He is a horror writer--to deny that is to deny the first half (so far) of his career. Stopping with that definition, or taking a limited view or that definition, is where some people are mistaken, though. I love something he said, I think in Danse Macabre (though I could definitely be wrong), about the way humor and horror 'lie together cheek and jowl' for children, because their minds are open. Horror was (and still is) a way to make us all children again; to open our minds to possibilities. What Mr. King does that is maybe unique from other writers (though I'm not so sure about that. Maybe he's just the most successful) is to use that tiny corner of rationality that he's prised up to talk about being human--the things that make us alive, that tie us together, that make us cry, or laugh, or keep chugging along when common sense says we should quit. Instead of shoving monster after monster though that crack in reality and only feeding our fear, he makes us think about what makes the monster...and whether the monster is really us.
A quote of his that resonates with me comes from the afterword of Full Dark, No Stars (actually, the whole afterword is a thing of beauty--if you haven't read it, you need to do so): "For writers who knowingly lie, for those who substitute unbelievable human behaviour for the way people really act, I have nothing but contempt... Bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do--to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street."
Here's to the man who never 'truckles to Fashion' or shies from showing us what people actually do, and in the process leads us to examine our own hearts. Horror, yes, but also love, and courage, and strength, and weakness...they're all there, and Mr. King never lets the reader forget that.