Caroline Bicks is the author of the new book Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King. She holds the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine.
Q: What inspired you to write Monsters in the Archives, and how did you first get interested in the writing of Stephen King?
A: I was 12 when I first discovered King’s writing. I picked up Night Shift in my local public library and devoured it.
I’d been a very anxious little kid who had stuck close to my mom and home whenever possible, so when I got to “The Boogeyman”—a story about children getting killed by a monster hiding in their bedroom closet— it scared me like nothing I’d ever read before. It hit my personal “fearbone” (a King neologism) in an especially excruciating way, and has stuck in my mind ever since.
When I took the position of Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at UMaine nine years ago, I was told that I wouldn’t be meeting King and shouldn’t reach out to him.
I was okay with that: it was a fabulous job that came with a fund to support the public humanities and included teaching Shakespeare, which I’d been doing for decades. I wasn’t a Horror specialist, although I’d kept reading King since that first encounter with Night Shift.
Then, four years into the job, Stephen King called me at home. I invited him to come to campus to talk to our English majors, and he spent two magical days with them.
We started to develop a lovely working relationship after that, and I felt comfortable asking him if I could spend my sabbatical year exploring his personal archives — specifically, drafts of the 1970s books that had scared me so badly when I was a kid: Carrie, The Shining, ’Salem’s Lot, Night Shift, and Pet Sematary. I wanted to understand how he had crafted them and why they were still haunting me 40 years later.
No one had been granted that kind of extended access to his materials before, but he and his wife, Tabitha, generously said Yes.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I spent two months on each book, taking them one at a time so that I could fully immerse myself in all of the drafts for each one and explore its unique story.
By “story” I mean a few different things: 1) What is it about, and what is its origin story? 2) Where was King in his own life story when he started the first draft? What had changed by the time he was writing the final one? And, most important; 3) How do the manuscript pages themselves tell a story — through King’s margin notes and edits — about the themes and stylistic concerns King was focusing on at the time he was drafting and revising that particular work?
I learned so many surprising things along the way about each of them. Some of the novels originally had very different endings, and it was fascinating to see and talk to King about those larger changes.
I was also surprised, on a micro-crafting level, at how he—like Shakespeare— intentionally picks words based on their aural effects.
There’s an iconic line in Pet Sematary, for example: “Sometimes dead is better.” In the first draft, he wrote “death is better,” but then crossed out “death” in the second draft and wrote “dead” in his distinctive handwriting. The sonic effect he eventually crafted echoes in your head and sticks so much more effectively than “death is better.”
In the final copyedited draft, I discovered a margin response he’d written to a query about another one of his word choices that perfectly illustrates his attention to how words land on the reader’s ear: “The sound of that particular stutter really is ‘shuh.’ Say it loud. You’ll see.”
Each day in the archives was a master class for me in the work that goes into creating a great piece of writing that will resonate with readers across time and live in their imaginations.
Q: The writer Amy Tan said of the book, “Illuminating and original, Monsters in the Archives takes us deep into Stephen King’s private papers to show us how he crafted some of his most iconic, haunting books and took possession of so many of our imaginations.” What do you think of that description?
A: I’m honored, of course, to get such praise from one of my favorite writers. I cite her in my book’s introduction when I’m describing a conversation she and King were having once about the kinds of questions they tend to get at book talks: “ ‘No one ever asks about the language,’ ” she said.
When I started imagining the book that I wanted to write about King’s process, her words stuck with me and were my guiding principle: every step of the way, I was asking about the language and working to discover how he had crafted it to create these enduring stories.
Q: What impact did it have on you to write the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: I learned a lot about myself as a writer, including how to bring my own voice and stories to my subject.
When I started my archival work, I didn’t know what this book would look like. I just wanted to explore how King had crafted some of the scariest moments from the stories I had read when I was a teenager. Words and phrases were still sticking in my head 40 years later, and—as a literary scholar—I wanted to understand why.
As I got deeper into his manuscripts, though, and reexperienced all the sickening, heart-thumping fears I’d originally felt, I realized that this was also going to be a story about how well-crafted language makes us feel something, whether that’s fear or joy or anger. I became more attuned to these connections as I studied his revisions and talked to him about his choices.
When I sat down to write Monsters in the Archives, I made a conscious decision to bring my personal story into it. As scholars, we’re taught to perform an emotional disengagement from our subjects. But, as I learned from King, the most effective writing (whether academic or fictional), connects readers to the humanity of the storyteller and, ultimately, to each other. That was the big lesson for me, and one that I hope readers will take away from my book.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m a full-time professor, which means I spend nine months of the year teaching. So I’m giving myself the summer to relax, read books I want to read, and get back to my Everyday Shakespeare podcast, which I co-host with my close friend Michelle Ephraim.
As much as I’ve loved promoting Monsters in the Archives— meeting and talking to people around the country and the globe—I’ve missed the fun, collaborative work Michelle and I do together.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I can’t overstate how generous and brave King was in letting me excavate his manuscripts and publish pages from some of them. For any writer, no matter how famous, having other people see your early drafts is going to leave you feeling a bit vulnerable.
He never said to me: “You’re wrong,” or “You can’t say that.” He answered all of my questions with candor and kindness. I am grateful to him for trusting me to tell this story.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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