A short story^[1] is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. A short story usually deals with a few characters and often concentrates on the creation of the mood rather than the plot.^[2]

The short story format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas (in the 20th and 21st century sense) and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because of the fragmentation of the medium into genres. Since the short story format includes a wide range of genres and styles, the actual length is determined by the individual author's preference (or the story's actual needs in terms of creative trajectory or story arc) and the submission guidelines relevant to the story's actual market. Guidelines vary greatly among publishers.^[3]

Many short story writers define their work through a combination of creative, personal expression, and artistic integrity. They attempt to resist categorization by genre as well as definition by numbers, finding such approaches limiting and counter-intuitive to artistic form and reasoning. As a result, definitions of the short story based on length splinter even more when the writing process is taken into consideration.

A short story is often judged by its ability to provide a complete or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.^[4]

Overview[link]

Authors such as Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, William Trevor, Hermann Hesse, Vladimir Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Nathaniel Hawthorne, Virginia Woolf, Bolesław Prus, Dino Buzzati, Rudyard Kipling, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, P. G. Wodehouse, J.D. Salinger, H. P. Lovecraft, D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King were highly accomplished writers of both short stories and novels.

Short stories have their roots in oral story-telling traditions and the prose anecdote, a swiftly sketched situation that quickly comes to its point. With the rise of the comparatively realistic novel, the short story evolved as a miniature version, with some of its first perfectly independent examples in the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann. Other 19th-century writers well known for their short stories include Nikolai Gogol, Guy de Maupassant, and Bolesław Prus.

Some authors are known almost entirely for their short stories, either by choice (they wrote nothing else) or by critical regard (short-story writing is thought of as a challenging art). An example is Jorge Luis Borges, who won American fame with "The Garden of Forking Paths", published in the August 1948 Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Another example is O. Henry (author of "Gift of the Magi"), for whom the O. Henry Award is named. American examples include Flannery O'Connor, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver.

Short stories have often been adapted for half-hour and hour radio dramas, as on NBC Presents: Short Story (1951–52). A Popular example of this is The Hitch-Hiker, read by Orson Welles. Sometimes, short stories are adapted into television specials, such as 12:01 PM, Nightmare at 20,000 feet, The Lottery, and Button, Button. Others have been made into short films, often rewritten by other people, and even as feature length films, such is the case of Children of the Corn, The Birds, Brokeback Mountain, Who Goes There?, Duel, A sound of thunder, The Body, The Lawnmower Man, and Hearts in Atlantis.

The art of storytelling is doubtlessly older than record of civilization. Even the so-called modern short story, which was the latest of the major literary types to evolve, has an ancient lineage. Perhaps the oldest and most direct ancestor of the short story is the anecdote and illustrative story, straight to the point.

The ancient parable and fable, starkly brief narrative used to enforce some moral or spiritual truth, anticipate the severe brevity and unity of some short stories written today.

Short stories tend to be less complex than novels. Usually a short story focuses on one incident; has a single plot, a single setting, and a small number of characters; and covers a short period of time.

In longer forms of fiction, stories tend to contain certain core elements of dramatic structure: exposition (the introduction of setting, situation and main characters); complication (the event that introduces the conflict); rising action, crisis (the decisive moment for the protagonist and his commitment to a course of action); climax (the point of highest interest in terms of the conflict and the point with the most action); resolution (the point when the conflict is resolved); and moral.

Because of their length, short stories may or may not follow this pattern. Some do not follow patterns at all. For example, modern short stories only occasionally have an exposition. More typical, though, is an abrupt beginning, with the story starting in the middle of the action (in medias res). As with longer stories, plots of short stories also have a climax, crisis, or turning point. However, the endings of many short stories are abrupt and open and may or may not have a moral or practical lesson. As with any art forms, the exact characteristics of a short story will vary by creator.

Oftentimes, stories cannot be truly considered "short stories" if they are around fifty to a hundred pages. Short stories are commonly classified as around 5 to 20 pages, but, as mentioned, vary on length depending on authors. Therefore, longer stories that cannot quite be called novels are considered "novellas", and, like short stories, are commonly placed into the economically wise choice of "collections", oftentimes containing previously unpublished stories, in fact, after Shirley Jackson died, someone found a crate of unpublished short stories in her barn and used them to make a short story collection in her memory. Sometimes, authors who do not have the time or money to write a novella or novel decide to write short stories instead and work out a deal with a popular website or magazine; such as Playboy, to publish them for profit. A good example of this is author Stephen King, who has created several notorious short story collections and novella collections, many of which have been adapted into critically acclaimed films.

When short stories intend to convey a specific ethical or moral perspective, they fall into a more specific sub-category called parables (or fables). This specific kind of short story has been used by spiritual and religious leaders worldwide to inspire, enlighten, and educate their followers.

Length[link]

See the article novella for related debate about length.

Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846). Interpreting this standard nowadays is problematic, since the expected length of "one sitting" may now be briefer than it was in Poe's era. Other definitions place the maximum word count of the short story at anywhere from 1,000 to 9,000 words, for example, Harris King's "A Solitary Man" is around 4,000 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000. Stories of less than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories",^[5] or "flash fiction."

As a point of reference for the science fiction genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America define short story length Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a word count of less than 7,500.^[6]

History[link]

Predecessors[link]

Short stories date back to oral story-telling traditions which originally produced epics such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Oral narratives were often told in the form of rhyming or rhythmic verse, often including recurring sections or, in the case of Homer, Homeric epithets. Such stylistic devices often acted as mnemonics for easier recall, rendition and adaptation of the story. Short sections of verse might focus on individual narratives that could be told at one sitting. The overall arc of the tale would emerge only through the telling of multiple such sections.

Fables, succinct tales with an explicit "moral," were said by the Greek historian Herodotus to have been invented in the 6th century BCE by a Greek slave named Aesop, though other times and nationalities have also been given for him. These ancient fables are today known as Aesop's Fables.

The other ancient form of short story, the anecdote, was popular under the Roman Empire. Anecdotes functioned as a sort of parable, a brief realistic narrative that embodies a point. Many surviving Roman anecdotes were collected in the 13th or 14th century as the Gesta Romanorum. Anecdotes remained popular in Europe well into the 18th century, when the fictional anecdotal letters of Sir Roger de Coverley were published.

In Europe, the oral story-telling tradition began to develop into written stories in the early 14th century, most notably with Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Both of these books are composed of individual short stories (which range from farce or humorous anecdotes to well-crafted literary fictions) set within a larger narrative story (a frame story), although the frame-tale device was not adopted by all writers. At the end of the 16th century, some of the most popular short stories in Europe were the darkly tragic "novella" of Matteo Bandello (especially in their French translation).

The mid 17th century in France saw the development of a refined short novel, the "nouvelle", by such authors as Madame de Lafayette. In the 1690s, traditional fairy tales began to be published (one of the most famous collections was by Charles Perrault). The appearance of Antoine Galland's first modern translation of the Thousand and One Nights (or Arabian Nights) (from 1704; another translation appeared in 1710–12) would have an enormous influence on the 18th century European short stories of Voltaire, Diderot and others.

1790–1850[link]

There are early examples of short stories published separately between 1790 and 1810, but the first true collections of short stories appeared between 1810 and 1830 in several countries around the same period.^[7]

The first short stories in the United Kingdom were gothic tales like Richard Cumberland's "remarkable narrative" "The Poisoner of Montremos" (1791).^[8] Great novelists like Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens also wrote some short stories.

One of the earliest short stories in the United States was Charles Brockden Brown's "Somnambulism" from 1805. Washington Irving wrote mysterious tales including "Rip van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820). Nathaniel Hawthorne published the first part of his Twice-Told Tales in 1837. Edgar Allan Poe wrote his tales of mystery and imagination between 1842 and 1859. Classic stories are "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and the first detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". In "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) Poe argued that a literary work should be short enough for a reader to finish in one sitting.^[9]

In Germany, the first collection of short stories was by Heinrich von Kleist in 1810 and '11. The Brothers Grimm published their first volume of collected fairy tales in 1812. E. T. A. Hoffmann followed with his own original fantasy tales, of which "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816) is the most famous.

In France. Prosper Mérimée wrote Mateo Falcone in 1829.

In Russia. Alexander Pushkin wrote romantic and mysterious tales, including "The Blizzard" (1831) and "The Queen of Spades" (1834). Nikolai Gogol's "Nevsky Prospekt" (1835), "The Nose" (1836) and "The Overcoat" (1842) are dark humorous tales about human misery.

1850–1900[link]

In the latter 19th century, the growth of print magazines and journals created a strong demand for short fiction of between 3,000 and 15,000 words.

In the United Kingdom, Thomas Hardy wrote dozens of short stories, including "The Three Strangers" (1883), "A Mere Interlude" (1885) and "Barbara of the House of Grebe" (1890). Rudyard Kipling published short story collections for grown-ups, e.g. Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), as well as for children, e.g. The Jungle Book (1894). In 1892 Arthur Conan Doyle brought the detective story to a new height with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. H. G. Wells wrote his first science fiction stories in the 1880s. One of his best known "The Country of the Blind" (1904).

