Hi there,
I’m just trying to understand how SK fans segment his work. I’d like to know which books fit into these categories I keep hearing about, and what you think makes each era so compelling. I’ve read Salem’s Lot, Cujo, and now Needful Things. I have Sun Dog, Duma Key, and IT up next. It seems people classify the eras as follows:
Young Rising King
Cocaine King
Post-Cocaine King
Post-Accident King
What are the main books that fit into these categories, and how do they differ thematically? Is Young Rising King-era books less developed since it’s his early work? Cocaine King-era, are these darker or more sinister? Don’t understand really how this works but I’ve noticed between Salem’s Lot and Cujo, that I thought Cujo was stronger, even though the plot was relatively simple. I’m now starting Needful Things, however Sun Dog sounds really to my liking, and I’m preparing my mind, body, and soul, for the encyclopaedic IT.
I don’t think this is a thing. Someone so prolific and long lived as King who has genre hopped all over the place and has inconsistent quality (imo), can’t really be defined by these categories. He could release another genre defining hit like IT tomorrow or a dud, neither would surprise me.
You may do better asking on /r/stephenking, but here’s how I answered this question on that sub some time ago.
Having been a Constant Reader for 40+ years, I would group King’s periods into smaller defined groups, as follows:
New and Hungry Writer (original ideas/original approach): Carrie to The Stand.
Booze and Cocaine, Part I (The Good Books): The Dead Zone to Pet Sematary.
Booze and Cocaine, Part II (Some Good, Some Bad, Some Ugly Books): The Talisman to The Tommyknockers.
Getting Clean and Sober (and rediscovering how to write without drugs, and with wife Tabitha’s help): The Dark Half to Needful Things.
Clean and Sober (with a 50/50 success rate): Gerald’s Game to The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
Hit and Run (Books Written After a Near-Death Experience): Dreamcatcher to The Dark Tower.
Period of Public Acceptance (Post-2003 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters): The Colorado Kid to End of Watch.
Working Retirement (Books Quickly Written, and Hardly Revised): Gwendy’s Button Box to Fairy Tale and on.
Hope that helps!
So I read my first Stephen King book when I was 10 and I’ve been reading along with him as he’s been publishing. I’m not sure I divide the books that easily in my mind, but I would say that I think there’s been distinctive phases in his writing. When I was growing up, from Night Shift to The Stand was an incredible string of terrifying, well-written books— generally tightly paced with strong endings. (Dead Zone is in there too.) Then suddenly there was a string of books that I’ve always thought were weaker, Christine and Cujo leap to mind, which I guess were his cocaine phase (but we didn’t know it at the time)— but then you’d have a burst of brilliance like Misery or Dolores Claiborne. The big rambling books with the lame endings started appearing as well, It and Needful Things, he began to lean on “it was like a spider but it wasn’t a spider, it hurt my mind to look at it,” “it looked like a tree but it wasn’t a tree, it hurt my mind to look at it,” which personally didn’t work for me. But what really stood out to me was that he no longer was really being edited, he’d gotten so famous and powerful that it was pretty clear he wasn’t taking advice on tightening up his books and the quality was all over the place (and I think that remains true). It’s been a grab bag since then.
The way you’re reading them, as you come to them, is fine, and the little things you might be missing aren’t that important. Salem’s Lot, for example, was famously called by his editor “Peyton Place with vampires,” and it helps I think to understand that horror was considered a sort of sleazy exploitation genre in the 70s, books like James Herbert’s and King’s early work had to have obligatory kinky sex (and then the people always had to die), and while King would be a big part of lifting the horror genre out of that paperback/men’s magazine morass, his early books reflect the genre he was writing in at the time. (This is why some of the criticisms of his sexism in his early books miss the point.) You say Cujo was “stronger” (???) but Salem’s Lot was a first, no one had written a vampire novel except Anne Rice in ages, linking it to small-town sin was a brilliant calculated move (in terms of sales), and nothing like it was out there. Cujo… was tense.