which is clustered in the literary magazines and book-review
sections of influential newspapers and magazines on both coasts, assumes that all
popular literature must also, by definition, be bad literature.  Those criticisms are
not really against bad writing; they?re against an entire type of writing.  My type of
writing, as it turns out (Norden, 1990, pp. 79-80).
In an early unpublished article held in the archives at King?s alma mater, the
University of Maine, King describes the word ?culch? which his mother often used.
In the article King offers a definition for his mother?s slang word:
Culch (pronounced cul-tch) was my mother?s word for junk.  That is an
exact translation, but like any translation of slang into straight language it is
flavorless.  Culch and junk are synonymous, but culch has certain overtones
? undertones too, for that matter (King, 1975, pp. 2-3).
An important aspect of this definition is that while culch means the same as junk, it
signifies greater meaning.  King goes on to enlarge this definition by stating that his
?mother used the word culch to define ? either partially or fully ? a wide variety of
uniquely American things? (King, 1975, p. 3).  In the article he proceeds to give a
long list of examples in order to further clarify the word:
The stuff you get for Halloween and always puke up on November 1?The
Johny Carson show. Orange crush. Dr Peper. Pink Studebakers. Toy
cars and trucks made of plastic?The Letters to the Editor column in
Esquire.  Nehru jackets.  The movies of Raquel Welch (King, 1975, p. 3).
The list is extensive, everything from junk food to clothing, politicians to litter, cars
to public service advertisements are included, but all with one point of commonality
48
in that they were all classified as ?culch? by King?s mother.
3
  King attempts to make
sense of this mixture of cultural detritus by describing it as ?one of those yardstick
words, a way to divide the sheep from the goats? (King, 1975, p. 3).  He states that,
in ?order to grow up satisfactorily whole in such a culture (culch-ure?), some
yardstick word was necessary.  Shoes were necessary.  Futuristic X-ray machines,
however, were not? (King, 1975, p. 3).  It is this belief in the need of a ?yardstick
word? in order to gauge the worth of an object, concept or person that is especialy
interesting in relation to King?s own value system.  He even confesses that of ?all
the things my mother gave me, I do believe that this one word has proved to be one
of the most enduring and most useful? (King, 1975, p. 3); however, it is also King?s
primary experience of cultural classification.
                                                  
3
 ?Your Kind of Place? (1975) was an article that King wrote in the same year as ?Culch? which
concerns the fast food outlet McDonald?s and its rise and continued suces within the late capitalist
era.  As Davis suggests in Stephen King?s America, ?King?s rendition of the Macdonald?s saga
highlights a number of vices often pervading American fiction: greed, alienation, and manipulation?
(Davis, 1994, p. 80).  King?s exploration of this ?saga? illustrates an interesting dichotomy; there is at
once a respect for, and a rejection of, the capitalist enterprise embodied by Ray Kroc, owner of
McDonald?s.  He confesses that, ?I love McDonald?s; I am hopeless.  My children love it.  Even my
wife, who is cynical about many things, will not withhold McDonald?s from her children.  In a world
where all our traditions have been broken, the golden arches continue to stand? (King, 1975, p. 3).
Despite his love for the burger chain and his admiration for the ?twin arches?, he proceeds to stress
that ?the most significant thing about McDonald?s is the number of trash containers that are spotted
around the restaurant? (King, 1975, p. 3).  He asserts that:
The beer can at the side of the road, America?s symbol of litter for many years, now has a
partner: the blowing yellow hamburger wrapper, branded with the golden arches, which you
see lying in the weeds or fluttering on the soft shoulder of the highway.  Instead of leaving a
flag and a plaque on the moon, it might have been more appropriate if our astronauts had
sprinkled around some McDonald?s wrappers and a few red Big Mac boxes.  The thought of
that stuff lying on top of that windless, pocked and pulverized surface fills me with both
wonder and horror.  And below the bronzed tablet reading WE CAME IN PEACE FOR
ALL MANKIND, the twin arches, raised in bas relief (King, 1975, pp. 3-4; my italics).
His description of the discarded packaging fits perfectly with his description of ?culch?; it is
superfluous, cheap, and has a distinctly American heritage.  In ?Culch?, he declared that if the ?worst
manifestations? of culch ?are to be avoided, imunization is necesary? (King, 1975, p. 4), and yet
when this is applied to his experience of McDonald?s it would appear that immunization has become
indoctrination. As much as he regards Ray Kroc as ?the realization of every American?s dream?
(Davis, 1993, p. 79), he also apreciates that there are negative aspects of capitalism, namely its
appropriation of culture and its manipulation of a population.
49
King?s claim, that his mother?s classificatory system for judging a product?s cultural
value has affected his perception of the field of literary production, is reiterated in
the foreword to ?Salem?s Lot in which he discuses her diferentiation betwen
?trash? and ?bad trash?:
To Nellie Ruth Pilsbury King, The Blackboard Jungle was trash; The Bat,
by Mary Roberts Rinehart, was trash; The Amboy Dukes, by Irving Shulman,
was serious trash. None of these boks were forbidden to us, however. A
very few others were.  These our mother described as ?bad trash?? The only
three in that category I can remember for sure were Peyton Place, King?s
Row and Lady Chatterley?s Lover (SL, p. viii).
While acknowledging that ?trash has its place? (SL, p. viii), Nellie King impressed
on her children her own taxonomic system for judging value by pronouncing a
text?s worth as she handed it to them following a trip to the library.  When King
imagines her response to ?Salem?s Lot, he gueses that ?she would have finished the
last hundred pages in one of her marathon chain-smoking readathons, then laughed,
put it aside (not without some afection), and pronounced it trash. But maybe not
bad trash? (SL, p. xii).  King?s understanding of his mother?s code for categorisation
has had the result that he clasifies his own texts accordingly.  Despite the
appreciation that he has for his mother?s system for attributing cultural value, he has
nonetheless come to regard these systems of value judgement as a constraint upon
his literary production.
The anxiety that he has experienced and articulated regarding the way in which he,
as a literary producer, and his literary production are judged is particularly prevalent
in his many reiterations concerning the ?typing? which ocured during his early
career.  As King recals, there was a great deal of deliberation surounding the
publication of his second novel.  The day before Thompson had contacted King to
50
tell him of the sale of the paperback rights for Carie, King had finished the first
draft of what was to become ?Salem?s Lot.  It was towards the end of this ?euphoric
conversation? (King, 1982, p. 30) that Thompson sugested they should begin to
think about a follow-up.  King wrote him a letter the following month, ?and told him
we had a bit of a problem; I had two posible folow-up boks and couldn?t pick
between them? (King, 1982, p. 30).  Upon reading both manuscripts, Second
Coming
4
 and Roadwork (1981), Thompson and King had a conversation, while
walking back to Doubleday?s New York office, concerning which book they should
go with:
[Thompson] said, ?Roadwork would probably get more serious attention, but
Second Coming is Peyton Place with vampires. It?s a great read and it could
be a bestseller.  There?s only one problem.?
?What?s that?? I asked, as DON?T WALK changed to WALK and people
started to move around us.
Bill stepped off the curb.  In New York you don?t waste the WALK, even
when decisions of moment are being made, and this ? I might have sensed it
even then ? was one that would affect the rest of my life.  ?You?ll be typed
as a horror writer,? he said (?Salem?s Lot: Illustrated Edition, p. xii).
While King sugests here, thirty years later, that he may have recognised that this
was the point at which he became a genre author, his response at the time ?was that
reputation follows function as much as form does; I would write the things I had it
in me to write and leave it to the critics to figure out labels? (King, 1982, p. 31).
 ?Salem?s Lot, however, was overlooked by critics despite, or more likely, because
of, its popular success.
5
  The issue was raised again when King summarised the plot
                                                  
4
 King changed the title of Second Coming to Jerusalem?s Lot after his wife ?said that Second
Coming sounded like a sex manual? (?Salem?s Lot Illustrated Edition, p. xii), and then to ?Salem?s
Lot when his publishers complained that ?Jerusalem?s Lot sounded like a religious book? (?Salem?s
Lot Illustrated Edition, p. xii).
5
 The overlooking of King?s fiction because of its popularity is confirmed in a retrospective of
King?s work in The New York Times (2000) in which Cynthia Ozick, after doing a reading with
King, confessed that she ?had never given King much thought? but that it ?dawned on me as I
listened to him that, never mind all the best sellers and all the stereotypes ? this man is a genuine,
true-born writer, and that was a revelation? (Dubner, 2000).
51
of The Shining (1977) for Thompson as they ?sat up?half the night in a bar called
Jaspers? (DS, p. 554).  King recalls that:
By the end, [Thompson?s] elbows were planted on either side of his bourbon
and his head was in his hands, like a man with a monster migraine.
?You don?t like it,? I said.
?I like it a lot,? he said hollowly.
?Then what?s wrong??
?First the telekinetic girl, then the vampires, now the haunted hotel and the
telepathic kid.  You?re gonna get typed? (DS, p. 554).
The ?typing? of Stephen King as a horror writer continued to stalk him for many
years, and in some ways still does.
6
  The publication choices, taken by King and
Thompson during the beginning of King?s career, were to set the course for the way
in which King would be perceived, not only by critics and academics, but also by
his fans and the general population, as an author of horror fiction.  King has
recounted this proces and the conversations with Thompson many times: first in
?On Becoming a Brand Name? (1980), then in the ?Afterword? to Diferent Seasons
(1982) and more recently in the ?Foreword? to the illustrated edition of ?Salem?s Lot
and The Paris Review interview.  In each of these repetitions, King confirms his
anxiety concerning his ?typing? which arose from this series of career defining
decisions.
It would be wrong, however, to assert that King?s perception of ?typing? merely
applies to the producers of popular literature.  As he reveals in On Writing, he is
                                                  
6
 This is evidenced in two recent interviews.  In ?Constant Craving? (2000), King admits:
if I see the red gels and the underlighting come out when someone comes to photograph me,
I do walk out these days?It?s degrading to be treated as someone who is so one
dimensional.  But once they decide you?re a whore, they want to put you in a skirt, don?t
they? (Adams, 2000a).
In The Paris Review interview he states:
Other people will hang tags on me like the horrormeister, the shlockmeister, the fearmeister,
the master of suspense, the master of horror.  But I?ve never said what it is that I do, and I
don?t write letters complaining about these tags, because then it sounds like I?m trying to
put on airs and make myself sound like something I?m not (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p. 88).
52
very aware of the ?typing? of literary authors, and while seeking to undermine his
own classification he also seeks to undermine that of critically revered authors.  One
of the ways in which he attempts to achieve this is by aligning himself with some of
the key tropes of the ?serious? author stereotype. King recals that his mother in her
encouragement of his attainment of a teaching degree prior to his pursuit of a
writing career, told him that, ?You may want to get married, Stephen, and a garret
by the Seine is only romantic if you?re a bachelor? (OW, p. 68).  Despite following
her advice though, King states that ?I was keeping my family in a series of garrets
which overlooked not the Seine but some of Bangor?s less appetizing streets? (OW,
p. 69).  The image of the impoverished author living in a Parisian garret is one often
employed to define an artist who wil not, as King phrased it, ?hew his peg to fit
accessibility?s hole?.  Here King is trading upon the ?Christ-like mystique of the
artiste maudit? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 169): a figure, portrayed as being ?sacrificed in
this world and consecrated in the next? (Bourdieu. 1993, p. 169), perpetuated by
those interested in the accrual of symbolic capital.
The serious literary author who suffers for his art is again discussed in On Writing
when King raises the issue of his alcoholism.  He states:
The idea that creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined
is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.  The four twentieth-
century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and the poet Dylan Thomas
(OW, p. 109).
These writers, King insists, are ?the writers who largely formed our vision of an
existential English-speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one
another and live in an atmosphere of emotional strangulation? (OW, p. 109):
concepts which, King believes, are ?very familiar to most alcoholics? (OW, p. 109).
53
King refuses to endorse the belief that alcoholism and high art have a natural
afinity by denouncing the vision of social isolation and ?emotional strangulation?;
he contends that the vision arises as a result from their role as ?common garden-
variety drunks and druggies? (OW, p. 109) as much as it does from their role as
highly regarded, well thought of writers.  In fact, he goes so far as to assert that any
?claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the
usual self-serving bullshit? (OW, p. 109) and that ?Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn?t
drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak.  They drank because
it?s what alkies are wired up to do? (OW, p. 110).  He dismantles the connection
between alcoholism and the endeavour to produce serious literature in order to
undermine ?the usual self-serving bullshit,? and in so doing, actively denounces the
?idea that creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined?. King
similarly destabilises this correlation through the articulation of his own suffering as
he fought his drug and alcohol addiction.  By acknowledging his role as a popular
author who has had to contend with an addiction largely considered the province of
serious, consecrated writers, he problematizes the affiliation.  After all, he contends,
?We all look pretty much the same when we?re puking in the gutter? (OW, p. 110).
However, just as I proposed in the introduction to this chapter, On Writing is not a
straightforward text, free of ambiguities and contradictions; it is a highly complex
construction which illumines King?s habitus through its many inconsistencies. One
such inconsistency exists in his depiction of the ?great pop-intelectual myths?, such
as is found in his discussion of literary production and its links to substance
adiction, and in his recolection of his mother?s coment concerning writers and
their garets overlooking the Seine. In one sense King is clearly tackling the
54
?typing? of literary authors by undermining the correlations dependent upon that
stereotyping, and by affiliating himself, as an immensely popular novelist, with both
alcoholism and Parisian garets. In another sense, through this afiliation, King is
capitalising on the entrenchment of this stereotyping by illustrating the qualities that
he poseses which are compatible with those ?great pop-intelectual myths of our
time?.  This simultaneous endorsement and subversion of the stereotyping of literary
writers results, I would sugest, from a lack of conscious awarenes pertaining to
his habitus: the dispositions which affect his perception of the field of literary
production.  It reveals the unconscious, internalised system of value judgements
which compel him to deny the legitimacy of literary stereotyping, while at the same
time supporting its perpetuation.  It is through this unacknowledged conflict that it
becomes possible to discern a dual strategy for acquiring greater amounts of
symbolic capital.  By denying legitimacy to the deeply embedded cultural
stereotype of the serious author there exists an intention, which may or may not be
consciously held, to invalidate the structure which dictates the distribution of
symbolic capital.  By suporting its perpetuation, however, King betrays a latent
desire to ascend the traditional hierarchy and attain symbolic capital as an author
who has come to be considered as serious and as ?literary? an author as those
already consecrated and integrated into the contemporary literary canon.
The conflicting desire to endorse or to subvert the distribution structure of symbolic
capital is not unique to On Writing; a similar tension can be discerned in his
?Afterword? to his 1982 collection of novellas, Diferent Seasons.  As I indicated
earlier, in this accompanying essay, King re-inscribes his experience of becoming
typed as a horror writer through his early career decisions relating to his publication
55
strategy.  In considering the advantages and disadvantages to this typing, King
states:
I could, for example, be an ?important? writer like Joseph Heler and publish
a novel every seven year or so, or a ?brilliant? writer like John Gardner and
write obscure books for bright academics who eat macrobiotic foods and
drive old Saabs with faded but still legible GENE McCARTHY FOR
PRESIDENT stickers on the rear bumpers (DS, p. 554).
By placing the words ?important? and ?briliant? in quotation marks, King atributes
these descriptions of Joseph Heller and John Gardner to an undefined other: a critic
capable of bestowing symbolic capital and whose opinions become accepted as
valid and durable.  King is also sen here perpetuating those ?pop-intellectual
myths? through his corelation of importance with limited literary production,
briliance with obscurity, and also through his stereotypical description of an
academic.  However, this afterword is also the point at which King highlights the
difficulties of writing within and outwith the genre with which his name is
synonymous,
7
 through his lament concerning the publication of the long short story
form.  He claims that ?artistically speaking, there?s nothing wrong at all with the
novella. Of course, there?s nothing wrong with circus freaks, either, except that you
rarely see them outside of the circus.  The point is that there are great novellas, but
they traditionaly only sel to the ?genre markets?? (DS, p. 556).  Genre markets - a
term King considers to be ?the polite term; the impolite but more accurate one is
?ghetto market?? (DS, p. 556) - have traditionally been one of the primary markets
for the novella.  However, as King elucidates, there is no such market for the
                                                  
7
 In assessing King?s success, Stefan Kanfer, in the October 6, 1986 issue of Time magazine that
featured an illustrated cover of a terrified reader engrossed in a Stephen King novel, claims that It, at
?3lbs. 71/2oz? would seem the right heft for a doorstop and the wrong one for a bestseller.  But
King has become a brand name himself, and his publishers ordered a supernatural first printing of
800,000 copies ? and then demanded five additional printings, for a current total of 1,025,000
copies? (Kanfer, 1986).  Kanfer proposes that when ?an author receives that kind of recognition, two
factors are at work: his skills and the vitality of his genre? the frightful theme is what continues to
make him the most successful horror writer in history? (Kanfer, 1986).
56
?mainstream? (DS, p. 556) novella, or ?ordinary stories? (DS, p. 559) as King
describes the novella collection to his editor.
In writing novelas that do not belong to the horror genre, the genre in which he
became so successful, King has strayed into a type of literary production which does
not typicaly yield large amounts of economic capital due to its distinct lack of
?marketability? (DS, p. 556).  As King confesses, ?I found myself in a puzzling
position.  I had gotten to a place with my novels where people were saying King
could publish his laundry list if he wanted to? but I couldn?t publish these tales
because they were too long to be short and too short to be really long? (DS, p. 558).
King makes it clear that despite the economic success that he has achieved through
his literary production of horror novels, he also belongs to that type of writer who
struggles to find publication for their texts because of their inherent lack of
marketability. King also states a belief in his own literary deficiencies by
contrasting this distancing from the genre markets and popular literary production.
He admits:
There are stil magazines that publish long fiction ? Atlantic Monthly and
The New Yorker are two which have been particularly sympathetic to the
publication problems of a writer who has delivered? a 30,000-word
novella.  But neither of these magazines has been particularly receptive to
my stuff, which is fairly plain, not very literary, and sometimes (although it
hurts like hell to admit it) downright clumsy (DS, p. 557).
King, in articulating the difficulties he has encountered during the publication
process of the novellas collected in Different Seasons, has revealed an
incompatibility between the form of the long short story and his own reputation as a
popular author; the length of the form coupled with its ?ordinary? subject matter
lacks economic viability and King?s reputation as a producer of ?the literary
equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from McDonald?s? (DS, p. 557) precludes
57
their inclusion in critically respected publications such as Atlantic Monthly and The
New Yorker.  King?s success within the horror genre has placed limitations upon his
literary production as he is excluded from publications of serious literature because
of it, and when he attempts to deviate from the genre, he claims he is unable to find
publication.  King?s remedy is to negotiate with his editor to publish his collection
of ?mainstream? novellas followed up by a novel in which he is true to form:
Christine (1983).
Commercial vs. Folk Cultural Production
I started out as a storyteller; along the way I became an economic force, as well
(King, 1985b, p. 1).
As I stated in the introduction, the conflicts within the field of literary production
are not limited to those between the autonomous and heteronomous principles of
producing literature; there are also conflicts inherent within the production of
literature at both ends of the spectrum. In this section, I turn to focus on one of
these internal struggles: that which exists between commercial and folk cultural
production.  For my purposes here, I am working with the definition of folk culture
as ?a comunal art roted in daily experience, a product of gemeinschaft in which
the distinction betwen audience and performer is imprecise? (Bigsby, 1976, p. 18)
as opposed to popular culture as ?an entertainment, a product of gesellschaft, in
which that distinction becomes vital? (Bigsby, 1976, p. 18).  It is a strugle in which
King has participated for many years, and which has encouraged his employment of
a variety of media throughout his career.  Before proceeding to explore King?s
experimentation with the tangible forms of the text and its correlation to the
folk/commercial dialectic, I would first like to turn to the intangible: the words upon
58
the page. This is, inevitably, discused comprehensively in On Writing, and it is
through King?s metaphorical rendering of the writing proces that he most closely
aligns his own literary production with folk cultural production rather than mass
culture. The first indication that this is a key objective for King in the writing of his
book ?about the language? is its subtitle: ?A Memoir of the Craft?.  King frequently
returns to this use of the word ?craft? to describe the process of writing, the practice
of which he proposes to teach in On Writing, and the metaphors he employs in order
to convey a perception of that process as akin to the manual production of folk art
than to the global mass market industry.
One such metaphor is that of carpentry, which he employs extensively throughout
the section entitled, ?Toolbox?, in which he delivers some of the basics of style and
grammar.  He begins by recalling his grandfather, Fazza, and uncle?s profession of
carpentry and the large handmade toolbox which contained all the necesary tols.
After accompanying his uncle to a job one day, King enquired ?why he?d lugged
Fazza?s toolbox all the way around the house, if all he?d needed was? one
screwdriver? (OW, p. 124).  His uncle responds, ?I didn?t know what else I might
find to do once I got out here, did I?  It?s best to have your tols with you.  If you
don?t, you?re apt to find something you didn?t expect and get discouraged? (OW, p.
125).  King uses this anecdote ?to sugest that to write to your best abilities, it
behoves you to construct your own tolbox and then build up enough muscle so
you can carry it with you? (OW, p. 125).  He maintains this metaphor throughout the
section describing each of the writing basics as tools for constructing narrative.  He
states, ?You?ll find you have most of the tools you need already, but I advise you to
look at each one again as you load it into your box.  Try to se each one new,
59
remind yourself of its function, and if some are rusty?clean them off? (OW, p.
125).  This process of re-familiarising oneself with the ?nuts and bolts? of the
writing process, he reiterates, is ?mostly a matter of cleaning the rust off the drillbits
and sharpening the blade of your saw? (OW, p. 132).
According to this pairing of literary production and manual construction, writing, as
King represents it here, is not ?art for art?s sake? and it is not art mechanically
reproduced for the masses; instead, it is portrayed as a ?craft?: a skilful endeavour
more suited to cottage industry than global, mas production.  King states that
carpenters
build houses, stores, and banks. They build some of wod a plank at a time
and some of brick a brick at a time.  You will build a paragraph at a time,
constructing these of your vocabulary and your knowledge of grammar and
basic style. As long as you stay level-on-the-level and shave even every
door, you can build whatever you like ? whole mansions, if you have the
energy (OW, pp. 153-154).
At no point during this metaphorical representation is the writing proces portrayed
as a commercial endeavour.  There is no mention of real estate agents, payment for
services rendered, legal contracts for the construction work; there is an absence of
any mention of exchange value.  The labour employed to complete the finished
product (the written text, the constructed house) is articulated in terms of use value:
that which, as Baudrilard expounds, ?is never truly inscribed in the field of the
market economy? (Baudrillard, 1981, p. 130).  Baudrillard qualifies this statement
by claiming that, within use-value ?is contained?the promise of a resurgence
beyond the market economy, money and exchange value, in the glorious autonomy
of the simple relation of people to their work and their products? (Baudrillard, 1981,
p. 130).  This is not the autonomy present in the production of art for art?s sake, but
rather autonomy unconnected with the processes of exchange whether for economic
60
or symbolic forms of capital.  It is an autonomous relationship betwen the worker,
their work and their own immediate needs.  In this sense, King is once again
distancing himself from the commercial venture of writing for economic profit, as
well as undermining the principles for the distribution of symbolic capital.
A second metaphor which King employs in On Writing is that of the practice of
palaeontology; he equates the excavation of fossils to the act of creating fiction.  He
claims:
Stories aren?t souvenir tee-shirts or GameBoys.  Stories are relics, part of an
undiscovered pre-existing world.  The writer?s job is to use the tools in his
or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as
posible. Sometimes the fosil you uncover is smal; a seashel. Sometimes
it?s enormous, a Tyranosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning
teeth.  Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the
techniques of excavation remain basically the same (OW, pp. 188-189).
Once again, King can be sen here diferentiating the labour expeled in the proces
of writing fiction from that in producing comodities such as ?souvenir te-shirts?
and ?GameBoys,? both of which exist as examples of commodity fetishism: ?not a
function of the commodity defined simultaneously as exchange value and use value,
but of exchange value alone? (Baudrillard, 1981, p. 130).  Also yet again, he is
encouraging the perception of the employment of grammar and style as tools to be
utilised, thus reinforcing the connection between the mental labour of writing to the
manual labour of construction and excavation.  However, the metaphor also
illuminates another facet of King?s portrayed perception of his own literary
production as production which is ?a spontaneous, autochthonous expression?
(Macdonald, 1994, p. 30) as oposed to one which ?is imposed from above?
(Macdonald, 1994, p. 30).  It is through this proposed affiliation of his writing with
61
autochthony that King attempts to differentiate his own production from that of
commercial, mass culture and from elite, high culture.
It is this differentiation which is also present in his experimentation with a variety of
different media from e-publishing to limited editions.  His experimentation with the
latter has been the most contentious among his many fans, leading to his defence
issued in Castle Rock: a fan newsletter for news of King and his literary production.
The defence entitled ?The Politics of Limited Editions? (1985) was so lengthy that it
was printed in two separate parts over consecutive months, and it strongly indicated
King?s dissatisfaction with the perception of his role as literary producer as one who
produces commercial fiction for the masses.  In ?The Politics of Limiteds ? Part II,?
King begins:
I started out as a writer and nothing more.  I became a popular writer and
have discovered that, in the scale-model landscape of the book business, at
least, I have grown into a Bestsellersaurus Rex ? a big, stumbling book-beast
that is loved when it shits money and hated when it tramples houses (King,
1985b, p. 1).
Evidently, King resents the comercial influence his role as a popular literary
producer has afforded him.  The pressures placed upon him by his publishers, who
believed he risked ?over-exposure in the marketplace? (King, 1985a, p. 3), and by
bokselers, who aserted his ?economic responsibility? to publish in a widely
accessible format, are cited as both the reason for his publication of the limited
edition and for his publication of a defense pertaining to his right to continue
publishing in this form.
62
However, also inscribed in this defence is his contention that he is engaged in a
cottage industry when he actively participates in the production of limited editions.
8
He describes the production of Eyes of the Dragon (1984) thus:
It was designed by Michael Alpert of Bangor, a fine poet and an inspired,
deeply dedicated maker of books.  A transplanted West Virginian named
Kenneth Linkhauser has done a number of lovely pen-and-ink illustrations?
My sister-in-law designed the ad copy, which will run in three
fantasy/science fiction orientated magazines? and did the layouts.  The
printing will be done by Stineour Press, in Vermont.  In other words, cottage
industry from beginning to end (King, 1985a, p. 4).
King claims that by involving himself in the production of a book such as this, in
which a number of named individuals collaborate to produce the final article, he is
part of a collective producing a book which is not aimed at economic profit.  He
states that to ?issue such a book, of course, is one of the few ways I have left of
saying I am not entirely for sale ? that I?m still in this business for the joy of it, and
that I have not been entirely subsumed by the commercial juggernaut I have
cheerfully fuelled up and set in motion? (King, 1985b, p. 5).  This ?commercial
juggernaut? is strikingly similar to Bill Denbrough?s ?vast dead bulldozer,? and it
demands that the mass, industrial production of his commercial fiction be
differentiated from his limited editions: his cottage work.
The sentiment that he has retained a measure of authenticity regarding his literary
production is reiterated during his explanation of his involvement in the e-
publication of his short story, ?Riding the Bullet? (2000).  He claims that writing
short fiction is ?the way I affirm, at least to myself, the fact that I haven?t sold out,
no mater what the more unkind critics may think? (E, p. xvi), and that he believes
                                                  
8
 For further reading on the publication of limited editions as a reaction against mass-market
publishing during the 1920s? vogue for fine books see Megan L. Benton?s Beauty and the Book: Fine
Editions and Cultural Distinction in America (2000).
63
short stories to be ?piecework, the equivalent of those one-of-a-kind items you can
buy in an artisan?s shop? (EE, p. xvi).  He is careful to stress though that
there?s no reason for stories to be marketed by the same old just-like-Father-
did-it methods, simply because the stories themselves are created that way,
nor is there any reason to asume (as so many stodgies in the critical pres
seem to have done) that the way in which a piece of fiction is sold must in
some way contaminate or cheapen the product itself (EE, p. xvi).
With King?s emphasis on short fiction?s rots in traditional craftsmanship, the
method of marketing and distributing literature through an electronic medium at
first appears unorthodox and even anachronistic.  However, even this seemingly ill-
matched coupling of the traditional and contemporary is reconciled through King?s
insistence in distancing himself from the mass market.
9
  He confeses to taking ?an
amateur?s slightly crazed pleasure in the busines side of what I do.  I like to goof
widdit, do a little media cross-pollination and envelope-pushing? (EE, p. xi).  By
defining his interest in ?the business side? as that which belongs to an amateur, his
?cross-pollination and envelope-pushing? become a way for King to continue ?trying
to se the act, art, and craft of writing in different ways, thereby refreshing the
proces and keping the resulting artefacts ? the stories, in other words ? as bright
as possible? (EE, p. xi).  He rejects the notion that it is ?about making more money?
or ?about creating new markets? (EE, p. xi), preferring to entertain the possibility
that ?a fresh perspective on one aspect of creative writing ? the commercial aspect ?
can sometimes refresh the whole? (EE, p. xvi).
10
                                                  
9
 This is evident in his lament articulated in his article ?Son of Best Seller Stalks the Moors? (1993)
for The New York Times in which he condemns the ?book business, which hardly used to be a
business at all? for searching ?for The Next Big Thing with a zeal once found only in the movie
business? (King, 1993).  He notes that the ?gentleman?s profession of book publishing has become
the corporate game called the book biz? (King, 1993) and that the success of book sequels, a practice
which aims to capitalise on the source texts? initial economic success, causes him to ?feel a little bit
sick to my stomach? (King, 1993).
10
 King?s attempt to ?refresh the whole? is also present in his publication of the serial novel The
Green Mile (1996) in six parts during 1996, the medium of which, he claims, ?certainly energized the
writing of the story? (GM, p. xiii) while harkening back to ?the nineteenth-century manner? (GM, p.
64
King chose to repeat his e-publishing experiment on a larger scale and without his
publisher?s backing when he embarked upon his new serial novel, The Plant (2000).
This conscious attempt to cut out the middleman attracted intense media speculation
which King attempted to contrast with his original intention.  He claims that there is
?a profound crevasse of misunderstanding between the smart guys of the business
world and the talented goofballs who make entertainment in this increasingly
entertainment-hungry society? (King, 2000).  His assessment of the media?s interest
and their portrayal of the book?s success, or lack thereof, was included in an article
written for Time, ?How I Got That Story? (2000).  He states:
Publishers, investors and media watchers see a venture like The Plant and
say, ?Ah, King is moving into e-commerce!? in the tones of 1940s
newscasters relaying the news that Hitler is moving east. King in the
meantime, is thinking something along the lines of, ?Hey guys!  My uncle?s
got a barn!  Let?s put on a show!?  It?s a goofy thing, in other words.  Not a
business thing at all.  Which, may I add, isn?t the same thing as saying
there?s no money in it.  Or cultural clout (King, 2000).
Here, King is deliberately portraying himself as a busines na?f who remains
blissfully ignorant of the machinations of the global entertainment industry, as
opposed to the savvy businessman capable of orchestrating strategies for world
domination that, he proposes, the ?publishers, investors and media watchers?
perceive him to be.
                                                                                                                                             
xiii) of book publication.  However, The Green Mile is also a significant publication because of its
commercial success encouraging cultural commentators to state that:
The Green Mile has become a publishing sensation, with each of the first five instalments
having shipped more than 3,000,000 copies, and four of the five currently occupying
positions on The New York Times paperback bestseler list, which all but guarantes that the
sixth and concluding instalment, in stores this wek, wil also be a hit. It?s a nifty trick: at
$2.99 a pop for each roughly 90-page paperback book, and $1 more for the half-again-as-
long conclusion, readers of the complete Gren Mile will have shelled out a total of $18.94
for what would have cost around $6.99 if it had been a normal, one-volume, mass-market
paperback (Handy, 1996).
The commercial success of this venture was rewarded with a Blue Ribbon, making it the ?only book
campaign noted by Advertising Age in its annual feature on the 100 most outstanding marketing
campaigns of 1996 (in a field that features very visible campaigns for Starbucks, Energizer batteries,
Coca Cola, The X-Files)? (Maryles, 1997).
65
It is a perception he has claimed to be battling throughout his career as a bestseling
novelist, despite his many attempts to emphasise his affinity with folk culture
through his cottage industry production of small-scale literary products.  Regardless
of his participation in restricted publication or internet publication, invariably the
reviewers deem his choice of form a business decision rather than one based upon
maintaining ?a fresh perspective on one aspect of creative writing?.  When he
allowed his short story, ?My Pretty Pony? (1989) to be designed by the artist
Barbara Kruger and published by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the result
was, in King?s opinion, ?over-priced? and ?over-designed? (ND, p. 827): over-
designed, as the form tok precedence over the content, and over-priced, as the pre-
publication price was set at $1,800 and rose to $2,500 post-publication.  The story
became almost an irrelevancy as attention was focused on the price and the design
instead of on the narrative.  This situation was repeated with the publication of
?Riding the Bullet?.  King complains in the introduction to Everything?s Eventual
(2002) of being ?mobbed in the airport lounges? (EE, p. xviii) by ?handsomely
suited, briefcase-toting fellows? (EE, p. xvii), and that publications, such as The
New York Times, ?pontificated at some length over the perceived suces of ?Riding
the Bullet?? (EE, p. xviii).  What King found difficult to come to terms with was not
that he had ?inadvertently become a mogul,? (E, p. xvii) but that ?nobody cared
about the story? (EE, xviii).  He was forced to acknowledge that ?all those readers
might have been a lot more interested in the novelty of the electronic package than
they were in what was inside the package? (EE, p. xix). With The Plant, King
experienced the same interest in the ?electronic package? with scant regard for the
story within the package.  As he bemoaned, ?In the modest hoopla that has
66
surrounded the publication of The Plant, very few media analysts bothered to talk
about the story itself (posibly because they didn?t bother to read it)? (King, 2000).
Despite his best efforts to align himself with the principles of folk cultural
production, his economic suces as a popular writer has blinded the other
participants operating within the field of literary production to anything other than
the inherent commerciality of his work.
King recently responded to a reader?s question on the Today Show (2008) regarding
which of his author-protagonists was most like him by citing Gordon Lachance
from ?The Body? as the closest to reality.  In many ways, this is an interesting
choice, not least because of the disparity Lachance perceives as existing betwen
the commerciality of his fiction and its roots in oral folk culture.  Lachance
complains:
Nowadays writing is my work and the pleasure has diminished a little, and
more and more often that guilty, masturbatory pleasure has become
associated in my head with the coldly clinical images of artificial
insemination: I come acording to the rules and regs laid down in my
publishing contract (DS, pp. 400-401).
His production has become defined by its commerciality and Lachance has been
?entirely subsumed by the commercial juggernaut? (King, 1985b, p. 5) King feared
in his ?Politics of Limiteds? article. The busines of producing literature has
contaminated the writing proces for Lachance, resulting in the los of pleasure he
previously felt from the act of creating fiction.  He, like King, has evolved into a
?best-selling novelist who is more apt to have his paperback contracts reviewed than
his boks? (DS, p. 358); one whose literary products receive more attention because
of their packaging than the story inside the package.  It leads him to question, ?if
there realy is any point in what I?m doing, or what I?m supposed to make of a
67
world where a man can get rich playing ?let?s pretend?? (DS, p. 480).  The clinical,
mechanisation of the literary production process now predominates, resulting in
commercial fiction which gains attention because of its potential to accrue vast
amounts of economic capital. King, like Lachance, has failed to establish a level of
disinterestedness necessary for the accruement of symbolic capital, which an
emphasis on folk cultural production had been contrived to achieve.
King and the Cultural Custodians
To me, it all goes back to this idea held by a lot of people who analyze literature for
a living, who say, If we let the rabble in, then they?ll see that anybody can do this,
that it?s accessible to anyone.  And then what are we doing here?
(Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p.87).
When King collected his National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to
American Leters in 2003 much of his spech focused on the divide betwen
literature perceived as popular and literature perceived as literary. It was a key
moment for King and his decision to focus upon this particular grievance
represented the culmination of a career-long endeavour to undermine the culturally
accepted divide between literature produced according to the heteronomous and
autonomous principle.
1
  As he stated, ?I believe the time comes when you must be
inclusive rather than exclusive? (King, 2003), and it is this push for inclusion which
this section traces from King?s days as a student within the university system, to his
time as a university teacher and onwards to his collection of the NBA award.
Throughout King?s carer as a writer and through his relations with academia, King
has attempted to render cultural custodianship obsolete; a claim corroborated by
Burton Hatlan, one of the professors who taught King during his undergraduate
                                                  