In the United States, Herman Melville published his story collection The Piazza Tales in 1856. "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was the title story of Mark Twain's first book one year later. In 1884, Brander Matthews, the first American professor of dramatic literature, published The Philosophy of the Short-Story. At that same year, Matthews was the first one to name the emerging genre "short story". Another theorist of narrative fiction was Henry James. James wrote a lot of short stories himself, including "The Real Thing" (1892), "Maud-Evelyn" and The Beast in the Jungle (1903). In the 1890s Kate Chopin published short stories in several magazines.

The most prolific French author of short stories was Guy de Maupassant. Stories like "Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat", 1880) and "L'Inutile Beauté" ("The Useless Beauty", 1890) are good examples of French realism.

In Russia, Ivan Turgenev gained recognition with his story collection A Sportsman's Sketches. Nikolai Leskov created his first short stories in the 1860s. Late in his life Fyodor Dostoyevski wrote "The Meek One" (1876) and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" (1877), two stories with great psychological and philosophical depth. Leo Tolstoy handled ethical questions in his short stories, for example in "Ivan the Fool" (1885), "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886) and "Alyosha the Pot" (1905). The greatest specialist of the Russian short story however was Anton Chekhov. Classic examples of his realistic prose are "The Bet" (1889), "Ward No. 6" (1892), and "The Lady with the Dog" (1899). Maxim Gorky's best known short story is "Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (1899).

In Poland, Bolesław Prus was the most important author of short stories. In 1888 he wrote "A Legend of Old Egypt".

1900–1945[link]

In the United Kingdom, periodicals like The Strand Magazine, The Sketch, Harper's Magazine and Story-Teller contributed to the popularity of the short story. Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916), also known by his pen name of Saki, wrote satirical short stories about Edwardian England. W. Somerset Maugham, who wrote over a hundred short stories, was one of the most popular authors of his time. P. G. Wodehouse published his first collection of comical stories about butler Jeeves in 1917. Lots of detective stories were written by G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie en Dorothy L. Sayers.^[10] Short stories by Virginia Woolf are Kew Gardens (1919) and Solid Objects, about a politician with mental problems. Graham Greene wrote his Twenty-One Stories between 1929 and 1954. A specialist of the short story was V. S. Pritchett, whose first collection appeared in 1932.^[11] Arthur C. Clarke published his first science fiction story, Travel by Wire! in 1937.

In Ireland, James Joyce published his short story collection Dubliners in 1914. These stories, written in a more accessible style than his later novels, are based on careful observation of the inhabitants of his birth city.

In the first half of the 20th century, a number of high-profile American magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker Scribner's, The Saturday Evening Post, Esquire and The Bookman published short stories in each issue. The demand for quality short stories was so great and the money paid for such so well that F. Scott Fitzgerald repeatedly turned to short-story (as Matthews preferred to write it) writing to pay his numerous debts. His first collection Flappers and Philosophers appeared in book form 1920. William Faulkner wrote over one hundred short stories. Go Down, Moses, a collection of seven stories, appeared in 1941. Ernest Hemingway's concise writing style was perfectly fit for shorter fiction. Stories like A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (1926), Hills Like White Elephants (1927) and The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936) are only a few pages long, but carefully crafted. Dorothy Parker's bittersweet story Big Blonde saw the light in 1929. A popular science fiction story is Nightfall by Isaac Asimov.

Katherine Mansfield from New Zealand wrote many of short stories between 1912 and her death in 1923. The Doll's House (1922) treats the topic of social inequity.^[12]

Two important authors of short stories in the German language were Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. In 1922 the latter wrote A Hunger Artist, about a man who fasts for several days.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is called the Father of the Japanese short story.

After 1945[link]

The period following World War II saw a great flowering of literary short fiction in the United States. The New Yorker continued to publish the works of the form’s leading mid-century practitioners, including Shirley Jackson, whose story, The Lottery, published in 1948, elicited the strongest response in the magazine’s history to that time. Other frequent contributors during the last 1940s included John Cheever, John Steinbeck, Jean Stafford, and Eudora Welty. J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories (1953) experimented with point of view and voice, while Flannery O’Connor's story A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955) reinvigorated the Southern Gothic style. Cultural and social identity played a considerable role in much of the short fiction of the 1960s. Philip Roth and Grace Paley cultivated distinctive Jewish-American voices. Tillie Olsen’s I Stand Here Ironing (1961) adopted a consciously feminist perspective. James Baldwin’s collection Going to Meet the Man (1965) told stories of African-American life. Frank O’Connor’s The Lonely Voice, an exploration of the short story, appeared in 1963. Wallace Stegner's short stories are primarily set in the American West. Stephen King published a lot of short stories in men's magazines in the 1960s and after. The 1970s saw the rise of the post-modern short story in the works of Donald Barthelme and John Barth. Traditionalists including John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates maintained significant influence on the form. Minimalism gained widespread influence in the 1980s, most notably in the work of Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie.

In Canada, Saul Bellow published Mosby's Memoirs in 1968, a story about an old intellectual.^[13] Alice Munro, who is nicknamed the Canadian Chekhov, started publishing in the same year.^[14]

In the United Kingdom, Daphne du Maurier wrote suspense stories like The Birds (1952) and Don't Look Now (1971). Roald Dahl was the master of the twist-in-the-tale. Short story collections like Lamb to the Slaughter (1953) and Kiss Kiss (1960) illustrate his dark humour.

In Italy, Italo Calvino published the short story collection Marcovaldo, about a poor man in a city, in 1963.

The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges is the most famous writer of short stories in the Spanish language. The Library of Babel (1941) and The Aleph (1945) handle difficult subjects like infinity.

See also[link]

Novels portal

• List of short story competitions
• Drabble
• Essay
• Flash fiction (also called microfiction)
• Irish short story
• Literary journal
• Novella
• Novelette
• Sketch story
• Tale (disambiguation)
• Vignette

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Gelfant, Blanche and Graver, Lawrence, (eds.), The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story, Columbia University Press (2000)
• Hart, James (ed.) Oxford Companion to American Literature, Oxford University Press.
• Magill, Frank, (ed.) Short Story Writers. Salem Press, Pasadena, California (1997).
• Watson, Noelle (ed.) Reference Guide to Short Fiction. St. James Press, Detroit (1994).

External links[link]

Wikisource has several original texts related to: Short stories

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Short stories

• The Best Short Stories
• The Short History of the Short Story by William Boyd
• William Boyd's classification of Short Stories
• Short stories at the Open Directory Project
• The Writing of the Short Story by Lewis Worthington Smith

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (June 2010)

Also see Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage

Monument to the "Weiße Rose" in front of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany, consisting of students from the University of Munich and their philosophy professor. The group became known for an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign, lasting from June 1942 until February 1943, that called for active opposition to dictator Adolf Hitler's regime.

The six most recognized members of the group were arrested by the Gestapo and beheaded in 1943. The text of their sixth leaflet was smuggled by Helmuth James Graf von Moltke out of Germany through Scandinavia to the United Kingdom, and in July 1943 copies of it were dropped over Germany by Allied planes, retitled "The Manifesto of the Students of Munich."^[1]

Another member, Hans Conrad Leipelt, who helped distribute Leaflet 6 in Hamburg, was executed on January 29, 1945 for his participation.

Today, the members of the White Rose are honoured in Germany amongst its greatest heroes, since they opposed the Third Reich in the face of death.

Members[link]

Members and actions[link]

The core of the White Rose were students from the University of Munich — Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, St. Alex Schmorell (a canonized New Martyr in the Orthodox Church), Willi Graf, Christoph Probst, Traute Lafrenz, Katharina Schueddekopf, Lieselotte (Lilo) Berndl, Jürgen Wittenstein, Marie-Luise Jahn and Falk Harnack. Most were in their early twenties. A professor of philosophy and musicology, Kurt Huber, was also associated with their cause. Additionally, Wilhelm Geyer, Manfred Eickemeyer, Josef Soehngen, and Harald Dohrn participated in their debates. Geyer taught Alexander Schmorell how to make the tin templates used in the graffiti campaign. Eugen Grimminger of Stuttgart funded their operations. Grimminger's secretary Tilly Hahn contributed her own funds to the cause, and acted as go-between for Grimminger and the group in Munich. She frequently carried supplies such as envelopes, paper, and an additional duplicating machine from Stuttgart to Munich. In addition, a group of high school students in the city of Ulm distributed a number of the group's leaflets. Among this group were Hans Hirzel and Franz J. Müller.

Between June 1942 and February 1943, the group prepared and distributed six leaflets, in which they called for the active opposition of the German people to Nazi oppression and tyranny. Huber wrote the final leaflet. A draft of a seventh leaflet, designed by Christoph Probst, was found in the possession of Hans Scholl at the time of his arrest by the Gestapo. While Sophie Scholl hid incriminating evidence on her person before being taken into custody, Hans did not do the same with Probst's leaflet draft or cigarette coupons given to him by Geyer, an act that cost Probst his life and nearly undid Geyer.

