Add this one to the coolest-jobs-ever list: In 2017, Shakespeare scholar and author Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maine’s very first Stephen E. King Chair in Literature. Bicks has shared her knowledge of and affinity for the Bard in the form of multiple books and an award-winning podcast. In Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear With Stephen King, she celebrates the King of Horror and shines a light into the dark corners of five of his early works: Pet Sematary, The Shining, Night Shift, ’Salem’s Lot and Carrie.
Bicks first encountered King’s work at age 12 with the short story collection Night Shift: “The cover had drawn me in, but it was the words inside that took hold of my imagination and didn’t let go.” Like so many of us, she often wondered what it is about King’s work that makes his stories linger, for better or worse, in our imaginations. How do they—nay, how does he—unlock the “secret door” of our deepest fears and amplify them?
Bicks hunted down those monsters in a treasure trove of King’s manuscripts, most of which had never been available to the public or even to scholars. She pored over handwritten notes, typed drafts, photographs (several of which are included in the book), news articles and more. She also interviewed King on numerous occasions, gaining further insight into everything from influences to word choices, character attributes to plot twists.
Read an essay by Caroline Bicks, author of ‘Monsters in the Archives.’
For example, Pet Sematary research reveals that references to “Oz the Great and Terrible” were initially absent from the novel but later “became, for him, the book’s prevailing motif.” King confirms he was thinking of Hamlet when he wrote The Shining. And an exploration of Carrie’s creation surfaces an early draft wherein Carrie’s powers have an altogether different effect on her, indicating a more sinister character than the one whose story ultimately became a “cultural touchstone.”
King devotees will love Bicks’ super-close readings of his work and fascinating insights into how he conjures up his characters and infuses his stories with humanity, humor and horror. And how about that bloodred cover, which evokes a much-read paperback bearing a spooky font and scary slashes? Monsters in the Archives is superbly shudder-inducing, inside and out.