1
 As a reviewer of It observes, ?King tries to conflate cultural material that teachers, critics, and
other squares urge young people to keep distinct? (Edwards, 1986).
68
degree at the University of Maine.  He confirms that, from ?the beginning, he set
himself a goal of trying to bridge the gap between traditional, serious literature and
mass culture.  He didn?t want to accept the limitations of either one? (Davis, 1994,
p. 149), and that King?s ?work really in some ways grows out of a conscious
critique of that cultural split itself? (Davis, 1994, p. 159).  Hatlen persists by stating
that King ?calls into question all of the ways in which we have traditionally thought
about literature.  He calls into question the very reality of the split? (Davis, 1994, p.
160).  However, through the act of questioning the ?reality of the split? he
simultaneously acknowledges its existence within the structures of the literary field;
it informs his habitus, thus influencing the development of his dispositions and his
perception of the way in which position-takings are effected.  He may question the
validity of the structures that reinforce the polarity betwen both high and low, but
that questioning simply strengthens their influence in the hierarchisation of the field.
These cros-purposes to undermine and to reinforce these structured and structuring
structures are present throughout King?s life and career, and are most clearly
apparent in the contradictions present during his discussions of the Academy.  This
is a typical agonistic response by a literary producer towards those entrusted with
the power to consecrate literature, thus confirming recognition of ?the legitimacy of
[the Academy?s] verdicts sufficiently to reproach it for not having recognized them?
(Bourdieu, 1993, p. 124).  The agonism is particularly prevalent in King?s
employment of the metaphor of the country club for the exclusivity that he
perceives to define the culturally consecrated pole of literary production.  He has
frequently referred to his inability to be perceived as a serious writer in terms of
being unable to gain access to an exclusive club.  The appropriateness of this
69
metaphor is supported by Bourdieu who confirms that entering ?the field of
literature is not so much like going into religion as getting into a select club?
(Bourdieu, 1993, p. 77).  In King?s acceptance speech for the NBA, he discusses his
past angry rants to his wife concerning the oposition of popular and serious
literature.  He admits that even ?a note in the acknowledgments page of a novel
thanking the this or that foundation for its generous assistance was enough to set me
off.  I knew what it meant, I told my wife.  It was the Old Boy Network at work?
(King, 2003).  In On Writing, in a defense of encouraging the production of popular
literature, he claims that:
I expect to be acused by some of promoting a brainles and happy Horatio
Alger philosophy, defending my own less-than-spotless reputation while I?m
at it, and of encouraging people who are ?just not our sort, old chap? to apply
for membership at the country club (OW, p. 162).
For King, serious literature is always affiliated with unfair exclusivity, and popular
fiction with an open church policy.
Those King accuses of perpetuating this exclusivity are the academics that
are liberals in their politics but crustaceans in their chosen fields.  Men and
women who would take to the streets to protest the exclusion of African-
Americans or Native Americans? from the local country club are often the
same men and women who tell their clases that writing ability is fixed and
immutable; once a hack, always a hack (OW, p. 161).
The stigmatisation that King and his literary production have endured is, he
maintains, the result of ?intellectual snobbery? (OW, p. 161): an academic approach
of suspicion towards popular success which is ?used as an excuse not to think? (OW,
p. 162).  However, it is not only this perception of a rigid hierarchy that causes King
to criticise the literary critics; it is also the act of literary criticism itself which, he
claims, ?serves only to reinforce a caste system? (OW, p. 161) which privileges
autonomous over heteronomous literature. King has criticised the practice of
70
literary criticism elsewhere, most memorably in Danse Macabre, in which he made
his infamous comparison of the literary critic and the lepidopterist,
12
 stating:
those lepidopterists of literature who, when they se a lovely buterfly, fel
that they should immediately run into the field with a net, catch it, kill it
with a drop of chloroform, and mount it on a white board and put it in a
glass case, where it will still be beautiful? and just as dead as horseshit
(DM, pp. 300-301).
According to King?s articulation of a text?s fate at the hands of an academic, the
work of a literary critic imposes a rigid fixity which is not only phenomenological
in nature, but is essentially taxonomic, thus embedding the text within the
hierarchical strata which characterise the literary field.
However, towards the end of the text, there is a longer and more sustained attack on
literary criticism, and those that practice it, whom he accuses of not feeling
?comfortable with the comfortably overgrown? literary wildernes until they have
built a freeway composed of Cliff?s Notes through it? (DM, p. 432) and of not
feeling ?totally at ease until each tale, created to hold some reader spellbound?has
been neatly dehydrated and poured into a gel capsule to be swallowed? (DM, p.
432).  His distinctly unfavourable depiction of the job of the literary critic is
compounded when he wishes upon them a variety of afflictions directly
apropriated from J.R.R. Tolkein?s fantasy epic, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
(1954-1955).  He invects:
That is their job ? the job of dissectors, engineers, and pharmacists ? and I
leave it to them, along with the fervent wish that Shelob may catch them and
eat them as they enter the Dark Lord?s land, or that the faces in the Marsh of
                                                  
12
 King may be alluding to the most famous of literary lepidopterists, Vladimir Nabokov.  John
Updike in his introduction to Nabokov?s Lectures on Literature (1980) states:
Nabokov took early and lasting delight in the exact sciences, and his blissful hours spent
within the luminous hush of microscopic examination carry over into his delicate tracing of
the horse theme in Madame Bovary or the twinned dreams of Bloom and Dedalus;
lepidoptery placed him in a world beyond common sense (Updike, 1980, p. xxv).
71
the Dead will first hypnotize them and then drive them mad by quoting
Cleanth Brooks to them eternally in mud-choked voices, or that the Dark
Lord himself will take them up to his Tower forever or cast them into the
Cracks of Dom, where crocodiles of living obsidian wait to crunch up their
bodies and silence their quacking, droning voices forever (DM, pp. 432-
433).
This series of curses directed towards literary critics invites speculation as to the
relevance of such a text to the literary production of King and to his perception of
the high/low dialectic.
Asistance in ascertaining the importance of The Lord of the Rings is found in
King?s introduction to the revised edition of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger,
which he begins, ?Hobbits were big when I was nineteen? (TG, p. ix).  He states that
?although I read the books in 1966 and 1967, I held off writing.  I responded? to
the swep of Tolkein?s imagination ? to the ambition of his story ? but I wanted to
write my own kind of story, and had I started then, I would have written his? (TG, p.
ix).  King?s response to his reading of Tolkein?s epic is the desire to emulate;
however, his emulation, as he contends, had to be ?his own kind of story? and not a
replication of The Lord of the Rings.  Ultimately, the texts arising from this
admiration were those which compose his Dark Tower series: the narrative of
Roland Deschain, spanning seven texts and twenty-six years.  Whether or not this
series is a sucesfuly original descendant of The Lord of the Rings is less relevant
to my purposes here than King?s perception of the kind of suces enjoyed by that
particular text.  In the same introduction, he claims that:
I think novelists come in two types? Those who are bound for the more
literary or ?serious? side of the job examine every possible subject in light of
this question: What would writing this sort of story mean to me?  Those
whose destiny? is to include the writing of popular novels are apt to ask a
very different one: What would this sort of writing mean to others?  The
?serious? novelist is loking for answers and keys to the self; the ?popular?
novelist is looking for an audience (TG, p. xii).
72
The ?story of Frodo,? King maintains, belongs ?to the second group? (TG, pxi); the
group of texts which were written by an author ?looking for an audience? over and
above ?answers and keys to the self?; a group of texts which turns its reflective gaze
outwards rather than directing it in towards the self.
However, King?s rather simplistic rendering of the high/low dialectic ignores the
importance of the role the structure of the field of literary production plays. It
necessarily informs the writing of all literary products, perpetuating the dispositions
of literary producers and in turn, being perpetuated by the dispositions of literary
producers.  Burton Hatlen, in an interview with Jonathon Davis, discusses King?s
perception of the success achieved by The Lord of the Rings and how that
perception inspired his desire to emulate that text and that success.  Hatlen states
that, for King,
Tolkein was an important influence.  He hasn?t talked very much about
Tolkein.  But he?s told me The Stand was quite consciously based on The
Lord of the Rings.  Tolkein managed to be taken seriously by literary
scholars and be vastly popular for a period in the 1960s and 1970s, and
Tolkein was writing fantasy.  So here it became possible once again to look
at fantasy as serious real literature (Davis, 1994, p. 149).
So, as Hatlen clarifies, King was motivated by the success of The Lord of the Rings
which managed to transcend the stigma of commerciality in order to become a text
which both appealed to the mass market and still accrued significant symbolic
capital through its consecration by the cultural custodians.  King, Hatlen contends,
was attempting to ?bridge the gap between traditional, serious literature and mass
culture? (Davis, 1994, p. 149) and that he ?did it somewhat differently in that he
deliberately went after certain genres which had never ben realy efectively
reconciled with the notion of high literature? (Davis, 1994, p. 149).  Tolkien?s
73
example showed King that it was possible to be a ?writer of literature and a writer
with a mas audience? (Davis, 1994, p. 156) while producing genre fiction.  His
adoption of Tolkein as a role model reflects his inherent desire to ?bridge the gap?
and to encourage a reconsideration of the way value judgements are made
pertaining to popular and serious fiction.  As Hatlen aserts, ?We have a masive
rethinking of the whole issue of canonicity and canonization; Steve?s work is one of
the forces that has initiated this rethinking of that issue? (Davis, 1994, p. 160).
To return to the text in which the Tolkein hexes are included, Danse Macabre,
despite containing this litany against literary scholarship, is a text which has its
roots in academia.  As King divulges in the introduction, the idea to write Danse
Macabre came from Bill Thompson, King?s former editor at Doubleday.  King, who
was at that time composing a sylabus for the Themes of Supernatural Literature
course that he was due to teach the folowing semester at the University of Maine,
decided that ?if my series of talks (I don?t quite have balls enough to call them
lectures) on the horror-supernatural-gothic field seemed well received ? by myself
as well as by my students ? then perhaps writing a book on the subject would
complete the circle? (DM, p. 12).  He proceeds to thank his students of that course,
stating that it is an ?acknowledgement of those one hundred Eh-90 students who
listened patiently? as I worked out my ideas. As a result of that clas, many of
these ideas cannot even be said to be my own, for they were modified during class
discussions, challenged, and, in many cases, changed? (DM, p. 12).   The
development of the ideas which underpin this work of non-fiction exploring the
origins and expression of the horror genre was undertaken by King and his students
in an academic seting, thus undermining the anti-academic statements contained
74
within that same text.  His active participation within an academic institution at the
time of writing Danse Macabre, forces a re-evaluation of his articulations of
antipathy towards the university system and its practices, which play such a
fundamental role in the consecration of literature.  Rather than the emphatic
rejection of the Academy that it apears to be at first, when considered within the
context of its publication, Danse Macabre is actually a complex negotiation of the
high/low dialectic: one which requires King to both acknowledge his debt to the
Academy, while simultaneously undermining the practices it promotes and the
consecratory power it wields.
13
His teaching of the Themes of Supernatural Literature course was not, however, the
first time that he had taught at the University of Maine. As Hatlen recals, during
?his senior year, [King] decided that he wanted to teach a course? on popular
fiction.  He felt that the curriculum of the English department tended to be snobbish,
elitist, and oriented toward old stuff? (Davis, 1994, p. 145).  As no-one in the
English department was ?in a position to teach? (Davis, 1994, p. 145) a course on
popular fiction, he developed a proposal for his own course which was acepted by
the ?committee that reviewed proposals for the special seminars? (Davis, 1994, p.
145).  While lecturer Graham Adams was the agreed ?front person? for the course,
King ?actually taught the course? (Davis, 1994, p. 145), leading Hatlen to surmise
that ?that?s stil the only time in the history of this university that an undergraduate
has actually taught a course? (Davis, 1994, p. 145).  Once again, King has
demonstrated his desire to integrate popular, commercial fiction, produced
according to the heteronomous principle, within the academic system, thus
                                                  
13
 This will be further explored in Chapter 5 in my analysis of Lisey?s Story.
75
acknowledging and engaging with the systems of consecration rather than
displaying an interest in subverting them.  He states:
I had some running battles with those teachers in college who sneered at the
popular fiction I carried around all the time.  They?d go around all day with
essentially unreadable books like Waiting for Godot.  I was their court jester.
?Oh, King, he?s got some peculiar notions about writing,? they?d say (Alen,
1990, p. 96).
However, Hatlen?s recollection of King?s teaching of a course on popular fiction,
and his status as the only undergraduate in the history of the University of Maine to
have taught a course, suggest a much more receptive and supportive environment
than King has portrayed in the past.
Academic support is now also perceptible towards not only King?s ?peculiar notions
about writing? but also the fruits of his literary production.  King has stated that ?I
think now ? and I didn?t use to think this way ? but I think now that we [King and
Peter Straub] might actually have a serious place in American literature in a
hundred years or so? (Wiater and Anker, 1990, p. 244).  More recently, in response
to a question concerning whether he stil felt excluded by the literary establishment,
King stated that, ?It has changed a lot? People who have grown up reading you
become part of the literary establishment.  They take you as part of the landscape
that was there when they came along. In some ways you get a squarer shake?
(Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p. 100).  Certainly, the support is not unequivocal as the
opposition to the bestowing of the NBA on King in 2003 shows.  Gary
Hoppenstand, one of King?s leading supporters, has claimed, ?In the past ten years, I
have sen more and more academics recognize in King elements of literary quality.
Yet, these academics are but a handful when compared to the overall literary
establishment that stil perceives in King the ?penny dreadful? pot-boiler, the hack
76
writer? (Davis, 1994, p. 168).  However, it has to be recognized that this growth in
academic interest in King is perhaps more a reflection of the changes in the
discipline
14
 than in a change of academic perception towards King and his work.
King?s response to the growing academic interest in his work is to acknowledge it
but also to downplay its significance.  In On Writing he states:
Critics who try to rise above this intellectual hardening of the arteries
usualy meet with limited suces. Their coleagues may acept Chandler
into the company of the great, but are apt to seat him at the foot of the table.
And there are always those whispers: Came out of the pulp tradition, you
know? carries himself well for one of those, doesn?t he?? did you know he
wrote for Black Mask in the thirties? yes, regrettable? (OW, pp. 161-162).
From this response it is clear that King stil believes his literary production to be
stigmatised because of its commerciality and its roots in popular genre tradition.
?Literary quality? may be recognised by some academics as being present in King?s
fiction, but he remains a considerable distance from becoming a consecrated author:
he is absent from most university curricula on contemporary literature, funding for
research into his work is still scarce and the longevity of his literature remains
unsure.
Conclusion
Don?t bother trying to read between the lines, and don?t look for a through-line.
There are no lines ? only snapshots, most out of focus (OW, p. 4).
In the opening pages of The Field of Cultural Production, Piere Bourdieu states
that:
writers? eforts to control the reception of their own works are always
partially doomed to failure? if only because the very effect of their work
may transform the conditions of its reception and because they would not
                                                  
14
 For further reading see Thomas Frank?s One Market Under God (2000) in particular the chapter
?New Consensus for Old: Culture Studies from Left to Right,? the work of Gerald Graff such as
Literature Against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society (1979) and Professing Literature: An
Institutional History (1987) and Allan Bloom?s The Closing of the American Mind (1987).
77
have had to write many things they did write and write them as they did? if
they had been granted from the outset what they are granted retrospectively
(Bourdieu, 1993, p. 31).
According to Bourdieu, there is a certain blindness for writers concerning their
literary production: an obscuring that renders a clear, objective appreciation of their
own output imposible. It is an argument qualified by King himself in the third and
last foreword to On Writing, when he states that, ?Fiction writers, present company
included, don?t understand very much about what they do ? not why it works when
it?s good, not why it doesn?t when it?s bad? (OW, p. xiii).  Just as King?s description
regarding his curriculum vitae portrays ?a fogged-out landscape from which
occasional memories appear like isolated trees? (OW, p. 3), it also describes his own
perception of his career trajectory, his literary production and his position-takings
within the field of literary production.  The first half of On Writing is, after all, ?not
an autobiography? (OW, p. 4), but a curriculum vitae: a document outlining the
shape of one writer?s career.  King?s asertion as to the absence of any ?through-
line? confirms his own inability to perceive a coherent, linear progresion
throughout his career as an author.  Not only does On Writing atempt to reposition
his literary production by qualifying many of the things he did write and why he
wrote them as he did, but it is also a text which suffers from an identical fate: the
very effect of his work transformed the conditions of its reception.
Consequently, this chapter does not perform the service of providing a ?through-
line?; rather it is invested in the plotting of a number of positions taken throughout
On Writing and throughout King?s long and prolific career.  The ?assorted
snapshots? (OW, p. 4) of which King?s narrative in On Writing is composed also
represent the structure of this chapter with its individual sections focusing upon four
78
distinct, but interconecting, factors afecting dispositions: the strugles betwen
and within autonomous and heteronomous production as delineated by the
art/money dialectic, the problems inherent in the writing of genre fiction, the
distinction between commercial and folk cultural production and the cultural
consecration of literary production. By ploting these positions the structure of the
field is revealed to be dynamic and evolving: one which is not only capable of
structuring the dispositions held by its participants, but one which is simultaneously
structured by them. It is precisely because of its dynamism and its continual
evolution that the participants within the field produce from a position of ignorance
as to the reception of their own work.  Habitus is often described as a feel for the
game, but it does not, however, provide insight as to the identities of the ultimate
winners and losers of that game.  The very nature of the field prevents this
contemporaneous knowledge, and it is only with the benefit of hindsight that
conclusions may be drawn. King, as evidenced by his dificulty to discern an
overal strategy within his own literary production, is stil strugling to fuly
ascertain his own literary legacy.  As he admits to Christopher Lehmann-Haupt,
?It?s a crapshoot.  You never know who?s going to be popular in fifty years.  Who is
going to be in, in a literary sense, and who?s not? (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p. 75).
79
Chapter 2 ? The Shining
Introduction
With The Shining I have more problems.  I have my days when I think that I gave
Kubrick a live grenade which he heroically threw his body on (King, 1990, p. 36).
During an interview with Eric Norden for Playboy in 1983, King confessed that,
while he admired Brian De Palma?s version of Carrie (1976), Stanley Kubrick?s
adaptation of The Shining left him feeling ?profoundly ambivalent? (Norden, 1990,
p.47).  Twenty thre years later, during his interview with Lehman-Haupt for The
Paris Review, the subject of Kubrick?s version was raised again, and he admitted
that it is ?certainly beautiful to lok at: gorgeous sets, all those Steadicam shots. I
used to call it a Cadillac with no engine in it.  You can?t do anything with it except
admire it as sculpture? (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p. 79).  King?s deep-seated
ambivalence towards Kubrick?s cinematic reinterpretation of one of the key texts in
King?s canon is partly founded in the alteration the filmmaker made to the narrative,
Kubrick?s choice of actors and, as King perceives it, his misunderstanding of the
horror genre.  However, I argue that it is also informed by an anxiety pertaining to
the critical acclaim enjoyed by the film but not by the book, an anxiety reinforced
by the many reviews of Kubrick?s version which emphasised film and director?s
cultural and artistic superiority to the source text and its author.  Janet Maslin in The
New York Times review (1980), for example, praised Kubrick and his collaborator,
Diane Johnson, for ?their shrewd and economical screenplay? (Maslin, 1980)
claiming that King?s original narrative was ?changed and improved considerably? by
their ?alterations? (Maslin, 1980).  Pauline Kael, reviewing for The New Yorker
Magazine (1980), was even more scathing in her assessment of King?s novel,
80
stating that Kubrick uses ?Stephen King?s hokum to make a metaphysical statement
about immortality? (Kael, 1980).
1
However, it was not only the film critics who condemned King?s novel as no more
than ?hokum? while elevating Kubrick?s work on The Shining; Kubrick himself
distanced his film from its origins, dismissing the novel as ?by no means a serious
literary work? (Ciment, 1984, p. 181).  Inded the proces of writing the screnplay
involved an atempt to render the film ore ?serious,? as is borne out by Kubrick?s
choice of the novelist and academic Diane Johnson as collaborator on the text.
Kubrick describes Johnson thus:
Diane is an American novelist who has published a number of extremely
good novels which have received serious and important atention. I was
interested in several of her books and in talking to her about them I was
surprised to learn that she was giving a course at the University of California
at Berkeley on the Gothic novel.  When The Shining came up she seemed to
be the ideal collaborator (Ciment, 1984, p. 185).
Johnson brought with her a measure of cultural ?consecration,? with her
participation in academia and her novels receiving serious ?attention?, which was
important for Kubrick in his eforts to adapt King?s novel: a consecration King
recognises, recalling that she ?writes reviews for The New York Times Book Review
sometimes; she had one not too long ago on a book of letters by or about William
Butler Yeats.  Quite a smart lady? (Stewart, 1990, p. 175).  Despite this, however,
King claims that neither Kubrick nor Johnson ?had any background in the field?
(Moderno, 1990, p. 197) of horror, and that this ?basic ignorance of the field
[causes] a lead-up to a big bang that isn?t a big bang. It?s sort of a dud firecracker?
(Modderno, 1990, p. 197).  Kubrick and Johnson have produced a screenplay which
                                                  
1
 Derogatory remarks such as these led King to state, perhaps in an effort to divest them of their
authority, that ?film critics tend to be the nouveau riche establishment of American letters? and, like
nouveaux riches people everywhere, they know that secretly they are being laughed at, or they are
inferior? (Kilgore, 1990, p. 154).
81
acts as a ?critique of the horror genre? (Bergstrom, 2000): a collaborative enterprise
dependent upon a dispasionate aproach towards the material. This practice is
indicative of the reflexivity Kubrick brings to all his films which engage in generic
convention; his ?freedom to reinvent the various generic conventions? at one with
his distance from all of them, and with their own historic obsolescence in the new
world of television, wide screen, and the blockbuster film? (Jameson, 1981, p. 119).
Kubrick atempts to establish cultural legitimacy for his project capitalising upon
Johnson?s intellectual achievements, his reflexive approach to genre, and upon
maintaining a derisive tone when discussing King?s original.  One such example of
Kubrick?s derision arives during a discusion on the adaptation proces, in which
he claimed:
It is in the pruning down phase that the undoing of great novels usually
occurs because so much of what is good about them has to do with the
fineness of the writing, the insight of the author and often the density of the
story. But The Shining was a different matter.  Its virtues lay almost entirely
in the plot, and it didn?t prove to be very much of a problem to adapt it into
the screenplay form (Ciment, 1984, p. 185).
Kubrick sugests here that the original did not contain ?finenes of writing?,
authorial insight or ?density of? story?, and was therefore a straightforward text
upon which to leave his own directorial mark. However, as Kian Bergstrom points
out, Kubrick?s choice of novel was more than just a question of adaptational
convenience:
Starting with The Shining, his films would become increasingly concerned
with the diferences betwen ?popular? taste and ?high culture,? betwen
sensationalism and intelectualism, internalizing this dialectic within the
themes and actions of the works, even as Kubrick wrestled with it externally,
in terms of marketing, casting, and choice of material (Bergstrom, 2000).
This dialectic that Kubrick was exploring in his work and struggling with as a
cultural producer, at ?the beginning of his increasing interest in definitions and
82
analyses of popular culture and the end of his definitive standing as a critical
darling? (Bergstrom, 2000),
2
 accounts for his decision to adapt a popular novel
while simultaneously distancing himself from its bestselling author.
It should not be assumed, however, that the articulation and exploration of this
dialectic remains unexplored in the novel only then to become a feature in its
cinematic adaptation; the relationship betwen high and low, popular and serious,
economic and symbolic is, I want to suggest, central to the original narrative, and it
may have been this which appealed to Kubrick over and above the anticipated ease
with which he could adapt it for his own purposes. The anxiety King reveals in his
comment about Kubrick?s critically revered version, did not stem from the film
critics? damning indictment of his novel, but was actually present prior to his
production of the text and, indeed, is an integral part of his narrative about the
Torrance family?s nightmarish incarceration in The Overlook Hotel.  Jack Torrance,
who is one of King?s conspicuously least successful author-protagonists in the
struggle to attain symbolic or economic capital,
3
 demonstrates the prominence of
this aspect of the narrative, and it is through him that King dramatises issues
                                                  
2
 Bergstrom clarifies:
The Shining stands at a turning point in Stanley Kubrick?s career in two important ways.
Coming after the monetary failure of Barry Lyndon, and being adapted from a Stephen King
bestseler, it is clearly an atempt to regain a popular foting? It also marks the begining
of his critical downswing. Folowing the four Academy Awards, the nominations for Best
Picture, Director and Screenplay, that Bary Lyndon was honoured with, The Shining
became the first Kubrick film in 23 years not to be nominated for a single Oscar
(Bergstrom, 2000).
3
 Jack is perhaps only second to The Stand?s Harold Lauder, who is described as an aspiring writer
who
edited the Ogunquit High School literary magazine and wrote strange short stories that were
told in the present tense or with the points of view in the second person, or both.  You come
down the delirious corridor and shoulder your way through the splintered door and look at
the race-track stars ? that was Harold?s style (TSt, p. 310).
His pretentious, self-conscious style indicates the way he wishes others to perceive him, as a writer
whose job it is ?to carve with language, to hew close to the bone? (TSt, p. 409), not as one who
entertains or provides escape from everyday reality.  Just as Jack believes that ?the reason? all great
literature, fiction and non-fiction, was written? is so that ?truth comes out? (TS, p. 244), Harold
believes that a writer?s craft is to ?hew? and ?carve? in order to ascertain universal truths.
83
pertaining to the hierarchical strata inherent to the structure of the field of literary
production, the distribution of capital, both economic and symbolic, and the
relationship of literary production to labour, alienated or otherwise. It is a text
which directly engages in the art/money dialectic, and as such, it invites us to
consider, pace Jameson, the role of the cultural producer in the late capitalist era: an
invitation duly accepted by Stanley Kubrick.
Controlled, Corrupted and Consumed
In an ?Evening at the Billerica Library,? (1983) King confesses, ?I?ve been drawn
back to the idea, again and again, that if you write it, if this is the worst thing that
you can think of, and you write it down, then it?ll be all right? (King, 1990, p. 33).
This act of writing down one?s fears is a trope present in many of King?s texts, and
is certainly a component within those texts which deal with the figure of the author-
protagonist and the trials and tribulations which are manifested as a result of
participation within the field of literary production.  In The Shining, King claims
that as he was writing it, he projected himself back into a time when he was
back in that trailer in Hermon, Maine, with no company but the buzzing
sound of the snowmobiles and my own fears ? fears that my chance to be a
writer had come and gone, fears that I had gotten into a teaching job that was
completely wrong for me, fears most of all that my marriage was edging
onto marshy ground and that there might be quicksand anyplace ahead
(King, 1982, p. 36).
However, Jack Torance?s experience should not solely be viewed as an expresion
of King?s past fears from a time before he became renowned as a bestselling horror
novelist; the narrative of The Shining also expresses fears which were plaguing
King as he was writing it.  He states during a discussion of the popularity of the
horror genre (1980), ?When you?ve got a lot of free-floating anxieties, the horror
story or movie helps to sort of conceptualize them, shrink them down to size, make
84
them concrete so they?re manipulable? (Henderson, 1990, p. 260), and, for King, the
writing down of these ?free-floating anxieties? allows him to gain control over them,
thus removing their potency.  As one of his other author-protagonists, Gordon
Lachance from ?The Body,? discovers, ?there was a kind of dreadful exhilaration in
seeing things that had bothered me for years come out in a new form, a form over
which I had imposed control? (DS, p. 358).
The Shining is a narrative in which many fears are expressed and consequently
manipulated; however, in relation to the focus of this study, the fears most pertinent
to King?s anxieties concerning the distribution of capital are those fears which
pertain to the perils of literary production, of which I shal focus on three: the fear
of being controlled, corrupted and consumed.
4
  Each of these fears is inherently
linked to King?s then newly discovered capacity to accrue vast sums of economic
capital and to attract a sizeable readership.  They arise from a fear of participating
within the field of literary production in a position which reflects that ability to be
economically successful,
5
 and which undermines the potential to accumulate
                                                  
4
 King also admits to employing the form of the limited edition as a way of managing these fears
stating:
It?s been a good life in a good world ? but it gets noisy.  More distressing than the noise is
the certainty that to many people are hustling, to many people are hungry, and they would
be perfectly wiling to dine on anything? including you.  This sort of cannibalism often
atacks the creative impulse before it atacks anything else, and when it does, the result
seems to be a kind of spiritual well-poisoning.  It becomes a little too easy to push away a
good novel idea in favor of a novel idea that looks like a natural to sell 600,000 copies and
go to some film company for the proverbial high six-figure advance.  One would think that
a writer would become less vulnerable to such temptations after he or she had become fairly
wealthy, but its not true ? when your walet is full, suces itself has a way of becoming the
brass ring you grab for.  For me, the limiteds have been a way of coping with that? (King,
1985b, p. 5).
5
 King?s profitable talents are reflected in the promotional material that was written to encourage
booksellers to stock The Shining.  It describes the front cover as ?completely unique and eye-
catching? (anon, 1977):
Done on Mylar, The Shining features the head of a small boy, with no features visible, only
the outline of the head and black hair.  The background slowly fades from black to gray to
the shiny, reflective stock, creating a cover that is elegant and intriguing? No paperback
house has ever done a cover in Mylar.  This is a first for the industry (anon, 1977).
85
symbolic capital.  The fear of being controlled by an outside force is one that is
particularly prevalent throughout Jack?s tortured descent.  His narrative is one of
possession, powerlessness and the failure to exert one?s own will, and the various
ways in which this is communicated in the text illustrate the acuteness of this fear.
The alienation with which Jack regards manual labour is evident in the
incompatibility he perceives as existing between his literary production, or his ?real
work? (TS, p. 160), as he terms it, and the prospects he imagines await him away
from the Overlok. This alienation with which he regards manual work in the town
of Sidewinder and the lack of alienation he experiences in relation to his position as
caretaker at the Overlook, exemplifies both a fear of being controlled and the way in
which one can be controlled without being consciously aware.  He imagines:
The picture of John Torrance, thirty years old, who had once published in
Esquire and who had harboured dreams ? not at all unreasonable dreams, he
felt ? of becoming a major American writer during the next decade, with a
shovel from the Sidewinder Western Auto on his shoulder, ringing
doorbells? (TS, p. 294).
The picture changes from Jack shovelling snow for a living, to Jack receiving
charity, to Jack ?swamping out Greyhound buses? (TS, p. 295), ?washing cars in a
rubber suit? (TS, p. 295), ?washing dishes in a diner? (TS, p. 295) and ?pumping gas?
(TS, p. 295).  In each of these visions of the future, the disparity between Jack?s
fantasy ?of becoming a major American writer? and his impoverished reality is
clarified, contrasting the way that he views his responsibilities to the Overlook.
                                                                                                                                             
The mylar, while creating a cover that was ?unique and eye-catching? was also impractical as it was
expensive (9 cents ?right off the top of a book that originally sold for $6.95?) and ?the lettering and
picture gradually buff off the book? The mylar was really discontinued not just because it buffed in
people?s hands, but because it buffed in the boxes when they were shipped? (Stewart, 1990, pp. 180-
181).  The use of this expensive, yet impractical, material serves as in illustration of the willingness
King?s publishers expressed to promote him as an author with the potential to attract a lot of buyers.
As the promotional letter also reveals, The Shining was ?also being backed by a huge radio
advertising campaign: $100,000 dollars worth of sensationally frightening commercials will saturate
15 major markets, thus reaching more than 58 million people!? (anon, 1977) and boasted an ?initial
print order for the Signet edition [of] 1,500,000? (anon, 1977).
86
Jack?s perception of the Overlook at the outset is a space in which he could achieve
liberation from the economic forces which would affect his literary production.  His
role of caretaker is, therefore, closely aligned with the maintenance of this space; in
other words, it has a self-serving purpose in that the work he is engaged in is a
fundamental component in the preservation of his literary aspirations.  While
replacing the rotten shingles, Jack feels that ?the work itself was soothing (TS, p.
114) and that ?he felt himself healing from the troubled wounds of the last three
years? (TS, p. 114) as he works up on the damaged roof.  The manual work is
having a liberating efect upon Jack?s literary output to, as he discovers that ?the
roadblock? (TS, p. 114) which was preventing the completion of his play
?disapeared under his fingers as magicaly as coton candy disolves on the lips?
(TS, p. 114).  The lack of alienation that Jack feels concerning his work at the hotel
becomes augmented following his discovery of the Overlook scrapbook in the
basement. On finding the scrapbook, Jack embarks upon an investigation into the
hotel?s history and in doing so becomes possessed by the spirit of the Overlook.
This posesion ocurs during his reading of the scrapbok and it is closely related
to ?the gotta,? which wil be discused in depth in the folowing case study: the
structural form of the text eliciting the reader to engage in a meaning-making
proces in collaboration with the text itself.
6
  In the case of the scrapbook, this
                                                  
6
 The gotta is an aspect of King?s own writing which is clearly present in The Shining as articulated
by fans in their letters archived at the University of Maine, in which they illustrate the way in which
they feel manipulated by his fiction.  Tamara A. Johns writes that many ?times I wanted to toss [The
Shining] aside, burn it, wipe the imagery from my mind? I could not.  I read the complete text in
nine, almost non-stop, hours loving every spelbinding page? (Johns, 1978).  The language Johns
uses sugests a textual invasion that borders on the visceral. She describes the desire to destroy the
physical object of the text as though this would somehow provide a cessation of the assault upon her
senses.  She has become the reader, as described by Wolfgang Iser, who ?passes through the various
perspectives offered by the text, and relates the different views and patterns to one another? thereby
setting ?the work in motion, and so sets himself in motion, too? (Iser, 2002, p. 291).  Linda Neff
describes The Shining as ?the best book I have ever read.  Once I started it, it was impossible to put
down. My mind was driven to such heights of suspense and terror that I didn?t quite realize until I
cried for fifteen minutes with relief after I?d finished it? (Neff, 1978).  Once again King?s words
87
structural form takes the shape of a series of newspaper articles excised from their
original contexts and re-contextualised alongside each other with the primary aim of
constructing the Overlook?s historical narrative.  The gaps, represented by the white
space dividing the isolated scraps of text, emphasise the lack of connecting narrative
between these individual stories which consequently demand interpretation. Jack,
in his efforts to interpret these gaps is compelled to search for ?the piece of
Overlookiana he needed to make the mystic connection that he was sure must be
here somewhere? (TS, p. 243).
Although the manner by which Jack comes to be under the control of the Overlook
is key to understanding the way in which Jack?s alienation to his labour as Overlook
caretaker becomes efaced, the narative the scrapbok conveys is of equal
importance, particularly when adresing fears asociated with the distribution of
capital.  The story constructed within the pages of the scrapbook is one of economic
success and failure, of transgression and excess, of decadence and greed.  Various
journalists who have conducted investigations into the happenings of the Overlook
and the dealings of those involved in its ownership, record their findings
illuminating a litany of corruption and criminal activity.  The underlying principle
behind all of these illegal operations is the distribution of economic capital.  Jack?s
first discovery amongst the pages of the scrapbok is an invite to the opening of the
hotel in 1945.  He imagines that he can ?almost se them in the dining room, the
                                                                                                                                             
upon the page have ?bridged the gap of inexperienceability of one another?s experiences? Iser, 2002,
p. 292) thus facilitating the reader to engage with the text.  It is through this engagement that King is
able to manipulate his reader?s emotions and control the reading experience.  As Trish Lanphier
confirms with her simple statement ?you got me ? I?m hooked? (Lanphier, 1978), this engagement
with the initial text acts as a ?hook? which attracts readers to King?s other works, an attribute he
himself admires as demonstrated in his review of Elmore Leonard?s Glitz as discussed in a previous
footnote.
88
richest men in America and their women.  Tuxedos and glimmering starched shirts;
evening gowns; the band playing; gleaming high-heled pumps. The clink of
glasses, the jocund pop of champagne corks? (TS, p. 170).  This vision of
conspicuous consumption
7
 detailed through the style of dres and the drinking of
champagne, expresses the enjoyment and display of economic wealth.  Upon further
investigation, however, Jack finds that underpinning this portrayal is a second
narrative, one connected to wealth creation.  It is through this second narrative that
Jack discovers the inherent corruption in the economic system of which the
ownership of the Overlook is integrated.  The activities that figures such as Horace
Derwent, Vito the Chopper and Charles Grondin appear to be involved in include
extortion, gambling, prostitution and other forms of organised crime.  The image
evoked by the invitation becomes altered as Jack now envisions these men ?reputed
to be involved with drugs, vice, robbery, murder? right above him, in those empty
roms. Screwing expensive whores on the third floor, maybe.  Drinking magnums
of champagne.  Making deals that would turn over millions of dollars? (TS, p. 179).
The refined decadence Jack first imagined is exposed as a ?false face? (TS, p. 468).
The corruption revealed in the history of the Overlook is intrinsically connected to
the acumulation of vast amounts of economic capital, an isue King discused, in
relation to his economic success as a literary producer, in his article ?On Becoming
a Brand Name? published in Fear Itself (1982).  There he confeses a fear of
corruptibility, claiming that, in ?writing popular, commercial fiction, there is
nothing but danger? (King, 1982, p. 16).  He asserts that the ?commercial writer is
easy to bribe, easy to subvert, and he knows it? (King, 1982, p. 16) and that he has
                                                  