Influences and vision[link]

The White Rose was influenced by the German Youth Movement, of which Christoph Probst was a member. Hans Scholl was a member of the Hitler Youth until 1937, and Sophie was a member of the Bund Deutscher Mädel. Membership of both groups was compulsory for young Germans, although many - such as Willi Graf, Otl Aicher, and Heinz Brenner - refused to join. The ideas of Deutsche Jungenschaft vom 1.11.1929 (dj 1.11.) had strong influence on Hans Scholl and his colleagues. d.j.1.11 was a youth group of the German Youth Movement, founded by Eberhard Koebel in 1929. Willi Graf was a member of Neudeutschland, a Catholic youth association, and the Grauer Orden.

The group was motivated by ethical and moral considerations. They came from various religious backgrounds. Willi and Katharina were devout Catholics. The Scholls, Lilo, and Falk were just as devoutly Lutheran. Alexander Schmorell was devoutly Orthodox, the grandson of a priest and eventually glorified as an Orthodox Christian saint. Traute adhered to the concepts of anthroposophy, while Eugen Grimminger considered himself Buddhist. Christoph Probst was baptized a Catholic shortly before his execution. His father Hermann was nominally a Catholic, but for some time he was into Eastern thought and wisdom. That is the reason why his son Christoph was not baptized as a baby.

Some had witnessed atrocities of the war on the battlefield and against the civilian population in the East. Willi Graf saw the Warsaw and Lodz Ghettos, and could not get the images of brutality out of his mind. By February 1943, the young friends sensed the reversal of fortune that the Wehrmacht suffered at Stalingrad would eventually lead to Germany's defeat. They rejected fascism and militarism and believed in a federated Europe that adhered to principles of tolerance and justice.

Origin[link]

In 1941 Hans Scholl read a copy of a sermon by an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, Bishop August von Galen, decrying the euthanasia policies (extended that same year to the concentration camps)^[2] which the Nazis maintained would protect the German gene pool.^[3] Horrified by the Nazi policies, Sophie obtained permission to reprint the sermon and distribute it at the University of Munich as the group's first leaflet prior to their formal organization.^[3]

Under Gestapo interrogation, Hans Scholl gave several explanations for the origin of the name "The White Rose," and suggested he may have chosen it while he was under the emotional influence of an obscure^{[citation needed]} 19th century poem with the same name by German poet Clemens Brentano. Most scholars, as well as the German public, have taken this answer at face value. Earlier, before these Gestapo transcripts surfaced, Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn speculated briefly that the origin might have come from a German novel Die Weiße Rose- The White Rose, published in Berlin in 1929 and written by B. Traven, the German author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Dumbach and Newborn said there was a chance that Hans Scholl and Alex Schmorell had read this. They also wrote that the symbol of the white rose was intended to represent purity and innocence in the face of evil.^[4]

In February 2006, however, Dr. Jud Newborn authored an essay entitled, "Solving Mysteries: The Secret of 'The White Rose'," originally intended as an Afterword to his co-authored book.^[5] In this essay he argues that Hans Scholl's response to the Gestapo was intentionally misleading in order to protect Josef Soenghen, the anti-Nazi bookseller who had provided the White Rose members with a safe meeting place for the exchange of information and to receive occasional financial contributions. Soenghen kept a stash of banned books hidden in his store. Dr. Newborn also looked into the content of B. Traven's The White Rose, arguing that the novel, banned by the Nazis in 1933, provided evidence of origin of the group's name.

In the same essay, Newborn also revealed information about Hans Scholl's 1937/1938 arrest and trial for participation in a youth movement banned the end of 1936—one he had joined in 1934, when he and other Ulm Hitler Youth members considered membership in this group and the Hitler Youth to be compatible. Hans Scholl was also accused of transgressing Paragraph 175, the anti-homosexuality law, because of a same-sex teen relationship dating back to 1934-5, when Hans was only 16 years old. Newborn built this argument partially on the work of Eckard Holler, a sociologist specializing in the German Youth Movement,^[6] as well as on the Gestapo interrogation transcripts from the 1937/38 arrest, and with reference to historian George Mosse's discussion of the homoerotic aspects of the German "bündisch" Youth Movement.^[7] As Mosse indicated, idealized romantic attachments among male youths was not uncommon in Germany, especially among members of the "bündisch" associations. Newborn argued that this experience led both Hans and Sophie to identify with the victims of the Nazi state, providing an explanation for why Hans and Sophie Scholl made the transformation from avid Hitler Youth leaders to passionate opponents of National Socialism.^[5]

Leaflets[link]

Quoting extensively from the Bible, Aristotle and Novalis, as well as Goethe and Schiller, they appealed to what they considered the German intelligentsia, believing that they would be intrinsically opposed to Nazism. At first, the leaflets were sent out in mailings from cities in Bavaria and Austria, since the members believed that southern Germany would be more receptive to their anti-militarist message.

^[8]

Alexander Schmorell, who penned the words the White Rose, has become most famous for having spoken, so much so that he is now an Orthodox saint after his martyrdom. Most of the more practical material —calls to arms and statistics of murder— came from Alex's pen. Hans Scholl wrote in a characteristically high style, exhorting the German people to action on the grounds of philosophy and reason.

At the end of July 1942, some of the male students in the group were deployed to the Eastern Front for military service (acting as medics) during the academic break. In late autumn, the men returned, and the White Rose resumed its resistance activities. In January 1943, using a hand-operated duplicating machine, the group is thought to have produced between 6,000 and 9,000 copies of their fifth leaflet, "Appeal to all Germans!", which was distributed via courier runs to many cities (where they were mailed). Copies appeared in Stuttgart, Cologne, Vienna, Freiburg, Chemnitz, Hamburg, Innsbruck, and Berlin. The fifth leaflet was composed by Hans Scholl with improvements by Huber. These leaflets warned that Hitler was leading Germany into the abyss; with the gathering might of the Allies, defeat was now certain. The reader was urged to "Support the resistance movement!" in the struggle for "Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and protection of the individual citizen from the arbitrary action of criminal dictator-states". These were the principles that would form "the foundations of the new Europe".

The leaflets caused a sensation, and the Gestapo began an intensive search for the publishers.

On the nights of the 3rd, 8th, and 15 February 1943, the slogans "Freedom" and "Down with Hitler" appeared on the walls of the University and other buildings in Munich. Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl and Willi Graf had painted them with tar-based paint (similar graffiti that appeared in the surrounding area at this time was painted by imitators).

The shattering German defeat at Stalingrad at the beginning of February provided the occasion for the group's sixth leaflet, written by Huber. Headed "Fellow students!", it announced that the "day of reckoning" had come for "the most contemptible tyrant our people has ever endured"."The dead of Stalingrad adjure us!"

Shortly after the capture of the members of the White Rose, Leaflet No. 6 was smuggled out of Germany and later copied by the Allies and dropped from aircraft as propaganda over Nazi Germany.^[1]

Capture and trial[link]

Atrium of the University

On 18 February 1943, coincidentally the same day that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called on the German people to embrace total war in his Sportpalast speech, the Scholls brought a suitcase full of leaflets to the university. They hurriedly dropped stacks of copies in the empty corridors for students to find when they flooded out of lecture rooms. Leaving before the class break, the Scholls noticed that some copies remained in the suitcase and decided it would be a pity not to distribute them. They returned to the atrium and climbed the staircase to the top floor, and Sophie flung the last remaining leaflets into the air. This spontaneous action was observed by the custodian Jakob Schmid. The police were called and Hans and Sophie Scholl were taken into Gestapo custody. Sophie and Hans were interrogated by Gestapo interrogator Robert Mohr, who initially thought Sophie was innocent. However, after Hans confessed, Sophie assumed full responsibility in an attempt to protect other members of the White Rose. Despite this, the other active members were soon arrested, and the group and everyone associated with them were brought in for interrogation.

The Scholls and Probst were the first to stand trial before the Volksgerichtshof—the People's Court that tried political offenses against the Nazi German state—on 22 February 1943. They were found guilty of treason and Roland Freisler, head judge of the court, sentenced them to death. The three were executed the same day by guillotine at Stadelheim Prison. All three were noted for the courage with which they faced their deaths, particularly Sophie, who remained firm despite intense interrogation (however, reports that she arrived at the trial with a broken leg from torture are false). She said to Freisler during the trial, "You know as well as we do that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly that you won't admit it?"^[9] When Hans was executed, he said "Let freedom live" as the blade fell.

The second White Rose trial took place on 19 April 1943. Only eleven had been indicted before this trial. At the last minute, the prosecutor added Traute Lafrenz (who was considered so dangerous that she was to have had a trial all to herself), Gisela Schertling, and Katharina Schueddekopf. None had an attorney. One was assigned after the women appeared in court with their friends.

Professor Huber had counted on the good services of his friend, Attorney Justizrat Roder, a high-ranking Nazi. Roder had not bothered to visit Huber before the trial and had not read Huber's leaflet. Another attorney had carried out all the pre-trial paperwork. When Roder realized how damning the evidence was against Huber, he resigned. The junior attorney took over.

