Mavrik McMeekan’s Reviews > Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King > Status Update

I was initially surprised by Bicks's decision to devote a chapter to Night Shift, King's first collection of short stories. She uses the collection to great effect, however, as a means of investigating King's early writing and college years. She goes so far as to read every edition of the student magazine, in which King had a weekly column.

Bicks is a Shakespearian scholar and brings that level of close reading to King's work.

She's done a fascinating examination of Pet Sematary and how King uses words to simulate the digging which so central to the story. Words like dirt/grit/grate/gravel are used to build a particular sonic landscape.
Her chapter over The Shining is less focused on the language but on how the novel evolved over its many drafts.