7
 I am using this term as it is described in Thorstein Veblen?s The Theory of the Leisure Class: An
Economic Study of Institutions (1912) as the ?consumption of luxuries? directed at the comfort of
the consumer himself, and is, therefore, a mark of the master? (Veblen, 1994, p. 45).
89
personally ?felt this much more strongly in the last two or three years than ever
before? (King, 1982, p. 16).  He fears that writing commercial fiction is ?hazardous
to your integrity? (King, 1982, p. 41) and that it is ?all too easy to begin producing
the literary equivalent of frozen TV diners? (King, 1982, p. 41).  As with the po?te
maudit discussed in the last section of this case study, there exists a discrepancy
between the image and reality.  King may claim that the ?idea that success in itself
can hurt a writer is as ridiculous and as elitist as the commonly held belief that a
popular book is a bad book? (King, 1982, p. 42), but he remains unsuccessful in
divesting those beliefs of their power to influence the distribution of capital.  This
fear of corruptibility as represented in The Shining is exaggerated in its detailing of
criminal activity; however, it does illuminate a fear that there is a link between
commercialism and the operations of economic exchange with a corrupting
influence with the power to manipulate. The phrase ?this inhuman place makes
human monsters? (TS, p. 156; italics original) is repeated several times throughout
the text, referring to the way in which the economic system, as embodied by the
structure of the Overlook hotel, has the capability to bring out the worst in those
participating in that system, and that through their gred they become easily
manipulated.  These monstrous humans become incorporated into the system, ?like
microbes trapped in the intestine of a monster? (TS, p. 232).
Part of King?s fear of becoming a corrupt, commercial writer is related to his
perception of literature?s relationship to truth-telling.  He frequently references
Frank Norris?s response to critic?s question pertaining to his texts? literary worth,
?What do I care for your opinion?  I never truckled.  I told the truth? (King, 1982, p.
90
16).
8
  For King, it would appear that literary integrity remains separate from its
ability to acrue economic capital. King states that ?the comercial writer who can
tell the truth has achieved a great deal more than any ?serious? writer can hope for;
he can tell the truth and stil keep up with his mortgage payments? (King, 1982, p.
16).  Jack, too, appears to be concerned about the integrity of his literary production,
particularly after he is forced to recognise his position within the supplicant/patron
relationship.  He claims that his book detailing the historical narrative of the
Overlok would not be ?the soft and thoughtful thing he had first considered, but a
gem-hard work of research, photo section and all, and he would pull apart the entire
Overlook history, nasty, incestuous ownership deals and all.  He would spread it all
out for the reader like a disected crayfish? (TS, p. 209).  Aproaching this new
literary project as though he were an investigative journalist, Jack plans on exposing
the corruption which lies at the heart of this hotel in an attempt to realign the image
with reality.  He states that he ?would write the hotel?s biography, write it straight
from the shoulder? but it would not be writen vindictively? (TS, p. 244).  Jack
does not view this project as a way of wreaking revenge on those responsible for
committing past wrongs against him, rather ?for the reason he felt that all great
literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always
comes out? (TS, p. 244).  However, it is even during these moments when Jack
believes that he is begining his project with the intentions of alowing the truth to
come out, that he is simultaneously being manipulated for the purposes of the
malignant spirit held within the walls of the Overlook hotel.
                                                  
8
 It is also present in On Writing, p. 222, and again in his NBA acceptance speech.
91
This fear of corruptibility, however, also feds into another fear that King returns to
frequently: the fear of being consumed by a voracious public appetite for celebrity
and an unscrupulous commercialism inherent in the literary production of popular
novels.  Cannibalism is an activity which King employs as a metaphor for his
growing popularity and the cult of celebrity.  In an interview with Michael Kilgore
for the Tampa Tribune, King states that:
The occupational hazard of the successful writer in America is that once you
begin to be successful, then you have to avoid being gobbled up.  America
has developed this sort of cannibalistic cult of celebrity, where first you set
the guy up, and then you eat him? I wish to avoid being eaten.  I don?t want
to be anybody?s lunch (Kilgore, 1990, pp. 153-154).
As a literary producer who has become conflated with his literary production, this
persists as a real fear for King. Becoming subsumed by the commercialism of which
the publication his books endorses is one of the hazards he perceives as besetting
the popular writer. He complains that his publishers asume that ?if your books sel
well you ought to be some kind of celebrity, that that?s yours by right, that you must
want it? (Henderson, 1990, p. 259).  King?s celebrity is inextricably connected to the
comerciality of his fiction; by ?writing books that are acesible and popular?
(Henderson, 1990, p. 259) he has, unwitingly or otherwise, become a public figure
intimately identified with the genre of fiction he is famous for producing. The
metaphor of canibalism for this type of fame which hinges upon his own
commerciality as a literary producer also stems from his fears of becoming a brand
name.  For example, in ?On Becoming A Brand Name? he compares himself to
fodstufs such as Hellman?s mayonnaise (King, 1982, p. 39) and Green Giant
swetcorn (King, 1982, p. 15), thus correlating the marketing of himself to that of
edible products: the brand synonymous with the product.
92
These fears expressed through the cannibalism metaphor were already a feature for
King as he wrote The Shining, as signaled by the repeated mention of canibalism
throughout the text.  Wendy in particular mentions the Donner Party
9
 many times
both prior to their arrival at the Overlook and after.  She recalls as they make the car
journey through the mountains on their way to their home for the season, that ?the
Donner Party had become snowbound and had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive?
(TS, p. 66), causing her to enquire if Jack is ?sure the larder is fuly stocked?? (TS,
p. 67).  Even when looking around the wel-stocked food supplies in the hotel
kitchen, ?the Donner Party kept recurring to her? (TS, p. 79), and when touring the
hotel with Ullman she imagines that they might get stuck in the elevator ?between
floors like flies in a bottle and found in the spring? with little bits and pieces
gone? like the Doner Party? (TS, p. 99).  Wendy?s obsesive returns to the fate of
the Donner Party betray her fear of the cannibalistic act: not only that she would be
eaten but that she would be driven to partake in the eating.  Jack recognises that this
fear exists for Wendy and that it inhibits her movements around the hotel.  When
travelling in the elevator by himself, Jack recalls that Wendy ?had a true
claustrophobe?s horror of the elevator? (TS, p. 275) and that she ?envisioned the
three of them trapped in it between floors while the winter storms raged outside, she
could see them growing thinner and weaker, starving to death.  Or perhaps dining
on each other, the way those Rugby players had? (TS, p. 275).  Jack discounts her
fear by making jokes about cannibalism and by stating that, ?Nothing in the
Overlook frightened him.  He felt that he and it were simp?tico? (TS, p. 275).
                                                  
9
 The Donner Party were a group of people migrating westwards across the Sierra Nevada in 1846.
Beset by poor weather conditions, half of the party died of starvation, causing the others to turn to
cannibalism in order to survive.  For further reading see Patrick Breem?s Diary (1846-1847) and
Eliza P. Houghton?s The Expedition of the Donner Party and Its Tragic Fate (1911).
93
Jack?s disregard for the fear of cannibalism relates to the fact that in many ways he
has already been consumed.  As a family, the Torrances are described as being ?like
microbes trapped in the intestine of a monster? as they go ?about their early evening
routine? (TS, p. 232) in the Overlook, thus implying that the hotel has swallowed
them up.  Jack, however, appears to be consumed by the Overlook: a fact which is
most apparent during his murderous pursuit of his wife and son.  Wendy recognises
that ?Jack wasn?t out there anymore.  She was hearing the lunatic, raving voice of
the Overlook itself? (TS, p. 456), while Danny perceives that the hotel?s force ?was
hiding behind Daddy?s face, it was imitating Daddy?s voice, it was wearing Daddy?s
clothes? (TS, p. 466).  Jack does not fear canibalism as he has already ben
cannibalised by the malevolent force of the hotel.  Not in the physical sense that
Wendy fears, but in the sense that he has become consumed by the capitalist
structure that the hotel represents.  The possession of Jack is achieved through the
hotel?s consumption of him, his labour and his product.  As a worker within the
hotel hierarchy he has become integrated within the fabric of the structure and in so
doing, he loses the sense of autonomy that his participation within literary
production depends upon.  The fears of economic success that King has exhibited
throughout his many interviews that he would become controlled, corrupted and
canibalised become expresed through this narative of a literary producer
condemned to failure.  It may seem ironic that the figure who acts as a focus for
these fears of economic suces is one of King?s least economicaly sucesful
author-protagonists, but the reasons for this are two-fold: in the first instance, as I
have stressed previously, habitus subsists at both a conscious and an unconscious
level and as such it is simultaneously expressed directly, as in the interviews, and
indirectly, as in his fictional representations of authorship. Secondly, by employing
94
Jack as the locus of these fears he further ilustrates his intention to undermine the
separation between the production of serious literature and the endeavour to accrue
economic capital: an intention articulated in this text which occupies a position in
King?s career as he was on the cusp of mass market success,
10
 in which he further
explores through the type of literary production in which Jack is involved, and the
way in which this type of literary production permeates the entire narrative.
Staging Literary Anxiety
The Shining played an important role in the confirmation of King?s reputation as
bestselling horror author.  It was the first of his hardback books for Doubleday to
make it onto the bestselling lists, if only for a week, and it was coupled with a back-
flap description of King as ?the master of the modern horror story?.  Bill Thompson
warned King, both prior to the publication of ?Salem?s Lot and The Shining that he
risked becoming ?typed? as a horror writer, and King responded that it was a risk he
was willing to take if it meant he would be categorised alongside writers like ?M.R.
James and Edgar Alan Poe and Mary Shelley? (Lehman-Haupt, 2006, p. 89).
However, as he claims in the introduction to the 2001 New England Library edition,
it was with The Shining that he attempted to ?try for something a little more difficult
and complex? (TS, p. xii). While writing the character of Jack Torance?s father,
King faced the decision whether ?to make little Jacky?s father a flat-out bad guy?
(TS, p. xiii) or to render him a more realistic character.  He stresses, ?If I had been
less well-fixed financially, I might well have opted for choice number one.  But my
                                                  
10
 Evidence that this was the case can be found in a letter from Ray Hellen, a National Sales Manager
who wrote to King in early 1978 requesting that King ?write a personal letter to my two Field
Managers? (Hellen, 1978) as he felt ?that a personal letter from you will make them get off their
?butt? and sell a few more copies? (Hellen, 1978).  Whether King complied with this request or not is
unknown, however, it serves as an illustration that the encouragement of booksellers in the form of
the promotional art and marketing described in a previous footnote, and personal letters was still
required as part of a strategy to promote King as a popular author.
95
first two books, Carrie and ?Salem?s Lot, had been sucesful, and we Kings were
doing okay in that regard? (TS, p. xiii).  King is at pains to point out twenty-four
years after its first publication that The Shining is the text in which he moved away
from the easy option of writing characters that neatly conformed to the generic
conventions of popular horror (which he claims, ?I could do in my sleep? (TS, p.
xiii)) to a more realistic portrait.  This is a text which was written as King was
enjoying a modicum of financial suces: enough to risk stretching his literary
talent, as he claims twenty four years later, but not enough to refuse the selling of
the film rights to The Shining to Warner Brothers.
As the third book published by King, The Shining is a text which has to perform on
multiple levels; it must earn economic capital, as King was not yet at the stage when
financial remuneration became just ?how you keep score? (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006,
p. 94), and it had to generate a degree of critical acclaim at a time when his
reputation remained relatively unfixed.  As Burton Hatlen claims in his interview
with Jonathan Davis, King was labouring under the belief that it was possible to
accomplish the dual purpose of attaining serious recognition and mass popularity, a
l? Tolkein.  The Shining is the novel in which King interogates the validity of this
belief through the presence of a particular form of literary production: that is, the
production of dramatic literature.  There are many references to the theatre and King
draws extensively upon the lexicon of the theatre throughout the narative of the
trapped Torrances.  For example, Watson, the hotel?s janitor is said to have
?soliloquized? (TS, p. 21).  Similarly, characters are described as ?a bad actor? (TS,
p. 23) or as putting ?on this big act? (TS, p. 24), establishing the first of many
references which pepper the entire narrative.  I argue that these references and
96
inferences signify the relevance of theatrical literary production to the text and that
by closely connecting his novel to the world of the theatre, King hopes to enjoy the
privileged status critically revered playwrights enjoy within the field of literary
production.  The proliferation of these references is also relevant due to the type of
literary production Jack is in the process of writing.  Jack?s role as playwright
highlights his failure as a literary producer, not only through his lack of success in
completing the manuscript, but also through the subject mater of the play, which
apears to miror Jack?s downfal at Stovington Prep.  The combination of both
Jack?s literary production, and the theatrical infiltrations throughout the text, signal
the importance of the theatre in a text concerned with the distribution of economic
and symbolic capital.
The presence of theatrical literary production runs throughout the narrative
involving all characters; Wendy is said to feel ?like an outsider, a bit player who had
accidentally wandered back onstage while the main action was taking place? (TS, p.
97); Danny watches the snow ?curtaining them off from the world? (TS, p. 371) as
though The Overlok were the stage and the play was currently betwen acts.
However, the character who is most expressive of the theme of theatrical production
is Jack.  He is the one who perceives much of the action as though it were occurring
within a dramatic performance.  Accordingly he believes that Danny?s reaction to
his experience in Room 217 is ?a piece of play-acting put on to escape his
punishment? (TS, p. 285) and that Wendy, ?instead of being satisfied with the
passive role of having wrecked one career and crippled another, had opted for the
poisonously active task of trying to destroy his last and best chance? (TS, p. 422; my
italics).  He casts his family members in roles in the drama unfolding within the
97
snowbound hotel, thus creating a juxtaposition between image and reality; however,
unlike Danny who with his extraordinary ability to perceive the truth behind the
image, as ilustrated towards the end of their incarceration in The Overlok, Jack is
condemned to confusion.  Jack?s confusion extends to his own actions too, as he
perceives himself also as an actor within the dramatic performance of his own
domestic tragedy. For example, when the thre members of the family meet in the
bar after Dany has ben atacked by the woman in Rom 217, it is said that the
?three of them made a tableau that Jack felt very strongly: it was just before the
curtain of Act II in some old time temperance play, one so poorly mounted that the
prop man had forgoten to stock the shelves of the Den of Iniquity? (TS, p. 265).
The connections between the events within the hotel to a performed narrative upon
the stage, and the members of the Torrance family to the actors enacting that
performance, are reiterated throughout the text, focalised through the author-
protagonist; they find expression through Jack?s perception as an aspiring
playwright.
It is through his role as playwright that the theme of dramatic literary production is
articulated. Jack?s endeavour to produce a play is mentioned in the first chapter and
its importance to the narrative as a whole is evident by the number of times it is
mentioned, discussed and appraised.  The play is called The Litle House, which
Jack describes to his New York agent as revolving around a ?conflict between
Denker, a gifted student who had failed into becoming the brutal and brutalizing
headmaster of a turn-of-the-century New England prep school, and Gary Benson,
the student he sees as a younger version of himself? (TS, p. 115).  Harbouring hopes
98
of being hailed ?Jack Torrance, the Eugene O?Neill
1
 of his generation, the
American Shakespeare!? (TS, p. 127) by those more influential than his wife, Jack
believes that his ?tragedy in five acts? (TS, p. 282) may have the potential ?to see it
through a successful Broadway run? (TS, p. 282).  However, his hopes become
dashed as he is unable to finish it; as he explains, he ?had begun with one play and it
had somehow turned into another? (TS, p. 285) and consequently he is unable to
complete the narrative.  It is its completion that Jack perceives will bring about the
end of his strugles. He surmises that the play may ?even make him some money?
(TS, p. 296), or ?lacking that, Al might well convince the Stovington Board to rehire
him? (TS, p. 296).  In either case, by finishing the play, Jack would have arrived at a
more favourable position to financially support his family.  Ultimately, however,
Jack is unable to complete it, thereby not alowing it the oportunity to raise either
economic or symbolic capital: to have a ?successful Broadway run? or to sink
?without a trace? (TS, p. 132).
Jack?s hopes for the success of his play aside, the actual narrative of the play holds
some interesting parallels to Jack?s efforts to assert his literary authority.  It is a play
in which an agonistic strugle exists betwen an established academic and his
student, a ?bright boy more cursed with money than blesed with it? (TS, p. 284).
                                                  
1
 The reference to Eugene O?Neill appears particularly significant, not only because of O?Neill?s
status as a major canonical figure in American theatre, but also because of his critique of capitalism
as featured in his play The Hairy Ape (1922) which details the fate of Yank, a ?stoker on an ocean
liner? (Berkowitz, 1992, p. 34) and a dispossessed labourer.  The role, working in the basement of a
vehicle designed to bring pleasure to the leisure class, is one shared by Jack in his role to attend to
the boiler in the basement of the Overlook Hotel.  In fact, Jack even imagines his own regression
?from college-educated man to wailing ape in five easy seconds? (TS, p. 119) further strengthening
his similarity to Yank.  O?Neill is also relevant to The Shining through his employment of masks in
the productions of his plays such as The Hairy Ape, The Great God Brown (1926) and Lazarus
Laughed (1925): an image which recurs throughout the narrative of Jack?s deterioration.  For further
reading on O?Neill?s use of masks see ?Eugene O?Neill: An Exercise in Unmasking? (1961) by E.M.
Waith and ?The Uses of the Mask in The Great God Brown and Six Characters in Search of an
Author? (1966) by A.R. Sogliuzzo.
99
The majority of the play remains unexplored within the confines of the novel, but
Jack?s battle to conclude the narrative is provided, and it is through this articulation
that insight is alowed into the dynamics of the play itself. In the ending Jack had
initially planned:
Denker, in a fit of rage, seizes the poker from beside the fireplace and beats
saintly Gary to death. Then, standing spread-leged over the body, the
bloody poker in one hand, he screams at the audience: ?It?s here somewhere
and I will find it!?  Then, as the lights dim and the curtain is slowly drawn,
the audience ses Gary?s body face down on the forestage as Denker strides
to the upstage bokcase and feverishly begins puling books from the
shelves, looking at them, throwing them aside (TS, p. 282).
However, Jack?s problem with completing this draft ocurs as he develops
?opposing feelings about his characters? (TS, p. 282), causing him ?to see Denker as
a Mr Chips figure, and the tragedy was not the intellectual racking of Gary Benson
but rather the destruction of a kindly old teacher and headmaster unable to se
through the cynical wiles of this monster masquerading as a boy? (TS, p. 285).  The
play, originally intended to be ?a microcosm to say something about the abuse of
power? (TS, pp. 284-285), is undergoing radical change as Jack?s sympathy towards
his characters becomes altered and redirected; the apparent impairment of his
judgement affecting not only his interpretation of the motives of those around him,
but also the motives of his own fictional characters.
The two characters of Jack?s play offer an insight into the inner battle Jack is
engaged in pertaining to his views about literary production and the distribution of
capital.  Denker, the teacher originally perceived as ?not much different from the
struting South American little Caesars in their banana kingdoms, standing
disidents up against the wal of the handiest squash or handbal court, a super-
zealot in a comparatively small puddle, a man whose every whim becomes a
100
crusade? (TS, p. 284), occupies the position of authority, experience and education;
he holds the power to consecrate within the educational establishment within which
the play is set.  Gary Benson, on the other hand, is a student whom Denker views as
?a younger version of himself,? with the benefits of economic wealth.  In Jack?s first
draft, Denker, who was also ?a gifted student? apears to actively resent Gary
Benson for his wealth, intellect and bright future and the playwright?s sympathies
clearly lie with Gary Benson.  As those sympathies shift, and Jack encounters
obstacles to the narrative?s successful conclusion, Denker becomes the character
who had never had any of the things Gary had.  Denker, who had had to
work all his life just to become the head of a single little school.  Who was
now faced with ruin over this handsome, innocent-seeming rich boy who
had cheated on his Final Composition and had then cunningly covered his
tracks? (TS, p. 284).
Jack has constructed a narrative which includes two characters that enact the power
relations as they exist within the field of literary production: ?the opposition
betwen the incumbents and the pretenders instals at the very core of the field a
tension between those who try to overtake their rivals and those who wish to avoid
being overtaken, as if it were a race? (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 126).  To begin with, Gary
Benson, economically wealthy enough to retain disinterestedness, is juxtaposed
with Denker, the authoritarian, cultural custodian who persists in hindering Gary
Benson?s progress.  After Jack?s shift of sympathies, Gary Benson becomes ?a
postulant before the altar of knowledge rather than a sincere acolyte? (TS, p. 284)
and Denker is reconfigured as an economically disadvantaged individual who is
attempting to retain his position within the field. In either draft, the theme of the
play is the battle between ?artistic generations? (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 122), the act of
position-taking and the fear of usurpation and displacement; it is the theme of
hierarchical struggle.
101
In order to fully appreciate the importance of the theatre to this text, it is necessary
to turn to Bourdieu?s explication of the nature of the field of literary production.
Despite its emphasis on nineteenth-century Parisian culture, it remains relevant to
the nature of theatrical production in America in the twentieth-century and to the
position it enjoys in the hierarchical strata of literary production.
12
  Bourdieu asserts
that poetic literary production is situated at the oposite end of the field from
dramatic production in that it remains consecrated ?as the art par excellence by the
romantic tradition, it retains all its prestige? it continues to attract a large number
of writers?[and] it is almost totally devoid of a market? (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 114).
Dramatic literary production, however, belongs at ?the opposite end? with its
direct exposure to the immediate sanction of the bourgeois public, its values and its
orthodoxies? (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 114) in that it sucesfuly ?procures, besides
money, the institutionalized consecration of the academies and oficial honours?
(Bourdieu, 1996, p. 114).  Due to the business of theatre, a dramatic production
must be a popular success or else it will never progress to the stage in the first place.
It must satisfy ?the bourgeois public? in order for it to not only cover the costs of the
initial investment which permitted its staging to begin with, but also to reward those
investors with a profit after the costs of the theatre, sets, wages of actors? and
backstage staff, advertising and royalties have all been accounted for.
13
  However,
                                                  
12
 For further reading on American drama and the literary field see Morris Freedman?s American
Drama in Social Context (1971) in particular the chapter ?Will Success Spoil the American
Dramatist? and John Gassner?s Theatre at the Crossroads: Plays and Playwrights of the Mid-Century
American Stage (1960).
13
 Robert Brustein in his essay ?Why American Plays Are Not Literature? (1965) claims
there is a widespread conviction among men of mind that the dramatist, writing for an
audience with debased values, does not have very high standards himself ? and anxious to
please a wide number, he creates a contaminated work which gives literature a bad name
(Brustein, 1965, p. 247).
He writes that this conviction can be overturned by ?the playwright?s strong resistance to commercial
pressures when he is certain his work is being cheapened? (Brustein, 1965, p. 250).
102
as I established in the previous chapter, the field of literary production is not merely
a two-dimensional spectrum with economic profits at one end and symbolic at the
other, as there is an intrinsic logic to the field which takes into acount generic
difference, and positions the producers of those genres accordingly; ?authors who
manage to secure ?high-society? successes and bourgeois consecration are opposed
to those who are condemned to so-called ?popular? success ? the authors of rural
novels, music-hall artists, chansonniers, etc.? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 46).  On the other
hand, dramatists of genres such as the tragedy potentially occupy a privileged
position within the field in that they enjoy a high degree of economic capital and a
high degree of academic consecration.  This combination of the best of both worlds
has been an aim of King?s from the outset and the presence of theatrical production
illumines this desire in a narrative which follows the troubles of King?s only author-
protagonist who is, in essence, a playwright-protagonist.
In an interview with Joyce Lynch Dewes Moore for Mystery Magazine (1981), King
clarifies his intention to draw upon the symbolic capital enjoyed by dramatic literary
production by stating of The Shining that:
Originally I set the book in the form of a Shakespearean tragedy, and that
was really all I knew.  It was going to be in five acts, which finally translated
themselves into parts: Job Interview and Preparatory Matters, Closing Day,
Wasp?s Nest, Snowbound, and Matters of Life and Death (Moore, 1990, p.
107).
The idea had come to King for the narrative of a family trapped in a haunted hotel
over a harsh, unforgiving winter during a trip to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park,
Colorado, on the day that it was closing for the season.  Armed only with the kernel
of the plot, he chose to employ the structure of the Shakespearean tragedy in order
to improve his position within the field of literary production; by atempting to
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position-take in this way, he draws attention to his desire to increase the amount of
symbolic capital available to him, as one who had already been sanctioned by the
bourgeois public.  This link to Shakespearean drama is augmented through his
description depicting Jack as ?an absurd twentieth-century Hamlet, an indecisive
figure so mesmerised by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its course
or alter it in any way? (TS, p. 327).  In fact, King had intended to further strengthen
the links between The Shining and Shakespearean tragedy by ending the narrative
with the death of all the characters.  He recalls that the ?original plan was for them
all to die up there and for Dany to become the controling force of the hotel after
he died? (Ketchum, Cadigan and Shiner, 1990, p. 169); however, he altered this
planned ending in the writing of his first draft in which Danny survived, but ?Jack
beat his wife to death with the mallet and it was blood and brains and everything?
(Ketchum, Cadigan and Shiner, 1990, p. 169).  This was changed in the rewrite
because, as King explains, ?It was really just terrible and I couldn?t do it.  I couldn?t
leave it that way? (Ketchum, Cadigan and Shiner, 1990, p. 169).  Instead the
narrative ends with the death of the author-protagonist and the rescue of the other
family members, thus offering an ameliorated resolution to the narrative.
By shying away from his plans to ape Shakespearean tragedy, King effectively
cements his position as bestselling horror author; the novel ultimately fails to
diferentiate itself from its categorisation as a popular horror novel. The ending of
the narrative illustrates the way in which King is capable of managing ?anxieties
about the social order? having ?first revived them and given them some rudimentary
expresion? while stil offering a ?legitimation of the existing order? (Jameson,
1979, p. 14); order is reasserted, transgression punished and boundaries confirmed.
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As King verifies, ?horror fiction is really as Republican as a banker in a three-piece
suit? (King, 1990, p. 22) in that it ?has that effect of reconfirming values, of
reconfirming self-image and our good feelings about ourselves? (King, 1990, p. 22).
It is King?s perpetuation of this ?reconfirming? narrative which encourages the
deviation away from the traditional tragic conclusion to which the narrative aludes.
Rather than the proposed bloodbath, reminiscent of the scene Fortinbras
encountered upon entering the Danish royal court, the narrative closes with Wendy,
Danny and Halloran recovering, emotionally and physically, the following summer
in a hotel in Western Maine, where Halloran delivers the moral of the story,
instructing Dany to pull ?your act together and just go on? (TS, p. 497).  The
references to the theatre continue despite the foiling of a tragedy in Shakespearean
tradition, by King?s adherence to popular cultural generic convention.  Of the horror
genre, King states that ?I love writing the things I write, and I wouldn?t and couldn?t
do anything else? (Norden, 1990, p. 82), and it is because of King?s apparent
inability to write a narrative which disobeys the conventions of popular fiction, that
?the bulk of the pages becom[e] sheer devalued means to an end? (Jameson, 1979, p.
132).  In attempting to achieve both critical acclaim as a serious writer and
profitable popularity as a commercially viable writer simultaneously, King has
drawn upon the lexicon and structure of dramatic literary production; however, by
failing to folow through, the narative becomes irevocably entrenched in the
popular fiction trope which offers narratological resolution.  King proves that he is
incapable of occupying both positions concurrently and that he must choose a
position within the polarised field of literary production.
105
Po?te Maudit or Hired Scribe?
Hierarchical strata are an issue of much concern in The Shining.  According to
Bourdieu, the literary field is characterised by its dual hierarchy which is dependent
upon the distribution of capital. Literary suces in the acumulation of either form
of capital, economic or symbolic, is often linked to failure in the accumulation of
the other: a phenomenon explored in The Shining, particularly through the figure of
the impoverished author-protagonist. At the outset of the novel, Jack?s career has
already become derailed resulting in his acceptance of the position of caretaker at
the Overlook Hotel.  His previous job was teaching English at Stovington
Preparatory Academy, where he was considered ?something of a catch for
Stovington, a slowly blooming American writer perhaps, and certainly a man well
qualified to teach that great mystery, creative writing? (TS, p. 41).  His increasing
dependence upon alcohol, contributing to the loss of his position and his inability to
meet his fiscal and familial responsibilities, is also intrinsically linked to the
decrease in his literary production.  Even after he determines to tackle his addiction
he remains unable to write creatively; those ?last unhappy six months at Stovington,
months when the craving for a drink had been so bad that he could barely
concentrate on his in-class lectures, let alone his extracurricular literary ambitions?
(TS, p. 114) stymieing his chances of success. While pondering the twists and turns
of his carer?s progres, Jack muses that ?part of his drinking problem had stemed
from an unconscious desire to be free of Stovington and the security he felt was
stifling whatever creative urge he had? (TS, p. 115); however, he comes to fear that
perhaps it has les to do with the ?stifling? of creative urges and more to do with his
urge to self-destruct.  When he fears that he may have lost his position at the
Overlook due to an antagonistic telephone call with the manager, Stuart Ullman, he
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queries, ?Was he afraid somewhere inside that the Overlook might be just what he
neded to finish his play and generaly colect up his shit and get it together? Was
he blowing the whistle on himself?? (TS, p. 200).
Whether it is the case that he loses, or comes close to losing, his jobs due to creative
or self-destructive urges, Jack?s inability to establish an equilibrium between the
work which provides for his family and ?the writing I consider to be my real work?
(TS, p. 160) is undeniable.  Unable to reconcile his need for economic capital and
his desire for symbolic capital, he is incapable of improving his position within the
field of literary production through his writing; instead, he looks to outside sources
for his economic capital, seking employment first as a teacher and then as the
caretaker of the Overlook. Jack?s fiction would be more predisposed to gain
economic capital within the literary field if he were to consciously strive towards
writing that which is acesible, popular and comercial. The literary field, as I
have previously asserted, is organized according to ?two independent and
hierarchized principles of differentiation (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 121), that is, ?between
pure production, destined for a market restricted to producers, and large-scale
production, orientated towards the satisfaction of the demands of a wide audience?
(Bourdieu, 1996, p. 121).  Now, it cannot be argued that Jack is unable to produce
literature belonging to this latter form of production as he has already displayed the
capacity for writing accessible, popular fiction that appeals to ?the demands of a
wide audience?.  The sale of one of Jack?s stories to Esquire magazine proves that
he does possess the ability to write commercial fiction.  Wendy recalls opening the
offer of publication which informed her that ?Esquire would like to use Jack?s story
?Concerning the Black Holes? early the folowing year.  They would pay nine
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hundred dollars, not on publication but on acceptance? (TS, p. 52).  While Jack?s
victorious proclamation of ?Veni, vidi, vici? (TS, p. 52; italics original) indicates that
he perceives this publication, and the money it brings, to be a sign of success,
Wendy cannot help but remember her mother?s condemnatory remarks regarding
Jack: ?Big ideas, her mother had said. Sure.  The welfare lines are full of educated
fools with big ideas? (TS, p. 53; italics original).  The question Wendy is forced to
ask herself is ?Did the Esquire story make her mother wrong or right?? (TS, p. 53).
Certainly, Jack?s employment at Stovington is attributed to ?the strength of his
stories ? four of them published at that time, one of them in Esquire? (TS, p. 52),
and yet Jack?s ?big ideas? about the role of a literary producer, and their capacity to
accrue capital, do contribute to the Torrances? proximity to financial dependence
upon the welfare state folowing his loss of that teaching position.  Instead of
investing his efforts in increasing his literary production to the point at which he can
support himself and his family from profits derived from publication, Jack appears
to invest in the image of the ?po?te maudit?: a figure for ?which success is suspect
and asceticism in this world is the precondition for salvation in the next? (Bourdieu,
1993, p. 101).  In embracing the idea that ?a real artist must sufer? (TS, p. 250) he
buys into the ?po?te maudit? concept, reinforced by those ?great pop-intellectual
myths? (OW, p. 109) that are actually ?nothing other than the retranslation of the
logic of a new mode of production into ideal and ideology? (Bourdieu, 1993, p.
169).  Jack is portrayed as an author who ?invents himself in suffering, in revolt,
against the bourgeois, against money, by inventing a separate world where the laws
of economic necesity are suspended, at least for a while, and where value is not
measured by comercial suces? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 169).  By partitioning
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himself off from the world in the Overlook, rendered isolated and inaccessible for a
period of months by the harsh winter conditions, Jack hopes to experience that
?separate world where the laws of economic necesity are suspended? believing that
he would be able to reasert his position as a literary producer with the potential to
become ?a major American writer in the next decade? (TS, p. 294).  He is, after all,
unable to experience that freedom from economic necessity, ?disinterestedness,? in
any other way, posesing no economic resource to render him financialy
independent.  Unlike his friend Al Shockley, Jack has not inherited the wealth
which offers ?a decisive advantage in a world which, as in the world of art and
literature, does not provide immediate profits? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 170); rather, Jack
must manufacture a situation where he can distance himself and his production from
the world of commercialism and economic gain.
When comparing the figure of Jack as he appears in the book and Kubrick?s film,
Fredric Jameson states that:
Stephen King?s original was far more openly and conventionally an artist?s
novel whose hero is already a writer of some minimal achievement and a
clasical American po?te maudit whose talent is plagued and stimulated by
alcoholism.  Kubrick?s hero, however, is already a reflexive commentary on
this now conventional stereotype (Hemingway, O?Neill, Faulkner, the beats,
etc.): his Jack Nicholson is not a writer, not someone who has something to
write or likes doing things with words, but rather someone who would like
to be a writer, who lives a fantasy about what the American writer is, along
the lines of James Jones or Jack Kerouac (Jameson, 1981, pp. 121-122).
Jameson differentiates the two versions of the same character by assessing the
amount of literary production achieved by each, and then utilises this differentiation
in order to make a comment on the role of the po?te maudit.  He claims here that
King?s Jack actually inhabits the role, while Kubrick?s merely covets.  However, as
Jameson also argues, the fantasy entertained by Kubrick?s Jack is already
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?anachronistic and nostalgic? (Jameson, 1981, p. 122) and that ?all those unexplored
interstices of the system, which alowed the lumpens of the 50s to become, in their
turn, figures of ?the Great American Writer,? have long since been absorbed into the
sealed and achieved space of consumer society (Jameson, 1981, p. 122).  The
stereotype of the ?Great American Writer? has been rendered ?so many consumable
images? (Jameson, 1981, p. 122) which Kubrick?s Jack recognises and responds to.
I argue, however, that despite the original Jack?s ?minimal achievement,? he still
endorses this particular set of consumable images and holds hopes of living up to
them.  Jameson, in his differentiation of either version?s literary production,
exagerates the contrast betwen their perception of the stereotype and their own
preoccupations with becoming an expression of that stereotype.
The presence of the po?te maudit in the novel, however, does not endorse the
reversal of economic success that the stereotype is invested with effecting.  The
image of the po?te maudit is informed by ?an upside down economy where the artist
could win in the symbolic arena only by losing in the economic one? (Bourdieu,
1993, p. 201); however, this failure within the economic ?arena? is only a ?short
term? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 201) failure as the financial success is effectively deferred
rather than refused.  In the case of Jack Torrance, his investment in the image of the
po?te maudit is made to appear ineffectual in that it does not bring him either
symbolic or deferred economic capital.  Instead, Jack fears that he has ?failed as a
teacher, a writer, a husband and a father? (TS, p. 365); he fears that failure has
tainted every part of his life, including his literary production.  According to the
logic of Bourdieu, failure in his literary efforts could ultimately lead to cultural
consecration and the economic benefits that status would bring; however, Jack, the
110
sole author-protagonist within King?s fiction to pursue this path towards literary
legitimacy, never makes it to that point.  Through Jack, King dramatises his belief
that the po?te maudit has no place within contemporary American economics, thus
exposing the po?te maudit to be a ?false face? (TS, p. 468): merely a mask to
disguise the hiden economic intentions of those aiming for cultural consecration.
Jack is condemned as a writer who pursued a fundamentally flawed strategy, one
which, according to King, offers no hope of success in any arena.  In essence, Jack?s
narrative is one in which the image of the po?te maudit is striped of its power to
attract symbolic capital, and its status as no more than a redundant, reified image is
confirmed. It is configured as a simulacrum: an image which operates at the level
of the hyperreal with its foundations in counterfeit.  This in itself does not strip the
image of its power, but through exposing it as functioning within a flawed economic
strategy, King hopes to assert his own strategy through which the accruement of
either economic or symbolic capital is not dependent upon its exclusivity.
As Jack succumbs to the malignant influence of the hotel, his role as a po?te maudit
is further undermined as he comes to inhabit the position of hired scribe.  Jack?s
shift from po?te maudit to hired scribe appears to be activated by his discovery of
the scrapbook in the basement, containing newspaper cuttings divulging the hotel?s
lurid past.  In his discussion with Watson during his first visit to the basement, the
subject of reputation was raised pertaining to the hotel?s past and the current esteem
with which it is held.  Watson suggests that, like all hotels, ?the Overlook?s got a
reputation? (TS, p. 26) in that the hotel has had its fair share of scandal over the
years.  This reputation persists despite the management?s attempts to suppress the
news of the tragic deaths and violent murders which have occurred at the hotel.
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There is a discrepancy between actuality and the image portrayed to the customer,
in much the same way that there exists a discrepancy betwen Jack?s image as a
po?te maudit and the reality of his situation.  It is a situation first hinted at during
Jack?s interview with Mr Ullman, in which the two men are described as
?interviewer and interviewee, supplicant and reluctant patron? (TS, p. 5).  Jack may
have manufactured a space which, in Wendy?s words, allowed him to be his ?own
boss? (TS, p. 269); free of the financial concerns that dogged his life prior to his
arival at the Overlok, Jack should have ben able to concentrate upon a form of
literary production that remains independent from the presures of economic
viability. In other words, he had entered into a space in which he expected to enjoy
the liberty that comes from disinterest.  However, Jack?s disinterest was feigned, as
his literary production is not as independent from outside forces as he had hoped it
would be.  Al Shockley makes this clear to Jack when he reminds him of the
supplicant/patron relationship that exists between Jack and the hotel hierarchy.
Folowing his discovery of the Overlok scrapbook, Jack decides that his next
project after his play will be a book on the Overlook itself.  Upon further
investigation, Jack calls Ullman to inform him of his intentions.  Jack predicts that,
rather than the kind of book he was proposing, Ullman would actually prefer ?some
sort of comisioned guidebok that you could hand out fre to the guests when
they checked in. Something with a lot of glosy photos of the mountains at sunrise
and sunset and a lemon-meringue text to go with it? (TS, p. 199).  The type of book
that would be commissioned would be one entirely dictated to by commercial
concerns, restricting the producer to the degree that all artistic merit would be lost.
However, as his conversation with Al reminds him, he is, in effect, in just such a
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position in that his patrons are those that are paying him to stay at the hotel; his
patrons have provided him with the space within which he has chosen to
unsuccessfully feign disinterest.  Al, despite claiming that he doesn?t want to control
Jack?s ?artistic life? (TS, p 208), atempts to prevent Jack from proceeding with his
book detailing the dark history of the Overlook hotel.  Al agrees not to fire Jack,
which would effectively remove him from the space within which he planned to
resume his pursuit of literary consecration, if he agrees not to contact Ullman again,
under any circumstances, and on the condition that there wil be no ?book about a
famous Colorado mountain hotel with a history? (TS, p. 207).  The ultimatum is
compared to ?getting a call from some twentieth-century Medici prince? no
portraits of my family with their warts showing, please, or back to the rabble you?ll
go.  I subsidize no pictures but pretty pictures? (TS, p. 207).  Jack is forced to
recognise that his relationship with Al is dependent upon the fact that ?the dog
colar? he has on Jack ?wil always be ignored by mutual consent? and that Al wil
?take good and benevolent care? (TS, p. 207) of him and his family.
In coming to terms with ?Al?s high-godam-handed request that he chuck his book
project? (TS, p. 243), Jack?s illusion that he is ?a classical American po?te maudit?
is shattered.  As with the moment at which he finally discerns the face of Christ in
the seemingly ?senseless and patternless? ?jumble of whites and blacks? (TS, p.
306), Jack experiences that ?one gestalt leap, the conscious and unconscious
melding in that one shocking moment of understanding.  You would always see it.
You were damned to always see it? (TS, p. 309).  Prior to this ?gestalt leap,? Jack
was under the impresion that the literary production he undertok while under the
roof of the Overlok hotel was uninfluenced by the market and comercialism.
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Forced to recognise the falsity of this position, Jack soon regards the production of
the Overlok book as a transaction betwen suplicant and patron.  He questions,
?Perhaps the Overlook, large and rambling Samuel Johnson that it was, had picked
him to be its Boswel. You say the new caretaker writes? Very good, sign him on.
Time we told our side? (TS, p. 309).  Rather than writing autonomously, Jack has
become a literary producer whose production is manipulated by his employer: the
mysterious, supernatural force cited as ?the manager? (TS, p. 389).  This lack of
control over his own production is also reflected in his physical movements both
during and after his visit to Room 217, as he is described as walking with ?jerky,
marionette strides? (TS, p. 278).  Jack accounts for his experience of the
supernatural in Room 217 by reassuring himself that he saw what he did because he
?had been strung up? (TS, p. 294), and he atempts to explain away the bruises upon
his son?s neck by claiming that Dany subconsciously caused his own injuries: that
the ?subconscious figure is pulling the strings? (TS, pp. 292-293).  In each of these
examples, Jack is compared to a puppet whose strings are being pulled by some
exterior force independent of Jack?s own volition.  His actions, like his production
are outwith the realms of his own control: the ?hotel was running things now? (TS,
p. 370).
As an authentic po?te maudit, Jack would have suffered in the role of tortured
author that King?s mother feared he was condemned to play, and yet he would have
retained a posibility of literary legitimisation: a posibility rendered unavailable to
the commercial, economically viable writers of popular genre fiction.  He perceives
himself to be a ?cultural [entrepreneur] struggling to accumulate specifically cultural
capital, albeit at the cost of temporarily renouncing economic profit? (Bourdieu,
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1993, p. 83).  However, King, whose aims are to enjoy ?the deferred, lasting success
of ?classics? and the immediate, temporary success of best-sellers? (Bourdieu, 1993,
p. 82) in synchrony, undermines the validity of this cultural hierarchy by unmasking
the po?te maudit to reveal the hired scribe.  He exposes the reality that all literary
production is influenced by economic profit, and that even when authors believe
themselves to be operating within a space protected from outside market forces,
they are in fact living an ilusion. Jack is a literary producer who is forced to
recognise his participation within the commercial world of consumerism and
economic profit, despite his desperate atempts to maintain the ilusion of
disinterestedness.  The gestalt leap which he made as a schoolboy in order to
perceive the image of Christ, occurs a second time as he now perceives himself to
be a marionette-figure: a writer whose literary production is dictated to by those to
whom he is held in thral. As I demonstrate in later chapters, King often portrays
the literary producer of popular literature as one who is held captive by his market,
trapped by a readership and by their publisher's expectations.  Jack, however, is an
example of a serious literary producer, and yet he is no freer from the economic
market than King?s bestselling author-protagonists.
Conclusion
The Shining was King?s ?first hardcover bestseller; it went to Number 8 on the
Times list? to Number 7 on the Publishers Wekly list, to Number 6 on the Time
Magazine list? (King, 1982, p. 41).  King also found himself ?a popcorn celebrity
one wek in People magazine ? a two-page spread sandwiched in between Bjorn
Borg and Larry Flynt? (King, 1982, p. 41).  After already experiencing a dramatic
increase in sales of Carrie following Brian de Palma?s adaptation, King knew that
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he could expect similar success following Kubrick?s.  This economic success,
however, further consolidated his position as a writer of popular fiction and
adversely affected his potential to attract symbolic capital.  This, along with the
condemnatory remarks made by film critics, influential academics and the director,
Stanley Kubrick, himself, regarding the literary worth of his novel, exacerbated
King?s anxiety concerning the commerciality of his fiction and his need to be
appreciated as a serious writer.  As King states, ?I have written seriously since I was
twelve, and to me that means that I always wrote in order to make money? (King,
1982, p. 16), and yet, it also means to receive cultural consecration, the lack of
which King fels kenly. The falout from the publication of the novel and the
release of Kubrick?s film has long haunted King.  He once wondered if he would
end up feeling the same way about Kubrick?s The Shining as he presumed Robert
Bloch must have felt about Alfred Hitchcock?s Psycho (1960).  He wonders how
Bob Bloch? has been able to cope with people asking, ?How did you like
Psycho?? ? for twenty-some years.  He must be a little bit tired of that
question.  I?m getting tired of The Shining question? I hope people aren?t
asking me that question in twenty years (Grant, 1990, p. 117).
However, it has now been over twenty years since he made that wish and it is a
question he still finds himself asked in interviews with the press.
As I have argued in this case study, however, this anxiety did not result from this
experience; it is inherent to King?s habitus, and as such it was present throughout
the writing of The Shining becoming expressed in a number of different ways.
Firstly, his habitus gains expresion through a dramatisation of thre key fears that
King harboured relating to his economic success: control, corruption and
consumption.  By incorporating these three embodiments of his central fear of
economic success into the narrative, King hoped that he could manipulate them,
116
thus divesting them of their potential to wield power over him and his literary
production.  Secondly, it is shown through the presence of references to the theatre
and his (failed) atempts to replicate a Shakespearean tragedy, thus hoping to
capitalise upon the potential economic and symbolic success he perceived to be
available to such a venture. His determination to be considered both popular and
serious, as confirmed by his university professor, Burton Hatlen, is made manifest
through the structure and lexicon of the theatre as well as the actions of his one and
only playwright-protagonist.  Last, the exploration of the image of the po?te maudit
and the denial of its potential to accrue either symbolic or economic capital allows
King to cast this figure in the role of hired scribe; his understanding of the field, the
way position taking is effected and the way in which that affects the distribution of
capital all finding articulation through the literary production of this masked figure.
As his reaction to Kubrick?s film and his subsequent literary production show,
King?s fears surrounding his success and his failure continue to haunt him and his
fiction.  An inevitable conclusion perhaps, as, after all, it is impossible to exorcise
oneself of one?s own habitus, as I shal show in the next case study on Misery and
The Dark Half.
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Chapter 3 ? Misery and The Dark Half
Introduction
In his 1985 article ?The Politics of Limited Editions? King confesses to holding ?a
strong and probably irrational belief that a novel in manuscript is like a man with
one leg and a novel which has been printed and bound is like a man with two?
(King, 1985a, p. 4).  He claims that ?not to publish is to se the book as a creation
which has been wilfully crippled? (King, 1985a, p. 4).  King?s confession of this ?act
of ned? (King, 1985a, p. 4), this ?compulsion? (King, 1985a, p. 4) sheds some light
on his revelation the year before of his experiments with pseudonymy.  Between the
years of 1977 and 1984 King not only published under his own name, but also under
the pseudonym, Richard Bachman, and the name has been resurrected twice since
with the publication of The Regulators (1996) and Blaze (2007).  The first four
novels, collated in a single volume, The Bachman Books (1986), were accompanied
by an introduction, ?Why I Was Bachman,? in which King once again defends his
ned to find other outlets for publication. One of the reasons he cites is over-
exposure.  He claims:
I didn?t think I was overpublishing the market? but my publishers did.
Bachman provided a compromise for both of us.  My ?Stephen King
publishers? were like a frigid wifey who only wants to put out once or twice
a year, encouraging her endlesly horny hubby to find a call girl.  Bachman
was where I went when I had to have relief (BB, pp. viii-ix).
1
This compromise, explained through the metaphor of prostitution, indicates that,
just as the limited editions offered King a way of publishing his books free from the
restrictions placed upon his production by his mas-market publishers, his adoption
                                                  