Grimminger initially was to receive the death sentence for funding their operations. His attorney successfully used the female wiles of Tilly Hahn to convince Freisler that Grimminger had not known what the money was really being used for.^{[citation needed]} Grimminger therefore escaped with a sentence of ten years in a penitentiary.

The third White Rose trial was to have taken place on 20 April 1943 (Hitler's birthday), because Freisler anticipated death sentences for Wilhelm Geyer, Harald Dohrn, Josef Soehngen, and Manfred Eickemeyer. He did not want too many death sentences at a single trial, and had scheduled those four for the next day. However, the evidence against them was lost, and the trial was postponed until 13 July 1943.

At that trial, Gisela Schertling —who had betrayed most of the friends, even fringe members like Gerhard Feuerle— redeemed herself by recanting her testimony against all of them. Since Freisler did not preside over the third trial, the judge acquitted all but Soehngen (who got only six months in prison) for lack of evidence.

Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber were beheaded on 13 July 1943, and Willi Graf on 12 October 1943. Friends and colleagues of the White Rose, who had helped in the preparation and distribution of leaflets and in collecting money for the widow and young children of Probst, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to ten years.

Prior to their deaths, several members of the White Rose believed that their execution would stir university students and other anti-war citizens into activism against Hitler and the war.

After her release for the sentence handed down on April 19, Traute Lafrenz was rearrested. She spent the last year of the war in prison. Trials kept being postponed and moved to different locations because of Allied air raids. Her trial was finally set for April 1945, after which she probably would have been executed. Three days before the trial, however, the Allies liberated the town where she was held prisoner, thereby saving her life.

The White Rose had the last word. Their last leaflet was smuggled to the Allies, who edited it, and air-dropped millions of copies over Germany. The members of the White Rose, especially Sophie, became icons of the new post-war Germany.

Commemoration[link]

The square where the central hall of Munich University is located has been named "Geschwister-Scholl-Platz" after Hans and Sophie Scholl; the square opposite to it is "Professor-Huber-Platz". Two large fountains are in front of the university, one on either side of Ludwigstraße. The fountain in front of the university is dedicated to Hans and Sophie Scholl. The other, across the street, is dedicated to Professor Huber. Many schools, streets, and other places across Germany are named in memory of the members of the White Rose.

One of Germany's leading literary prizes is called the "Geschwister Scholl" prize (the "Scholl Siblings" prize.)

The White Rose has also received artistic treatments, including the acclaimed opera Weiße Rose by Udo Zimmermann, In memoriam: die weisse Rose by Hans Werner Henze and Kommilitonen!, an opera by Peter Maxwell Davies.

With the fall of Nazi Germany, the White Rose came to represent opposition to tyranny in the German psyche and was lauded for acting without interest in personal power or self-aggrandizement. Their story became so well-known that the composer Carl Orff claimed (falsely by some accounts^[10]) to his Allied interrogators that he was a founding member of the White Rose and was released. He was personally acquainted with Huber, but there is no evidence that Orff was ever involved in the movement.

On February 5th, 2012, Alexander Schmorell was glorified (canonized) as a New Martyr by the Orthodox Church.

In the media[link]

The following, although not exhaustive, provides a chronological account of some of the more notable treatments of the White Rose in media, book and artistic form.

The New York Times published two articles on the first White Rose trials. They were published on March 29, 1943 and April 25, 1943. The articles were titled "Nazis Execute 3 Munich Students For Writing Anti-Hitler Pamphlets" and "Germans Clinging to Victory Hope in Fear of Reprisals." While the articles did not correctly record all of the information about the resistance, the trials, and the execution, they were the first acknowledgement of the White Rose in the United States.

Beginning in the 1970s, three film accounts of the White Rose resistance were produced. The first was a film financed by the Bavarian state government entitled Das Versprechen' (The Promise) and released in the 1970s. The film is not well known outside Germany, and to some extent even within the country. It was particularly notable in that unlike most films, it showed the White Rose from its inception and how it progressed. In 1982, Percy Adlon's Fünf letzte Tage (The Last Five Days) presented Lena Stolze as Sophie in her last days from the point of view of her cellmate Else Gebel. In the same year, Stolze repeated the role in Michael Verhoeven's Die Weiße Rose (The White Rose).

A book, Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, was published in English in February 2006. An account by Annette Dumbach and Dr. Jud Newborn tells the story behind the film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, focusing on the White Rose movement while setting the group's resistance in the broader context of German culture and politics and other forms of resistance during the Nazi era.

As mentioned earlier, Udo Zimmermann composed a chamber opera about the White Rose (Weiße Rose) in 1986. Premiering in Hamburg, it went on to earn acclaim and a series of international performances.

Lillian Garrett-Groag's play, The White Rose, premiered at the Old Globe Theatre in 1991. Several plays have also been written by teachers in the USA for performance by students.

In Fatherland, an alternate history novel by Robert Harris, there is passing reference to the White Rose still remaining active in supposedly Nazi-ruled Germany in 1964.

In an extended German national TV competition held in the autumn of 2003 to choose "the ten greatest Germans of all time" (ZDF TV), Germans under the age of 40 placed Hans and Sophie Scholl in fourth place, selecting them over Bach, Goethe, Gutenberg, Willy Brandt, Bismarck, and Albert Einstein. Not long before, women readers of the mass-circulation magazine Brigitte had voted Sophie Scholl as "the greatest woman of the twentieth century".

In 2003, a group of students at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas established The White Rose Society dedicated to Holocaust remembrance and genocide awareness. Every April, the White Rose Society hands out 10,000 white roses on campus, representing the approximate number of people killed in a single day at Auschwitz. The date corresponds with Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. The group organizes performances of The Rose of Treason, a play about the White Rose, and has rights to show the movie Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days). The White Rose Society is affiliated with Hillel and the Anti-Defamation League.^{[citation needed]}

In February 2005, a movie about Sophie Scholl's last days, Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days), featuring actress Julia Jentsch as Sophie, was released. Drawing on interviews with survivors and transcripts that had remained hidden in East German archives until 1990, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in January 2006. An English language film, The White Rose, was in development for a time in 2005/06, to be directed by Angelica Huston and starring Christina Ricci as Sophie Scholl, but has since been abandoned, as it no longer appears on the Internet Movie Database site.^[11] Another American film project about the White Rose continues to be under development^{[citation needed]} by co-author Jud Newborn of the 2006 book Sophie Scholl and the White Rose.^[5]

White Rose has inspired many people around the world, including many anti-war activists in recent years. Scattered throughout 2007-2008, 5 hoax pipe bombs were placed at various military recruitment centers with the words "Die Weisse Rose" written upon them.^[12]

In February 2009, a biography of Sophie Scholl, Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman Who Defied Hitler, was published in English by the History Press. The book, by the Oxford-educated British historian Frank McDonough, includes material related to Hans Scholl and featured in the national press in the UK and rose up the best seller lists. This renewed interest in Hans and Sophie Scholl led to the first ever showing on UK national television of Sophie Scholl: The Final Days on Channel 4 in March 2009.

The UK-based genocide prevention student network Aegis Students uses a white rose as their symbol in commemoration of the White Rose movement. There are numerous study guides to the White Rose, notably one available from the University of Minnesota's Holocaust Center.

In 2009, Dan Fesperman published a novel entitled The Arms Maker of Berlin in which activities by real and fictional White Rose characters play a significant role in the story.

In 2011, a documentary film by André Bossuroy addressing the memory of the victims of Nazism and of Stalinism ICH BIN, with the support from the Fondation Hippocrène and from the EACEA Agency of the European Commission (Programme Europe for citizens – An active European remembrance), RTBF, VRT. Four young Europeans meet with historians and witnesses of our past… They investigate the events of the Second World War in Germany (the student movement of the White Rose in Munich), in France (the Vel d’Hiv Roundup in Paris, the resistance in Vercors) and in Russia (Katyn Forest massacre).They examine the impact of these events; curious to how the European peoples are creating their identities today.

