Stephen King: America's Storyteller

by Tony Magistrale

This analysis of the work of Stephen King explores the distinctly American fears and foibles that King has celebrated, condemned, and generally examined in the course of his wildly successful career.

Stephen America's Storyteller explores the particular American-ness of Stephen King's work. It is the first major examination to follow this defining theme through King's 40-year career, from his earliest writings to his most recent novels and films made from them.

Stephen King begins by tracing Stephen King's rise from his formative years to his status as a one of the most popular writers in publishing history. It then takes a close look at the major works from his canon, including The Shining , The Stand , It , Dolores Claiborne , and The Dark Tower . In these works and others, author Tony Magistrale focuses on King's deep rooted sense of the American experience, exemplified by his clear-eyed presentation of our historical and cultural foibles and scars; his gallery of unlikely friendships that cross race, age, and class boundaries; and his transcendent portrayals of uniquely American survival instincts, fellowship, and acts of heroism from the least likely of sources.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Tony Magistrale is the author of three books of poetry: What She Says About Love, winner of the 2007 Bordighera Poetry Prize, which was published as a bilingual edition in 2008; The Last Soldiers of Love (Literary Laundry Press, 2012); and Entanglements (Fomite Press, 2013). His poems have appeared in Green Mountains Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is professor of English at the University of Vermont.

Over the past two decades, Magistrale's twenty-plus books and many articles have covered a broad area of interests. He has published on the writing process, international study abroad, and his own poetry. But the majority of his books and articles have centered on defining and tracing Anglo-American Gothicism, from its origins in eighteenth-century romanticism to its contemporary manifestations in popular culture, particularly in the work of Stephen King. He has published three separate interviews with Stephen King, and from 2005-09 Magistrale served as a research assistant to Mr. King. Accordingly, a dozen of his scholarly books and many published journal articles have illuminated the genre's narrative themes, psychological and social contexts, and historical development.

Reviews

[Day Rusk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stephen King is one of the 20th Century and 21st Centuries most prolific writers, so it's not surprising that books exist analyzing his work. Tony Magistrale's book, I understand, is one of many. I've certainly read a lot of King's work, although not all of it, and have enjoyed many more than I found lacking (to be fair, even those books I didn't think were great, were good).

While to a certain degree I enjoyed Stephen King: America's Storyteller, there came a point where I got tired of some of the analysis. At points I found myself wondering if, in fact, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and nothing more. While its a fun exercise, unless King pipes in and say, "Yeah, you hit that nail on the head," it's all just one person's evaluation of his work, and may be on the nose or not.

If you're a die-hard fan, check it out, if not, don't bother; turn your attention to King's work itself and discover a writer who has had to fight his way to respectability, based on the genre he has chosen to write in. You're going to really love his stuff. I'd recommend you start with The Shining and move on for there.