1
 For further reading on the metaphor of sex and reading in King?s fiction, see ?The Rape of Constant
Reader: Stephen King?s Construction of the Female Reader and Violation of the Female Body in
Misery? by Kathleen Margaret Lant, in Imagining the Worst: Stephen King and the Representation of
Women, edited by Lant and Theresa Thompson.
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of a pseudonym similarly allowed King a release from repressive publication
strategies.
His second, and main, reason for publishing as Richard Bachman was, he claims, to
attempt to replicate the success he had garnered under his own name.  This time,
however, the fiction had been released from the ?ghetto? (King, 1982, p. 22) of the
horror genre market.  As King says of Roadwork, it ?was an efort to write a
?straight? novel? (BB, p. xii), an ?honestly dealt novel ? a novelist?s novel, if you
know what I mean? (Lehman-Haupt, 2006, p. 88).
2
  It was an attempt to break out
of the straitjacket stereotype of horror novelist, and all the baggage that that label
brought with it.  As King observes, Bachman was beginning to become successful
as an author in his own right:
His final book, Thinner, had sold about 28,000 copies in hardcover before a
Washington bookstore clerk and writer named Steve Brown got suspicious,
and went to the Library of Congress, and uncovered my name on one of the
Bachman copyright forms.
3
  Twenty-eight thousand copies isn?t a lot ? it?s
certainly not in best-seller territory ? but it?s 4,000 copies more than my
book Night Shift sold in 1978. (BB, p. xi)
The question of ?is it work that takes you to the top or is it all just a lottery?? (BB, p.
xi) clearly remains unresolved by this experiment, and it is King?s belief that had
the experiment ben alowed to continue, he would have ben able to provide a
more conclusive answer. His plan was to release Misery under Bachman?s name
rather than his own, and he believes that this ?might have taken ?Dickie? onto the
                                                  
2
 As he confirms in an interview with Stephen Jones in 1979 (five years previous to the revelation
that he was publishing pseudonymously) his decision not to publish the ?two mainstream novels?
(Jones, 1990, p. 166) that he had written was ?more a business decision? (Jones, 1990, p.166).  Of
course, both novels had in fact been published, just not under the name of Stephen King.
3
 For an account of Brown?s discovery see his chapter ?The Life and Death of Richard Bachman:
Stephen King?s Doppelganger? in Kingdom of Fear: The World of Stephen King edited by Tim
Underwood and Chuck Miller (1986).
119
best-seller lists? (BB, p. xi).
4
  While this episode in King?s career failed to bring him
the answer to his question, it stil performed a valuable service in that it forced a re-
evaluation of his work in light of the more ?straight? Bachman novels,
5
 as well as
performing a clever marketing trick.  King not only managed to exceed the limits of
publication as decreed by the publishing industry, but he published them twice over:
once under Bachman?s name and again under his own.
Misery and The Dark Half offer insights into King?s experiments with pseudonymy.
While Misery may, as King posits, have been a breakthrough novel for Bachman, it
stands out in King?s oeuvre as a work which explicitly tackles the role of the literary
producer and the way in which that role functions within the wider field of cultural
production.  It takes into account the hierarchical strata, those structuring structures
and structured structures that afect the development of an author?s habitus and
condition literary creation and reception.  Through its narrative of the author-
protagonist trapped, it explores the divisions between the production of popular and
serious fiction, and reveals the inherent difficulties in the practice of position-taking
within the hierarchically defined field.  Paul Sheldon, his perception of the field and
his own literary output are vividly rendered through the narrative of his
incarceration by his ?number-one fan? (M, p. 6), Annie Wilkes.  Unlike King, Paul
does not employ a pseudonym in order to publish those texts which do not
participate in the genre for which he has become famous; instead he publishes both
                                                  
4
 It may also have been King?s intention to publish Misery as a Bachman book so as to avoid the
backlash from readers who perceived Misery as an attack upon his fans.  As Tabitha King divulges,
?I have read several pained, angry, and offended letters from fans who mistakenly believe that Steve
was recording his true feelings about his readers in Misery? (King, 1987, p.1), which led her to write
a defence of her husband?s motives behind his ?exploration of the worst aspects of the celebrity-fan
connection? (King, 1987, p.1).
5
 As King points out, the books published under the Bachman pseudonym ?weren?t really Stephen
King books as it was then understood? (Adams, 2000b).
120
his serious novels and his bodice-ripping romances under the name of Paul Sheldon.
King?s revelation that he intended Misery to be a Bachman book allows us to
consider the function of pseudonymy in King?s career alongside the issues of
authorial practice explored in the novel itself.  In his introduction to The Bachman
Books, King cites Paul McCartney on The Beatles? assumption of fake identities ?so
no one would recognize them, and they would just have a rave-up, like in the old
days? (BB, p. vi), but recognizes that their cover would inevitable be blown by their
distinctive voices and trademark ?guitar licks? (BB, p. viii).  From King?s point of
view this manifests itself as an anxiety that, as a popular cultural producer, it is
impossible to escape recognition and, in turn, the expectations and stigmata that
accompany such recognition.
6
These themes of textual entrapment and liberation were adresed again in his
fictive exploration of his employment of a pseudonym in The Dark Half: a text in
which he credits ?Richard Bachman for his help and inspiration? (DH, p. x),
stressing that this ?novel could not have been written without him? (DH, p. x).  With
the disclosure of the source for either pseudonym, the correlation of both the author
and the author-protagonist?s employment of a pseudonym extends beyond the
dedication. George Stark, the name of the pseudonym who haunts Thad Beaumont,
is derived from Donald Westlake?s pen name, Richard Stark, which, incidentally, is
the same source for the first name of King?s pseudonym, Richard Bachman.  King
                                                  
6
 An example of a review which validates this perception appeared in The New York Times (1987)
which states that ?Misery will undoubtedly perform as other Stephen King novels have ? cresting to
the top of the best-seller lists, splashing heavily with the Book-of-the-Month Club, weighing down
the corners of thousands of beach blankets this summer? (Katzenbach, 1987) before asserting that
success ?has a way of diminishing value and obscuring actual worth? (Katzenbach, 1987).  By
emphasising the authorial signifier, Stephen King, Katzenbach highlights not only the author-
function, as I have already discussed, but also the fact that the recognition of the King brand
condemns the novel because of the inevitability of the popular success the brand recognition
necessitates.
121
recalls that NAL contacted him regarding the publication of Getting It On, and
enquired ?what name I wanted on it.  There was a Richard Stark book on my desk,
and the Bachman-Turner Overdrive on the stereo.  So I told them to call him
Richard Bachman? (Brown, 1987, p. 115).  The shared source for both King and
Thad?s pen names irrevocably links the two, signalling a connection between the
theme of entrapment and liberation as it pertains to the literary production of both
King and Thad.  King?s admission to publishing his ?straight novels? under the
Bachman pseudonym, and Thad?s use of the Stark pseudonym to write popular
novels act as inversions of one another, highlighting King?s preoccupation with the
divide betwen the literary production of popular and serious fiction. In this sense,
The Dark Half, more so than Misery, directly engages with the adoption of a
pseudonym in order to afect liberation from the expectations of publishers, critics
and public.  By featuring the pseudonym-made-flesh, as it were, King explores the
way in which pseudonymy offers only a temporary liberation from these
expectations and speculates that, at worst, the pseudonym actively exacerbates the
original entrapment experienced by the literary producer.  King includes an
anecdote in ?Why I Became Bachman,? in which he relates a rumour that Elvis
admitted to an interviewer:
I was like a cow in a pen with a whole bunch of other cows, only I got out
somehow.  Well, they came and got me and put me in another pen, only this
one was biger and I had it al to myself. I loked around and seen the
fences was so high I?d never get out.  So I said, ?All right, I?ll graze? (BB, p.
vi).
King may have temporarily escaped the widespread recognition, but he has found
himself in the same situation as Elvis, in that he is in that ?bigger? pen with the high
fences; however, unlike Elvis, King is not content to graze and continues to lament
his entrapment through his fiction.
122
A Miserable Entrapment
?outside things began to impinge more rapidly until the objective world, with all
its freight of memory, experience, and prejudice, had pretty much re-established
itself.  He was Paul Sheldon, who wrote novels of two kinds, good ones and best-
sellers (M, p. 7).
As Paul Sheldon awakens from his state of unconsciousness, following his recovery
from a car accident, he begins to retrieve his sense of identity.  The narrative states
that ?memory, experience and prejudice? re-establish themselves during this process
of identity formation, but another way of describing this is that it represents a
reaffirmation or recomposition of habitus.  Paul?s understanding of the field of
literary production is prominent in his understanding of himself and his place within
the world; by consciously identifying himself as ?Paul Sheldon, who wrote novels
of two kinds, good ones and best-sellers?, he simultaneously states his connection to
his profesion and evaluates the symbolic capital of his previous work. He defines
himself through his writing, and yet Paul is not a mere representation of King
himself, but rather, I would suggest, Paul?s narrative is a dramatisation of King?s
habitus.  He is not representing authorship, but the author-function.  As Michel
Foucault establishes, the author-function works as a categorising agent: it defines a
text as belonging to a larger body of work, through establishing their similarity with
the other texts within that group, and by differentiating it from texts which belong to
other groups.  This procedure of taxonomic differentiation can be equated with
Paul?s identification.  His own categorisation is re-established and subsequently he
is positioned within a cultural hierarchy which defines not only his previous and
future career, but also the production, publication, circulation, and reception of his
work.  His acknowledgment that he writes two kinds of books, ?good ones and best-
sellers,? is key to appreciating the weight of his ?memory, experience, and
123
prejudice?; it is crucial to appreciating his perception of the field of literary
production.
Prior to his arrival at Annie?s home, Paul?s experience of culture has been one in
which the categorisation of texts was fixed to the author function, and the author
categorised according to the symbolic capital accrued.  Paul perceives this system as
rigid, as proven by his previous efforts to subvert the system which have all met
with opposition in the form of literary critics, readers, agents, editors and publishers.
In the case of the readers, Paul recalls the outcry from the fans of his Misery novels
when he takes a break from writing these historical romances to concentrate on
?what he thought of as his ?serious? work? (M, p. 31).  As Paul laments, he ?could
write a modern Under the Volcano, Tess of the D?Urbervilles, The Sound and the
Fury; it wouldn?t mater. They would stil want Misery, Misery, Misery? (M, p31).
When he defies his readers? expectations, his more ?serious? eforts are met with a
slew of letters from his readership; letters which vary ?from bewilderment? to
reproach, to outright anger? (M, p. 31).  Their complaint remains the same though,
no matter their tone: they protest, it ?wasn?t what I expected, it wasn?t what I
wanted? (M, p. 31; italics original).  However, it is not just readers who fix Paul?s
position in the literary field; Paul accuses the literary critics of doing the same.  As
he acknowledges, his serious work, Fast Cars, which Annie forces him to destroy,
was ?a book that would sel half as many copies as the least sucesful Misery book
[he] ever wrote, and which Peter Prescott would shit upon in his finest genteel
disparaging manner when he reviewed it for that great literary oracle, Newsweek?
(M, p. 50; italics original).  In anticipating Fast Cars? economic and symbolic
failure, Paul demonstrates his perception of a rigid and unchanging, ?imortalized
124
and completed? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 199), literary hierarchy. This is the system of
classification that he is familiar with; it is the system upon which the development
of habitus is founded.  It structures his understanding of the way in which the field
of literary production operates, his own position within that field, and the
expectations placed upon him to comply with his positioning. However, the
dismantling of the structures through which the distribution of capital is managed is
rendered an undesirable outcome. Paul loses his ability to effect position-takings
when he is prevented from participating within the field of literary production.  This
rejection of the system is antithetical to Paul?s understanding of how to function
within the field, which is demonstrated in his inability to sacrifice Misery?s Return
to the fate of the ?severely limited (first printing: one copy) Anie Wilke?s Edition?
(M, p. 281).  His rescuing of the manuscript which he has been forced to produce
during his captivity clearly shows his determination to remain a participant in the
field of literary production.  ?It wasn?t Annie that was holding him back; it was the
manuscript? (M, p. 354).  He is as trapped by the structures that determine his
literary production as he is by the text itself.
This self-imposed textual entrapment complements the physical entrapment he
endures at the hands of Annie Wilkes and is alluded to throughout the novel.  The
first indication of this occurs when Annie informs Paul of how he came to be in her
care:
It was while he ate the soup that she told him what had hapened, and he
remembered it all as she told him, and he supposed it was good to know how
you happened to end up with your legs shattered, but the manner by which
he was coming to this knowledge was disquieting ? it was as if he was a
character in a story or a play, a character whose history is not recounted like
history but created like fiction (M, p. 12).
125
Paul?s history is fictionalised in that his memories are forming simultaneously to
Anie?s articulation of the events which caused his injuries; this fictionalisation
transcends the mere simple relation of past events.  Annie is the one who is telling
his history; she becomes the author of his fictionalised existence, and as such she
not only imprisons Paul physicaly, but also textualy. This corelation of
entrapment within the text is reiterated as Paul reads Annie?s scrapbook, Memory
Lane.  As he turns the pages of her asembled narrative, he finds himself becoming
a trapped reader, imprisoned by the text:
No more, please.  I don?t want to look at any more.  I?ve got the idea.  I?m
going to put this book down exactly where I found it.  Then I am going into
my room? But his hands semed to have a mind and a wil of their own;
they kept on turning the pages, faster and faster (M, p. 208; italics original).
Paul?s inability to stop reading ilustrates the power which Anie exerts through the
text.  This is contrasted with the autonomy with which she constructs her own
narrative.  The scrapbook made up of poached narratives, excised from their
original contexts and pasted into a new narrative, a narrative in which the gaps
between scraps are to be interpreted alongside the scraps of text, is representative of
Annie?s creative force.
7
  In her textual construction, Annie has created ?the gotta?
described later in the text thus:
The gotta as in: ?I think I?ll stay up another fiften?twenty minutes, honey, I
gotta see how this chapter comes out.? Even though the guy who says it
spent the day at work thinking about getting laid and knows the odds are
good his wife is going to be asleep when he finally gets up to the bedroom.
The gotta, as in: ?I know I should be starting supper now ? he?ll be mad if
it?s TV dinners again ? but I gotta see how this ends.?
I gotta know will she live.
I gotta know will he catch the shitheel who killed his father.
I gotta know if she finds out her best friend?s screwing her husband  (M,
265).
                                                  
7
 For further reading on Annie Wilkes? scrapbook see my own article ?Poaching the Print: Theorising
the Scrapbook in Stephen King?s Misery? (2007).
126
Annie?s possession of the ?gotta? is evident in Paul?s compulsion to read her
scrapbok, although it is also clear that Paul is equaly adept at creating the ?gota?
in his own narratives, particularly in those aimed for the popular market.  The
?gotta? ?was something he had been irritated to find he could generate in the Misery
books almost at wil but in his mainstream fiction eraticaly or not at al? (M, pp.
264-265).  Both Annie and Paul?s ability to create the ?gotta? is indicative of their
own potential to manipulate and their susceptibility to the manipulations of others.
This similarity between the two is reinforced through the repeated reference to
Scheherazade in connection to both the author-protagonist and the reader.  Paul
dreams of ?Anie Wilkes in the court of some fabulous Arabian caliph? (M, p. 74)
where she cals out ?Once upon a time it came to pas. This happened in the days
when my grandfather?s grandfather was a boy. This is the story of how a poor boy.
I heard this from a man who.  Once upon a time. Once upon a time? (M, p. 74;
italics original).  This dream positions Anie as Scheherazade not only through the
Middle Eastern references of the ?Arabian caliph?, ?genies from bottles? (M, p. 75),
and a ?magic carpet? (M, p. 75), but also through the collection of folk story
openings. While I discus the relevance of folk culture in King?s work in the
following case study on Bag of Bones, it is important to note here Annie?s relation
to the culture of the people through this literary reference.  It could further be
argued that her creation of the scrapbook also positions her as a practitioner of folk
art; by disassembling the fixed type of the newspaper clippings, she appropriates a
mode of popular culture, thus facilitating a reclamation of her own narrative.
However, Paul also aserts his own connection to the Scheherazade figure through
his role as the author writing for survival.  To Paul, ?it wasn?t Anie that was
127
Scheherazade. He was? (M, p. 75).  Paul?s denial of the posibility of Anie?s co-
option of the Scheherazade role reinforces his perception of his own role as writer
and manipulator.  This antipathy towards the possibility of an authoritative reader
with the potential to manipulate is also displayed when he measures the
manipulative power of the author against that of the reader. His realization of ?how
pervasive the influence of art? (M, p. 272) can be is explored through the examples
of Arthur Conan Doyle?s mother?s reaction to the death of Sherlock Holmes, ?the
way people had mobed the Baltimore docks each month when the packet bearing
the new instalment of Mr Dickens? Little Dorrit or Oliver Twist was due? (M, p.
274),
8
 the ?old woman of a hundred and five who had declared she would live until
Mr Galsworthy finished The Forsyte Saga? (M, p. 274) and ?the young mountain
climber hospitalized with a suposedly fatal case of hypothermia whose friends had
read The Lord of the Rings to him non-stop, around the clock, until he came out of
his coma? (M, p. 274).  These examples of ?the gotta? are offset by Paul?s own
experience of the reader?s potential to manipulate the author.  He recalls a letter sent
to him from a ?Mrs Roman D. (?Virginia?) Sandpiper? (M, p. 275) which was
accompanied with photographs of her own reproduction of Misery Chastain?s study:
Looking at those pictures had given him a feeling which was strange yet
eerily intangible ? it had been like looking at photographs of his own
imagination, and he knew that from that moment on, whenever he tried to
imagine Misery?s little combination parlor and study, Mrs Roman D.
(?Virginia?) Sandpiper?s Polaroids would leap immediately into his mind,
obscuring imagination with their cheery but one-dimensional concreteness
(M, p. 275).
                                                  
8
 King returned to this anecdote in the introduction to The Green Mile, relating:
A large group of Dickens fans crowded onto a waterfront dock, anticipating the arrival of an
English ship with copies of the final installment of The Old Curiosity Shop on board.
Acording to the story, several would-be readers were jostled into the water and drowned
(GM, p. viii).
It was through the serially published text that King wished to write in order to replicate this extreme
form of ?the gotta,? and for which, as I have already shown, he enjoyed great popular success.
128
The subversive potentiality of the reader is encapsulated in this remembrance as it
demonstrates how the author?s imaginative creation can become concretised by the
reader in such a way that affords the author no way to regain control over the
material. Paul?s ?erily intangible? feling is juxtaposed with the ?chery one-
dimensional concretenes? of Mrs Sandpiper?s apropriation of that which had
previously been the author?s sole property.
However, it is not just the interactions with readers that cause Paul to feel trapped.
The distribution of symbolic capital also contributes towards Paul?s entrapment in
the popular.  This is evident in his equation of writing his popular fiction as an act
of prostitution. When Annie equates Paul?s reference to the ?business? (M, p. 81) of
producing fiction to a profession of his status as a whore, Paul responds:
I?m no whore.  Fast Cars was about not being a whore. That?s what kiling
that goddamned bitch Misery was about, now that I think about it.  I was
driving to the West Coast to celebrate my liberation from a state of
whoredom.  What you did was to pull me out of the wreck when I crashed my
car and stick me back in the crib again. Two dolar straight up, four dolar
I take you aroun the worl (M, p. 81; italics original).
Once again, the implication of the reader in Paul?s incarceration in the popular is
evident, but there is another agent operating here too.  Annie, in many ways,
transcends her role as reader through her facilitation of Paul?s new book Misery
Returns.  As she is the one attributed to positioning Paul ?back in the crib again?,
she is ultimately playing the role of editor to the book.  She is, in fact, described as
?Merciless Editor? (M, p. 117) who is ?exercising editorial authority over his body?
(M, p. 315) and his creative output. Charlie Merril, Paul?s editor in New York is
perhaps the most suitable character to compare Anie?s capacity in this role.
During a meeting to discus the publication of Misery?s Return, ?Charlie was
begging him for a nonfiction account of his ordeal.  That book, he said, would
129
outsel even Misery?s Return.  Would, in fact, outsell Iacocca? (M, p. 362).  While
considering Charlie?s request for the ?nonfiction account of his ordeal?, Paul
recognizes that:
It would start out as fact, and then I?d begin to tart it up? just a little at
first? then a little more? then a little more.  Not to make myself look better
(although I probably would) and not to make Annie look worse (she
couldn?t).  Simply to create that roundness.  I don?t want to fictionalize
myself.  Writing may be masturbatory, but God forbid it should be an act of
autocannibalism (M, pp. 362-363; italics original).
This comparison of the act of fictionalising one?s own narrative to
?autocannibalism? refers back to the traumatic episode in which Annie threatens
Paul with the forced consumption of his amputated thumb. At this point in the text,
the style alters radically from the rest of the narrative so as to evoke the mounting
hysteria clearly felt by Paul both at the time and in his remembrance of the event.
Annie is described as having
cut his thumb off in the morning and that night she swept gaily into the room
where he sat in a stupid daze of drugs and pain with his wrapped left hand
held against his chest and she had a cake and she was bellowing ?Happy
Birthday to You?  in her on-key but tuneless voice although it was not his
birthday and there were candles all over the cake and sitting in the exact
center pushed into the frosting like an extra big candle had been his thumb
his gray dead thumb the nail slightly ragged because he sometimes chewed it
when he was stuck for a word and she told him If you promise to be good
Paul you can have a piece of birthday cake but you won?t have to eat any of
the special candle (M, p. 278).
The two metaphors of prostitution and autocannibalisation that Paul employs to
discuss the writing of fiction, and, in particular, popular fiction, illustrate his
disempowerment pertaining to his own literary production and his participation in
the field.  His position in the literary field is subject to the control of publishers,
agents, editors, and readers; his own power to determine his position is greatly
diminished upon this realisation.
130
The great revelatory moment for Paul occurs as he waits in the basement for Annie
to return from her Laughing Place.  As Paul lies on the mattress in Annie?s rat-
infested basement he gains a clarity previously unavailable to him.  He begins to
ponder how he has been affected by being labelled a ?popular writer?.  He asks
himself the question, ?So what was the truth? The truth, should you insist, was that
the increasing dismissal of his work in the critical press as that of a ?popular writer?
(which was, as he understod it, one step ? a smal one ? above that of ?hack?) had
hurt him quite badly? (M, p. 314).  This ?hurt? that Paul experiences is specifically
related to his ?self-image as a Serious Writer who was only churning out these shitty
romances in order to subsidize his? REAL WORK!? (M, p. 314), and he realises
that he hated Misery because ?her face on the dustjackets had overshadowed his in
his author photographs, not alowing the critics to se that they were dealing with a
young Mailer or Cheever here ? that they were dealing with a heavyweight here?
(M, p. 314).  These are crucial points of recognition for Paul, as they alow him to
come closer to acknowledging the part that he has played in his own positioning in
the field of literary production.  His entrapment is no longer solely attributed to the
readers or the editors or the publishers, but also to himself as a literary producer.
A Tale of Two Halves
In The Dark Half, King explores the role of one who produces for a bifurcated
market; he delves into the duality, which allows Thad to write both popular
commercial books and those considered serious and worthy of literary prizes.
Despite his ability to write for both markets, this dual literary production does not
liberate him from the demands of the market, as Thad, like Paul, has become
traped in his role as literary producer. Unlike Paul, however, Thad is a respected
131
literary author who is nominated for awards and receives critical attention.  As an
eleven year old, he wins an honourable mention in a writing contest sponsored by
American Teen magazine, prefiguring his future nomination in 1972 of the National
Book Award for his first novel The Sudden Dancers.  Thad recognises, however,
that this ?sort of thing swung some weight with literary critics, but the breathles
celebrity-watchers of America didn?t care a dime? (DH, p. 20); while he has shown
himself capable of accruing symbolic capital, his fiction does not bring him much in
the way of remuneration.  Following the publication of The Sudden Dancers, ?which
earned more critical acclaim than royalties? (DH, p. 23), Thad suffers ?serious
writer?s block? (DH, p. 23), leading his wife to suggest the practice of writing under
a pseudonym:
She said I could kick up my heels for once, if I wanted to.  Write any damn
thing I pleased without The New York Times Book Review looking over my
shoulder the whole time I wrote it. She said I could write a Western, a
mystery, a science fiction story. Or I could write a crime novel (DH, pp. 23-
24).
Interestingly, the types of fiction his wife sugests as an alternative to writing
serious literary prose all require an adherence to strict generic conventions.  Thad
views the adoption of the pseudonym as a ?secret escape hatch? (DH, p. 24), which
would allow him to reinvent himself (DH, p. 24) through a reinterpretation of his
role as a textual producer: one who writes for entertainment rather than as an
expression of serious literary endeavour.  He seeks liberation from his role as
serious author, from the stifling attentions of literary critics, from the expectation
that he live up to his potential as ?the next William Shakespeare? (DH, p. 8), by
turning to the pseudonym, George Stark, and the writing of immensely popular
crime novels in which ?men robbed banks, shot each other, and demonstrated how
much they loved their women mostly by beating the shit out of them? (DH, p. 74).
132
However, it is only folowing Thad?s discarding of the pseudonym that he begins to
realise that in writing popular generic fiction, he has simply swapped one type of
entrapment for another; he is no longer trapped by his production of serious
literature, but by his production of the popular.
Thad?s popular novels consist of Machine?s Way, which became ?that year?s
surprise success, going to number one on best-seller lists coast to coast? (DH, p. 29),
and ?three extremely successful follow-up novels? (DH, p. 20), of which the first
and last, Riding to Babylon, feature the lead character Alexis Machine,
9
 an
incredibly violent protagonist determined to exact revenge upon those who have
committed past wrongs against him.  The difference betwen Stark?s textual
production and his own is clarified by Thad when he states that:
Thadeus Beaumont has writen two books hardly anybody has read. The
second, published eleven years ago, didn?t even review very well.  The
infinitesimal advances he got didn?t earn out; it?ll be a wonder if he can even
get published again, with the business being what it is.  Stark, on the other
hand, makes money by the fistful.  They?re discreet fistfuls, but the books
still earn six times what I make teaching this year (DH, p. 122).
Thad, through his writing of popular thrillers, proves that he is able to earn
economic capital.  The monies earned alow him to live in a ?roomy New England
Colonial, maybe one wing shy of qualifying for mansionhood? (DH, p. 334); they
allow him ?to live in the light and be happy?when he would otherwise have lived
poor and expired in obscurity? (DH, p. 334).  His accrual of economic capital
provides him with the opportunity ?to face life as ? flourish of trumpets, please! ? a
                                                  