Quotations[link]

• If everyone waits until the other man makes a start, the messengers of avenging Nemesis will come steadily closer. (From Leaflet 1, urging immediate initiative by the reader. Nemesis of course punished those who had fallen to the temptation of hubris.)
• Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race? ... The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals....[The German] must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt....For through his apathetic behaviour he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do.... he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all! Each man wants to be exonerated ....But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!... now that we have recognized [the Nazis] for what they are, it must be the sole and first duty, the holiest duty of every German to destroy these beasts. (From Leaflet 2)
• ...why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system? (From Leaflet 3)
• ...every convinced opponent of National Socialism must ask himself how he can fight against the present "state" in the most effective way, how he can strike it the most telling blows. Through passive resistance, without a doubt. (From Leaflet 3)
• We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace! (Leaflet 4's concluding phrase, which became the motto of the White Rose resistance.) "We will not be silent" has been put on t-shirts in many languages (among them Arabic, Spanish, French, Hebrew, and Persian) in protest against the U.S. war in Iraq. This shirt, in the English-Arabic version, led, in 2006, to the Iraqi blogger Raed Jarrar's being prevented from boarding a Jet Blue airplane from New York to his home in San Francisco, until he changed his shirt.^[13]
• Last words of Sophie Scholl: …your heads will fall as well. There is, however, some dispute over whether Sophie or Hans actually said this; other sources claim that Sophie's final words were God, you are my refuge into eternity. The film Sophie Scholl, The Last Days shows her last words as being The sun still shines (however, these are probably fictitious).
• Last words of Hans Scholl: Es lebe die Freiheit! (Long live freedom!).
• Now my death will be easy and joyful. These were the words of Christoph Probst after a Catholic priest conditionally (sub conditione) baptized him and had heard his first Confession.
• Hitler and his regime must fall so that Germany may live. This is from an unpublished leaflet written by Christoph Probst.
• When you have decided, act. Another quote from Christoph Probst's unpublished leaflet.
• I always made it a point to carry sev­eral extra copies of the leaflets with me whenever I was walking through the city – specifically for that purpose. Whenever I saw an opportune moment, I took it. Another Sophie Scholl quote.
• I knew what I took upon myself and I was prepared to lose my life by so doing. From the interrogation of Hans Scholl.

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: White Rose

• DeVita, James "The Silenced" HarperCollins, 2006. Young adult novel inspired by Sophie Scholl and The White Rose.
• DeVita, James "The Rose of Treason", Anchorage Press Plays. Young adult play of the story of The White Rose.
• Dumbach, Annette & Newborn, Jud. "Sophie Scholl & The White Rose". First published as "Shattering the German Night", 1986; this expanded, updated edition Oneworld Publications, 2006. ISBN 978-1-85168-536-3

• Leaflet I (German) (Text / Original as PDF)
• Leaflet II (German) (Text / Original as PDF)
• Leaflet III (German) (Text / Original as PDF)
• Leaflet IV (German) (Text / Original as PDF)
• Leaflet V (German) (Text / Original as PDF)
• Leaflet VI (German) (Text / Original as PDF)

• Hanser, Richard. A Noble Treason: The Revolt of the Munich Students Against Hitler. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1979. Print.
• McDonough Frank, Sophie Scholl: The Real Story of the Woman Who Defied Hitler, History Press, 2009.
• Sachs, Ruth Hanna. Two Interviews: Hartnagel and Wittenstein (Annotated). Ed. Denise Heap and Joyce Light. Los Angeles: Exclamation!, 2005.
• Sachs, Ruth Hanna. White Rose History, Volume I: Coming Together (January 31, 1933 – April 30, 1942). Lehi, Utah: Exclamation! Publishers, 2002.
• Sachs, Ruth Hanna. White Rose History, Volume II: Journey to Freedom (May 1, 1942 – October 12, 1943). Lehi, Utah: Exclamation! Publishers, 2005.
• Sachs, Ruth Hanna. White Rose History, Volume III: Fighters to the Very End (October 13, 1943 – May 8, 1945).
• Sachs, Ruth Hanna. White Rose History: The Ultimate CD-ROM (1933–1945).
• Scholl, Inge. The White Rose: Munich, 1942-1943. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983.
• Vinke, Hermann. The Short Life of Sophie Scholl. Trans. Hedwig Pachter. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Print.

Primary Source Materials in English Translation:

• Alexander Schmorell: Gestapo Interrogation Transcripts. RGWA I361K-I-8808. ISBN 0-9767183-8-3
• Gestapo Interrogation Transcripts: Graf & Schmorell (NJ 1704). ISBN 0-9710541-3-4
• Gestapo Interrogation Transcripts: Scholls & Probst (ZC 13267). ISBN 0-9710541-5-0
• The Bündische Trials (Scholl / Reden): 1937–1938. ISBN 0-9710541-2-6
• Third White Rose Trial: July 13, 1943 (Eickemeyer, Söhngen, Dohrn, and Geyer). ISBN 0-9710541-8-5
• Scholl, Hans, and Sophia Scholl. At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl. Ed. Inge Jens. Trans. Maxwell Brownjohn. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Print.

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: White Rose

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: The White Rose

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2010)

Stephen King
Stephen King, February 2007
Born	Stephen Edwin King (1947-09-21) September 21, 1947 (age 64) Portland, Maine
Pen name	Richard Bachman, John Swithen
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, columnist, actor, television producer, film director
Alma mater	University of Maine (B.A., English, 1970)
Genres	Horror, fantasy, science fiction, drama, gothic, genre fiction, dark fantasy
Notable work(s)	Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, It, and The Dark Tower
Spouse(s)	Tabitha King
Children	Naomi King Joe King Owen King
Influences Burton Hatlen[1] Bram Stoker Elmore Leonard Shirley Jackson H. P. Lovecraft Richard Matheson Ray Bradbury[2] Edgar Allan Poe[3] John D. MacDonald Don Robertson
Influenced Peter David[4] J. J. Abrams[5] Damon Lindelof[5] Jeaniene Frost[6]
Signature
www.stephenking.com

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies^[7] and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. As of 2011, King has written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, five non-fiction books, and nine collections of short stories. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine.

King has received Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Society Awards, his novella The Way Station was a Nebula Award novelette nominee,^[8] and in 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.^[9] He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his whole career, such as the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (2004), the Canadian Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award (2007) and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America (2007).^[10]

Early life[link]

King's father, Donald Edwin King, who was born circa 1913 in Peru, Indiana, was a merchant seaman.^[11] King's mother, Nellie Ruth (née Pillsbury; March 13, 1913 – December 28, 1973) was born in Scarborough, Maine.^[11] They were married July 23, 1939, in Cumberland County, Maine.^[11]

Stephen King was born September 21, 1947, in Portland, Maine. When King was two years old, his father left the family under the pretense of "going to buy a pack of cigarettes," leaving his mother to raise King and his adopted older brother, David, by herself, sometimes under great financial strain. The family moved to De Pere, Wisconsin, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Stratford, Connecticut. When King was eleven years old, the family returned to Durham, Maine, where Ruth King cared for her parents until their deaths. She then became a caregiver in a local residential facility for the mentally challenged.^[12] King was raised Methodist.^[13]

As a child, King apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train, though he has no memory of the event. His family told him that after leaving home to play with the boy, King returned, speechless and seemingly in shock. Only later did the family learn of the friend's death. Some commentators have suggested that this event may have psychologically inspired some of King's darker works,^[14] but King makes no mention of it in his memoir On Writing.^[15]

King's primary inspiration for writing horror fiction was related in detail in his 1981 non-fiction Danse Macabre, in a chapter titled "An Annoying Autobiographical Pause". King makes a comparison of his uncle successfully dowsing for water using the bough of an apple branch with the sudden realization of what he wanted to do for a living. While browsing through an attic with his elder brother, King uncovered a paperback version of an H.P. Lovecraft collection of short stories entitled The Lurker in the Shadows that had belonged to his father. The cover art—an illustration of a yellow-green Demon hiding within the recesses of a Hellish cavern beneath a tombstone—was, he writes, the moment in his life which "that interior dowsing rod responded to.” King told Barnes & Noble Studios during a 2009 interview, "I knew that I'd found home when I read that book."^[16]

Education and early career[link]

King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High School, in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC's horror comics, including Tales from the Crypt (he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow). He began writing for fun while still in school, contributing articles to Dave's Rag, the newspaper that his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling stories to his friends which were based on movies he had seen (though when discovered by his teachers, he was forced to return the profits). The first of his stories to be independently published was "I Was a Teenage Grave Robber", serialized over three published and one unpublished issue of a fanzine, Comics Review, in 1965.^[17] That story was published the following year in a revised form as "In a Half-World of Terror" in another fanzine, Stories of Suspense, edited by Marv Wolfman.^[18]

From 1966, King studied English at the University of Maine, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. That same year his first daughter, Naomi Rachel, was born. He wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Maine Campus, titled "Steve King's Garbage Truck", took part in a writing workshop organized by Burton Hatlen,^[1] and took odd jobs to pay for his studies, including one at an industrial laundry. He sold his first professional short story, "The Glass Floor", to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967.^[12] The Fogler Library at the University of Maine now holds many of King's papers.

