César Hernández-Meraz
Wants to be Nick, ends up as Larry
Never left me. I am still scared of a shower curtain. Peek in first.
Me too. But just in case of cockroaches.
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Never left me. I am still scared of a shower curtain. Peek in first.
.....BOO!!!!!!......I am very easily scared.
Except for spiders and snakes, real life horrors don't really scare me - they upset me and make me angry but they don't scare me y'know? Ghosts terrify me though and since SK has already written the most terrifying gothic novel ever written (The Shining), nothing written by SK or any other horror writer can top it so I don't scare as easily as I once did I think the book that came the closest to scaring me almost as much as The Shining was SK's Duma Key.
...parts of that novel gave me the willies as well.....it had some very atmospheric sections....think, "visitor with wet footprints".....Duma Key scared you? Odd what touches us.
1408 Movie was scary scary scary, agree. Must watch again.
...parts of that novel gave me the willies as well.....it had some very atmospheric sections....think, "visitor with wet footprints".....
...oh heavens no, please be seated.....Yes, that part. And I must say that Elizabeth and her flashbacks and sudden words were creepy at times. I stand corrected.
I find that as I get older I can enjoy supernatural creepies, but they don't scare me anymore (with a few exceptions--The Babadook creeped me out mightily, for example). Maybe it's because as we get older there are so many other real life things that terrify us. I think that's where Mr. King has been for the last few years--in the realm of real fear. Age, loss, health issues, evil people...man, those go right for my gut as I get older. When I was a kid, real scares weren't a thing, so I could luxuriate in make believe fears like vampires and clowns and demons; not so much, anymore. They don't hold a candle to nearly losing a child, facing cancer and bankruptcy, losing an uncomfortable number of people who are close to me, or seeing the evil men do. I feel closer to Mr. King's more recent books these days--feels like we're on a similar wavelength.
I absolutely could be misremembering, but I could swear that I remember reading that the last book he wrote while in the throes of addiction was The Tommyknockers, which was quite a while before the books you mention. I think the shift came naturally with age and maturity, the same was that real life horrors have become more personal and terrifying than creepycrawlies to many of us .I wonder when that shift took place (him going from fantasy-horror to more real life-horrors), it seems around the time he stopped his alcohol and drug-use. I don't know exactly when he did that or when the 'intervention' happened that was organized by his family (mainly by Tabitha I suppose).
Could it be around Gerald's Game/Dolores Claiborne? It's not like he didn't deal with a subject like domestic abuse before, but there it seems to get a more realistic tone, it doesn't take place in a haunted hotel to give it a more fantastical setting.
It's not that the more 'serious subjects' aren't in his earlier books too, but it's more like they're just only one part of the story and feel less central. From Carrie to Needful Things his work feels like 'genre work', but from Gerald's Game/Dolores Claiborne on he often crosses in to a more realistic approach of his subjects.
It feels broadly like he wrote the more fantasy/genre stuff when he was addicted (I don't know when he was full-out addicted, but at least by the time of Cujo, cause he has no memory of writing it), and the more 'serious' stuff when he had quit that.