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Respect is now being accorded to horrormeister Stephen King as his 60th birthday approaches.
It has been a long time coming. But King's prodigious output of 40 novels and countless short stories, his monster book sales of more than 300 million copies, his unassuming manner despite great wealth and his multitude of charitable good works have all contributed to a rising, if sometimes begrudging admiration throughout the book world.
Maybe his vast legions of loyal readers have been onto something after all. Maybe the consigning of King to the book hack scrapheap had been elitist claptrap. The guy, at the least, is a hard-working war horse, a steady winner with remarkable staying power over decades.
The critical tide started to turn in 1998 when King published "Bag of Bones," a well-reviewed novel of huge scope and considerable ambition. That book, launched under a new publisher (Scribner), brought the semi-reclusive author to Seattle for a rare visit. He returns for the first time since then Wednesday evening when the longtime Maine resident steps behind the Benaroya Hall podium for Seattle Arts & Lectures.
King's reputation continued to rise in 2000 when he published "On Writing," a thoughtful and unusual combination of memoir of his writing life and guidebook to the craft. He won many new fans with his no-nonsense approach to writing and his openness about his own life, including the 1999 accident in which the writer was hit by a van alongside a Maine highway, resulting in grievous injuries that nearly wrote "the end" for King.
The most significant spike in his reputation came in 2003 when the National Book Foundation gave him its award for "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters," which put King in the distinguished company of such past winners as Eudora Welty, Toni Morrison, John Updike, Arthur Miller and Philip Roth. The startling award sparked some controversy, but King defused it with a magnanimous acceptance speech that urged, "Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction."
Now comes King's new novel released this week amid a chorus of favorable reviews that outstrip those that have greeted almost all of his 40 previous novels. "Lisey's Story" (Scribner, 509 pages, $28) is a powerful and affecting look at a literary marriage examined in the aftermath of the best-selling husband's death.
The book includes a few of King's expected supernatural elements, but the novel is more restrained, showing the care that King put into its writing that consumed three years after recovering from a nearly fatal bout with pneumonia, his second Lazarus act. The novel's vivid language and many allusions to works of writing and culture have prompted much praise from critics, including Janet Maslin of The New York Times who likened the new King work -- be prepared to faint -- to James Joyce!
King himself was a bit more circumspect about the book in an interview with the same newspaper, but left no doubt about his fondness for "Lisey's Story."
"I'm not saying it's deathless prose, or it's a classic," King related, "but I'm saying that I'm surprised I had this book in me. It's a lucky book."
King felt so strongly about the novel's potential that he shifted the editing of the book from his longtime editor to the editor in chief of the Scribner imprint. What happened as a result is outlined in "author's statement" at the novel's close that shows the writer is still working to overcome lingering suspicion about his craftsmanship with his usual honesty and humor.
"Nan Graham edited this book," King writes. "Quite often reviewers of novels -- especially novels by people who usually sell great numbers of books -- will say 'So-and-so would have benefited from actual editing.'
"To those tempted to say that about 'Lisey's Story,' I would be happy to submit sample pages from my first-draft manuscript, complete with Nan's notes. I had first-year French essays that came back cleaner. Nan did a wonderful job, and I thank her for sending me out in public with my shirt tucked in and my hair combed."
This month, King was tabbed to receive another major prize -- the Grand Master Award, highest honor conveyed by the Mystery Writers of America.
"I'm delighted to be getting the Grand Master Award and to be joining the company of some of my greatest idols and teachers -- people like John D. MacDonald, Ed McBain and Donald E. Westlake," King says. "The award means a great deal to me personally, because it's an award from people who understand two things: the importance of good writing and the importance of telling stories."
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