After leaving the university, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, being unable to find a teaching post immediately, initially supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men's magazines such as Cavalier. Many of these early stories have been published in the collection Night Shift. In 1971, King married Tabitha Spruce, a fellow student at the University of Maine whom he had met at the University's Fogler Library after one of Professor Hatlen's workshops.^[1] That fall, King was hired as a teacher at Hampden Academy in Hampden, Maine. He continued to contribute short stories to magazines and worked on ideas for novels.^[12] It was during this time that King developed a drinking problem, which would plagued him for more than a decade.^{[citation needed]}

Bibliography[link]

1970s–1980s work[link]

In 1973, King's novel Carrie was accepted by publishing house Doubleday. King threw an early draft of the novel in the trash after becoming discouraged with his progress writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. His wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it.^[19] His advance for Carrie was $2,500, with paperback rights earning $400,000 at a later date. King and his family moved to southern Maine because of his mother's failing health. At this time, he began writing a book titled Second Coming, later titled Jerusalem's Lot, before finally changing the title to 'Salem's Lot (published 1975). In a 1987 issue of The Highway Patrolman magazine, he stated, "The story seems sort of down home to me. I have a special cold spot in my heart for it!"^[20] Soon after the release of Carrie in 1974, his mother died of uterine cancer. His Aunt Emrine read the novel to her before she died. King has written of his severe drinking problem at this time, stating that he was drunk delivering the eulogy at his mother's funeral.^[15]

After his mother's death, King and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where King wrote The Shining (published 1977). The family returned to western Maine in 1975, where King completed his fourth novel, The Stand (published 1978). In 1977, the family, with the addition of Owen Phillip (his third and last child), traveled briefly to England, returning to Maine that fall where King began teaching creative writing at the University of Maine. He has kept his primary residence in Maine ever since.^{[citation needed]}

In 1985 King wrote his first work for the comic book medium,^[21] writing a few pages of the benefit X-Men comic book Heroes for Hope Starring the X-Men. The book, whose profits were donated to assist with famine relief in Africa, was written by a number of different authors in the comic book field, such as Chris Claremont, Stan Lee, and Alan Moore, as well as authors not primarily associated with that industry, such as Harlan Ellison.^[22] The following year, King wrote the introduction to Batman #400, an anniversary issue in which he expressed his preference for that character over Superman.^[23][24]

[edit] The Dark Tower books

Stephen King at the Harvard Book Store, January 8, 2007

In the late 1970s, King began what became a series of interconnected stories about a lone gunslinger, Roland, who pursues the "Man in Black" in an alternate-reality universe that is a cross between J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and the American wild west as depicted by Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone in their spaghetti westerns. The first of these stories, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, was first published in five installments by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under the editorship of Edward L. Ferman, beginning in 1977 and the last in 1981. The Gunslinger was continued as a large 7-book epic called The Dark Tower, which were written and published infrequently over four decades.

In 1982, the fantasy small-press Donald M. Grant (known for publishing the entire canon of Robert E. Howard) printed these stories for the first time together in hardcover form with color and black-and-white illustrations by fantasy artist Michael Whelan, as The Gunslinger. Each chapter was named for the story previously published in magazine form. King dedicated the hardcover edition to his editor at F&SF, Ed Ferman, who "took a chance on these stories". The original print-run was only 10,000 copies, which was, by this time, a comparatively low run for a first printing of a King novel in hardcover. His 1980 novel, Firestarter, had an initial print-run in trade hardcover at 100,000 copies, and his 1983 novel, Christine, had a trade hardcover print-run of 250,000 copies, both by the much larger publisher Viking. The Gunslinger's initial release was not highly publicized, and only specialty science-fiction and related bookstores carried it on their shelves. The book was generally not available in the larger chain stores, except by special order. Rumors spread among avid fans that there was a King book out that few readers knew about, let alone had actually read. When the initial 10,000 copies sold out, Grant printed another 10,000 copies in 1984, but these runs were still far short of the growing demand among fans for this book. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger was the beginning of his magnum opus fantasy epic. Both the first and second printings of The Gunslinger garner premium prices on the collectible book market, notably among avid readers and collectors of Stephen King, horror literature, fantasy literature, American western literature, and fans of the artwork of Michael Whelan.^{[citation needed]}

In 1987, King released the second installment, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, in which Roland draws three people from 20th-century United States into his world through magical doors. Grant published The Drawing of the Three with illustrations by Phil Hale in a slightly larger run of 30,000 copies, which was still well below King's typical initial hardcover print-run of a new book. (It, published in 1986, had an initial print-run of 1,000,000 copies, King's largest to date.) King had believed that the Dark Tower books would only be of interest to a select group of his fans, and he had resisted releasing it on a larger scale. Finally, in the late 1980s, bowing to pressure from his publishers and fans who were searching for the books (at this point fewer than 50,000 of his millions of readers would have been able to own any of the Dark Tower books), King agreed to release The Gunslinger and all subsequent Dark Tower books in trade paperback and mass market formats.^{[citation needed]}

In the early 2000s King revised the original book, The Gunslinger, because he felt the voice and imagery of the original stories of the late 1970s did not seem to fit the voice of the final installment of 2004. King felt the style of the work had markedly changed during the intervening 27 years. The revised version was published in 2003 by his former hardcover publisher Viking. Grant published its hardcover limited edition of the revised version of The Gunslinger along with a prequel story set in the Dark Tower world called "The Little Sisters of Eluria" (originally published in 1998 in the collection Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy) in 2009.

Adaptations[link]

In October 2005, King signed a deal with Marvel Comics to publish a seven-issue, miniseries spin-off of the series called The Gunslinger Born. The series, which focuses on a young Roland Deschain, is plotted by Robin Furth, with dialogue by Peter David, and illustrated by Eisner Award-winning artist Jae Lee. The first issue was published on February 7, 2007, and King, David, Lee and Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada appeared at a midnight signing at a Times Square, New York comic book store to promote it.^[25][26] The work had sold over 200,000 copies by March 2007. The success of The Gunslinger Born led to an ongoing series of miniseries published by Marvel, with Furth and David continuing to collaborate, featuring both adapted material from the Dark Tower books and new material approved by King; it also led to a second series of King adaptations in the same format, serializing the events of The Stand.

Although The Hollywood Reporter announced in February 2007 that plans were underway for Lost co-creator J. J. Abrams to do an adaptation of King's epic Dark Tower series,^[5] Abrams stated in a November 2009 interview with MTV that he would not be adapting the series.^[27]

Akiva Goldsman, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer will produce a feature film based on The Dark Tower series, with Howard slated to direct.^{[citation needed]}

Richard Bachman[link]

In the late 1970s-early 1980s, King published a handful of short novels—Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), The Running Man (1982) and Thinner (1984)—under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The idea behind this was to test whether he could replicate his success again and to his fears that his popularity was an accident. An alternate explanation was that publishing standards at the time allowed only a single book a year.^[28] He picked up the name from the hard rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive, of which he is a fan.^[29]

Richard Bachman was exposed as King's pseudonym by a persistent Washington D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, who noticed similarities between the works and later located publisher's records at the Library of Congress that named King as the author of one of Bachman's novels.^[30] This led to a press release heralding Bachman's "death"—supposedly from "cancer of the pseudonym."^[31] King dedicated his 1989 book The Dark Half, about a pseudonym turning on a writer, to "the deceased Richard Bachman", and in 1996, when the Stephen King novel Desperation was released, the companion novel The Regulators carried the "Bachman" byline.

In 2006, during a press conference in London, King declared that he had discovered another Bachman novel, titled Blaze. It was published on June 12, 2007. In fact, the original manuscript had been held at King's alma mater, the University of Maine in Orono, for many years and had been covered by numerous King experts. King completely rewrote the original 1973 manuscript for its publication.^{[citation needed]}

King has used other pseudonyms, such as John Swithen for The Fifth Quarter.^{[citation needed]}

Car accident and thoughts of retirement[link]

On June 19, 1999 at about 4:30 p.m., King was walking on the shoulder of Route 5, in Lovell, Maine. Driver Bryan Smith, distracted by an unrestrained dog moving in the back of his minivan, struck King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet from the pavement of Route 5.^[15] According to Oxford County Sheriff deputy Matt Baker, King was hit from behind and some witnesses said the driver was not speeding, reckless, or drinking.^[32]

King was conscious enough to give the deputy phone numbers to contact his family but was in considerable pain. The author was first transported to Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton and then flown by helicopter to Central Maine Medical Center, in Lewiston. His injuries—a collapsed right lung, multiple fractures of his right leg, scalp laceration and a broken hip—kept him at CMMC until July 9. His leg bones were so shattered doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but stabilized the bones in the leg with an external fixator.^[33] After five operations in ten days and physical therapy, King resumed work on On Writing in July, though his hip was still shattered and he could only sit for about forty minutes before the pain became worse. Soon it became nearly unbearable.^[34]

King's lawyer and two others purchased Smith's van for $1,500, reportedly to prevent it from appearing on eBay. The van was later crushed at a junkyard, much to King's disappointment, as he dreamed of beating it with a baseball bat once his leg was healed. King later mentioned during an interview with Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he wanted to completely destroy the vehicle himself with a pickaxe.^[35]

During this time, Tabitha King was inspired to redesign his studio. King visited the space while his books and belongings were packed away. What he saw was an image of what his studio would look like if he died, providing a seed for his novel Lisey's Story.^[36]

In 2002, King announced he would stop writing, apparently motivated in part by frustration with his injuries, which had made sitting uncomfortable and reduced his stamina. He has since resumed writing, but states on his website that:

"I'm writing but I'm writing at a much slower pace than previously and I think that if I come up with something really, really good, I would be perfectly willing to publish it because that still feels like the final act of the creative process, publishing it so people can read it and you can get feedback and people can talk about it with each other and with you, the writer, but the force of my invention has slowed down a lot over the years and that's as it should be."^[37]

2000s work[link]

In 2000, King published a serialized novel, The Plant, online, bypassing print publication. At first it was presumed by the public that King had abandoned the project because sales were unsuccessful, but he later stated that he had simply run out of stories.^[38] The unfinished epistolary novel is still available from King's official site, now free. Also in 2000, he wrote a digital novella, Riding the Bullet, and has said he sees e-books becoming 50% of the market "probably by 2013 and maybe by 2012." But he also warns: "Here's the thing—people tire of the new toys quickly."^[39]

In August 2003 King began writing a column on pop culture appearing in Entertainment Weekly, usually every third week. The column is called "The Pop of King", a play on the nickname "The King of Pop" commonly given to Michael Jackson.^[40]

In 2006, King published an apocalyptic novel, Cell. The book features a sudden force in which every cell phone user turns into a mindless killer. King noted in the book's introduction that he does not use cell phones.

