King Speaks On The Cannibals

Stephen King & Robert Louis Stevenson

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In Danse Macabre, Stephen King notes that Robert Lous Stevenson wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at a break neck pace -- completing the novel in just three days. However, the book so upset his wife that he burned it in his fireplace! Then, regretting his repentance he wrote it again, from scratch in another three days. (See Dance Macabre, p.60)

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If that first draft of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde existed -- would we want to read it? You bet! We would probably find that the rewrite came out much stronger, but just the same, it would be interesting.

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The Art Of Darkness

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It seemed that the Cannibals was lost in Stephen King's fireplace. Only mentioned briefly by Douglas E. Winter in The Art o Darkness -- but for the most part, it was gone. Until King found it (or went looking for it) in his office. He has released the first 60 pages. A rather humble act for an accomplished author! To show his work, warts and all, is pretty bold.

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Douglas Winter's book was so good that almost every other references just checked back to Winter. The Art of Darkness was a true gift to fans at the time and still. It has proved a lasting source of information. Something King himself admits having referenced recently! Anyway, Stephen King has recently given some more history on the connection between Under the Dome and The Cannibals.

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King Says. . .

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King says that he lost the first draft, but the other was written in Pittsburg. Interesting to me that this was during the filming of Creepshow, since you would think he would stop writing to make a movie. But then, if King stopped for each movie -- he would never write again!

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"I spent two months in a depressing suburban apartment complex," King says, "that became (with the usual fictional tweaks) the setting for the story. It was called The Cannibals, and this time I got a lot further—almost five hundred pages—before hitting a wall. I assumed the manuscript was lost. Long story short, it turned up—battered, and with some pages missing, but mostly complete—in the summer of 2009."

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John MacDonald Had An Interesting Take
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At the beginning of Night Shift, John D. MacDonald said that what makes King a great writer is that King has written a "stupendous number of other stories and books and fragments and poems and essays and other unclassified things, most of them too wrtched to ever publish." (Night Shift, introduction).

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King offers the work simply for amusement, suggesting it be an "appetier" to Under The Dome. For those who enjoy seeing a writers work before rewrites and editors, this should be a treat. MacDonald would remind us that it is this earlier work that made King's soon to be published work strong.

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A Typewriter?!

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"I’m amused by the antique quality of the typescript," King admits. "this may have been the last thing I did on my old IBM Selectric before moving on to a computer system." Seems like I remember him saying years ago that he didn't like computers because he felt like his words were under glass. Of course, the computer would go bye bye when he wrote Dreamcatcher by hand.