Joe Mont at The Street has an article titled "10 Celebrity 'Fake-Out' Retirements." Guess who is number 1 on his list. . . Stephen King.
I often see this "retirement" cited at the beginning of announcements about King. For instance, if King tells us a new book is coming out, an article will often read like this: "Even though he said he was going to retire in 2002, Stephen King is still hard at it -- producing another eight million page novel."
It has become an irksome thing for me, because I'm not really sure King was ever serious about retiring. Maybe for a moment -- but even when he talked about it, he was writing away. Does anyone really think he was going to ride into the sunset? Come on, the guy got hit by a van and was soon after writing Dreamcatcher out by hand.
Here is what Mont said about King:
Back in January 2002, horror fans got quite a scare when best-selling author Stephen King announced he would retire.
But, like one of those scary movie killers who manage to keep popping up after everyone thinks they're gone, King's writing just couldn't be dispatched so easily.
King's retirement plans were an after-effect of the injuries sustained when he was almost killed by a van while walking along a Maine roadway. For many months, debilitating pain made it nearly impossible for him to sit upright long enough to put word to paper.
Despite the pain he still suffers, King has long since abandoned his retirement.
Since the accident he has penned a column for Entertainment Weekly and published six novels and novellas and two collections of short stories. He has also announced two novels on the way over the next 12 months.
Pretty prolific for someone with plans to ride off into the sunset. http://www.thestreet.com/story/11078811/1/10-celebrity-fake-out-retirements.html?cm_ven=RSSFeed&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tsc%2Ffeeds%2Frss%2Flatest-stories+%28TheStreet.com+Latest+Headlines%29 What people who are not constant reader do not understand about King -- what Hollywood does not understand about King -- is that he has to write. He does not do it for the money or the fame, he writes because not writing is not an option.
In a 2007 interview with Gilbert Cruz (TIME), King explained the retirement thing: When I said to that lady from the L. A. Times I might retire, I was still recovering from the accident that I was in [where King was struck by a car], I was in a lot of pain, and I was under the pressure of finishing The Dark Tower. At that point, retirement looked good. When the pain went away and The Dark Tower finished up, retirement started to look bad. I have a book that's coming out in January called Duma Key, and there's the musical. I'm like Travis McGee, I can take my retirement in chunks. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1687229,00.html#ixzz1JKMZajYb
News that King might quit was just too much for the Onion to leave be. So in October 2002, they ran with it! Here ya go:
I never thought it was going to happen back when they were talking about it a lot because like you said, writing for him isn't really a choice. I do remember getting a little chilled during an interview with him on the Today Show once, however, when he said he won't stop writing but that doesn't mean he will keep publishing, and that his desk has a lot of drawers to stuff manuscripts in. This was back in 2003 I believe.
ReplyDeleteWhat I always found interesting about all this was that it seemed like many people enjoyed rubbing the retirement fear into the faces of those that enjoy his work. People used to do it to me all the time and I could see pleasure in their face. Very bizarre.
I think it strange that people took it so serious. An artist cannot stop producing art! I think for a writer like King, writing is part of how he functions. It's part of how he processes the world around him.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, he also threatened to stop publishing. All that would mean, though, is that his work would be published after his death. A terrible thing, since we would be left to guess on things King usually explains to us.
Well, honestly, King has only himself to blame for the rumors of his retirement becoming so widely reported. After all, he DID more or less say that he was going to give up writing once he was done finishing The Dark Tower.
ReplyDeleteWhat's weird to me is why Joe Mont -- or anyone else, for that matter -- would sound annoyed by the fact that King didn't end up actually retiring. If someone was likely to be annoyed by King's writing, then surely they've stopped reading, or never even started; so why would it bother them for King to keep publishing? And if they DO read King, then surely they'd be happy that he decided to keep publishing, right?
It's very odd.
All I know is, since that "retirement" fell through, King has published a lot of books, and I've liked all of them except one ("Lisey's Story"). That, to me, is a very good thing.