In 2007, Marvel Comics began publishing comic books based on King's Dark Tower series, followed by adaptations of The Stand in 2008 and The Talisman in 2009.

In 2008, King published both a novel, Duma Key, and a collection, Just After Sunset. The latter featured 13 short stories, including a novella, N., which was later released as a serialized animated series that could be seen for free, or, for a small fee, could be downloaded in a higher quality; it then was adopted into a limited comic book series.

In 2009, King published Ur, a novella written exclusively for the launch of the second-generation Amazon Kindle and available only on Amazon.com, and Throttle, a novella co-written with his son Joe Hill, which later was released as an audiobook Road Rage, which included Richard Matheson's short story "Duel". On November 10 that year, King's novel, Under the Dome, was published. It is a reworking of an unfinished novel he tried writing twice in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and at 1,074 pages, it is the largest novel he has written since 1986's It. It debuted at #1 in The New York Times Bestseller List.^[41]

2010s work[link]

On February 16, 2010, King announced on his website that his next book will be a collection of four previously unpublished novellas. The book is called Full Dark, No Stars. In April of that year, King published Blockade Billy, an original novella issued first by independent small press Cemetery Dance Publications and later released in mass market paperback by Simon & Schuster. The following month, DC Comics premiered American Vampire, a monthly comic book series written by King with short story writer Scott Snyder, and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque, which represents King's first original comics work.^[42][43][44]

King's next novel, 11/22/63, was published November 8, 2011,^[45][46] and the eighth Dark Tower volume, The Wind Through the Keyhole, was published in 2012.^[47] King's next novel is the upcoming sequel to The Shining (1977), titled Dr. Sleep, scheduled to be published in 2013, and King is currently working on Joyland, a novel about "an amusement-park serial killer", according to an article in The Sunday Times published on April 8, 2012.^[48]

Collaborations[link]

King has written two novels with acclaimed horror novelist Peter Straub: The Talisman and a sequel, Black House. King has indicated that he and Straub will likely write the third and concluding book in this series, the tale of Jack Sawyer, but has set no time for its completion.

King also wrote the nonfiction book, Faithful, with novelist and fellow Red Sox fanatic Stewart O'Nan.

In 1996 King collaborated with Michael Jackson to create Ghosts, a 40-minute musical video in which the singer portrays a recluse living in a mansion confronting an unwelcoming group of townsfolk initially calling for his exodus from their community.

"Throttle", a novella written in collaboration with his son Joe Hill, appears in the anthology He Is Legend: Celebrating Richard Matheson, (Gauntlet Press, 2009).^[49]

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red, was a paperback tie-in for the King-penned miniseries Rose Red. The book was published under anonymous authorship, and written by Ridley Pearson. This spin-off is a rare occasion of another author being granted permission to write commercial work using characters and story elements invented by King.

King wrote a musical play with John Mellencamp titled Ghost Brothers of Darkland County.

King played guitar for the rock band Rock-Bottom Remainders, several of whose members are authors. Other members include Dave Barry, Ridley Pearson, Scott Turow, Amy Tan, James McBride, Mitch Albom, Roy Blount, Jr., Matt Groening, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Sam Barry, and Greg Iles. None of them claim to have any musical talent.^{[citation needed]} King is a fan of the rock band AC/DC,^{[citation needed]} who did the soundtrack for his 1986 film, Maximum Overdrive. He is also a fan of The Ramones,^{[citation needed]} who wrote the title song for Pet Sematary and appeared in the music video. King referred to the band several times in various novels and stories^{[citation needed]} and The Ramones referenced King on the song "It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)", which is on 1981's Pleasant Dreams. In addition he wrote the liner notes for their tribute album We're a Happy Family. In 1988, the band Blue Öyster Cult recorded an updated version of their 1974 song "Astronomy". The single released for radio play featured a narrative intro spoken by King.^[50]

On Sunday, October 25, 2009 the DC Comics/Vertigo announced King's collaboration with short story writer Scott Snyder and artist Rafael Albuquerque for the monthly Vertigo comic book series American Vampire, which debuted in March 2010.^[42] King wrote the background history of the very first American vampire, Skinner Sweet, in the first five -issues story arc. Scott Snyder wrote the story of Pearl.^[51]

In 2010, King collaborated with musician Shooter Jennings and his band Hierophant, providing the narration for their most recent album, Black Ribbons.

Analysis[link]

Writing style[link]

King's formula for learning to write well is: "Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer." He sets out each day with a quota of 2000 words and will not stop writing until it is met. He also has a simple definition for talent in writing: "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."^[52]

Shortly after his accident, King wrote the first draft of the book Dreamcatcher with a notebook and a Waterman fountain pen, which he called "the world's finest word processor."^[53]

When asked why he writes, King responds: "The answer to that is fairly simple—there was nothing else I was made to do. I was made to write stories and I love to write stories. That's why I do it. I really can't imagine doing anything else and I can't imagine not doing what I do."^[54] He is also often asked why he writes such terrifying stories and he answers with another question: "Why do you assume I have a choice?"^[55]

King often uses authors as characters, or includes mention of fictional books in his stories, novellas and novels, such as Paul Sheldon who is the main character in Misery and Jack Torrance in The Shining. See also List of fictional books in the works of Stephen King for a complete list. In September 2009 it was announced he would serve as a writer for Fangoria.^[56]

Influences[link]

King has called Richard Matheson "the author who influenced me most as a writer."^[15] Both authors casually integrate characters' thoughts into the third person narration, just one of several parallels between their writing styles. In a current edition of Matheson's The Shrinking Man, King is quoted: "A horror story if there ever was one...a great adventure story—it is certainly one of that select handful that I have given to people, envying them the experience of the first reading."

King refers to H. P. Lovecraft several times in Danse Macabre. "Gramma", a short story made into a film in the 1980s anthology horror show The New Twilight Zone, mentions Lovecraft's notorious fictional creation Necronomicon, also borrowing the names of a number of the fictional monsters mentioned therein. "I Know What You Need" from the 1976 collection Night Shift, and 'Salem's Lot also mention the tome. In On Writing, King is critical of Lovecraft's dialogue-writing skills, using passages from The Colour Out of Space as particularly poor examples. There are also several examples of King referring to Lovecraftian characters in his work, such as Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth.

King acknowledges the influence of Bram Stoker, particularly on his novel 'Salem's Lot, which he envisioned as a retelling of Dracula.^[57] Its related short story "Jerusalem's Lot", is reminiscent of Stoker's The Lair of the White Worm.^{[citation needed]}

King has also referenced author Shirley Jackson. 'Salem's Lot opens with a quotation from Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and a character in Wolves of the Calla references the Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

King is a fan of John D. MacDonald, and dedicated the novella "Sun Dog" to MacDonald, saying "I miss you, old friend." For his part, MacDonald wrote an admiring preface to Night Shift, and even had his famous character, Travis McGee, reading Cujo in one of the last McGee novels and Pet Sematary in the last McGee novel, The Lonely Silver Rain.

In 1987 King's Philtrum Press published Don Robertson's novel, The Ideal, Genuine Man. In his forenote to the novel, King wrote, "Don Robertson was and is one of the three writers who influenced me as a young man who was trying to 'become' a novelist (the other two being Richard Matheson and John D. MacDonald)."^[58]

Robert A. Heinlein's book The Door into Summer is repeatedly mentioned in King's Wolves of the Calla.

In an interview with King, Published in the USA Weekend in March 2009, the author stated, "People look on writers that they like as an irreplaceable resource. I do. Elmore Leonard, every day I wake up and – not to be morbid or anything, although morbid is my life to a degree – don't see his obituary in the paper, I think to myself, "Great! He's probably working somewhere. He's gonna produce another book, and I'll have another book to read." Because when he's gone, there's nobody else."^[59]

King partly dedicated his book Cell to film director George Romero, and wrote an essay for the Elite DVD version of Night of the Living Dead.

Critical response[link]

Although critical reaction to King's work has been mostly positive, he has occasionally come under fire from academic writers.