9
 It should be noted that this name is a play on words, ?a lexis machine,? perhaps alluding to the
mechanical reproduction of the literary product aimed for mass-market success, which is explored
further in the following case study.  However, as King admits in an afterword to The Dark Half,
The name Alexis Machine is not original to me.  Readers of Dead City, by Shane Stevens,
will recognize it as the name of the fictional hoodlum boss in that novel.  The name so
perfectly summed up the character of George Stark and his own fictional crime boss that I
adopted it for the work you have just read (DH, p. 469).
King describes Shane Stevens as the author of ?three of the finest novels ever written about the dark
side of the American dream? (DH, p. 469).
133
full-time writer if he so desired? (DH, p. 21).  And yet, despite this freedom from
financial constraint, he stil finds that he cannot escape his role as a writer of
popular fiction.  When he confesses to the authorship of the George Stark novels,
thus effectively ending his career as bestselling genre novelist, Stark gains material
form and begins to exact his revenge in much the same fashion as his fictional
construct, Alexis Machine, in an attempt to continue participating in the production
of literature.  Thad is brought face to face with his pseudonym-made-flesh and is
forced to recognise that he cannot ever truly break free from his role as a writer of
popular novels and return unscathed to his role as writer of serious literary fiction.
As he comes to realise, both he and Stark are the same man, despite their existence
as two separate forms; the matching of their voice prints, their finger prints, and
their ?sub rosa? (DH, p. 429) similarity displayed in ?that trick of crosing the fet
during the stretch, of splaying the fingers stifly beside either thigh, the tight little
crinkle of the eyes? (DH, p. 429), confirming that ?they were mirror images, just the
same? (DH, p. 429).  Within this one man, there is an inner conflict pertaining to the
dominance of either serious or popular fiction which is ultimately iresolvable. The
ambiguous ending in which Thad remains standing with his hands covering his face,
while George is caried of by the flock of psychopomp sparows, and the
intertextual reference to Thad?s suicide in King?s later novel Bag of Bones, both
sugest that the excision and exorcism of Stark was not only to his detriment, but
also to Thad?s.  They are ultimately halves of the same whole: ?Half and half.  Criss
and cross.  Snick and snee? (DH, p. 263).  In the same way that they depend upon
each other for the continuation of their existence, popular and serious textual
production depend upon each other to uphold their positions within the hierarchical
field of literary production.  There exists a relational identity between the two, in
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that they define themselves through their opposition to each other: they are what the
other is not.  To remove one is to consign the other to oblivion.
To proceed beyond the level of the narrative?s plot in order to look at the way in
which the narrative is told, it is fruitful to turn to the structuralist theories of Jerry
Palmer. Analysing the text in the light of his theories, as expounded in Thrilers:
Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre (1978),
10
 it becomes clear that Thad?s
story of a serious literary author terorised by his monstrously violent popular
pseudonym conforms to the established conventions of the thriller genre, and
consists of two halves: the first is an ?enforcer thriller?, while the second is a
?negative thriller?.  As ?in all Enforcer stories, the hero is totally beyond the pale of
the law, but still retains the reader?s sympathy, as he is ? within the context of the
story ? more sinned against than sinning? (Palmer, 1978, p. 214).  The victims of the
enforcer hero ?either thoroughly deserve [their treatment] or are sufficiently
anonymous to arouse no sympathy. His profesionalism and isolationist
competitive individualism guarantee him admiration? (Palmer, 1978, p. 214).  From
this description, George Stark can most clearly be identified as an ?enforcer?.  It is
his efforts as a producer of popular fiction that provide Thad with the income which
allows him to live the way that he does. Thad, through consigning him to the grave,
is perceived by George to have ?sinned against? him, and he therefore considers that
he is justified in carrying out the murders of Thad?s accomplices.  George?s
presence in the narrative traps Thad within the genre of the thriller; in a paradoxical
turn of events, by breaking free from the writing of the thriller genre, Thad?s own
narrative becomes bound to the conventions of the thriller.  The explanation of his
                                                  
10
 For further reading on explorations of the genre can be found in The World of the Thriller (1969)
by Ralph Harper and in Jerry Palmer?s Potboilers: Methods, Concepts and Case Studies in Popular
Fiction (1991).
135
choice pertaining to the name of his pseudonym foreshadows his fate, in that the
name is derived from another source of the enforcer narrative: Richard Stark.  Stark,
as I mentioned in the introduction, was the pseudonym of Donald Westlake who
used it to write about an enforcer named Parker who ?goes through the bad guys ?
the other bad guys, I mean ? exactly like a robot that?s been programmed with one
single goal. ?I want my money,? he says, and that?s just about all he says? (DH, pp.
26-27).  As Thad indicates, this character, who conforms to the enforcer type
described by Palmer, is very similar to his own fictional creation, Alexis Machine.
When George takes physical form, he follows the same pattern as Alexis Machine
and Parker, by pursuing the members of an organisation in order to exact his
revenge.  Thad finds himself a character in one of his own thrillers, in which ?we are
no longer told about a crime anterior to the moment of the narative; the narative
coincides with the action? Prospection takes the place of retrospection? (Todorov,
1988, p. 161).
The second half of the novel, following George?s murder of Thad?s editors, Miriam
and Rick Cowley, the journalist and the photographer who helped to break the story
of Thad?s adoption of the pseudonym, Fredrick Clawson who blackmailed Thad,
thus forcing his hand to divulge his secret authorship of the George Stark novels,
and the secretary who used to work in the accounts department at Darwin Press who
gave Clawson the information in the first place, becomes a different kind of thriller:
the negative thriller.  Palmer describes this type of thriller as a narrative in which
what the hero works to save is no better than the conspiracy he destroys, and
the guarantee of this is that in saving it he actually removes from it what was
most valuable? Ultimately, all that is left is the posibility of a fresh start
for everyone; and even here nothing in the text allows us to suppose that
what is to come will be any better than what has gone before (Palmer, 1978,
p. 47).
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By working towards the end goal of removing George from his life, Thad must
occupy the role of a hero in the thriller genre.  He must thwart George?s plan to
usurp his position within reality and retain authority over his literary production.
However, as I have already suggested, the conclusion of The Dark Half is deeply
ambiguous, as the narrative closes with Thad covering his face with his hands.  Has
he sucesfuly aserted his authority and determined his own identity? Unlike the
positive thriler, ?the negative is unable to hold out any real asurance: it is an open
question whether the hero will be happy or not? (Palmer, 1978, p. 51).  Mike
Noonan?s reference in Bag of Bones removes that ambiguity somewhat by
concluding that Thad?s family left him; he never wrote again and ultimately
committed suicide.  However, at the close of the narrative as it stands in The Dark
Half, Thad?s fate remains undecided and the finality of George?s banishment
questioned.  Following George?s demise, Alan Pangborn, the local sheriff, regards
standing next to Thad as akin to
standing next to a cave some nightmarish creature came out of.  The
monster is gone now, but you stil don?t like to be to close to where it came
from.  Because there might be another? And even if the cave is empty
forever, there are the dreams.  And the memories (DH, p. 465; italics
original).
The ?conflicts that threatened the order of the world? (Palmer, 1978, p. 51) are
resolved albeit unconvincingly, and ?one is left with the sense that they wil crop up
again somewhere else, and soon? (Palmer, 1978, p. 51).  Thad?s narrative, told with
due adherence to the thriller genre conventions, concludes without the reassurance
that Thad has escaped his own personal sense of entrapment. The ambiguity of the
ending provided suggests that Thad may remain trapped by his choices concerning
his authorship and his participation within the field of literary production.
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Thad is not only bound by generic convention, however, as he is also bound within
the confines of a text.  In this sense he is similar to Paul Sheldon who is also an
author-protagonist trapped in the pages of a popular novel.  In King?s original plan
for Misery, Paul would meet his end in Annie Wilkes? home and his skin would be
used to bind the copy of Misery?s Return she had forced him to write (OW, p. 194).
This alternative ending makes a clear connection between Paul and his inability to
escape the text.  However, this is not the ending which King ultimately published,
and so the correlation between Paul and the material text is admittedly less obvious,
but it is certainly still present in the final version.  As I have mentioned earlier in
this case study, Annie relates the events that led to Paul?s arrival at her home, and
Paul comes to this knowledge ?as if he was a character in a story or a play, a
character whose history is not recounted like history but created like fiction? (M, p.
12).  Paul?s latent perception of his participation in the text is reiterated at many
points.  When considering the consequences which may have taken place had Paul
made a copy of his Fast Cars manuscript, and Anie ?had ben clearly faced with
the fact that she couldn?t destroy his ?dirty book?? (M, p. 62) that she might ?have
decided to destroy the creator of the dirty book instead? (M, p. 62).  A clear
connection is drawn here between the body of the text and the body of the writer; if
the destruction of the manuscript could not be effected then she would have to resort
to the destruction of the writer; after ?all, there was no copy of Paul Sheldon? (M, p.
62).  The use of the word copy here also indicates Paul?s comparison to the material
text, and this is furthered by other moments in the text, such as the description of
Anie?s placement of Paul into his whelchair for the first time: ?She did it with the
ease of a woman sliding a book into an empty slot in her bookcase? (M, p. 73).
However, the nature of his status as a character in a novel, bound and marketed as
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popular fiction is also communicated through the text when the events which occur
during Paul?s time in Annie?s home are discussed as though they were a plot-line.
This is exemplified in Paul?s asesment of his final encounter with Anie, as he
complains that in ?a book, al would have gone acording to plan? (M, p. 354). He
stresses that ?life was so fucking untidy? (M, p. 354) and asks ?what could you say
for an existence where some of the most crucial conversations of your life tok
place when you needed to take a shit, or something?  An existence where there
weren?t even any chapters? (M, p. 354).  Paradoxicaly, Paul?s existence, as it is
narated, is ?tidy? and divided neatly into chapters; he is an author contained within
the pages of ?a book?.
In The Dark Half, Thad makes a similar observation during his desperate atempt to
save Miriam Cowley from George?s murderous intentions:
Characters in books ? at least in Stark?s books ? never took pauses like this,
never stopped to wonder something nonsensical like why they had never had
a second telephone line put in for cases where a woman in another state
might be bleeding to death.  People in boks never had to take time out so
they could move their bowels, and they never clutched up like this (DH, p.
157).
While Thad sems at pains to point out the incompatibility of his own actions with
those regularly narrated in popular fiction, the evidence suggests otherwise.  As
Thad aserts, the ?world would be a more eficient place if everyone in it came out
of a pop novel? People in pop novels always manage to keep their thoughts on
track as they move smothly from one chapter to the next? (DH, p. 157).  The
validity of this statement is demonstrated by Thad himself through the telling of his
own narative through the medium of a popular novel, which ses him aintain his
?thoughts on track as? he moves ?smoothly from one chapter to the next?, with no
bathroom breaks.  Once again the predilection of the thriller narrative to focus on
139
prospection rather than retrospection is evident through Thad?s extolling the
benefits of interacting with ?people who behave like characters in pop novels? rather
than ?a Saul Bellow person? (DH, p. 162) when dealing with the aftermath of a
psychotic popular writer?s attack on one?s editor.  In fact, it is Thad?s acceptance of
his role as a character in a popular fiction that allows him to function in the thriller
narrative in which he is confined.  After telling himself to pretend ?it?s a book
you?re writing? And pretend you?re a character in that book? (DH, p. 357; italics
original), Thad begins to understand his capability to ?move not only himself but the
other characters in this story? around the way he moved characters on paper? (DH,
p. 357).  Through his manipulations of narrative, Thad attempts to wrest authority of
his own story from George, but he can only do so by accepting the rules of the
genre, by accepting his entrapment in a popular novel.  Both author-protagonists,
Paul Sheldon and Thad Beaumont, recognise their predicament as writers who
produce both serious literary texts and popular fiction, and who both find
themselves as characters caught in the genre conventions of the thriller or the
suspense novel.  Similarly, they both experience their life becoming turned upside
down by the intrusion of a figure who disrupts their understanding of the
hierarchical strata that underpins the field of literary production: a figure who
degrades, destabilises and disassembles.
Caught in the Carnivalesque
In both Misery and The Dark Half, the author-protagonist experiences a crisis which
afects the way in which they function within the field of literary production. The
figures intimately involved in the manifestation of these crises, Annie Wilkes and
George Stark, act in ways that undermine Paul and Thad?s sense of literary
140
hierarchy, and, with that sense undermined, they lose their perception of the way in
which position-takings can be efected. Hence Paul and Thad, authors traped by
their own textual production, also endure another entrapment: an entrapment within
the carnivalesque. The carnivalised space in which both author-protagonists find
themselves causes traditional, accepted hierarchies to become inverted: all that is
low becomes high, while all that is high is rendered low.  The carnivalesque erupts
in many ways throughout both novels, and in both cases it destabilises the way in
which the author-protagonist perceives their work and themselves in relation to the
field of literary production. Paul?s physical entrapment exemplifies this through its
shared characteristics with the carnivalesque as theorised by Bakhtin.  A key scene
in the narrative which highlights this correlation, is Paul?s realisation of the extent
of his confinement when he leaves the guest bedroom, during Annie?s first trip to
her ?Laughing Place? (M, p. 191).  While investigating his options for escaping
Annie?s home, ?Paul Sheldon?s Laughing Place? (M, p. 192), he discovers that
?Anie?s driveway was flooded, and her yard was a quagmire of mud, standing
water and gobbets of melting snow? (M, p. 197).  This causes Paul to realise that:
Maybe she locked the doors to keep the Roydmans out, but she sure didn?t
ned to lock them to kep me in. If I got out there in this whelchair, I?d be
bogged to the hubcaps in five seconds.  You?re not going anywhere, Paul.
Not tonight and probably not for weeks ? they?ll be a month into the
baseball season before the ground firms up enough for you to get out to the
road in this wheelchair (M, p. 197).
Paul is trapped by more than Annie?s locked doors; he is trapped by the world
beyond. However, what is important to note here, is that it is a finite entrapment.
Paul anticipates the reinstatement of his liberty at some point in the future. His
confinement is temporally restricted.  This feature of Paul?s entrapment is shared by
the carnivalesque, as the carnival ?feast is always essentially related to time? not just
in that it was linked to ?the recurrence of an event in the natural (cosmic) cycle, or
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to biological or historic timeliness? (Bakhtin, 1994, pp. 198-199), but also in that it
provided a ?temporary suspension? of hierarchical rank? (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 199).
The key term here is ?temporary? as it is this which signifies that the carnival is
bound temporally.  Paul?s assumption that there will be an end to his time in his
?Laughing Place,? indicates that his immersion in the carnivalesque is similarly
bound.
Annie, as representative of the carnivalesque, has a complex relationship with time,
history and the process of memory.  This is first signalled during her relation of the
events which led Paul to become a patient/prisoner in her home.  At one point
during the delivery of her part of the story, Annie stops:
There was a quer interval of silence, and Paul was frightened by what he
saw on her face, because what he saw was nothing; the black nothing of a
crevase folded into an alpine meadow, a blackness where no flowers grew
and into which the drop might be long.  It was the face of a woman who has
come momentarily untethered from all of the vital positions and landmarks
of her life, a woman who has forgoten not only the memory she was in the
process of recounting but memory itself (M, p. 13).
 Her lapse into what appears to be a semi-catatonic state is described in
topographical terms: the imagery of the black ?crevasse folded into an alpine
meadow? indicates a gap, a disturbing absence within the normalcy of the everyday.
This drifting away from that which binds her to reality, is also signified through her
temporal detachment.  As a ?woman who has come momentarily untethered from all
of the vital positions and landmarks of her life?, she is unaware of her past, present
and future.  She has forgotten ?memory itself? as she has become incapable of
constructing a past or conceiving a future, just as she is similarly incapable of
apprehending the present.  This detachment is signalled at several points in the
narative, as it becomes clear that Paul?s realisation that ?her grasp of time was not
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good? (M, p. 19) is well founded.  Two such examples are the calendar on the guest
bedroom wall and Annie?s scrapbook.  The former is significant in that its irregular
updating further enhances the understanding of Paul?s entry into the carnivalesque.
The calendar ?showed a boy riding a sled down a hill.  It was February according to
the calendar, but if [Paul?s] calculations were right it was already early March.
Annie Wilkes had just forgotten to turn the page? (M, p. 65).  Her forgetfulness
regarding the calendar is revisited again later in the text when the town official
arives to warn her of her tardy tax payment.  Upon realising that she is in arrears
with her tax, Annie also realises that she has neglected to update the calendar.  She
?forgot, just the way [she] kep[s] forgeting to change February on that damned
calendar? (M, p. 168; italics original).  The second example of Anie?s temporal
lapse is an entry in her Memory Lane.  Anie?s memories are all recounted in
consecutive order and are al neatly labeled; ?Anie had chronicled the whole story
in her meticulous way? (M, p. 214), all apart from one specific entry which relates
the news that she and Ralph Dugan have been granted a divorce:
Slashed into the bottom of the page was AUG 43
rd
 1880 FUCK YOU!
The paper, thick as it was, had torn in several places under the fury
of the hand which had driven the pen.
It was the DIVORCES GRANTED column from the Nederland
paper, but he had to turn it over to make sure that Annie and Ralph were a
part of it.  She had pasted it in upside down (M, pp. 212-213).
One of the most startling aspects of this entry, as signified by its prominence in its
description, is the date heavily inscribed into the page.  The date, August 43
rd
 1880,
is not only jarring in its clear disruption of the narrative teleology, but also in that it
is a date which has not, and never could have, existed.  From this entry it is apparent
that Annie is susceptible to these episodes where time becomes fractured and
disjointed.
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These lapses, however, are not confined to Annie, as they are similarly experienced
by Paul. This los of the ability to keep time is sometimes caused by his drug use:
he ?drifted.  The tide came in and he drifted.  The TV played in the other room for
awhile and then didn?t. Sometimes the clock chimed and he tried to count the
chimes but he kept getting lost between? (M, p. 23).  The loss of time-keping and
the drug induced state of temporal confusion is also indicated through Paul?s
references to Lewis Carroll?s Alice in Wonderland (1865).  When Paul peers
through the guest bedroom keyhole out into the rest of Annie?s house, the keyhole is
described as ?the old fashioned sort, reminding Paul of John Tenniel?s Alice in
Wonderland drawings, set in the middle of a tarnished keyplate? (M, p. 90).  Alice?s
entry into Wonderland, like Paul?s entry into Annie?s ?funhouse [where] the laff riot
just never stopped? (M, p. 55), necessitates a loss of ?all of the vital positions and
landmarks of? life? (M, p. 13), which are mostly temporal in nature.  A second
reference to Alice in Wonderland appears further on in the text, when Paul hears
?the voice of the Red Queen lecturing Alice: Down here we got our act clean
yesterday, and we plan to start getting our act clean tomorow, but we never clean
up our act today? (M, p. 126).  The suspension of action, as evinced by the imagined
Red Queen, concerns Paul?s realisation that he is addicted to Novril, the codeine-
based narcotic which Annie has been administering to Paul to help control his pain.
These are the drugs which result in lapses of time for Paul, but which also alert him
to the passing of time.  He describes Annie, the provider of the medication, as ?the
mon which brought the tide? (M, p. 28), thus sugesting that his pain is tidal in its
effect; the cyclical waxing and waning of the pain in his legs allows Paul a more
elemental understanding of the passage of time, one which is roted in his
physiology.  When Paul is rescued by the two policemen he is described as
144
resembling that ?guy in that book who?d spent forty years in solitary confinement.
He hadn?t sen anybody in forty years. That?s what this guy looked like? (M, p.
356). Paul recognises and is affected by the continual passage of time, and yet,
during his enforced stay in Annie?s guest room there are moments at which time
becomes pliable, or even lost altogether.  The description of the incarcerated
fictional unfortunate coupled with Paul?s own narative of incarceration, pain and
addiction illustrate Paul?s unwilling participation in the carnivalesque through his
incarceration at the will of Annie.
However, despite Paul?s unwiling participation in the carnivalesque, he discovers
that the act of degradation, one of the fundamental features of the carnivalesque, is
tightly bound to conception, and that to degrade is ?to bury, to sow, and to kill
simultaneously, in order to bring forth something more and better? (Bakhtin, 1994,
p. 206).  This most natural of all cycles of birth, death and rebirth, can most clearly
be seen in Paul?s fiction, and is facilitated in the first instance by Paul through his
creation of Misery Chastain and through his inscription of her death in the
penultimate novel, and in the second instance by Annie through her insistence on
Misery?s revival.  Misery?s revival is effected through her resurrection from the
grave in which she was intered prematurely. The narative that Paul concocts to
allow Misery to rise from the dead involves the initial burial followed by a rescue
mission to disinter her.  In this way Misery herself becomes the epitome of Paul?s
degradation. After al, to ?degrade an object does not imply merely hurtling it into
the void of nonexistence, into absolute destruction, but to hurl it down to the
reproductive lower stratum, the zone in which conception and a new birth take
place? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206).  In fact the source of the idea for Misery?s
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resurrection is derived in the lower stratum: ?the fruitful earth and the womb?
(Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206) that ?is always conceiving? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206).  Paul is
described as having layers of consciousness, of which the ?top two or three? dealt
with such things as when he had last shampooed, or whether or not Annie would be
on time with his next dope alotment? (M, p. 132).  However, another ?part of him
was furiously trying out ideas, rejecting them, trying to combine them, rejecting the
combinations? (M, p. 132), and it is this part which is positioned beneath these top
layers of consciousness.  Paul ?sensed this going on but had no direct contact with it
and wanted none. It was dirty down there in the sweatshops? (M, p. 132).  Paul
prefers to remain focussed on the top layers of his mind rather than to allow himself
to sink ?down there? to the level where his ideas for fiction originate.  When
ultimately he comes up with an idea, the way in which it is narrated is to once again
locate the idea ?down there?, as ?the guys down below shot up a flare, as they
always eventually did? (M, p. 135).  When, after due consideration, Paul almost
disregards the ?flare?, ?a faint groan from down there in the sweatshops? (M, p. 135)
is anticipated. This repetition of ?down there? and ?down below? further suports
the supposition that Misery, as a creative outpouring, is reborn from the grave.
Annie, along with his physical disability, traps Paul in the carnivalesque, but the
outcome from that incarceration is not death, ?destruction? and ?non-existence?,
rather it is the birth of a new creativity; it is, as Paul perceives it, the conception of
?maybe the best thing [he] ever wrote? (M, p. 345), suggesting that Paul has begun
to appreciate his talents as a popular author over and above his shortcomings as a
serious one.
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Degradation is also a key element in The Dark Half, most clearly represented in
George?s burial and rebirth.  Despite George?s lack of material form, Thad
participates in a faux interment for a photo shoot to accompany the magazine article
in which he admits authorship of the bestselling Stark novels.  In the photograph,
Thad had a spade and Liz had a pick.  Set off to one side was a wheelbarrow
with more cemetery implements in it.  On the grave itself, several bouquets
of flowers had been arranged, but the gravestone itself was still perfectly
readable.
GEORGE STARK
1975-1988
Not a Very Nice Guy (DH, p. 18).
The realism of the shot is offset by both Thad and Liz ?laughing cheerily? (DH, p.
19), as they shake hands across the top of the gravestone.  Upon finding the
photograph in the pages of People magazine, Thad discovers that the fake
gravestone leaves him distinctly uneasy.  ?That tombstone.  That name.  Those
dates.  Most of all that sour epitaph, which made him bellow laughter but was not,
for some reason, one bit funny underneath the laughter? (DH, p. 22).  His
discomfort at the sight of the fake gravestone goes unexamined.  Thad is aware that
?there was something not quite right about such helpless laughter ? it was a form of
hysteria. He knew that humor rarely if ever had anything to do with such fits. In
fact, the cause was apt to be something quite the oposite of funny? (DH, p. 21).
Rather that, ?laughter degrades and materializes? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206), it ?bring[s]
down to earth, turn[s] their subject into flesh? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206), and this
appears to be precisely the action that causes George to become reborn from the
depths of his fake grave.  It is as much Thad?s laughter that initiates George?s
degradation and subsequent materialisation, as the photo shoot itself.
147
The sequence of events supports this supposition, as George does not rise from the
earth fully formed folowing the breaking of the news that Thad wrote under the
name of George Stark, or directly after the photo shot; his resurection folows
Thad?s laughter at the photograph and interview.  His laughter is the degrading act
which ?digs a bodily grave for a new birth? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206) thus
exemplifying that degradation ?has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a
regenerating one? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206).  The hole in the earth from which George
is reborn is described as ?taper[ing] to a kind of cone? It loked the way a grave
would look if someone had been buried before he was dead, come to, and dug his
way out of the ground with nothing but his bare hands? (DH, p. 44).  The birth of
this fictional character, created by a popular author, is strikingly similar to Misery?s
rebirth at the pen of Paul Sheldon.  George Stark and Misery Chastain are the
fictional constructs which operate in such a way to ensnare their authors in the role
of popular writer, and as such, when their author attempts to rid his fiction of them
by literally degrading them, he effectively creates the conditions for their rebirth.
Bachman experienced a similar rebirth, in that folowing his death by ?cancer of the
pseudonym? (BB, p. xi), a manuscript of a novel, The Regulators, was found by his
fictional widow and was published alongside King?s Desperation (1996). The
novels were both published in September 1996, packaged together along with a
??kep-you-up-al-night? book light? (Beahm, 1998, p. 191), and shared the same
cover artist, Mark Ryden.
1
  The marketing campaign included:
                                                  
1
 Mark Ryden (1963- ) has published books of his artwork, such as Fushigi Circus (2006) and
Anima Mundi (2001). His artist?s statement describes his work thus:
Viewers are initially drawn in by the comforting beauty of Ryden?s pop culture references,
then challenged by their circumstances and finally transported to the artist?s final intent ? a
world where creatures speak from a place of childlike honesty about the state of mankind
and our relationships with ourselves, each other and our past (Ryden).
148
a special toll-free number (1-800-4Bachman) to get information on the
Bachman book; abridged audios read by Kathy Bates (for Desperation) and
Mary-Louise Parker (for The Regulators)?; thirty-second television ads (a
million buck?s worth) to push the boks as a pair; and linked web sites for
those with Internet access (Beahm, 1998, p. 191).
As Collings comments in Horror Plum?d: An International Stephen King
Bibliography and Guide (2002), the two novels formed part ?of a unique publishing
event? (Collings, 2002, p. 377) in that the two novels link together to give ?readers
intimate glimpses as to how the two imaginations, while beginning with essentially
the same cast of characters (or at least the same names for characters) might create
entirely different stories? (Colings, 2002, p. 377).  King?s pseudonym experiment
was resurrected as a marketing device to encourage the commerciality of King?s
work: Bachman?s return emphasising King?s inability to escape the stigma of his
popularity.
To return to The Dark Half, George?s physical presence in the text serves to
illustrate the two-world structure at the heart of the carnivalesque in which accepted
hierarchies become inverted. The ?carnival celebrated temporary liberation from
the prevailing truth and from the established order? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 199) and
George?s presence in the narrative facilitates the conditions of ?temporary
liberation?; his very existence is in defiance of the established order.  The night
George digs his way out of his grave, Thad has a nightmare in which everything he
touches splits into two.  This theme of the division of a whole into two halves, with
the actions of one rebounding on the other, permeates the text.  Thad?s twin babies
offer a visual explication of this connection through the sharing of their bruises;
when one baby bruises their leg, the other develops a bruise the same shape and in
the same location.  It is also made explicit through Thad and George?s twinning and
149
their role as authors of literature capable of accruing two different types of capital:
economic and symbolic.  This is demonstrated most clearly during their first and
final meeting as they begin to write George?s new novel Steel Machine.  Thad
considers that writing ?is not what we?re doing here, not realy. Writing is just the
ritual. We?re talking about pasing some sort of baton.  An exchange of power?
(DH, p. 439; italics original).  This exchange is made manifest as George?s
appearance begins to change:
The sores were disapearing. The broken, decaying skin was growing pink
again; the edges of this fresh skin were reaching acros the healing sores
toward each other, in some cases already knitting together. Eyebrows which
had disapeared into a soup of rotting flesh were reappearing.  The trickles
of pus which had turned the collar of Stark?s shirt an ugly soden yellow
were drying (DH, p. 449).
As his skin begins to mend itself, his body regains solidity.  The disappearance of
the sores, the ?knitting together? of the flesh and the drying up of the externalised
bodily fluids all indicate the reinstatement of the barrier between the self and other.
George?s status as a separate entity begins to be realised once more, but only to be
acompanied by the beginings of Thad?s subsequent physical decay, evident as
?Thad reached up with his left hand and touched the sore which was beginning to
erupt on his own left temple, and held the pads of his fingers in front of his eyes for
a moment.  They were wet? (DH, p. 449).  Thad?s skin, his own barrier between the
internal and external which provides him with a sense of wholeness and which
separates Thad from not-Thad, is eroding, and with that erosion comes the
realisation that, just as one ?end of the teter-toter goes up, the other end has to
come down.  Just another law of nature? (DH, p. 450).
While the two writers were one, there existed no need for a balance; Thad and
George worked in harmony together, producing literature that was either writen for
150
critical acclaim or popularity. They complemented each other, and facilitated the
maintenance of Thad?s position in the field of literary production. It was only upon
the separation of the two, accomplished through Thad?s admission to the role he
played in the production of the Stark novels, that the two halves behave
antagonisticaly towards each other.  Their only hope for survival, post-separation,
is to accelerate the other?s demise; they must actively sek the promotion of their
own role as either a producer of literary fiction or popular fiction, to the detriment
of the other.  The fact that Thad is ultimately sucesful is unsurprising; folowing
the temporary reign of the carnivalesque, in which the hierarchical positioning of
popular and serious in undermined, traditional order must be reinstated.  George, a
fictional construct reborn through degradation, a popular writer determined to wrest
control away from a serious writer, thus undermining the traditional hierarchy, is
ultimately consigned to oblivion.  As a carnivalesque figure his dominance is short
lived.  ?The book is closed on George Stark? (DH, p. 462).  King was similarly
incapable of maintaining any kind of hierarchical subversion, as he reveals that he
received ?letters asking me if I was Richard Bachman from the very beginning?
(BB, p. viii).  He confesses that Roadwork, ?a ?straight? novel? (BB, p. xii), was
writen as a response to those that asked him when he was ?going to do something
serious? (BB, p. xii).  However, even when writing a ?straight? novel, his authorship
of the text was recognised, and throughout the experiment he aspired for Bachman
to achieve suces on ?the best-seler lists? (BB, p. x). He was incapable of
transcending his popular roots and the hierarchical strata remained unaltered by
these attempts to undermine and destabilise them, and continue to structure the field
of literary production.
151
Conclusion
As I indicated at the outset of this case study, the carnivalesque will prove to be an
important feature in the following analysis of the case studies that follow as its
presence signals a disruption of hierarchical strata, causing high and low positions
to become transposed.  The significance of the carnivalesque to these narratives of
author-protagonists engaged in the production of literature is to undermine the
normal structuring of the literary field, thus articulating not only a desire to invert
and destabilise, but also an acknowledgement of those structures and their
permanence.  Bakhtin?s interpretation of the literary carnival as a space in which
everyone connects through ?frank and free? (Bakhtin, 1994, p.199) discourse, a
space in which the strict traditional hierarchies of feudal culture are suspended,
ofers a way of understanding how King?s author-protagonists react to the
destabilisation of an accepted hierarchy which characterises the field of literary
production.  As King progresses through his professional career as author, his
habitus, his way of understanding how to participate in the field of literary
production, matures and alters.  In the two texts that I have analysed here, King?s
author-protagonists experience the literary field as ?immortalized and completed?
(Bakhtin, 1994, p. 199) and they struggle with the sense that their positions within
that field are immovable and fixed.  However, what both of these narratives show is
that Thad and Paul fel equaly traped when this hierarchy is removed. Their
definition of themselves as authors is fundamentally underpinned by their habitus,
and when the carnivalesque enters the narrative and the hierarchy becomes inverted,
they find that their habitus is incompatible with this new space; they find their
identification as an author undermined.  Neither can ever really find freedom as
evidenced by the endings of both texts.  Both end equally ambiguously with neither
152
author-protagonist clearly achieving a measure of liberty from their original
entrapments.
The authorial struggles experienced by Thad and Paul in relation to their writing of
texts demed popular or serious corespond to King?s experience with his
employment of the Bachman pseudonym. Their atempts to achieve simultaneous
economic and symbolic suces may differ in that Paul publishes both his serious
fiction and his popular genre fiction under his own name, while Thad and King
adopt pseudonyms, but they all aspire towards the same fantasy of large financial
profits coupled with critical acclaim.  However, as the intrusion of the carnivalesque
signifies, their efforts to destabilise the hierarchical structures that underpin the field
of literary production, in order to effect a position-taking through an enforced re-
evaluation of their work, effectively reinforce those structures.  The destabilisation
of the field is a temporary aberration which merely confirms its permanence and its
omnipresence.  King?s experiments with the Bachman pseudonym ultimately
enhanced the commerciality of his work through their republication under the name
of Stephen King and through the resurrection of the Bachman pseudonym for the
publication of The Regulators.  King admits in his ?full disclosure? (Blaze, p. 1),
published as the foreword for Bachman?s most recent publication, Blaze, that he
?was actually two men? (Blaze, p. 1) during the years in which he sureptitiously
published under both names.  While the original intention may have to negate the
efects of King?s typing as a writer of commercial fiction, the publications of the
?two men? have fundamentally reinforced his categorisation.  The use of a
pseudonym has become reduced to little more than a marketing device.
153
Misery and The Dark Half are both examples of King?s dramatisation of his habitus;
they both contain an exploration of the struggle to write popular and serious fiction
separately, as a strategy for achieving economic and symbolic success.
12
  Through
either author-protagonist, authorial anxiety becomes articulated concerning
positioning within the literary hierarchy and the difficulty inherent in the practice of
position-taking.  King portrays the literary field as a simplistic bifurcation of serious
and popular, and the practice of participation within literary production as requiring
an affiliation with either pole; he proposes that the only way to achieve
simultaneous success in both economic and symbolic capital is to publish separate
texts aimed at succeeding where the other cannot.  As King continues to explore
what it is to be a writer in the late capitalist era, however, his definition of his own
authority changes, and he begins to examine his involvement in the mass production
of literary products in terms of a contrast with the products of folk culture.  It is this
focus which determines the following case study, which addresses the way in which
another of King?s author-protagonists, Michael Noonan, approaches his role as a
popular author from the perception of one involved in producing fiction for the
mass market.
                                                  
12
 Despite Tabitha King?s assertion that ?Paul Sheldon, the writer-protagonist in Misery, is not
Stephen King, only a kind of thread spun from the imagination of Stephen King? (King, 1987, p. 5),
it cannot be ignored that the narrative ?thread? is necessarily coloured by King?s perception of the
literary field.
154
Chapter 4 ? Bag of Bones
Introduction
If Misery and The Dark Half are King?s first substantive investigations of popular
authorship, and its inferior position in the field of literary production, then Bag of
Bones is the novel in which King examines the interface betwen two types of
popular culture: what I am calling here ?mass? and ?folk? cultures; however, it
should be noted that ?folk? culture functions in this novel as ?mas? culture?s
romanticised other, a simplified binary which seeks to negate the complexities
inherent in the production of culture according to the heteronomous principle.  King
has often expresed an unease over the division betwen folk and mas culture, and
has found himself in need of defending his choices to produce work that contributes
to this ideal of folk culture rather than being aimed at the mass market.  The most
obvious examples of this are his experiments with self-publication through his own
publishing house, Philitrum Press, and his decision to publish limited editions.  In
his defence of publishing limited editions he states that:
For me, [the limited edition] gives the book back its proper status not just as
something to be sold by the pound at stret auctions or to stick on shelves
and forget or to stumble over in dusty atics, but as a living object in which
the reader/owner/custodian has a vital part (King, 1985b, p. 5).
In other words, by removing it from the clutches of the mass market, and by
publishing very low numbers, the text becomes imbued with an authenticity, an
originality, an aura that it could never have posesed had it ben produced by a
commercial publisher.
1
  He describes it as
                                                  
