BOOK REVIEW: Exploring the why behind the “woah!”
By Michelle Beckwith
“Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King,” by Caroline Bicks
Full disclosure, I am a certified scaredy-cat, once terrorized by a specific episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. But my curiosity about and admiration for Stephen King stems from his recent nonfiction book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and his acerbic criticism of book banning on social media. O.K., I may have listened to the final scene of the movie Carrie from under a blanket!
In Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King - conjoined parts literary exploration and memoir - Caroline Bicks pulls back the curtain on how and why King’s novels have had such a tremendous impact on an entire genre of fiction. Granted the position as the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine in 2017, this Shakespearean scholar and Blue Hill resident was uniquely qualified. She honored the “absolutely no contact with Mr. King” dictate, and four years later received a call from the author himself, suggesting a meeting with her students. He and his wife Tabitha eventually agreed to grant full access to their private archives, resulting in this recently published gem.
“Maybe the Boogeyman doesn’t ever go away. Maybe he melts like cotton candy—just like dreams and stories—but then returns in a different form to fit our grown-up fears and nightmares.
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Bicks dissects King’s early works Pet Sematary, The Shining, Night Shift, ‘Salem’s Lot, and the grand finale Carrie, exploring the sensory nature of his word choice and the evolution of his life experience and how it influenced his vast catalog. This master class in literary research is tethered to the author’s childhood fears and subsequent attraction to the horror genre. Perhaps the most fascinating tidbits are contained within the deep dive into the editing process, and the literal, hidden secrets in the margins.
I consider this to be required reading for Stephen King fans, but if you’re a scaredy-cat like me, I still highly recommend taking a chance exploring the why behind the “woah!”
And, I hope to see you at The Blue Hill Public Library on June 25 at 7 p.m. where Caroline Bicks will present an author talk, co-sponsored by Blue Hill Books!
—Michelle Beckwith reviews books of various genres and especially enjoys titles set in Maine. Her reviews from the past five years are posted on her Instagram page @bookshelfbybeckwith. She and her husband Jeff live in Blue Hill.