Science fiction editors John Clute and Peter Nichols^[60] offer a largely favorable appraisal of King, noting his "pungent prose, sharp ear for dialogue, disarmingly laid-back, frank style, along with his passionately fierce denunciation of human stupidity and cruelty (especially to children) [all of which rank] him among the more distinguished 'popular' writers."

In his analysis of post-World War II horror fiction, The Modern Weird Tale (2001), critic S. T. Joshi^[61] devotes a chapter to King's work. Joshi argues that King's best-known works (his supernatural novels), are his worst, describing them as mostly bloated, illogical, maudlin and prone to deus ex machina endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that since Gerald's Game (1993), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written. Joshi suggests that King's strengths as a writer include the accessible "everyman" quality of his prose, and his unfailingly insightful observations about the pains and joys of adolescence. Joshi cites two early non-supernatural novels—Rage (1977) and The Running Man (1982)—as King's best, suggesting both are riveting and well-constructed suspense thrillers, with believable characters.

In 1996, King won an O. Henry Award for his short story "The Man in the Black Suit".^[62]

In his short story collection A Century of Great Suspense Stories, editor Jeffrey Deaver noted that King “singlehandedly made popular fiction grow up. While there were many good best-selling writers before him, King, more than anybody since John D. MacDonald, brought reality to genre novels. He’s often remarked that 'Salem's Lot was “Peyton Place meets Dracula.” And so it was. The rich characterization, the careful and caring social eye, the interplay of story line and character development announced that writers could take worn themes such as vampirism and make them fresh again. Before King, many popular writers found their efforts to make their books serious blue-penciled by their editors. ‘Stuff like that gets in the way of the story,’ they were told. Well, it’s stuff like that that has made King so popular, and helped free the popular name from the shackles of simple genre writing. He is a master of masters.”^[63]

In 2003, King was honored by the National Book Awards with a lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, with his work being described thus:

Stephen King’s writing is securely rooted in the great American tradition that glorifies spirit-of-place and the abiding power of narrative. He crafts stylish, mind-bending page-turners that contain profound moral truths–some beautiful, some harrowing–about our inner lives. This Award commemorates Mr. King’s well-earned place of distinction in the wide world of readers and book lovers of all ages.

Some in the literary community expressed disapproval of the award: Richard Snyder, the former CEO of Simon & Schuster, described King's work as "non-literature", and critic Harold Bloom denounced the choice:

The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.^[64]

However, others came to King's defense, such as writer Orson Scott Card, who responded:

Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What Snyder really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite."^[65]

In Roger Ebert's review of the 2004 movie Secret Window, he stated, "A lot of people were outraged that [King] was honored at the National Book Awards, as if a popular writer could not be taken seriously. But after finding that his book On Writing had more useful and observant things to say about the craft than any book since Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, I have gotten over my own snobbery."^[66]

In 2008, King's book On Writing was ranked 21st on Entertainment Weekly list of "The New Classics: The 100 Best Reads from 1983 to 2008".^[67]

Appearances and adaptations in other media[link]

King and his wife Tabitha own Zone Radio Corp, a radio station group consisting of WZON 103.1 FM and 620 AM.^[68]

King has stated that his favorite book-to-film adaptations are Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Mist.^[69]

King's first film appearance was in George Romero's Knightriders as a buffoonish audience member. His first featured role was in Creepshow, playing Jordy Verrill, a backwoods redneck who, after touching a fallen meteorite in hopes of selling it, grows moss all over his body. He has since made cameos in several adaptations of his works. He appeared in Pet Sematary as a minister at a funeral, in Thinner as a pharmacist, in Rose Red as a pizza deliveryman, as a news reporter in The Storm of the Century, in The Stand as "Teddy Wieszack," in the Shining miniseries as a band member, in The Langoliers as Tom Holby and in Sleepwalkers as the cemetery caretaker. He has also appeared in The Golden Years, in Chappelle's Show and, along with fellow author Amy Tan, on The Simpsons as himself. In addition to acting, King tried his hand at directing with Maximum Overdrive, in which he also made a cameo appearance as a man using an ATM that is on the fritz.

King produced and acted in a miniseries, Kingdom Hospital, which is based on the Danish miniseries Riget by Lars von Trier. He also co-wrote The X-Files season 5 episode "Chinga" with the creator of the series Chris Carter.

King made an appearance as a contestant on Celebrity Jeopardy! in 1995, playing to benefit the Bangor Public Library.

King provided the voice of Abraham Lincoln in the audiobook version of Assassination Vacation.

In 2010, King appeared in a cameo role as a cleaner named Bachman (a reference to his pen name Richard Bachman) on the FX series Sons of Anarchy.^[70]

The Syfy TV series Haven is based on King's novella, The Colorado Kid.^[71]

Political activism[link]

In April 2008, King spoke out against HB 1423, a bill pending in the Massachusetts state legislature that would restrict or ban the sale of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18. Although King stated that he had no personal interest in video games as a hobby, he criticized the proposed law, which he sees as an attempt by politicians to scapegoat pop culture, and to act as surrogate parents to others' children, which he asserted is usually "disastrous" and "undemocratic". He also saw the law as inconsistent, as it would forbid a 17-year-old, legally able to see Hostel: Part II, from buying or renting Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is violent but less graphic. While conceding that he saw no artistic merit in some violent video games, King also opined that such games reflect the violence that already exists in society, which would not be lessened by such a law, and would be redundant in light of the ratings system that already exists for video games. King argued that such laws allow legislators to ignore the economic divide between the rich and poor, and the easy availability of guns, which he felt were the more legitimate causes of violence.^[72] Regarding video games, he later stated that he enjoys playing light gun shooter arcade games such as Time Crisis.^[73]

A controversy emerged on May 5, 2008, when a conservative blogger posted a clip of King at a Library of Congress reading event. King, talking to high-school students, had said: "If you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that."^[74] The comment was described by the blog as "another in a long line of liberal media members bashing the military," and likened to John Kerry's similar remark from 2006.^[75] King responded later that day, saying, "That a right-wing-blog would impugn my patriotism because I said children should learn to read, and could get better jobs by doing so, is beneath contempt...I live in a national guard town, and I support our troops, but I don’t support either the war or educational policies that limit the options of young men and women to any one career—military or otherwise." King again defended his comment in an interview with the Bangor Daily News on May 8, saying, "I’m not going to apologize for promoting that kids get better education in high school, so they have more options. Those that don’t agree with what I’m saying, I’m not going to change their minds."^[76]

King's website states that he is a supporter of the Democratic Party. During the 2008 presidential election, King voiced his support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.^[77] King was quoted as calling conservative commentator Glenn Beck "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother."^[78]

On March 8, 2011, King spoke at a political rally in Sarasota aimed against Governor Rick Scott (R-FL), voicing his opposition to the Tea Party movement.^[79]

In November 2011, King donated $70,000 in matched funding via his radio station to help pay the heating bills for families in need in his home town of Bangor, Maine, during the winter.^[80]

On April 30, 2012, King published an article in The Daily Beast calling for rich Americans, including himself, to pay more taxes, citing it as "a practical necessity and moral imperative that those who have received much should be obligated to pay ... in the same proportion".^[81]

Personal life[link]

King's home in Bangor

King and his wife own and occupy three different houses, one in Bangor, one in Lovell, Maine, and they regularly winter in their waterfront mansion located off the Gulf of Mexico, in Sarasota, Florida. He and Tabitha have three children, Naomi, Joe and Owen, and three grandchildren.^[12]

Shortly after publication of The Tommyknockers, King's family and friends staged an intervention, dumping evidence of his addictions taken from the trash including beer cans, cigarette butts, grams of cocaine, Xanax, Valium, NyQuil, dextromethorphan (cough medicine) and marijuana, on the rug in front of him. As King related in his memoir, he then sought help and quit all forms of drugs and alcohol in the late 1980s, and has remained sober since.^[15]

Tabitha King has published nine of her own novels. Both King's sons are published authors: Owen King published his first collection of stories, We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, in 2005. Joseph Hillstrom King, who writes under the professional name Joe Hill, published a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, in 2005. His debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, was published in 2007 and will be adapted into a feature film by director Neil Jordan.^[82] King's daughter Naomi is a Unitarian Universalist Church minister in Plantation, Florida with her same-sex partner, Rev. Dr. Thandeka.^[83]

King is a fan of baseball, and of the Boston Red Sox in particular; he frequently attends the team's home and away games, and occasionally mentions the team in his novels and stories. He helped coach his son Owen's Bangor West team to the Maine Little League Championship in 1989. He recounts this experience in the New Yorker essay "Head Down", which also appears in the collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. In 1999, King wrote The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which featured former Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon as the protagonist's imaginary companion. In 2004, King co-wrote a book titled Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season with Stewart O'Nan, recounting the authors' roller coaster reaction to the Red Sox's 2004 season, a season culminating in the Sox winning the 2004 American League Championship Series and World Series.^[84] In the 2005 film Fever Pitch, about an obsessive Boston Red Sox fan, King tosses out the first pitch of the Sox's opening day game.

Awards[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (October 2010)