1
 An article by Michael Alpert appeared in the next edition of The Castle Rock Newsletter (1985) in
which he states that the limited edition of ?The Eyes of the Dragon was meant to serve a specific
purpose ? to be a lasting artistic pleasure? (Alpert, 1985, p. 4) before describing in painstaking detail
the choices made pertaining to the design of the book including paper, typeface, illustrator, size of
the finished product and the sourcing of the book-cloth used to cover the spine. Tirelessly attended to
155
a way of saying Hello ? here?s something you might like ? I made it myself.
Cottage work if you can dig it? like knitting an afghan, then cutting it up
and sending out the separate squares to friends, or giving away jars of home
preserved jam (King, 1985a, p. 3).
Apart from King?s underestimation of his readers? disappointment and the
bokselers? antipathy towards his decision to ocasionaly publish texts not
available for mass distribution, King continues to publish in this way, reasoning that
it makes it explicit that he is ?not entirely for sale? (King, 1985b, p. 5).
King restates his intention to distance himself from the commercialism of popular
fiction with the publication of The Plant by his own publishing company Philitrum
Press.  Huge media interest gathered around its release in July 2000, and by the time
it concluded in November of the same year, King felt moved to coment on the
disparity between the perception of publishers ?investors, and media watchers? and
his own, stresing that, in publishing The Plant online, he was ?thinking something
along the lines of, ?Hey guys!  My uncle?s got a barn!  Let?s put on a show!??
(King, 2000).  He claims that ?It?s a goofy thing, in other words. Not a busines
thing at all.  Which, may I add, isn?t the same thing as saying there?s no money in it.
Or cultural clout? (King, 2000).  King significantly plays down both his business
acumen and his cultural perspicacity in order to diffuse the intense speculation over
The Plant?s economic success or failure.  In this way he attempted to refocus
attention on the story itself, but his perceived abandonment of the story, in
November 2000, merely reinforced the belief that economicaly it was proving
unsuccessful.  King claimed that he was leaving it at a ?logical stopping place?
(Perry, 2000) despite stoping short at chapter six out of a proposed eight. The
                                                                                                                                             
by Alpert, the smallest details of this limited edition?s production underscore its differentiation from
the mass-market paperback.
156
media reported that attention and ?sales have steadily faded and this month the
multi-millionaire decided to suspend the novel? (Perry, 2000), supported by Marsha
De Filippo, King?s personal assistant?s comments that ?sales had fallen sharply to
levels that threatened the future of the project? (Perry, 2000).  Ultimately, it was
revealed on King?s official website that he made a net profit of $463,832.27 on the
internet sales of The Plant.
2
  The hype surrounding the immaterial form of The
Plant continued to overshadow the novel itself, which never gained critical interest,
despite the relevance of the content to the form.  According to King:
The Plant happens to be about a voracious supernatural vine that begins to
grow wild in a paperback publishing house.  It offers success, riches and the
always desirable Bigger Market Share.  All it wants in return is a little
flesh?a little blood?and maybe a piece of your soul (King, 2000).
By ignoring the content in favour of the form, media analysts failed to fuly
appreciate King?s vision of cutting out the middle man and, therefore, negotiating a
path direct to the reader bypassing the system of cultural classification.  This vision
became hijacked by the novelty factor of a major author joining the internet
revolution.
As both his practice of publishing limited editions and his experiment with e-
publishing confirm, King is keen to assert his folk culture credentials; he wants to
highlight the affinity betwen his work and an idealised, nostalgic, even at times
pre-technological fantasy of folk cultural production.  In this way, he attempts to
distance himself from the detrimental aspects experienced by one typed as a
comercial best-seling writer. King?s exploration of this isue is not limited to his
                                                  
2
 Emma Yates for The Guardian Unlimited (2001) reported that:
The figures show that the total money received from downloading of the six-part book was
$721,448.61 and after expenses, which included $140,766.75 for advertising, $14,000 for
?compositing and design services? and $102,849.59 for ?web hosting and maintenance?, the
net profit was $463,832.27 (Yates, 2001).
157
publishing methods and his paratextual posturing, however, as it is also dramatised
in his fiction.  Through the figure of author-protagonist Mike Noonan in Bag of
Bones, King investigates the dialectic betwen popular and folk cultural production
by comparing Noonan?s participation in the field with that of his wife, Johanna, and
the long deceased blues singer, Sara Laughs.  Noonan?s positioning within the field
and his methods of production reveal that he is a popular, best-seling author who,
unlike his wife and Sara, competes for economic capital.  This case study seeks to
address the question of what is achieved by this comparison, and how is it
dramatised in this novel which, inevitably, became a popular bestseller in itself.
This narrative of a popular author?s haunting by female folk cultural producers
further reveals King?s perception of folk culture and its relationship to commercial
fiction that he first espoused paratextually, confirming yet again that there exists a
dramatisation of habitus through these narratives featuring an author-protagonist.
Writing for Mass Market? I Prefer Not
In On Writing, King advises would-be writers to write ?what you like, then imbue it
with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life,
friendship, relationships, sex, and work.  Especially work? (OW, p. 185).  He claims
that people ?love to read about work? (OW, p. 185) and that it is this, in part, which
accounts for the success of an author such as John Grisham.  As King points out,
?Grisham?s make-believe tale [The Firm] is solidly based in a reality he knows, has
personally experienced, and which he wrote about with total (almost na?ve) honesty?
(OW, p. 187).  I argue that in Bag of Bones, perhaps more so than in any other of his
books, King folows his own advice and writes about the profesion he is most
familiar with: the profession of authorship.  For this reason, it is a useful text
158
through which to consider the representation of the field of cultural production, as
perceived by a popular bestselling author.  In this first section, I focus specifically
on this representation in order to explore King?s own perceptions of the profession
he has folowed most of his life. As the ?author function,? Mike Nonan operates
according to King?s own innate understanding of the field and the position-takings
effected within that field; his narrative dramatises King?s habitus.
The beginings of Nonan?s carer display an anxiety concerning the perception of
his writing:
I got an agent through my old creative-writing teacher (who read my novel
and damned it with faint praise, seing its commercial qualities as a kind of
heresy, I think), and the agent sold Being Two to Random House, the first
publisher to see it (BoB, p. 22).
The university tutor who ?damns with faint praise? underscores the latent
inadequacy that Noonan feels as a writer who specialises in ?popular? literature
rather than the more ?serious? sort as preferred by academia. As he complains to his
wife, Johanna, ?Did you see that first press release from Random House?? They?re
just about calling me V.C. Andrews with a prick, for God?s sake? (BoB, p. 23).
Johanna responds by reassuring him that, ?when I was in third grade, Patty Banning
used to call me a booger-hooker.  But I wasn?t? (BoB, p. 23).  Noonan, however,
refuses to be consoled and responds that ?Perception is everything? (BoB, p. 23).
This is a significant statement which recalls the growing unease felt by King
concerning his typecasting as an author of horror fiction.  The way that books, and
by extension their authors, are marketed by the publishing houses determines the
way in which the market will perceive the product.  The press release, the author
photograph, the publications featuring the author interviews, the front cover of the
text, the reviews included in the paratext and the blurb upon the back cover, all
159
correspond to the inherent knowledge of the market.   Fredric Jameson, in his essay
?Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture? (1979), states that the ?atomized or serial
?public? of mass culture wants to see the same thing over and over again, hence the
urgency of the generic structure and the generic signal? (Jameson, 1979, p. 137).  To
illustrate this he calls for a consideration of ?your own consternation at finding that
the paperback you selected from the mystery shelf turns out to be a romance or a
science fiction novel? (Jameson, 1979, p. 137) or ?the exasperation of people in the
row next to you who bought their tickets imagining that they were about to see a
thriller or a political mystery instead of the horror or occult film actually underway
(Jameson, 1979, p. 137).  Jameson quite rightly identifies that the way a text is
marketed is interpreted by the market as belonging to a specific genre correlative to
its delineation by mass culture?s generic definitions.  Noonan accepts this fact with
his rebuttal ?perception is everything?; if he is marketed as ?V.C. Andrews with a
prick? then that is the way he will be perceived, and the interpretive community will
choose to read his fiction within those strict mass market, generic parameters
accordingly.  These communities ?share interpretive strategies? (Fish, 1976, p. 476)
which ?exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is
read rather than, as is usualy asumed, the other way around (Fish, 1976, p. 483;
my italics). The key word here is ?prior?: if the strategies employed while reading
the text are fixed ?prior? to reading, then it is the paratextual, both the epitextual and
the peritextual, that determine the strategies employed.  As Noonan puts it,
?perception is everything?.
While Noonan reveals this fear of inadequacy as an author, due to his preference for
popular fiction, he does recognise that it is his writing for a mass-market audience
160
that allows him and his wife to live the way they do.  He admits, ?I wasn?t Thomas
Wolfe (not even Tom Wolfe or Tobias Wolff), but I was being paid to do what I
loved, and there?s no gig on earth better than that; it?s like a licence to steal? (BoB,
p, 25).  It is this writing ?gig? that Noonan enjoys, before the onset of his writer?s
block, which is the subject of much debate betwen those who write according to
either the heteronomous or autonomous principle.  As Bourdieu points out,
the definition of the writer? is an issue at stake in struggles in every
literary? field.  In other words, the field of cultural production is the site of
strugles in which what is at stake is the power to impose the dominant
definition of the writer and therefore to delimit the population of those
entitled to take part in the struggle to define the writer (Bourdieu, 1993, p.
42).
Writers producing independently of market forces would not consider Noonan a
writer of ?literature? due to his production of economicaly profitable fiction. As
Noonan confesses, he feels as though he has a ?licence to steal,? thus confirming
that he himself struggles over his own definition as a writer, and is conflicted by the
way in which he operates within the literary field and the conferral of the two types
of capital.  While Noonan never again discusses the lack of ?serious? attention his
work receives, he does discus at length his perception of his role as a profesional
author of popular mass-market fiction.  Nowhere is this more apparent than when he
is describing the kind of fiction he is producing for consumption by others:
I was what mid-list fiction used to be in the forties: critically ignored, genre
orientated (in my case the genre was Lovely Young Woman on Her Own
Meets Fascinating Stranger), but well compensated and with the kind of
shabby acceptance accorded to state-sanctioned whorehouses in Nevada, the
feeling seeming to be that some outlet for the baser instincts should be
provided and someone had to do That Sort Of Thing. I did That Sort Of
Thing enthusiastically? and at some point around the time of George
Bush?s election, our accountant told us we were millionaires (BoB, p. 25).
Perhaps the most striking aspect of Noonan?s appraisal of his own role within the
field is his comparison of himself to a prostitute.  This correlation between the
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selling of one?s body for the sexual gratification of others to the act of producing
popular fiction is one that I have already highlighted with regards to King himself,
most notably in his article ?Great Hookers I Have Known?,
3
 as well as in Misery
through Sheldon?s perception of his role as popular author.
4
  In each of these cases,
this comparison is one adopted by the popular authors themselves, perhaps as a
justification that they are serving some sort of need, as expressed by the paying
public. The metaphorical linking of prostitution to popular fiction production is
repeated again in Bag of Bones, when Noonan goes to his safety deposit box to
collect a manuscript to send to his demanding publishers.  The bank manager leads
him to the box and helps Noonan with its unlocking, and then, ?as discreetly as a
pimp who has conveyed a customer to a whore?s crib, he left? (BoB, p. 51).  What is
most intriguing about this simile is that the role of prostitute has shifted from the
author of the text to the text itself, and with this shift, the author has now become
the customer seeking gratification.  However, it should be noted that this simile
pertains to Nonan?s perception of the bank manager?s mode of departing; or rather,
it is Noonan?s projected perception of himself as a purveyor of services of the flesh.
He is no longer the prostitute seking payment; he now views himself as the
customer seking relief. This shift indicates that he acepts that the texts he
                                                  
3
 In ?Great Hookers I Have Known,? (1986) the ?hookers? of the title are actually referring to opening
sentences that ?hook? readers and stimulate a desire to read on; however, towards the end of the
article, King expands upon the metaphor, implied by the colloquialism, of reading as synonymous
with a sexual relationship.  He states:
Hookers come cheap on the street, and I don?t really want to be one.  I?ve been a sort of
call-girl, I think, giving in my best novels and stories sensations of richness and pleasure
which linger, but with little shadow or dimension.  I?d like to do better, but I?m afraid that,
so far, at least, I?ve made no reader a great wife? which is what great fiction is: neither
hooker nor high-priced call girl but a helpmate, giving richness that repays the reader
tenfold for his commitment (King, 1986, p. 7).
4
 Another example is present in King?s interview with Abe Peck for Rolling Stone Magazine (1980)
in which he correlates his literary production to sexual promiscuity through his recognition that, ?I?ve
got a reputation.  I?m like a girl of easy virtue: one more won?t hurt? (Peck, 1990, p. 141).
162
produces satisfy his own need for an ?outlet for the baser instincts? and that his
enthusiasm to provide ?That Sort Of Thing? is inherent to this need.
However, Noonan also acknowledges that his responsibility as an author who
provides this ?outlet for the baser instincts?, for both himself and his readers, also
extends to his publishers: the producers of the material text.  He recognizes that:
What the publisher wants? especialy from an author who can be counted
on to sel 500,000 or so copies of each novel in hardcover and a million
more in paperback, is perfectly simple: a book a year?. Less than a book a
year and you?re screwing up the publisher?s investment in you, hampering
your business manager?s ability to continue floating all of your credit cards,
and jeopardizing your agent?s ability to pay his shrink on time (BoB, pp. 33-
34).
In essence, there are contractual and financial obligations to fulfil, as well as the
presure to continue producing in order to apease all of those who financially
depend upon his ability to keep up production.  Upon his acceptance that he is no
longer physically capable of producing popular fiction, Noonan prophesies of his
agent and his editor at Putnam, that ?Harold would scream in pain and Debra would
moan in disbelief, but what could they do?  Send out the Publication Police?
Threaten me with the Book-Of-The-Month Club Gestapo?? (BoB, p. 57).  This is an
issue King addresses directly some years earlier in his defence of publishing limited
editions.  The defence is delivered in two parts, and in the first he explores at length
his decision to publish limited editions as a response to the acusation from the
book business that he has a responsibility to publish. He concludes:
If the idea of a writer having an economic responsibility to publish what he
writes sems absurd to you, I can assure you it does not sem at all absurd to
the bokselers of America, or to a writer himself after he has ben told that
his semingly whimsical decision to publish a book in a smal-distribution
format had actually taken the bread out of children?s mouths or might have
been a contributing cause to the closure of an independent small-town
bookstore that might otherwise have turned the corner? or at least
staggered on a while longer before collapsing (King, 1985a, p. 6).
163
Only briefly does Noonan touch on the profitability of his fiction for booksellers,
when he mentions on the first page, ?a used bookstore named Spread It Around?
(BoB, p.1) which he aserts does ?a very brisk busines in my old paperbacks?
(BoB, p. 1).  Noonan could be alluding to the disposability of his fiction by his
association of his texts with their quick turnover in the second hand book store, or
he could be indicating the economic capital his texts are still able to accrue, even in
their second life as used objects. He does, however, sem to fully appreciate the
significance of the financial gains his fiction brings to other participants within the
textual production proces, in particular his agent and his editor. For example, he
questions, ?Are the pair of you trying to figure how many golden eggs you can get
out of this tired old gose before you finally wring its neck and turn it into p?t???
(BoB, p. 63; italics original).  Despite the awarenes that Nonan displays
concerning his obligation to publish, he is still unable to produce new fiction in
order to fulfil it.
This deterioration in the productivity of one formerly fully capable of producing
commercially viable fiction, therefore participating within the capitalist system,
corelates with one of the main intertextual references which recurs at key points in
the narative. Many texts make an appearance throughout Noonan?s narative:
Daphne Du Maurier?s Rebecca (1938) and Somerset Maugham?s The Moon and
Sixpence (1919), for example, both feature in the text.  However, Herman Melville?s
short story, ?Bartleby?, is arguably the most significant of all these intertextual
references, as it is this text which is most intimately connected to the difficulties of
writing within a capitalist society.  In ?Bartleby? there exists the clearest expression
164
of Melvile?s problematic relationship with profesional authorship. In his famous
letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851), Melville confesses that, ?Dollars damn me?
What I feel most moved to write, that is banned, - it will not pay.  Yet, altogether,
write the other way I cannot.  So the product is a final hash, and all my boks are
botches? (Melville, 1993, p. 191).  His anxiety pertaining to his self-identification
with the label ?writer?, and the way authorship was becoming defined, resulted in
his joining ?the long procesion of American writers who, in their insecurity and
their wish to be understod as writers, write literature about literature? (Charvat,
1968, p. 227), thus complying with Bourdieu?s hypothesis that it is only posible to
encounter ?historical definitions of the writer, coresponding to a particular state of
the strugle to impose the legitimate definition of the writer? (Bourdieu, 1993, p.
42).  Melvile, as his leter and his ned to contribute towards the ?legitimate
definition of the writer? demonstrate, was involved with literary production in
America at a time when there existed two oposing yet equaly acute neds: the
personal need to write and sell profitable literature in order to survive financially,
and the national need to create a new distinctly American literary tradition, forged
by those writers capable of producing literature appropriate for a new and dominant
canon.
5
  He, along with other American authors of that time, ?attempted both to
profit from and to serve as prophets of the literary word? (Post-Lauria, 1996, p. xi),
finding himself faced with ?the challenge of combining personal visions with the
complexities of literary production at midcentury? (Post-Lauria, 1996, p. xi) as
exemplified through his ?attempt to cater simultaneously to British and American
tastes, to write for divergent readerships in America, to negotiate the critical debates
                                                  
5
 This was exacerbated by the lack of an international copyright law designed to protect the interests
of all the participants in the literary field involved in the production, publication, distribution and
circulation of literary products.  For further reading see William Charvat?s The Profession of
Authorship in America, 1800-1870.
165
over genre and style, and to ?make literary? social, political, and personal views?
(Post-Lauria, 1996, pp. xi-xii).  In ?Bartleby?, the challenge Melville directly
engages in concerns the tension between writing and the participation in capitalist
economics. The lawyer narates his experience of Bartleby?s employment, and
therefore the reasoning behind Bartleby?s behaviour remains mysterious and
uncommunicated; however, it can be discerned that Bartleby?s reiteration of the
phrase, ?I prefer not? (Bartleby, p. 25), has its inception in Bartleby?s passive refusal
to engage in the world of copying.  His occupation, to manually produce copies of
words originally inscribed by another, seems particularly relevant to the narrative of
Nonan, a disafected producer of mas culture, as Bartleby fundamentally reclaims
his autonomy from the marketplace economy through his withdrawal of services.
Bartleby?s first appearance in Bag of Bones is in the epitext, as a quotation from the
narrator of ?Bartleby? referring to the obstinate copyist is included as the first of
thre intertextual references serving as epigraphs to the central text. The excerpt
chosen is from towards the end of the novella, prior to the narrator?s abandonment
of his premises containing Bartleby: ?Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen,
thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any of
these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as when I know you are here? (BoB,
np).  By prefacing the narrative with this excerpt, issues pertaining to writing and
the rejection of economic exchange related to textual production are imediately
established, before being further explored through Noonan?s relationship to the
other agents involved in the publication proces. It is tempting to view this excerpt
as a second dedication, following King?s first dedication to his daughter - a
dedication which addresses the reassurance King derives from his economic
166
autonomy from market forces.  However, it may be more prudent to link Noonan to
Bartleby himself, as this is certainly a position which is reinforced by the other
points at which the copyist is referred to.  The second time Bartleby appears in the
text is when Noonan visits Mattie?s trailer and discovers that she is reading it as part
of the library book group she participates in.  Mattie asks Noonan to give her his
interpretation of the text, so that she can impress the other members of the group
when she leads the discussion on it.  Noonan describes it thus:
Bartleby is tied to life only by work. In that way he?s a twentieth-century
American type, not much different from Sloan Wilson?s Man in the Gray
Flannel Suit, or ? in the dark version ? Michael Corleone in The Godfather.
But then Bartleby begins to question even work, the god of midle-clas
American males? Think of Bartleby as a? a hot-air balloon.  Only one
rope still tethers him to the earth, and that rope is his scrivening.  We can
measure the rot in that last rope by the steadily increasing number of things
Bartleby prefers not to do.  Finally the rope breaks and Bartleby floats away
(BoB, p. 256).
In many ways Noonan has come to resemble the man who ?prefers not?; with the
los of the ropes which bound him to a family and to his work, he has become that
hot-air balloon drifting further and further away from all that could potentially
anchor him again to the reality within which he has functioned throughout his entire
life.  Noonan explains that the reason why the publication of his fiction still matters
to him is ?because without my wife and my work, I was a superfluous man living
alone in a big house that was all paid for, doing nothing but the newspaper
crossword over lunch? (BoB, p. 39).  Noonan?s negative preference may be in large
part due to the dramatic, physical alienation that he has developed towards his role
in textual production, but it nevertheles efects a similar result, in that untethered
he becomes detached from the market economy; he becomes incapable of
participating in the proceses of textual production. As he closes his narative,
167
Noonan explains, ?I?ve put down my scrivener?s pen.  These days I prefer not to?
(BoB, p. 660).
Folk Culture, the Carnivalesque and the Negation of Hierarchy
Despite the dominance of mas cultural representations in Nonan?s narative, it
should be recognised that it is not the only type of popular culture present in the
text.  Folk culture, as it is represented by the historicised past of the unincorporated
township of TR90, acts as a foil for mass culture, and it is this form of popular
culture that I concentrate on in this section, as it offers insights into the relationship
between the industrialised commercially produced commodity and the handmade,
?cottage industry? anti-commodity.  Dwight Macdonald, in defining folk culture in
his rather pessimistic article, ?A Theory of Mass Culture? (1957), states that:
Folk Art grew from below.  It was a spontaneous, autochthonous expression
of the people, shaped by themselves, pretty much without the benefit of
High Culture, to suit their own needs? Folk Art was the people?s own
institution, their private little garden walled off from the great formal park of
their masters? High Culture (Macdonald, 1994, p. 30).
This idealised view of folk culture operating entirely independently from all
commercialism is distinctly nostalgic, with little basis in actual reality. ?No matter
how much we might insist on this definition, the fact remains that people do not
spontaneously produce culture from raw materials of their own making? (Storey,
2001, p.10).  In fact, as Michel de Certeau aserts, through his exploration of the
practice of ?la peruque? (De Certeau. 1988, p. 25),
6
 the ?operational models of
popular culture cannot be confined to the past, the countryside, or primitive peoples.
                                                  
6
 De Certeau defines ?la perruque? as ?the worker?s own work disguised as work for his employer?
(De Certeau, 1988, p.25) such as ?a secretary?s writing a love letter on ?company time? or? a
cabinetmaker?s ?borrowing? a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living room? (De Certeau,
1988, p. 25).  He asserts that, accused ?of stealing or turning material to his own ends and using the
machines for his own profit, the worker who indulges in la perruque actually diverts time (not goods,
since he uses only scraps) from the factory for work that is free, creative and precisely not directed
toward profit? (De Certeau, 1988, p. 25).
168
They exist in the heart of the strongholds of the contemporary economy? (De
Certeau, 1988, p. 25).  However, both folk culture and its practitioners are clearly
presented by Noonan from a nostalgic perspective, thus offering an idealised view
of past culture as a structural contrast to a contemporary popular culture driven by
mass-market forces.  This perspective is articulated through the presentation of folk
cultural products in terms of the primitive.  Nicholas Daly argues in Modernism,
Romance and the Fin De Si?cle: Popular Fiction and British Culture, 1880-1914
(1999), that primitive ?object-culture offered the modernist artist an image of a non-
commodified aesthetic practice? (Daly, 1999, p. 24); it ?offered an escape from?
the smothering effects of modernization and mass culture? (Daly, 1999, p. 23).  In
Bag of Bones, the representation of ?primitive object-culture? permits the narative
to contrast the mass-market commodity with the ?primitive object? an anti-
comodity? (Daly, 1999, p. 134).  In order to further explore exactly how this
contrast functions, it is useful to revisit Bakhtin?s carnivalesque and its exploration
of a very different kind of marketplace.
The two figures who practice folk art in King?s novel are Johana and Sara. The
mythologised Sara is the most carnivalesque character in the text; however, I shal
first turn to address Johanna?s primitive, folk art practices, as these offer a
contemporary example of a culture which distinctly contrasts the industry of mas
culture Noonan is so heavily involved in.  Noonan recalls:
Johana painted (although not very wel), she took photographs (very good
ones inded) and sometimes sold them, she knited, she crocheted, she wove
and dyed cloth, she could play eight or ten basic chords of the guitar. She
could write, of course; most English majors can, which is why they become
English majors.  Did she demonstrate any blazing degree of literary
creativity? No.  After a few experiments with poetry as an undergrad, she
gave up that particular branch of the arts as a bad job.  You write for both of
169
us, Mike, she had said once.  That?s all yours; I?ll just take a little taste of
everything else (BoB, p. 164).
Johanna is artistically autonomous; financially supported by her novelist husband,
she is free to follow whichever arts take her fancy.  This autonomy is emphasised by
the only economic exchange present in the description of Johanna?s activities, the
selling of a few photographs, which underscores the sporadic nature of Johanna?s
involvement in producing art capable of generating economic capital.  This
autonomy would have allowed Johanna to produce ?serious? art: a form of art more
suited to the acrual of symbolic than economic capital. Instead, Johana prefers to
?take a little taste of everything?; she would rather be involved in the kind of artistic
endeavour rooted in community craftsmanship.  The community emphasis of
Johanna?s art is present in the types of craft she practices, in particular the activities
involved in the production and treatment of textiles.  She knits, crochets, weaves
and dyes cloth, and is known locally for her participation in the community ladies?
sewing circle.  Johanna may not be directly involved in textual production, but her
involvement in textile production connects her to the community of the TR90 to a
far stronger degree than Noonan ever achieves, as demonstrated by her participation
in the exchange of gifts.  Bill Dean, Johanna and Mike?s caretaker, in passing on his
condolences, tells Mike that ?My wife asked if I?d give you her condolences special.
Jo made her an afghan the year she had pneumonia, and Yvette ain?t ever forgot it?
BoB, p. 172).  The act of gift giving is addressed by Arjun Appadurai, in his
introduction to The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective
(1986), when he states that gifts, ?and the spirit of reciprocity, sociability, and
spontaneity in which they are typically exchanged, usually are starkly opposed to
the profit-oriented, self-centred, and calculated spirit that fires the circulation of
commodities? (Appadurai, 1988, p. 11).  However, he proceeds to illustrate that
170
?this is a simplified and overdrawn series of contrasts? (Appadurai, 1988, p. 12) by
demonstrating that ?it is important to see the calculative dimension in all these
forms of exchange? (Appadurai, 1988, p. 13).  As I stated earlier, folk culture and
the products arising from that culture are presented from an idealised, nostalgic
perspective in Bag of Bones, which serves to contrast the representation of the mas
market produced commodity and the hand-crafted gift.  In this way, ?commodities
are held to represent the drive ? largely free of moral or cultural constraints ? of
goods for one another, a drive mediated by money and not by sociality? (Appadurai,
1988, pp. 11-12).  Johanna is thus established as ?a community artist? (Daly, 1999,
p. 134) precisely because of her ?primitive production, the manufacture of highly
individuated objects? (Daly, 1999, p. 134) and her participation in gift exchange, the
goal of which ?was not the acquisition of comodities but the establishment of
bonds between giver and receiver? (Geary, 1986, p. 173).  Her view of the world is
one in which everyone?s position is equally valid and appreciated: a community
devoid of hierarchical organisation exists more as a collective circle of equals.
Noonan, on the other hand, belongs to a world where individualism reigns and your
success within this competitive environment is measured by the positioning one
atains on the bestseler lists; he is, inded, a ?slave to the mases? (Daly, 1999, p.
134).
Johanna?s participation in the production of community craft projects, and the act of
gift-giving, is not the only example of folk culture in the text, however. Arguably,
Sara Tidwel provides the dominant expresion of folk culture, albeit one from the
idealised past.    She was a ?turn-of-the-century blues shouter? (BoB, p. 165) who
was ?known as Sara Laughs? (BoB, p. 166).  Her nickname is the first indication
171
that she is a figure deeply integrated within the carnivalesque, and it is this aspect of
folk culture, ?a culture of the people for the people? (Storey, 2001, p. 10) which is
articulated through Sara?s presence in the narrative.  Laughter is categorised by
Bakhtin as belonging to the carnivalesque, where it is the expresion of ?the social
consciousness of all the people? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 210).  Carnivalesque laughter is
of a specific sort, in that,
It is, first of all, a festive laughter.  Therefore it is not an individual reaction
to some isolated ?comic? event.  Carnival laughter is the laughter of all the
people.  Second, it is universal in scope; it is directed at all and everyone,
including the carnival?s participants.  The entire world is seen in its droll
aspect, in its gay relativity.  Third, this laughter is ambivalent: it is gay,
triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding. It aserts and denies, it
buries and revives. Such is the laughter of carnival (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 200).
Sara Tidwel becomes synonymous with laughter; her ?raucous, smoke-broken
laugh? is her trademark? (BoB, p. 611; italics original).  Not only is she a source
of laughter, but she also induces laughter in others.  This is most clearly
demonstrated by the crowd?s reaction to her performance during the Fryeburg Fair:
They were claping and stomping and belowing along with the music,
totally involved? The few women in the crowd were blushing but clearly
enjoying themselves, one of them laughing so hard tears were streaming
down her face (BoB, p. 452; my italics).
This atmosphere of collective engagement and participation is key to Bakhtin?s
explanation of carnivalesque laughter, and it is Sara?s own particular brand of folk
humour which acts as the lynchpin for this specific aspect of the carnival.  However,
Sara not only provides the source of the laughter, she also directs it, casting her as
one of King?s characters who is catalyst for a carnivalesque inversion of high and
low.  Sara?s laughter is ?universal in its scope?, and it is through her laughter that
she degrades as she directs her laughter towards Jared Devore: a man who displays
a ?crude but powerful magnetism? (BoB, p. 460) and who controls the actions of
172
?his crew? his boys? (BoB, p. 607).  As she is facing him down, just prior to her
attack, Jared trips over and rips his trousers.  Sara ?just cannot help herself? (BoB, p.
61; italics original) and ?she laughs?. And her laugh becomes her doom? (BoB, p.
611; italics original).  Folowing her gale of laughter, Devore orders his crew to
atack and rape her, but when she discovers Devore?s impotence, ?that raucous
laugh bursts all unexpected from her again? (BoB, p. 614; italics original).  Even in
her dire situation, ?she can?t help but see the funny side? (BoB, p. 614; italics
original).  However, the type of laughter she employs at this point is deeply
ambivalent, as is her laughter throughout the narrative.  When she calls after
Noonan at the fair, she sounds ?angry, but not too angry to laugh? (BoB, p. 456).
Even her tone of voice is described as ?laughing and urgent and ominous all at the
same time' (BoB, p. 265).  Sara Laughs, through her own laughter and the laughter
she inspires, which is both universal and ambivalent, is the embodiment of
carnivalesque laughter, and as such she becomes the ?expression of folk
consciousness, of folk culture? (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 6), the ?expression of the people?
(Storey, 2001, p, 30): an agent capable of destabilising the hierarchical strata which
determine the field of cultural production.
The way in which Sara inspires laughter is also deeply entrenched in the
carnivalesque, as it is through her ?frank and free? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 199) songs,
which employ sexual imagery, that she comunicates her folk humour.  An
example of one of her songs is Fishin? Blues:
Do you want to go fishin
here in my fishin hole?
Said do you want to fish some, honey,
here in my fishin hole?
You want to fish in my pond, baby,
you better have a big long pole (BoB, p. 426; italics original).
173
As Noonan confirms, the song was ?written by Sara Tidwell, originally performed
by Sara and the Red-Top Boys? The raunchy ones had been her speciality, double-
entendre so thin you could read a newspaper through it? (BoB, p. 427).  The subject
of her songs is degradation, and they ?therefore [relate] to acts of defecation and
copulation, conception, pregnancy and birth? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206).  Her emphasis
on the physical, through the thinly veiled fishing metaphors, is echoed through her
delivery of the music.  Her movements during her performance are dynamic and
energetic as she draws attention to ?the lower stratum of the body, the life of the
bely and the reproductive organs? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206).  She is described as
?shaking her ungirdled, unbustled fanny and laughing? (BoB, p. 453), as well as
sticking ?out her breasts? (BoB, p. 454) and shaking them, ?laughing her trademark
laugh as she did? (BoB, p. 454).  These movements designed to highlight her
sexuality are all accompanied, once again, by her laughter.  Bakhtin states that the
?people?s laughter which characterized all the forms of grotesque realism from
immemorial times was linked with the bodily lower stratum? (Bakhtin, 1994, p.
206) and Sara, through her association of the sexual subject matter of her songs, her
physical movements stressing her femininity and her ambivalent laughter, becomes
a vehicle for this carnivalesque degradation within the narrative.  In fact, just before
her own degradation, the scene upon which the entire narative hinges, the link is
made once again between her physical sexuality and her laughter.  When the voice
of one of her assailants breaks, ?she laughs.  She knows how unwise that is, but she
can?t help it ? she?s never been able to help her laughter, any more than she?s been
able to help the way men like this look at her breasts and bottom? (BoB, p. 609;
italics original). Of course, it is folowing her next laugh that she comes to grief as
the group of men attack her.  During this long and brutal attack she is sexually
174
degraded, and ultimately she is killed and quite literally degraded, as she is buried in
the earth beneath where she was raped.  However, as I have already established in
the previous chapter with respect to the rebirth of Misery Chastain and George
Stark, ?degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive,
negative aspect, but also a regenerating one? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206), and so Sara is
reborn, albeit in ghostly form.  Her fate confirms Bakhtin?s assertion that
carnivalesque laughter ?is also directed at those who laugh? (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 12),
and that ?they also die and are revived and renewed? (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 12). For
King, she too represents the creativity inherent in the act of degradation.
One final aspect of the carnivalesque that Sara enacts, along with her bawdy
physicality, her ambivalent, universal laughter and her narrative of degradation, is
her ability to negate hierarchy, and it is through this role that she prefigures King?s
reprimand of the National Book Award audience in 2003.  In that speech, King
chastised the foundation for ?deliberately staying out of touch with your own
culture? (King, 2003).  He attempted to act as a leveller: one who could connect the
producers of high and low literature.  Sara achieves this levelling through the type
of music she sings.  Her songs may be ribald and bordering on sexual impropriety,
but they are also examples of African American blues music.  Accordingly, Sara
exemplifies the ?expresive achievement of? blues musicians, which ?lay in their
translation of technological innovativeness, unsettling demographic fluidity, and
boundles frontier energy into expresion which atracted avid interest from the
American masses? (Baker Jr. 1984, p. 11).  Baker perceives that the blues ?comprise
a mediational site where familiar antinomies are resolved (or dissolved) in the office
of adequate cultural understanding? (Baker Jr. 1984, p. 6).  They are a matrix; they
175
are a ?point of ceaseless input and output, a web intersecting, crisscrossing impulses
always in productive transit? (Baker Jr. 1984, p. 3).  They do not exist within a
hierarchical structure, as they are the ?spontaneous, autochthonous expression of the
people?, as described by Macdonald in his definition of folk culture.  Sara, the locus
for this music, as the name of the band, Sara and the Red-Top Boys, confirms, acts
as a blues force within the society of TR90.  She and her folk cultural production
?are always at this intersection, this crossing, codifying force, providing resonance
for experience?s multiplicities? (Baker Jr, 1984, p. 7).  The best example of this
occurs on the strip of land that accompanies the lake; running ?north and south
along its edge, bordering the entire east side of the lake, was a right-of-way path
(it?s called ?common property? in the deds) which folks on the TR simply call The
Street? (BoB, p. 142).  As Devore describes, it ?belongs to anyone who wants to use
it? It?s our version of the town comon? (BoB, p. 362). As the term ?comon?
sugests, it is a place of universal experience, and a place of free interchange.
Sara?s experience of The Street, prior to her attack, is a very positive one in which
she exists as a member of equal standing in TR90 society despite her disadvantaged
status at the turn of the century as a black woman.  Despite Devore?s belief that she
should be ?treated like a nigger? (BoB, p. 607) rather than ?like a neighbour? (BoB,
p. 607), Sara ?walks The Street as if she has a right to be there? (BoB, p. 606; italics
original), and as for the townspeople:
They did talk to her. She had a way about her ? that laugh, maybe.  Men
talked to her about crops and the women showed off their babies.  In fact
they gave her their babies to hold and when she laughed down at them, they
laughed back up at her.  The girls asked her advice about boys.  The boys?
they just looked.  But how they looked, huh? (BoB, p. 607).
Sara freely intermingles with TR90 society, connecting to them and connecting
them to each other by her laughter; her laughter is what eliminates any notion of a
176
lowly social standing stemming from her race, and instead it embeds her in the
community.  The town common area of The Street, becomes Bakhtin?s town square
where ?a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were
usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age? (Bakhtin,
1994, p. 199).  It is Sara?s presence as a figure of the blues matrix that provides the
conditions of the carnivalesque, and which results in her success building those
bridges that King called for four years after the publication of Bag of Bones.
The result of Sara?s cultural production are very different from Noonan?s: whereas
Sara?s negates hierarchy and eliminates barriers between herself as cultural
producer and the culture she is producing for, Noonan?s reinforces the barriers
between producer and market, and even between producer and producer.  This is
best evidenced through Nonan?s familiarity with the bestseller lists, the positioning
of his texts within those lists, and the positioning which can hope to be achieved by
his competitors.  He explains, ?I was never a Clancy, Ludlum, or Grisham, but I
moved a fair number of hardcovers? and once got as high as number five on the
Times list? (BoB, p. 24).  He recognises that he stands ?just outside the magic circle
of the mega-bestsellers? (BoB, p. 24), and he accepts that the highest positions are
only achievable by the Clancys, the Ludlums and the Grishams of the publishing
world.
7
  However, as his agent Harold Oblowski confirms, the mid-list positions are
available to more texts than there are positions:
There are five writers for every one of those spots down on the list, and you
know who they are ? hel, they?re your neighbors thre months a year.
Some are going up, the way Patricia Cornwell went up with her last two
                                                  
7
 King reiterates these novelists? domination of the bestseller lists in his Paris Review interview
stating, ?We?re a competitive society, and I think I have a tendency to measure whether I?m as
successful as one of these guys based on the amount of money that I can get.  But the bottom line is
always sales, and these guys outsell me.  Grisham outsells me four to one? (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006,
pp. 94-95).
177
books, some are going down, and some are staying steady, like you (BoB, p.
38).
The competition is more intense amongst the mid-list writers, as there is no
guaranteed success for them.  It cannot be ignored that these bestseller lists offer a
visual and quantifiable example of Bourdieu?s field of literary production, replete
with position takings and acknowledgement of economic capital accrued.  The
consequences of this competition for Noonan are most fully explored when
Oblowski informs Nonan of the dificulties pertaining to the suces of his next
novel:
?There may be as many as five other writers that we didn?t expect
publishing next fal: Ken Folet? it?s suposed to be his best since Eye of
the Needle? Belva Plain? John Jakes??
?None of those guys plays tennis on my court,? I said, although I knew that
was not exactly Harold?s point; Harold?s point was that there are only fifteen
slots in the Times list (BoB, p. 43).
By ?playing on his court?, Noonan is referring to his target market.  In other words,
the authors mentioned produce a genre of fiction different from his own.  However,
this, as Noonan points out, is not relevant to the problem Oblowski is trying to
clarify; the other authors may appeal to different target audiences, but they all stil
occupy positions upon the bestseller list and within the field of literary production.
Then Oblowski informs him that Mary Higins Clark is also due to publish a novel
at the same time as him.  Noonan believes that:
Going nose to nose, she would cream me.  As the late Jim Croce so wisely
observed, you don?t tug on Superman?s cape, you don?t spit into the wind,
you don?t pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger, and you don?t mess
around with Mary Higgins Clark.  Not if you?re Michael Noonan, anyway
(BoB, p. 44).
What is interesting to note about this expression of inadequacy, is that he, as well as
in his previous discusions pertaining to the bestseller lists, refers to names of actual
authors.  King does not employ fictional names as he wants to draw upon his
178
audience?s knowledge of the field and to give them points of reference within that
field.  In this way, King reaffirms Noonan?s position within the field while
simultaneously emphasising the reduction of the names of these well-known authors
to signifiers of the author-function.
The contrast betwen the ways in which cultural goods are produced, marketed and
received, as well as the effect that they have on their recipients, are obvious and far-
reaching.  Johanna, Sara and Noonan are all invested in producing popular culture,
and yet the diferent kinds of cultural products function in ways which are
completely antithetical to each other. Whereas Johana and Sara are embeded
within their community and are part of a culture which grows ?from below?, Noonan
is elevated from his comunity, ignorant of its ways and its tabos, and
knowledgeable of only how the members of that comunity translate into potential
participants within interpretive communities.  He is a producer within the
juggernaut that is mas culture, and as such, he imposes his contribution ?from
above?.
The Two Ages of Reproduction: Maternal and Mechanical
It is difficult to ignore the fact that the difference between folk and mass culture is
split along the gender line, thus highlighting the difference between methods of
reproduction: maternal and mechanical.  While both Johanna and Sara represent the
presence of folk culture in the text, it is also clear that they share other
resemblances, namely that they are both female, they are both mothers (although
Johana?s child is stil foetal) and both they and their children are dead at the outset
of Noonan?s narrative.  They embody the process of maternal reproduction, while
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Nonan?s reproductions are wholy mechanical.  As I mentioned in the first section,
Nonan frequently refers to the machinations of textual production, and it is my
intention to further explore this metaphor of the machine and the writing process
using Walter Benjamin?s famous essay from Iluminations (1935), ?The Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction?.  As feminist critics of popular culture
have been at pains to point out, production and consumption of popular culture are
generally viewed from a gendered perspective: masculine production, feminine
consumption.
8
  What I am arguing in this section is that this gendered view of
popular culture can, and should, be extended to the producers of mas and folk
culture, as they are represented in this text. In this way, King?s alignment of
popular, mechanically produced culture with the masculine and folk, maternally
produced culture with the feminine allows him to explore the dialectic present
within culture produced according to the heteronomous principle.  This exploration
is most apparent when the differing products manufactured by both cultures, and the
way in which the producers relate to their products, is contrasted.
The most obvious product is the one which Nonan himself is concerned with the
production of: the popular novel. Noonan considers his production of these texts as
being akin to the output of a machine, thus recalling King?s metaphor of the
jugernaut first employed in his defence of publishing limited editions and then
again in reference to Bill Denbrough?s literary production in It, and in The Dark
Half through his decision to name George Stark?s violent protagonist, Alexis
Machine.  Noonan?s correlation of mechanised production to the act of producing
fiction is evidenced throughout the narrative.  For example, he claims to produce a
                                                  
8
 For further reading see Janice Radway?s Reading the Romance, Christine Geraghty?s Women and
Soap Opera (1991) and Tania Modleski?s Loving With A Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for
Women (1982).
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new novel every autumn ?like clockwork? (BoB, p. 34), and he expresses the
thought that ?novelists may come equiped with a certain number of stories to tell ?
they?re built into the software? (BoB, p. 234). But perhaps the most thorough
exploration of this particular metaphor comes towards the end of the text where he
concedes that
?the machine which ran so sweet for so long has stopped.  It isn?t broken ?
this memoir came out with nary a gasp or missed heartbeat ? but the
machine has stopped, just the same.  There?s gas in the tank, the sparkplugs
spark and the battery bats, but the wordygurdy stands there quiet in the
middle of my head.  I?ve put a tarp over it.  It?s served me well, you see, and
I don?t like to think of it getting dusty (BoB, p. 658).
The ?wordygurdy? as Nonan refers to it, is the internalised machine that functions
solely in order to crank out popular fictions: the juggernaut has come to a juddering
halt.  However, the machine malfunctions following the completion of the novel
Nonan was working on when Johana dies, resulting in Nonan?s inability to use
the tools of his trade.  His experience corresponds to the argument posited by
Umberto Eco in The Open Work (1989), that we ?produce a machine, and then the
machine oppresses us with an inhuman reality that renders the relationship we have
with it, and the world through it, disagreeable? (Eco, 1989, p. 128).  Noonan?s
utilisation of writing tools prior to the breakdown of his ?wordygurdy? indicates that
the problem of alienation has ben solved, albeit temporarily. Alienation, which
occurs inevitably within the machine/human interface, is negated by the
manufacturing of ?pleasant? (Eco, 1989, p. 128) machines, which, through a fusing
of ?beauty with utility? (Eco, 1989, p. 128), induce the worker to ?touch it, stroke it,
use it? (Eco, 1989, p. 128).  Noonan?s experience with using writing tools confirms
the success of this solution, as he becomes oblivious to the world exterior to the
writing process when utilising either the computer or the typewriter.  He admits that
?when I write I prety much trance out? (BoB, p. 12), which is a fact demonstrated
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often throughout the novel as Noonan attempts to recollect memories of the months
leading up to Johanna?s death.  He was so absorbed in the writing process that he
was oblivious to his wife?s comings and goings, and to any concerns she may have
had prior to her stroke.  He had become completely assimilated by the machine; the
?wordygurdy? and his word processing application were working in symbiosis: an
assimilation which recalls King?s description of writing to escape the pain he
suffered following his accident in 1999.  He states that writing is ?like lifting off in
an airplane: you?re on the ground, on the ground, on the ground? and then you?re
up, riding on a magical cushion of air and prince of all you survey? (OW, p. 326).
While writing did not save his life, ?it has continued to do what it always has done:
it makes my life a brighter and more pleasant place? (OW, p. 326).  The proces of
interacting with the ?wordygurdy? for King, is one of pleasure and escape, rather
than an affirmation of alienation.
Following the breakdown of Noonan?s ?wordygurdy?, however, there follows a
comprehensive incompatibility between writer and machine, as demonstrated by the
physical reaction which occurs when Noonan attempts to operate the computer:
Sometimes I tried to write, and every time I did, I locked up.  Once, when I
tried to force a sentence or two? I had to grab the wastebasket and vomit
into it.  I vomited until I thought it was going to kill me? and I did have to
literally crawl away from the desk and the computer, pulling myself across
the deep-pile rug on my hands and knees (BoB, p. 40).
Noonan?s extreme physical aversion to producing text, utilising the tool with which
he formerly felt an affinity with, symbolises more than just a breakdown of the
relationship between man and machine; it is the embodiment of Noonan?s inability
to function within the economic exchange of words for economic capital.  The last
attempt to reconnect with his Word 6 programme ends in such an extreme physical
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assault that it results in Noonan?s loss of consciousness.  Following this incident,
Noonan selects the Word 6 icon on his desktop and drops it into the trash, erasing
the word procesing software from his computer, thus effectively ending his
professional life as a popular author.  He relinquishes his role as a user who works
?as if in a trance, not for a common profit but rather in total surender to the charm
of the object? (Eco, 1989, p. 129).  It is an act that King portrays in many of his
novels, as writing tols become a tol with which to inflict pain upon the authorial
body.  In Misery, Paul Sheldon?s hands become crippled by his turning to writing by
hand due to the deterioration of the typewriter. In The Dark Half, Thad Beaumont
and George Stark sufer impalement by pencil and in his more recent Cel (2006),
Headmaster Ardai is forced to stab himself through the eye with a fountain pen.
?The tools represent in concrete form the torturous knowledge, sharp sinuosities,
perforating ruses, and incisive detours that penetration into the labyrinthine body
requires and produces? (De Certeau, 1988, p. 145).  Through these writing tols,
King augments the alienation felt by the author-protagonist, forcing them to
recognize their role in the production of commodities.
It is here that I would like to draw atention to the fact that, whereas Nonan is the
only cultural producer within the narrative to be directly engaged in the mass
marketed article, he is also the only male who is invested in the production of
cultural products.  Therefore, it is significant that he perceives of his production as
mechanical, as the reproduction of his product is most certainly manufactured in
this way. However, when compared with the folk cultural products made by the
female producers, Noonan?s machine-like process of production is thrown into
sharp relief by Johanna and Sara?s distinctly organic methods.  As I have already
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touched upon, in carnivalesque terms, folk culture and the maternal body are
intricately linked, as the carnival is essentially concerned with ?degradation?: the
cyclic nature of birth, death and regeneration. As I aluded to in my analysis of the
degradation and consequent materialisation of both Misery Chastain and George
Stark, the degradation of ?an object does not imply merely hurling it into the void of
non-existence, into absolute destruction? but rather it positions it in ?the zone in
which conception and a new birth take place? the fruitful earth and the womb.  It is
always conceiving? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206).  Both Joanna and Sara are figures of the
carnivalesque, and it is in part their role as producers of folk cultural products which
situates them as such. In Johana?s case, one particular product that she is
responsible for creating is a photograph of Sara herself.  Benjamin, in discussing the
technical and process reproduction of photography, acknowledges that ?process
reproduction is more independent of the original than manual reproduction?
(Benjamin, 1970, p. 222) as it allows the ?capture [of] images which escape natural
vision? (Benjamin, 1970, p. 222).  Despite this recognition of the independent nature
of the photographic medium, its technological methods are stil a means of
reproduction and, as such, it is denied the authenticity accorded to an original
artifact.
However, the photograph that Nonan discovers in Johana?s studio, which he
assumes she found in ?some local?s attic? and had ?printed it herself? before she
?then hand-tinted the result? (BoB, p. 165), demands the redressing of the concept of
originality, with regards to this creative reappropriation of a photographic image.  In
effect, Johanna?s alteration of the photograph has created a new original piece of
work, which exists side by side the original archived in ?some local?s attic?.
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Johana is practising a core principle of folk culture, that of variance and
adaptation.  The concept of originality becomes diffused as the ?true? original
becomes obscured by a multitude of reconstituted versions.  It can be said that the
opposite exists for the folk cultural products which are reapropriated for the
purposes of mas reproduction, such as Sara?s songs. Sara ?had never been
recorded? (BoB, p. 157), but it was still possible for Noonan to purchase a version
recorded by another artist, for example, Blind Lemon Jeferson (BoB, p.157) or
Aerosmith (BoB, p. 166).  It should be stressed though that the original remains
completely inaccessible, as does any reproduction of the original, as might be found
in a folk cultural enthusiast?s collection of ?folk songs, just one more dusty
American butterfly in a glass case full of them? (BoB, p. 449).  As this metaphor
sugests, to place a folk cultural product in stasis, as the lepidopterist does with the
buterflies in his collection, is to render it a dead thing: a metaphor which King had
already employed to describe the efect of academic criticism upon a piece of
literature.  However, in the case of Sara?s songs, these are not even accessible for
commercial or academic study in the dead form of a lifeles butterfly collection or
otherwise; they exist as a contained and unapproachable piece of folk cultural
history.  The recorded adaptations of her songs, mechanically reproduced for mass
consumption by male recording artists remaining the sole connection between the
past and the present.
These two forms of reproduction, the maternal and the mechanical, have a profound
effect on the authenticity of the product in question, and it is this ?authenticity?
which lies at the heart of Benjamin?s Marxist exploration of reproduction.  He
deliberates that:
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The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its
beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the
history which it has experienced.  Since the historical testimony rests on the
authenticity, the former, too, is jeopardized by reproduction when
substantive duration ceases to matter (Benjamin, 1970, p. 223).
Authenticity is definitely an issue within the narrative, if not of direct concern,
which is most clearly evident when Noonan notices the art prints in Mattie?s trailer.
Prior to his first visit to the trailer, Nonan makes negative judgements pertaining to
its d?cor, in which he imagines a ?velvet Elvis painting on the wall? (BoB, p224)
and ?commemorative plates from the Franklin Mint? (BoB, 224).
9
  Both of these
expectations stem from what little knowledge he has of Mattie: a white single
mother living in a trailer in backwoods, Maine. Later, once he has actualy had the
opportunity to survey the trailer?s interior, he confesses, ?I still felt ashamed of my
casual preconceptions? as he discovers that:
On the wall above and behind us there was an Edward Hopper print ? that
one of a lonely lunch counter late at night ? and across the room, over the
small Formica-topped table in the kitchen nook, was one of Vincent van
Gogh?s ?Sunflowers.?  Even more than the Hoper, it loked at home in
Mattie Devore?s doublewide (BoB, p. 226).
These prints of original pieces of art have been mechanically reproduced for mas
consumption, and consequently, have become striped of their ?presence in time
and space, [their] unique existence at the place where [they happen] to be?
(Benjamin, 1970, p. 222).  In Bakhtinian terms, they have become dislocated from
their position within the chronotope, a critical concept which, I believe, is key to
understanding the difference between the two types of culture, folk and mass, as
determined by time and space, and one which underpins King?s practice of
publishing handmade limited editions and mass market paperbacks.  It provides a
way of comprehending the connections between the two time periods encompassed
                                                  
9
 For further reading on the position kitsch products, such as those described here, occupy within
field of cultural production see Umberto Eco?s The Open Work, in particular the chapter ?The
Structure of Bad Taste.?
186
by the narrative of Bag of Bones, and the two types of popular culture which
predominated in either time.  While Bakhtin?s exploration of the term ?chronotope?
is ?as a formally constitutive category of literature? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 184), I would
like to broaden the scope of the term to include the way material products of culture
function within the parameters of time and space.  It is my contention that the
chronotope of the cultural product has a critical effect upon that article?s
authenticity, as explored by Benjamin. If, as Benjamin contends, the ?uniqueness of
a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition?
(Benjamin, 1970, p. 225), and that the quality of ?uniqueness? is fundamental to that
item?s authenticity, then it stands to reason that the chronotope the item exists
within, reflects its inherent authenticity or lack thereof, and it is this which
fundamentaly diferentiates the cultural production of Nonan, Sara and Johana,
or, indeed, King?s commercial and limited editions.
In order to explore this representation of cultural products, an analysis of the
chronotope, as it is expressed within the narrative, is required.  There are two main
ways in which the interface betwen time and space are configured, ?where the
knots of narative are tied and untied? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 187): the ?invisible cables?
(BoB, p. 331) and Thomas Hardy?s concept of literary characters and a ?bag of
bones? (BoB, p. 41).  The former provides a way of conceptualising space and time
by emphasising the conectednes of people, events and places. The ?image of the
TR criscrosed with invisible cables, conections that were unsen but as strong as
stel? (BoB, p. 331) facilitates the perception that the community which belongs to
this space, TR90, is connected in a way that remains unseen by those outwith the
community.  This is confirmed by Bill Dean, as he attempts to describe the
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polyvalence of the community to Noonan: ?In little towns things are kind of
conected under the surface? (BoB, p. 348), before Nonan suplies the simile ?like
cables you couldn?t quite see? (BoB, p. 348).  I argue that these cables are
metaphorically employed by Noonan to give a visual image to represent the threads
of narrative as they progres through time and space, while the chronotopes act as
?the organizing centres? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 187): ?the intersection of axes and fusion
of indicators? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 184).  As Bakhtin asserts, this provides a way of
conceiving narrative as it is conveyed through the form of the novel: ?the
chronotope, functioning as the primary means for materializing time in space,
emerges as a centre for the concretizing representation, as a force giving body to the
entire novel? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 187).  So not only should the chronotope provide a
framework for the perception of the novel in its entirety, but it should also be
employed to understand those events, tied to time and place, that lend the narrative
its momentum. One such event is Nonan?s discovery of another photograph, this
time in a town history of TR90.  Once again it is a photograph which includes Sara,
and it provides a moment in the narative where the two temporal spheres of the
distant past and the present can meet and deliver to Noonan a partial understanding
allowing the narrative to progress.  These connections lead Noonan to ponder again
those ?cables that were felt rather than seen? (BoB, p. 340), reinforcing the link
between narrative progression and the chronotope.
The second way the chronotope features in the text relates to the quote attributed to
Thomas Hardy by Dennison Carville, that compared ?to the dullest human being
actually walking about on the face of the earth and casting his shadow there? the
most brilliantly drawn character in a novel is but a bag of bones? (BoB, p 41).  Of
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course, there is an actual bag of bones in Nonan?s narrative, as he discovers the
remains of Sara and her son, Kito, buried in The Street, but it is actually the ghosts,
those who are incapable of casting shadows, that most clearly represent Hardy?s
pronouncement.  These characters, as ethereal, intangible constructs from the past,
offer instances in which the chronotope can be perceived.  It is at those points,
however, that the physical make-up of the ghosts alters and they ?take on flesh and
blood? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 187).  This is shown during Noonan?s encounter with
Jared/Max Devore on the spot where Sara was murdered, as Noonan notes, that
there ?was some substance to the man in Jared Devore?s clothes, perhaps because in
life he had been a man of enormous vitality, perhaps because he was so recently
dead? (BoB, p. 602).  Nonan views this figure standing in his way, prohibiting him
from proceeding down onto The Street, as a conflation of the recently deceased Max
Devore and his long dead grandfather, Jared Devore, the ringleader responsible for
Sara?s death.  Bakhtin claims that ?the chronotope makes narrative events concrete,
makes them take on flesh, causes blod to flow in their veins? (Bakhtin, 1994, p.
187); it reanimates those bags of bones.
However, as I indicated before, I believe that the concept of the chronotope can
serve to elucidate more than just narrative and narratological progresion; I believe
that it can facilitate an understanding of the way cultural products embody a
temporal/spatial specificity, which either establishes or diminishes their claim to
authenticity. As a carnivalesque figure, Sara and her folk cultural products, i.e. her
songs, offer perhaps the clearest exploration of this correlation of the chronotope
and authenticity, through her presence within a finite, temporal and spatial matrix.
Her songs redolent with a ?frank and free? disclosure of sexuality, and Sara herself,
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as an agent of unification, degradation, and ambivalence, remain temporally bound:
trapped within a closed circuit of production.  Her products form her contribution to
folk culture; they represent her absolute integration into ?the fabric of tradition?
(Benjamin, 1970, p. 225).  They are the products of a feminised folk culture which
gains its sense of authenticity, its originality, through its maternal reproduction.
When compared with Noonan?s novels, it becomes clear that they function in an
entirely different way.  Rather than grounding Noonan within a tangible
comunity, his fiction positions him in the hierarchical realm of boklists, market
shares, and target audiences, in much the same way that King?s participation in the
production of popular literature does for him.  They facilitate his positioning within
the field of literary production complete with its necessary drive to effect position-
takings, thus fuelling its competitive nature.  For Noonan, his participation in the
mechanical production of mas culture ultimately results in his disafection for the
technology he works with in order to contribute his product.  As mass market
objects, his texts lose their authenticity because they do not belong to a unique
chronotope.  They are multiple and detached.
King?s own texts, their publication commercially driven and widely available, suffer
a similar fate, as can be discerned by the final line of Bag of Bones, which is
delivered with no explanation or qualification, and merely consists of ?Center
Lovel, Maine: 25 May, 1997 ? 6 February, 1998? (BoB, p. 660; italics original).
This is similar to the concluding lines of Misery, ?Lovell, Maine: September 23
rd
1984/Bangor, Maine: October 7
th
 1986: Now my tale is told? (M, p. 369) and to the
text which the next case study introduces, Lisey?s Story, ?Centre Lovell, Maine
August 4, 2005? (LS, p. 559).  In each of the cases I have cited, the dates are all at
190
least six months prior to their dates of publication, suggesting that the dates are
linked to the writing of the text, and the place to the location where it was written.
King?s inclusion of these details are sporadic throughout the rest of his work;
sometimes all that is given is a date, such as in The Dark Half, in which the dates
?November 3, 1987 ? March 16, 1989? (DH, p. 468) conclude the text, and
sometimes that is not specified either. I would argue that the date and place ocupy
a transgresive position within the text as they are included as if they belong to the
text, while providing information, albeit unqualified information, which is
intrinsicaly paratextual. The presence of these concluding lines ofer a point at
which the world of the author, and the fictional world he has created, bleed together.
Thus the date and location cited ground King in a chronotope, a temporal/spatial
specificity, which he in turn attempts to confer on his fiction.  By fixing the fiction
in a unique time and place, he tries to reconstitute its authenticity, although its very
existence as a mass cultural product prevents it from ever obtaining this status.  Bag
of Bones itself remains a product of mechanical reproduction, and so consequently it
is irredeemable as an article imbued with authenticity.
Conclusion
Through the narrative of the author-protagonist, Mike Noonan, and his perspective
as a producer of popular fiction, King has dramatised his own understanding of
cultural production underpinned by the heteronomous principle.  He has explored
within his fiction the dialectic between folk and mass culture by juxtaposing the
production and the products of Nonan and Johana and Sara, thus facilitating an
appreciation of either culture?s modes of production, circulation, and reception.  As
I have stresed at the outset of this case study, the depiction of folk culture is
191
deliberately nostalgic and idealised in order to exaggerate the differentiation of the
two, but by doing so, King portrays a belief in the anti-commodity status of folk
cultural products.  As I have shown through his paratextual inclusion of the location
and date pertinent to the writing of the text in question, King attempts to appropriate
some of the tropes that he recognises as belonging to those products of folk culture
as a way to redeem his commercially popular fiction from their sole status as
commodities of the entertainment industry.
However, it is his participation in the publication of limited editions which exist as
the most obvious examples of the rendering of King?s fiction as products of folk
culture through their cotage industry production and King?s emphasis on their anti-
comodity status. He encourages the apreciation of the book as a textual object
by asking questions such as ?Do you know the difference between a sewn binding, a
cloth binding, and a glued binding?? (King, 1985b, p. 2) and ?When was the last
time that you stuck your nose into a book and smeled it? When was the last time
you weighed a book?? (King, 1985b, p. 2).  He claims that the ?reworking of the
book-image? (King, 1985b, p. 5) emphasises that ?it really is an actual object that
has weight and dimension and physical presence? (King, 1985b, p. 5), thus
providing the reader ?with the rather startling knowledge that he is not just a book
reader or a book owner but is actually a book custodian ? and in our current
society, that is something almost as unique as a road without electrical wires
running beside it? (King, 1985b, p. 5).  As his choice of simile indicates, with its
reference to the conecting cables, the notion of the reader asuming the role of
book custodian affirms the limited edition as existing within its own chronotope.  It
has retained its authenticity, its aura, its individuality.
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In Bag of Bones, King articulates the difference between the autochthonous folk
culture that results in unrecorded folk songs, gifted afghans and ?jars of home-
preserved jam? with the ?mutually parasitic business of publishing and bookselling,
where commerce now exists in a feverish hype-world of pre-publication news,
bloated advertising budgets, subsidiary sales, and gigantic print runs? (King, 1985b,
p. 5).  As his statements concerning his reasons for publishing limited editions and
for self-publishing his serial novel The Plant online confirm, King perceives that the
invocation of folk culture contributes towards the redemption of culture that
operates acording to the heteronomous principle. It marks a movement away from
the profit-driven economics of the commercially focused ?business of publishing
and bookselling? and in this way, it attempts to reinvest popular fiction with a worth
that transcends economic capital.  In the following chapter, which focuses on King?s
most recent fiction, I shall show that King employs a similar invocation in his
narrative of agonism as it exists between authors and the Academy.
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Conclusion - Lisey?s and Other Stories
Introduction
Throughout this thesis it has been my intent to assess the relevance of the author-
protagonist to King?s pronouncements concerning authorial anxiety. I have
demonstrated that there exists an articulation of King?s understanding of the
hierarchisation of literary production in his paratexts, non-fiction and fiction.
Through my analysis of his narratives which feature an author-protagonist, I have
argued that there is a dramatisation of habitus which provides insight into his
perception of the literary field and into the way position-takings may be effected
within that field.  In order to show this, I have necesarily limited my research to a
small number of King?s texts; however, it should be noted that while I have
demonstrated the way in which the figure of the author-protagonist functions within
a selection of King?s fiction, examples of his articulation of the authorial experience
are present throughout his work.  As I have shown in my case studies on The
Shining, Misery, The Dark Half and Bag of Bones, authorial anxieties find their
clearest expression through the figure of the author-protagonist who agonises over
their production of literature, and the way in which those literary products will be
marketed, distributed, critiqued and received.  It is through these narratives that
questions pertaining to the hierarchical strata that structure the field are explored,
and King?s understanding of the ways in which an author produces within these
hierarchies, in order to achieve success of both an economic and a symbolic nature,
is rendered explicit.
From the outset of his career, King has explored through his fiction his perception
of the literary field, which, as I have stresed previously, is a dynamic ?complex,
194
multi-dimensional model? (Webb, Schirato and Danaher, 2002, p. 169), that
operates according to the opposing principles of autonomous and heteronomous
literary production.  In my analysis of The Shining, I demonstrated the way in which
the narative expreses the anxieties of authorial production acording to the
autonomous principle. Jack?s failure to sucesfuly embody the role of the po?te
maudit undermines the belief that one can participate in literary production while
remaining wholy separate from the pursuit of economic capital. In Misery and The
Dark Half, however, the focus shifts to those endeavouring to produce literature
according to the heteronomous principle as well as that which complies with the
autonomous. As both Paul Sheldon and Thad Beaumont ilustrate, King?s
experience as one of the best-selling novelists of the eighties dictates that, for him,
this occupation of both roles of popular and serious author is an impossible
achievement.  Bag of Bones signals another change in focus through a narratorial
investigation into heteronomous cultural production, and the differentiation between
mas culture and an idealised representation of folk culture. By way of concluding,
however, I shall demonstrate the way in which King?s literary production continues
to explore these anxieties of authorship through his most recent novels, Lisey?s
Story and Duma Key, his role as editor of the Houghton Mifflin publication of The
Best American Short Stories for 2007 and his latest collection of short stories, Just
After Sunset.
The earliest of these texts, Lisey?s Story was written during King?s period of crisis.
King, recovering from an attack of pneumonia, in which, he claims, ?I almost died.
It was really close? (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p. 99), returned home to find his wife in
the midst of redecorating his study. He recals that, ?When I came back from the
195
hospital, everything had been pulled out, and I felt like a ghost.  I thought, Maybe I
died.  This is what the study would look like after I died? (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p.
99).  It was at this point that he began ?to write this story about a famous writer who
died, and about his wife, Lisey, who is trying to get on with her life two years later?
(Lehman-Haupt, 2006, p. 99): a story in which the themes of literary legacy are
explored to a greater extent than in any of his previous fiction.  Unlike King?s
earlier novels, Lisey?s Story is only marginally concerned with the practicalities of
literary production.  There is very little mention of the act of authorship,
negotiations with publishers, or interaction with his fan-base.  Primarily it is a text
which focuses on the consecration of literature, the role of the academy in literary
legitimisation and the fashioning of an author?s reputation.  While King has
discussed all of these issues at length in his many interviews, afterwords, forewords,
editorials and non-fictional texts, Lisey?s Story is his first full-length, fictional
interrogation of literary longevity.  Written during a period in which King had come
face to face with his mortality, it marks a shift of focus in his writing about writing;
it is, I want to suggest, an attempt to effect position-taking by emphasizing the
importance of literary reputation rather than of textual production.  And as I shall
show in my concluding remarks, the dilemas Lisey?s Story dramatizes have
become the dominant ones in King?s subsequent writing.
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King and the Incunks
There were lots of words for the stuff Scott had left behind.  The only one
she completely understood was memorabilia, but there was another one, a
funny one, that sounded like incuncabilla.  That was what the impatient
people wanted, the wheedlers, and the angry ones ? Scott?s incuncabilla.
Lisey began to think of them as Incunks (LS, p. 5).
One of the primary institutions invested with the power to give credit, in the form of
increasing the amount of symbolic capital available to a text, and, by extension, to
its author, is the university. King has had a long and complex relationship with the
university from his early days as a student at the University of Maine to his teaching
there in later years.  His interactions with the university system, particularly with
respect to literary production and criticism, have influenced his disposition towards
the system of cultural consecration, structuring his habitus and, ultimately,
becoming dramatised in his fiction.  For example, It and The Dark Half both feature
an academic presence which acts as a signifier for literary legitimacy; however,
Lisey?s Story ofers the most prevalent and ongoing fictionalisation of the
author/academy relationship.  This relationship is characterised by the ?two-hearted?
(LS, p. 301) nature of the text, in that it is simultaneously suported and subverted.
Just as there exists an attempt to undermine and endorse the reifying structure and to
incorporate dialogized heteroglosia while conceding to centripetal force, the
treatment of academics, and of the university institution in general, similarly reflects
a desire to conflate two oposing elements. In the narative?s treatment of both the
academics explicitly named, Joseph Wodbody and Roger Dashmiel, the narator is
particularly scathing and seeks to portray them as disempowered, as illustrated by
Dashmiel?s cowardice and his inability to achieve a literary status equal to Scott?s,
and by Woodbody?s inability to control Dooley?s aggressive actions towards Lisey.
197
However, in its treatment of the Academy as an institution capable of bestowing
literary consecration, the narrative is far more ambivalent and conflicted,
particularly as the Academy is shown to endorse Scot?s work as worthy of serious
critical attention.
I argue that by adopting this ?two-hearted? approach King hopes to effect position-
taking, by simultaneously undermining and endorsing those structured structures
and structuring structures which maintain the functioning of the field of literary
production.  If the hierarchy was to remain undermined, then the author?s habitus,
their understanding of how to operate within the field of literary production, would
be deemed incompatible and any attempt to position-take would ultimately be
superfluous and ineffectual.  The dramatisation of this aspect of King?s habitus, as it
pertains to the esteem in which his work is held by academics and other cultural
custodians, articulates his understanding of the Academy as the institution largely
responsible for the sacralisation of literature, consequently facilitating position-
taking and upholding cultural hierarchy. King?s relationship to the university is
necessarily agonistic; authors ?attempting to impose an auctoritas that recognizes no
other principle of legitimation than itself? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 124), are, in fact,
?embittered by that type of teacher, the lector, who comments on and explains the
work of others? and whose own production owes much to the professional practice
of its author and to the position? and circulation of symbolic goods? (Bourdieu,
1993, p. 124).  However, despite this,
producers cannot fail to pay attention to the judgements of university
institutions.  They cannot ignore the fact that it is these who will have the
last word, and that ultimate consecration can only be accorded them by an
authority whose legitimacy is challenged by their entire practice, their entire
professional ideology (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 124).
198
It is this which is ?the principle underlying the ambivalent relations between
producers and scholastic authority? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 124), and it is also this
which, I argue, is demonstrated in King?s interactions with the Academy, which
become dramatised in Lisey?s Story.  Inded, the representation of academics in
Lisey?s narrative would most certainly be an example recognised by Bourdieu, as
one of those ?attacks upon the university which bear witness to the fact that their
authors recognize the legitimacy of its verdicts sufficiently to reproach it for not
having recognized them? (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 124).
One way in which this ?two-hearted? approach can be best understood is, once
again, through the presence of the carnivalesque.  Some theorists approaching the
carnivalesque in popular culture have suggested that its presence ?is a recognition of
the strength and endurance of those oppositional, disruptive, popular forces? (Fiske,
1987, p. 249), and that it ?remains an always dangerous supplement, challenging,
destabilising, relativising, pluralising single notions of true culture, true reason, true
broadcasting, true art? (Docker, 1994, p. 284).  However, Simon Dentith in his
introductory reader Bakhtinian Thought (1995) posits that:
it is hard to acede to a version of carnival which streses its capacity to
invert hierarchies and undermine boundaries, without at the same time
recaling that many carnival and carnival-like degradations clearly
functioned to reinforce communal and hierarchical norms? The carnival
inversions, the world-turned-upside-down of these festivities, were clearly
not aimed at losening people?s sense of the rightnes of the rules which
kept the world the right way up, but on the contrary at reinforcing them
(Dentith, 1995, p. 74).
The carnivalesque is, as already demonstrated throughout these case studies,
characterised by its inherent temporality.  The opportunity to ?invert hierarchy and
undermine boundaries? is finite, framed by an existence in which the high and the
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low are held securely in place, position-takings are made acording to a shared
understanding of the field of literary production and the authority to sacralize
belongs to agreed custodians of culture, such as academics.  In this sense, Lisey?s
Story, through its articulation of the carnivalesque, provides an ?outletting? (LS, p.
130), ?a safety valve, which in some overall functional way reinforces the bonds of
authority by allowing for their temporary suspension? (Dentith, 1995, p. 73). As
both Docker and Fiske sugest, the carnivalesque is ?dangerous?, ?opositional? and
?disruptive?; however, the way in which the carnivalesque operates in Lisey?s Story,
and in the other texts I have focussed on in these case studies, is to temporarily
destabilise hierarchical strata before they are once again reasserted.
 The figure who best embodies this practice of temporary subversion, as signalled
through the presence of the carnivalesque, is Scot as he negotiates, through his
participation in the field of literary production, a balance between the carnivalesque
sphere of Boo?ya Mon and the highly hierarchical sphere of literary legitimisation.
As Amanda, following her own return from a break with reality, explains:
most kids have a place they go to when they?re scared or lonely or just plain
bored.  They call it Neverland or the Shire, Boo?ya Moon if they?ve got big
imaginations and make it up for themselves. Most of them forget. The
talented few ? like Scott ? harness their dreams and turn them into horses
(LS, p. 499).
Boo?ya Moon is a place constructed by the imaginings of Scott as a small boy, and
it remains a place to retreat to while also acting as a way to contain threats and
fears, throughout his adult life.  His affiliation with this carnivalesque space
manifests itself in several ways throughout Lisey?s narrative of marital reminiscence
and grieving widowhood.  His role as serious literary author is frequently subverted
by his childish love for practical jokes, which he cals ?bols? (LS, p. 105).  One
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example of this love is described by Amanda who recalls a trip she once made with
him to Auburn:
I hooked a ride with him up the city once ? he needed to go to the office-
supply store and I needed new shoes? And we happened to drive by
Auburn Novelty.  He?d never seen it before and nothing would do but he had
to park and go right in.  He was like a ten-year-old!  I needed Eddie Bauer
shitkickers so I could walk in the wods without getting poison ivy all over
me and all he wanted to do was buy out that whole freakin store. Itchy-
powder, joy buzers, pepper gum, plastic puke, X-ray glases, you name it,
he had it piled up on the counter? He must have bought a hundred dollars?
worth of that crazy made-in-Taiwan shite, Lisey  (LS, p. 124).
Reference to this impulsive shopping spree at the local joke shop is included in the
narrative to undermine the perception of Scott as a ?serious? author.  His active
enjoyment of the practical joke, or ?bool?, destabilises any attempt to cast him in the
role of one who upholds any form of ?one-sided tone of seriousnes? (Bakhtin,
1994, p. 208) as embodied by the Academy; the king becomes the clown. This is
demonstrated through his final practical joke intended for the academic
establishment: his seemingly epic novel, Ike Comes Home:
Was it a novel? A short story?  Just looking into the box, it was impossible
to tel. But there had to be a thousand or more pages in there, most of them
in a single high stack under that title-page but still more crammed in
sideways in two directions, like packing.  If it was a novel, and this box
contained all of it, it had to be longer than Gone With the Wind (LS, p. 97).
However, upon closer inspection, it is revealed to be a practical joke; the box is
stufed ful of blank pages. ?This giant bogus novel was Scot Landon?s idea of a
knee-slapper? (LS, p. 105).  Lisey ponders whether the joke was intended for
?Incunks like Woodbody?  That made a certain amount of sense, Scott liked to poke
fun at the folks he?d caled ?text-crazies?? (LS, p. 105).  Scot is directly engaging
with the Academy in order to ?poke fun? at their dependence upon the creative
output of authors such as himself.
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His refusal to play this role of upholder of seriousness is once again ambivalent as
Lisey reveals that Scott actively participated in the Academy?s propagation of the
perception of him as a serious author, through his frequent visits to university
campuses.  Scott?s intensive schedule of ninety campuses a year throughout twenty-
five years of marriage betrays a significant desire to develop and maintain a literary
profile as an author whose creative output is worthy of study.  His regular visits to
universities acros the country reveals his need to be appreciated within the field of
academia and for his texts to be legitimised by that field, thus ensuring their future
on course syllabi as classics of late twentieth-century America.  However, when this
is compared with the actuality as perceived by his wife Lisey, who has a unique
insight into his life beyond the concerns of literary critics, it becomes clear that his
persona as author of high literature is very different from the actual writing process:
Lisey thought of Scott at the desk he called Dumbo?s Big Jumbo, sitting
before his big-screen Mac and laughing at something he?d just written.
Chewing either a plastic straw or his own fingernails.  Sometimes singing
along with the music. Making arm-farts if it was sumer and hot and his
shirt was off.  That was how he agonized over his smucking creations (LS,
p. 320).
Scott recognizes Lisey?s objectivity when he tells her, ?when you look at me you
see me top to bottom and side to side and to you everything weighs the same? (LS,
p. 159).  She remembers ?a period of about ten years when Scott had somehow
gotten larger than life ? to others, and sometimes to himself.  (Not to Lisey; she was
the one who had to fetch him a fresh roll of toilet paper if he ran out while he was
on the john)? (LS, p. 21).  She is the one who ses and remembers these two
distinctly different components of Scott?s identity, and therefore it is through her
narrative that Scott?s true ambivalence towards the academic institution is brought
into light.  Although Scott is the figure most closely linked to the carnivalesque
space that is Boo?ya Moon, it is Lisey?s narrative which articulates the
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carnivalesque; it is through her narrative of antagonistic academics, the disruptive
force of the carnivalesque and of the necessary re-establishment of hierarchy that
insight into the agonistic relationship between Academy and literary producer is
provided.
It should also be noted that it is through this articulation that the narative asumes
many of its popular fiction tropes, as Lisey?s terrorisation closely conforms to the
generic conventions of the thriller as outlined in the previous case study on Misery
and The Dark Half.  It is this part of the narrative which can most truly be described
as Lisey?s story as it occurs two years after Scott?s death.  As shown through the
contrast of Lisey and Scott, in which Scott is allied with thought and Lisey with
action, this shift from the reflective prose of recounted memories to the fast-paced
action of Lisey?s eforts to escape the threat of violence is mirrored in the
characterisation of both Lisey and Scott.  This contrast is particularly evident when
Lisey attempts to travel to Boo?ya Moon for the first time since 1996.  She recalls
that if ?Scott Landon had had a fatal flaw, it might have been thinking too much, but
that had never been her problem.  If she had stopped to consider the situation on
that hot day in Nashvile, Scot almost certainly would have died.  Instead she had
simply acted? (LS, p. 427).  This identification of either character with thought and
action respectively, is also shared by Scott, whom Lisey once overheard at a party
saying that ?Lisey?s smart as the devil, as long as she doesn?t think about it? (LS, p.
265; italics original).  Lisey?s bypassing of thought feeds directly into that portion
of the narrative that operates according to the thriller genre, in which Jim Dooley is
on a mission to retrieve Scott?s literary papers from Lisey in order to place them in
the custody of University of Pitsburgh profesor, Joseph Wodbody. Lisey refers
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to Woodbody as ?King of the Incunks? (LS, p. 101), and Dooley, as Woodbody?s
missive, is thus labelled ?Black Prince of the Incunks? (LS, p. 558), as he is the
physical embodiment of the Academy?s expresed animosity towards her as
withholder of an ?intellectual treasure-trove of unpublished Landon manuscripts?
(LS, p. 231).  He comes to represent, for Lisey, the academic institution: the
institution which possesses the power to establish and reinforce literary hierarchy
through its role in the system of literary sacralization.  Lisey has dared to usurp their
role as ?literary executor? (LS, p. 7) and so consequently this responsibility must be
wrested back under the Academy?s control.  Doley has been the one invested with
this responsibility, and therefore, he is the one with whom Lisey must engage with
in a fight which concludes in the carnivalesque space of Boo?ya Moon.
There are many aspects of Bo?ya Moon that resonate with Bakhtin?s exploration of
the carnival and of the carnivalesque, one of which is the presence of laughter. In
the Fairy Forest, there exist some strange, human-like creatures which ?run on all
fours, but sometimes they? Stand up.  Like people? (pp. 422-423), that Scott has
named, ?laughers? (LS, p. 422). When Lisey recalls that brief initial visit to Boo?ya
Moon, she describes her memory of her first encounter with the laughers.  She states
that, to ?her those things don?t sound like hyenas, they sound like people, lunatics
cast into the deepest depths of some nineteenth-century Bedlam? (LS, p. 422).
There is an unhinged quality to the laughter which is emitted by these strange half
beast, half human creatures.  Lisey recalls:
More laughers join the chorus.  In a matter of moments there are dozens of
them.  Some of the laughter runs up a jagged scale and turns into broken-
glas screams that make Lisey feel like screaming back.  Then they descend
again, sometimes to guttering chuckles that sound as if they?re coming from
mud (LS, p. 422).
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The presence of laughter in Boo?ya Moon is ambivalent through its derivation from
these strange creatures which possess both human and beast-like qualities, through
its comparison with the laughter of the insane, and through its fluctuation betwen
?broken glass screams? to ?guttering chuckle?.  It destabilises, dislocates and
degrades; their ?laughter presents an element of victory not only over supernatural
awe, over the sacred, over death; it also means the defeat of power, of earthly kings,
of the earthly upper classes, of all that oppresses and restricts? (Bakhtin, 1994, p.
210).  The indiscriminate laughter emanating from the Fairy Forest exemplifies this,
as does Lisey?s own laughter when she faces Jim Doley. It is in this final
encounter that Lisey uses laughter as a weapon; she ?was frightened ? terrified ? but
it felt good to laugh, perhaps because she understood that her laughter was her
knife.  Every peal from her burning throat drove the point deeper into his flesh? (LS,
p. 571).  Her laughter undermines Dooley?s image of himself as one who would be
doing ?a service to mankind? (LS, p. 232) by prying ?a great treasure away from a
woman who was too stupid to understand what it was she was siting on? (LS, p.
232).  It is a degrading laughter; a laughter which ultimately leads to Dooley?s
premature burial in the giant maw of Boo?ya Moon?s most grotesque inhabitant.
The presence of this grotesque creature ?with the piebald side? (LS, p. 13; italics
original), ?Scott?s long boy? (LS, p. 428) and the role that it plays in the life-in-death
fate of Jim Doley, is another example of Boo?ya Moon?s affinity with literary
carnival. Bakhtin describes the grotesque body as ?grandiose, exagerated,
immeasurable? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 205) and suggests that its ?essential principle?
(Bakhtin, 1994, p. 205) is ?the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract; it
is a transfer to the material level, to the sphere of earth and body in their
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indissoluble unity? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 205).  As I have already asserted, Dooley is a
figure Lisey associates with the high literary field of cultural production: a field in
which authorial hierarchy is heavily policed by academics and literary critics and
which embodies ?all that is high?.  So, it is particularly relevant that he meets his
end in the way that he does, which is by being consumed by this imense creature
that has haunted the Landons for all their married years.  Its mouth is described in
terms which appear to compare it to the female ?reproductive lower stratum, the
zone in which conception and a new birth take place? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 206).  This
is made manifest, in particular, through Lisey?s perspective of it just prior to its
consumption of Dooley, where she sees ?an opening in the meat of its vast questing
blunt head and intuited that the things it tok in through that vast straw of flesh did
not precisely die but lived and screamed? lived and screamed? lived and
screamed? (LS, p. 578).  This description of the opening in the flesh is furthered
when Lisey is haunted by a vision of ?that blunt head that wasn?t a head at all but
only a maw, a straw, a funnel into blackness filled with endless swirling bad-gunky.
In it she still heard Jim Dooley screaming, but the sound was now thin, and mixed
with other screams? (LS, p. 582).  This emphasis on the orifice which takes Doley
in, giving him an eternal life within death, affirms its role as degrader of ?all that is
high, spiritual, ideal, abstract?. In fact, it is through Lisey?s overiding impresion
of this creature?s ?pufickly huh-yooge batch of orifice? (LS, p. 28), to borrow a
phrase from the interior discourse of the Landons? mariage, that it reveals itself to
be ?a point of transition in a life eternally renewed, the inexhaustible vessel of death
and conception? (Bakhtin, 1994, p. 234).
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However, the consumption of Dooley by Scott?s Long Boy fails in its attempt to
disempower the Academy, in that the institution persists as the dominant force of
cultural consecration.  Lisey?s ultimate act of defiance against the Academy, the
decision to send Scott?s papers to the University of Maine rather than the University
of Pittsburgh, so as to render them out of convenient reach for Woodbody, is petty
and ineffectual, and the structures upholding the hierarchical strata remain intact
and continue to act according to expectation.  In this way, they illustrate the validity
of Dentith?s theory that the carnivalesque does not efect a fundamental ?losening
[of] people?s sense of rightness of the rules which kept the world the right way up?
rather that they reinforce those rules.  Thus King?s habitus continues to structure
and be structured according to a set of possibles determined by a range of
dispositions cultivated through his understanding of the field of literary production.
The intrusion of the carnivalesque temporarily destabilises this understanding, but it
must always revert back to operating within the set of posibles as perceived by
those who participate within the field.  Accordingly, the field remains unaffected,
and King and his literary production are still subject to its rules and hierarchical
positioning.
One of the key phrases repeated throughout Lisey?s Story is ?everything the same?
(LS, p. 8).  Designated a phrase of power, it possess two meanings: firstly it means
?is everything all right, is everything cool? (LS, p. 8; italics original) and secondly it
contains ?an inside meaning? (LS, p. 8) which means to take a balanced view in
which all factors are weighted equally.  It is this second meaning that provides
insight into the seemingly paradoxical textual elements of which Lisey?s Story is
composed. King harbours a desire to be appreciated as a serious writer: as one who
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is worthy of critical aclaim and cultural consecration. The bridge of which he
spoke during his acceptance speech in 2003 between the ?so-called popular fiction
and the so-called literary fiction? (King, 2003, np) is rendered textually manifest in
this narrative of a writer?s widow, and yet, because King stil perceives these
elements to be mutually exclusive of either popular or literary fiction, the outcome
is not wholly successful.  King has said of this hybrid, ?two-hearted? novel that ?to
me it fels like a very special book? (Lehman-Haupt, 2006, p. 100), and certainly
he has encouraged the perception that this book is the most important of his career.
1
As he has admited in the past, however, that ?I don?t think writers are very good
judges of their own work? (Dewes More, 1990, p. 100) and that ?you have to
evaluate the critical reaction to your work and decide from that what you?re doing?
(Dewes Moore, 1990, p. 100).
The suces that Scot enjoys remains an unrealised fantasy for King who continues
to labour under the label of ?popular fiction writer?.  Only time will tell if Lisey?s
Story makes a significant contribution towards his literary longevity, although even
King recognised that ?there wil be some people who are going to be ugly to this
book? (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p. 100).  He knew before the first reviews were
writen on Lisey?s Story that there would be some who would condemn it as ?a
supermarket, best-selling, gothic, piece-of-schlock trash, pulp crap by writer
Stephen King? (Kilgore, 1990, p. 154) and, as he confessed, ?I couldn?t stand that,
the way you would hate people to be ugly to someone you love.  And I love this
book? (Lehmann-Haupt, 2006, p. 100).  I contend that the reason King loves this
book is because it represents for him that bridge between the popular and the
                                                  
1
 King states that, ?It?s like surfers and the seventh wave? You ride six waves that are O.K., and
then the seventh one is really great. But with every seventh wave, you mess up the ride, so really it?s
only every 49
th
 wave that?s really a great, great wave, and I felt that way with Lisey? (Rich, 2006).
208
literary; it is his attempt at producing a hybrid text that he perceives will offer him
the opportunity to achieve simultaneous critical and popular success: ?everything
the same?.
And if there is a repeated pattern in King?s subsequent work, it has been this
concern with the high/low dialectic in its institutional forms.  Despite voicing
concern that he will never publish a book that is ?better? (Lehman-Haupt, 2006, p.
101) than Lisey?s Story, King has continued to publish, releasing a novel, Duma
Key, and a collection of short stories, Just After Sunset, as well as assuming the role
of editor for Houghton Mifflin?s annual Best American Short Stories anthology in
2007.  He is stil deply invested in questioning the profesionalism of authorship,
the mechanisms of economic and symbolic exchange and the hierarchical principles
which determine the field of literary production.  While it is impossible to estimate
the extent to which King will continue to explore the participation in the literary
field through the figure of the author-protagonist, it would appear that there will be
plenty of new material published by King over the next few years, the most
significant of which is a new novel, Beyond the Dome, scheduled for publication in
2009.  Despite the fact that King is still working on the manuscript for this new
novel, he has divulged that it will be an epic on a scale similar to The Stand and It.
It looks to be a major contribution to King?s oeuvre; however, there are another two
novels on the horizon: a collaboration with his son, Joe Hil, and a collaboration
with Peter Straub.  As Duma Key signals, however, there appears to be no sign of an
abatement in King?s dramatisation of the high/low dialectic and the role of the
producer within the field of cultural production.
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Duma Key and the Artist-Protagonist
Unlike the novels I addressed earlier, Duma Key does not feature an author-
protagonist, but it does continue to engage in isues pertaining to the field of
cultural production through the presence of an artist-protagonist.  Edgar Freemantle
is a property developer who, following a horrific accident in which he loses his right
arm, discovers an artistic talent leading to suces within the Florida art scene. As
with many of King?s novels, there is a strong supernatural presence which
permeates the narrative; an ancient, manipulative spirit named Perse is bent on
causing chaos and ruin through the medium of Fremantle?s surealist paintings.
However, the aspect of the narrative that most interests me for the purposes of this
thesis is the expresion of habitus through Freemantle?s perspective, practice, and
prejudice as a new producer within the field of cultural production.  The relevance
of this approach is confirmed by King himself when he stated in an interview for
Lilja?s Library (2008) that ?Edgar?s paintings are like my work? Edgar realy is
like me (Lilja, 2008).  As I have already mentioned, King admits that he always
writes from a position of familiarity; he takes not only what he feels, but also what
he knows, and inscribes it within his fiction. Duma Key may be a novel with an
artist-protagonist, but it could just as easily have ben writen from the perspective
of an author-protagonist.  That said, however, the artist-protagonist allows King to
address an aspect of the field of cultural production not readily available through his
previous adoption of the author-protagonist.  While he has written of restricted
production with reference to the limited edition, Duma Key gives King the
opportunity to write about a form of production which is so restricted that only one
copy exists.  It allows him the scope to tackle similar issues as he has done in
210
previous texts, but it also facilitates an articulation of the extremes of cultural
production, of which he has not written before.
Fremantle, like al of King?s recent cultural producer-protagonists, is a milionaire
at the outset of the narrative.  Unlike Mike Noonan and Scott Landon, however,
Freemantle has made his money in his ?other life? (DK, p. 3) as a ?big deal in the
building and contracting business? (DK, p. 3).  As Edgar readily admits, ?I was a
genuine American-boy success? (DK, p. 3), working his ?way up in the company?
(DK, p. 3), before launching his own business, The Freemantle Company, which
resulted in the creation of his net worth of forty million dollars at the time of his
accident.  It is clear from this back-story that Freemantle measures suces
according to the amount of economic capital generated by his eforts within the
construction industry.  Following his accident, however, his financial success brings
him little more comfort than the peace of mind his ability to afford medical care and
support provides.  It does, however, influence the artistic production he embarks
upon subsequent to his move to Duma Key. The economic capital acrued in his
?other life? provides him with an autonomy necessary to produce art for art?s sake.
The production of art for art?s sake is always posited in opposition to the production
of art for commercial suces within the mas market, as his neighbour and
landlady, the Alzheimer?s afflicted Elizabeth Eastlake, confirms in her enquiry,
?Are you one who creates art for money, or do you believe in art for art?s sake??
(DK, p. 169).  Fremantle?s financial independence alows him to exercise artistic
autonomy: he does not have to paint pictures for the specific purpose of accruing
enough capital to aford the art suplies and materials he requires in order to
participate within the field of cultural production, he does not have to engage in the
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production of work which could be mass produced to meet a mass demand so as to
efect his survival in a capitalist economy, and he retains the option to withold his
products from sale, thus preventing them from entering the market.
This autonomy is also reflected in the subject matter of his paintings.  As the gallery
owner, Dario Nannuzzi, asserts after his first viewing of Freemantle?s paintings,
?you?re looking for a way to reinvent the most popular and hackneyed of all Florida
subjects, the tropical sunset.  You?ve been trying to find your way past the clich??
(DK, p. 162).  Rather than reproducing the ?hackneyed? Florida sunset, Freemantle
positions objects found on his ?Great Beach Walks? (DK, p. 20) upon the horizon of
his clich?d sunsets.  He states that ?almost every night when the sun went down, I
drew the sunset.  I knew sunsets were a clich?, and that?s why I did them.  It seemed
to me that if I could break through that wall of been-there-done-that even once, I
might be getting somewhere? (DK, p. 55).  The result initially is ?a penciled piece of
shit where the colours said I?m trying to tell you the horizon?s on fire? (DK, p. 55),
leading Fremantle to surmise that you ?could undoubtedly have bought forty beter
ones at any sidewalk art show in a Saturday in Sarasota or Venice Beach? (DK, p.
55).  After his first experiment with painting a local wildflower upon the line of the
horizon he finds that:
The sophora bracelet seemed to rear over the horizon-line like the tentacle of
a sea creature big enough to swalow a supertanker. The single yellow
blosom could have been an alien eye.  More important to me, it had
somehow given the sunset back the truth of its ordinary I-do-this-every-night
beauty (DK, p. 56).
This is just the first of a series of paintings Fremantle creates in which he obscures
part of the sunset with disproportionately large shels, wildflowers and general
flotsam and jetsom. The subject of this series facilitates Fremantle?s expresion of
212
the ?truth, and the truth deserves to be spoken? if you can say it in a new way?
(DK, p. 302).
In depicting this ?truth?, Freemantle?s paintings prove to be worthy of accruing
significant symbolic capital.  Upon unveiling his work to Nanuzi, in order to hear
his opinion on the artistic value of his painting, a crowd gathers to admire and
appreciate the pieces that he has brought along with him.  In amongst that crowd is
art critic, Mary Ire, who describes Freemantle as ?a true American primitive? (DK,
p. 159): an opinion Nanuzi agres with shortly before inviting Fremantle to
exhibit at the Scoto gallery.  Fremantle?s decision to take Nanuzi up on his offer
results in a series of three events arranged by the gallery designed to gain
Freemantle the maximum amount of critical attention, in an attempt to attract
symbolic capital.  The first of these events is a lecture to be given by Freemantle,
accompanied by slides of some of his paintings due to be exhibited at the Scoto.
The lecture is to be attended by ?two hundred art mavens? (DK, p. 297), including
Mary Ire: ?important people?interested in new artists and each one knows thre
more who feel the same? (DK, p. 260).  Nannuzzi assures Freemantle that after ?the
lecture ? your lecture ? the talk will start.  The kind of talk that almost always turns
into that magical thing called ?buzz?? (DK, p. 260).  In his introduction to
Freemantle?s lecture, Nannuzzi contextualizes his work by drawing upon other
artists such as ?Joan Mir?? (DK, p. 297) and on key documents such as ?Breton?s
Surrealist Manifesto? (DK, p. 297).  Freemantle, listening in the wings, states that
names ?went past like floats in a parade.  A few, like Edward Hopper and Salvador
Dali, I knew.  Others, like Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage, I didn?t? (DK, p. 297).  The
cultural cachet of these key figures and moments from art history are drawn upon in
213
order to encourage the perception of Freemantle as an artist of similar import and
stature.  The following event is a scheduled interview with Mary Ire in which
Fremantle is questioned about his ?influences? (DK, p. 309) and his ?technique?
(DK, p. 309).  After the publication of Mary?s interview, Freemantle becomes ?a
local celebrity? (DK, p. 330) with folow-up interviews conducted at the local news
station and with an AP reporter.  The final event is the exhibition of the paintings
themselves, an event which proves to be wildly sucesful as demonstrated by the
reviews published the following morning:
The reviews in the Sarasota Herald Tribune and the Venice Gondolier were
great, but short.  Mary Ire?s piece in the Tampa Trib, on the other hand, took
up nearly a whole page and was lyrical.  She must have written most of it
ahead of time.  She called me ?a major new American talent? (DK, pp. 393-
394).
Nannuzzi may claim that, ?I don?t want to think too much about art, you see.  I don?t
want to criticize it.  I don?t want to attend symposia, listen to papers, or discus it at
cocktail parties ? although sometimes in my line of work I?m forced to do all those
things? (DK, p. 162), but he recognizes that it is through these activities that the
?magical thing called ?buzz?? is created, and that this buzz facilitates the accrual of
symbolic capital.
Of course, it cannot be disregarded that this buzz also attracts money.  Elizabeth
Eastlake in her questioning of Freemantle asks, ?And surely if you believe in art for
art?s sake, the painting is the important part, isn?t it?? Even if you don?t ned to
sell your paintings to buy your daily bread, sharing work? giving it to the world?
surely artists care about such things, don?t they?  The giving?? (DK, p. 170).  When
producing art for art?s sake, art designed to attract symbolic rather than economic
capital, the artist is still involved in the process of producing a commodity.  In fact,
214
it is the commodity?s exclusivity, its authenticity, its chronotopic positioning, that
allows it to be exchanged for large amounts of economic capital.  It is this aspect of
the ?art for art?s sake? market that is rendered prominent in the novel of Duma Key;
Freemantle may not need to sell his products to buy his ?daily bread?, but that
certainly does not mean that his products are bereft of economic value.  As the
alterations Freemantle?s friend and lawyer, Jerome Wireman, makes to the gallery?s
contract attest, the market for high art is a lucrative one.  Wireman explains the
changes thus:
It says you and the galery split right down the midle, but I?m gona cap
that.  Fifty-fifty shall not live after gross sales reach a quarter-mil.  Once you
pas that point, the split goes to sixty-forty, your favor? I?m also going to
propose that the split goes to seventy-thirty at half a million (DK, p. 258).
Wireman?s alterations to the contract are made after he watches a wealthy customer
at the gallery offer to buy one of Freemantle?s paintings for the price of
Freemantle?s asking.  Nannuzzi denigrates Mr Costenza, the wealthy customer, as
one of those who is ?too rich for their own good? (DK, p. 160), and states that they
rely on docents such as Mary Ire to maintain the ?nice artist-and-gallery economy
here on the west coast of Florida? (DK, p. 160).   According to both Wireman and
Nannuzzi, ?if the Happy Art Galleria down the street discovers they can sell
paintings of Elvis done in macaroni on velvet for ten thousand dolars a pop, Mary
would ? blow them out of the water? (DK, p. 160).  Nannuzzi pointedly remarks
that art curators and buyers are ?not venal? (DK, 160), however, from the contract
issued to Freemantle, they are quite clearly participants within the market economy.
This corelation betwen the acquisition of economic capital and the Scoto Galery
is most evident during the opening night of Freemantle?s exhibition.  During the
evening, Freemantle is called in to the gallery office where he is informed that ?the
215
show?s a sel? (DK, p. 359): ?every painting and sketch that was for sale has been
sold? (DK, p. 359).  The gallery?s accountant, Jacob Rosenblatt, states that:
The paintings fetched four hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars, the
sketches an additional nineteen.  The total comes to a little over half a
million dollars.  It?s the greatest sum the Scoto has ever taken in during the
exhibition of a single artist?s work.  An amazing coup.  Congratulations
(DK, p. 359).
The preceding lecture and interviews, designed to promote Freemantle as a
significant artist and to generate symbolic capital, have also succeeded in raising a
large amount of money for both gallery and artist.  Freemantle?s work is
commodified by the gallery, and consequently it proceeds to accrue both economic
and symbolic capital.
In the same way that King undermined the role of the po?te maudit in The Shining,
by underscoring the latent economic strategy in assuming such a role, King
similarly reveals the circulation of money in art produced according to the
autonomous principle.  However, Freemantle becomes significantly more successful
than Jack Torrance, both in his work?s capacity to attract symbolic capital and
accrue economic capital, as he does not have to feign disinterestedness; he already
has the funds to be financialy autonomous from the market. When Fremantle
becomes a producer of art, he enjoys absolute freedom from financial constraint,
unlike Jack, who is condemned always to be the suplicant in the patron/suplicant
relationship.  In this way, Freemantle also differs from all of King?s recent author-
protagonists (significantly excluding Scott Landon), and from King himself, in that
their millionaire status has come at the cost of their credibility as cultural producers.
The economic necesity experienced by this author and his author-protagonists
compelled them to write for financial profit, and it is this which has damaged their
216
literary reputation, thus situating them in an inferior position in the hierarchical
strata that structures that part of the literary field influenced by symbolic capital.
Fremantle, in this sense, is not typical of King?s fictionalisation of the field of
cultural production, in that he produces from a privileged economic position and has
always done so; there exists no period of economic impoverishment in the timeline
of Freemantle?s cultural production.  King has created a character unhindered by
their poor economic background, and uses that character in order to show that it is
possible to achieve success economically and symbolically in the cultural field, but
that it is in such a way that can never be replicated by King himself.  He is an author
condemned by his history of literary production for the masses.
Just After Sunset and The Best American Short Stories
King?s other recent projects have involved the short story: firstly, his editing of the
annual anthology of Houghton Mifflin?s The Best American Short Stories for 2007,
2
and secondly, his latest publication of a new collection of short stories, Just After
Sunset.  The production of short fiction has a long history within the field of
American literary production, and it has always ben tightly bound up with
hierarchical isues pertaining to the acquisition of symbolic and economic capital.
As I claim in the first chapter of this thesis, King has published short stories both for
economic necessity during his days prior to becoming a bestselling author, and as a
strategy to increase the symbolic capital of his work, as shown by his recent
                                                  
2
 The decision to employ King as editor for this prestigious anthology, a role previously occupied by
Ann Patchett and subsequently by Salman Rushdie, was a surprising move by Houghton Mifflin and
should perhaps be considered in the same light as the NBA board?s decision to honour King with an
award.  Just as that decision generated a ?buzz about the NBA ceremonies? that had been lacking, it
is feasible that Houghton Mifflin hoped to achieve a similar level of ?buzz? in order to revivify
interest in this literary product.
217
acceptance of the O. Henry prize for best short story,
3
 and the recent publication of
his short stories in The New Yorker and The Paris Review.  In his introduction to
Everything?s Eventual, he claims that he continues to write short stories ?because
it?s the way I affirm, at least to myself, the fact that I haven?t sold out, no matter
what the more unkind critics may think.  Short stories are still piecework, the
equivalent of those one-of-a-kind items you can buy in an artisan?s shop? (EE, p.
xvi).  I believe that it would prove fruitful to approach King?s short stories using the
framework I developed in my research and analysis on Bag of Bones, in which
issues of mass and folk cultural production are addressed.  His affiliation of his
production of short stories with ?piecework? juxtaposed with his disclosure of the
economic capital some of his most profitable short stories have accrued, displays a
tension between the production of literature as a contribution towards mass or folk
culture similar to that found in Noonan?s narrative.
It is this tension which King once again articulates in the forewords to both the
anthology and his new collection.  In the former, King?s focus in the foreword is
largely upon the marketing of the stories chosen for that year?s inclusion rather than
on the quality of the stories themselves.  He describes a trip to a bookstore to
purchase the latest issues of magazines containing short fiction, and places strong
emphasis in this description on the positioning of these magazines.  He relates that
he passes a ?table filled with best-selling hardcover fiction at prices ranging from 20
to 40 percent off.  James Paterson is represented, as is Daniele Stel, as is your
faithful correspondent? (BASS, p. xiv).  He proclaims that most ?of this stuff is
disposable? (BASS, p. xiv); these ?are the moneymakers and rent payers; these are
                                                  
3
 For ?The Man in the Black Suit? in 1996.
218
the glamour ponies? (BASS, p. xiv).  Aside from the denigration of his own fiction,
through its presence alongside Danielle Steel and James Patterson, both authors he
has scorned in the past, there exists a paradox in the way in which these texts are
published and their classification as ?disposable?. It is a paradox shown in bas relief
when King moves on to address the publication of the short stories in their
disposable format: the magazine.  He claims that his selection of stories ?show how
vital short stories can be when they are done with heart, mind, and soul by people
who care about them and think they still matter? (BASS, p. xvii; my italics); it is
their vitality which I suggest sharply contrasts their initial medium of publication.
This literary paradox is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe?s practice of writing short
stories which were then published in magazine format.  Poe ?insisted that the ideal
short story be constituted as a disposable artifact? (Levy, 1993, p. 22) and ?explicitly
linked the superiority of the shorter form to the very fact of its expendability.  Like
the magazine within which it was published, Poe?s short story was meant to be
thrown away and revered at the same time? (Levy, 1993, p. 22).  However, as the
numerous anthologies of Poe?s short fiction evidence, his work was not disposed of
despite its disposable medium. It is precisely this incongruity which is aparent in
the continued publication of short stories in literary magazines; whereas the
blockbuster novels published in hardback are deemed disposable, the magazine-
published short story is considered ?vital? and worth of collation in this annual
showcase anthology. King compounds this paradoxical relationship betwen
content and medium through noting that the hardcover books are all discounted by
betwen twenty and forty percent, in contrast to the selection of six magazines
which cost him ?over eighty dollars? (BASS, p. xv).  As King notes, there ?are no
219
discounts in the magazine section? (BASS, p. xv).  The disposable medium in which
these stories are published is not reflected in the cost, just as the price of the
?disposable? novels is disproportionate to their publication in hardcover form.
However, the comparison between the literary magazine containing short fiction
and the bestselling hardback novels is not limited to the form in which both have
been published or the difference of price, as it also extends to their accessibility;
whereas the novels of Steel, Patterson and King are all readily available at the front
of the bokstore, King discovers that he has to go to some physical effort in order to
attain his monthly allotment of short fiction.  He describes assuming the position of
?a school janitor trying to scrape a particularly stubborn wad of gum off the gym
floor? (BASS, p. xiv) so as to access titles such as Zoetrope, Tin House, Five Points,
The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, The Iowa Review and the Alaska
Quarterly Review.  The ?Wall of Magazines? (BASS, p. xiv) is structured as a
physical embodiment of that hierarchy of the literary field determined by the
heteronomous principle.  As King describes:
I stare at the racks of magazines, and the racks of magazines stare eagerly
back. Celebrities in gowns and tuxes, models in lo-rise jeans, luxy stereo
equipment, talk-show hosts with can?t-mis diet plans ? they all scream Buy
me, buy me!  Take me home and I?ll change your life!  I?ll light it up!?
(BASS, p. xiv; italics original).
These prominently placed ephemeral celebrations of the rich and famous signify
?fiction?s out-migration from the eye-level shelves? (BASS, p. xv) to the ?lowest
shelf, where neatness alone suggests few ever go? (BASS, p. xv): this ?out-
migration? exacerbated in an environment in which ?Britney Spears has become a
cultural icon, available at every checkout, while an American talent like William
Gay labors in relative obscurity? (BASS, p. xv).
220
King chooses which of these stories that initially resided in the ?relative obscurity?
of the lowers shelves according to very different criteria from that of his co-editor,
Heidi Pitlor.  Pitlor states that she chose the short stories
that transcended something.  Whether it was a particular clich? of
character? or language or situation, the stories I chose twisted and turned
away from the familiar and ultimately took flight, demanding their own
particular characters and structure and prose? (Pitlor, 2007, p. x).
King, on the other hand, claims that the commonality these stories share posses ?that
sense of emotional involvement, of flipped-out amazement? (BASS, p. xvii).  He
claims that ?I look for stories that care about my feelings as well as my intellect?
(BASS, p. xvii) and questions, ?Do I want something that appeals to my critical
nose?? (BASS, p.xvii) before conceding ?Maybe later (and, I admit it, maybe
never)? (BASS, p. xvi). In other words, his choice reflects a preference for those
texts which engage ?on an emotional level? (Lehman-Haupt, 2006, p. 87), thus
differentiating him from the ?serious critics? (Lehman-Haupt, 2006, p. 87) who
?start to shake their heads and say, No? ?once those levers start to get pushed?
(Lehmand-Haupt, 2006, p. 87).  He claims:
I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown
clean out of myself for a while, as violently as a fighter pilot who pushes the
EJECT buton in his F-111.  I certainly don?t want some fraidy-cat?s writing
schol imitation of Faulkner, or some stream-of-consciousnes bulshit
about what Bob Dylan once called ?the true meaning of a peach? (BAS, p.
xvii).
King?s perception of transcendence is more akin to escapism, than to Pitlor?s sense
of a literary transcendence in which the author has broken free of the bonds of an
anxiety of influence.  Pitlor focuses on the transcendence of the author, while King
focuses on the reader?s, and yet both participate in another form of transcendence
221
altogether: the transcendental rise of these stories from the bottom shelf to inclusion
in a ?series that is still popular and discussed? (BASS, p. xvii; my italics).
Apparently it was his participation in facilitating these stories? liberation ?from the
bottom shelf? (BASS, p. xvii) that inspired King to start writing short fiction again,
which resulted in the publication of Just After Sunset, a collection of thirteen short
stories, in November 2008.  He confesses in the introduction to that collection that
he agreed to edit Best American Short Stories for ?all sorts of reasons, some even
altruistic, but I would be a black liar indeed if I didn?t admit self-interest played a
part? (JAS, p. 3).  He hoped that by immersing ?myself in the best the American
literary magazines had to offer, I might be able to recapture some of the
effortlessness that had been slipping away? (JAS, p. 3).  Once again King correlates
literary worth with escapism, questioning, ?Are these stories any good? I hope so.
Will they help you pass a dull airplane flight? or a long car trip?? I really hope
so, because when that happens, it?s a kind of magic spell? (JAS, p. 4).
However, the most noticeable emphasis in this introduction is once again on the
way in which the publication of short stories became an economic strategy during
King?s early career, a subject that he has returned to many times prior to Just After
Sunset.  He recalls that:
In those days it was never about writing literature, and any discusion of my
fiction?s ?lasting value? would have been as much a luxury as that Texaco
card.  The stories, when they sold (they didn?t always), were simply a
welcome bit of found money.  I viewed them as a series of pi?atas I banged
on, not with a stick but my imagination.  Sometimes they broke and
showered down a few hundred bucks.  Other times they didn?t (JAS, p. 2).
After emphasising the financial aspect of writing short fiction, King then proceds
to note that many ?bestselling novelists in America don?t write short stories? (JAS,
222
p. 2), thus differentiating himself and his publications from that of most bestselling
American authors.  He doubts ?if it?s a money issue; financially successful writers
don?t need to think about that part of it? (JAS, p. 2), surmising that the majority of
popular novelists do not write short fiction because they have lost ?the knack? (JAS,
p. 2).  Claiming in Just After Sunrise, and in the introductions to his other
collections of short stories, that he dedicates himself to the difficult task of writing
short stories, King atempts to heighten the contrast betwen himself and those
others such as Steel and Patterson that he is most often marketed alongside on
bookstore shelves.
It is not only his method of writing short stories that King has recuperated, however,
as the publications in which these stories were initially published prior to being
collected in Just After Sunset mirror those that he published in during his early
career.  In those days he sold stories ?to men?s magazines like Cavalier, Dude, and
Adam? (JAS, p. 2), while today, despite publishing some of the stories in respected
literary magazines such as The Paris Review and The New Yorker, he also published
two stories in Esquire and two in Playboy.  By collating these short stories,
originaly published in such disparate sources, targeted towards semingly
oppositional markets, King is performing that function that he called upon others to
facilitate: the building of bridges between the popular and the literary.  As a text
composed of stories first published in highly regarded literary magazines and in
popular mas market men?s magazines, Just After Sunset exists as King?s attempt to
bring together the two sides of the divide that he defined in his acceptance speech at
the NBA ceremony in 2003.  Whether this attempt is deemed successful or not, only
time will tell.  What can be discerned, however, is that King is still determined to
223
subvert the structures that separate the ?so-caled literary and the so-caled popular?
(King, 2003, np).  Not only is his resolve evident in his early fiction, but its
presence persists undiminished in the fiction he still publishes today, thus
demonstrating his ongoing commitment to build a bridge between the popular and
the serious.
224
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225
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226
---- 1987, It, New English Library: London
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---- 1988, Misery, New English Library: London
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