You Like It Darker

Stephen King is one of the foremost American authors of horror. A prolific writer, he has produced a sizable body of work, and many of his works have been adapted for the screen. Two characteristics distinguish King’s work from that of his predecessors and contemporaries in the genre.

First, his oeuvre predominantly focuses on blue-collar characters. In the years leading to King’s breakthrough, American horror writing often focused on upper-class characters, as evidenced by novels like Shirley Jackson’s gothic mystery We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), Ira Levin’s occult thriller Rosemary’s Baby (1967), and William Peter Blatty’s religious horror novel The Exorcist (1971). This focus on upper-class characters distances many readers from the events such novels depict and makes the characters less relatable. Both Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, for instance, center on the families of actors whose stars are steadily rising when demonic forces intrude on the boundaries of their lives. Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle follows two sisters who live in a mansion and are isolated from the rest of society, partly due to a gruesome incident that causes the local community to ostracize them.

King’s earliest novels, Carrie (1974) and ‘Salem’s Lot (1975), subverted this trend by relocating the milieu to suburban communities and high school teenagers. Likewise, his early short stories like “Graveyard Shift” and “The Mangler” follow mill and laundry workers. This approach allows more readers to relate to King’s characters. When King places his characters in positions of affluence, it’s normally in the context of employment or unexpected inheritance. For instance, the family in The Shining (1977) lives in an empty hotel over the winter season only because the family patriarch, Jack Torrance, is employed as its caretaker. ‘Salem’s Lot likewise begins with a prominent writer returning to his small hometown in Maine to write his next novel. This gives many of King’s stories a Dickensian quality, bringing people from different social classes together.

The second major characteristic of King’s work is the shared setting of many of his stories. In addition to setting many of his stories in or around the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, King occasionally revisits past works, breathing new life into them by letting characters from old and new stories encounter each other. This quality rewards many longtime King readers by connecting the major ideas of his stories into a larger narrative about the human experience. His fantasy novel series The Dark Tower demonstrates this best, incorporating characters from ‘Salem’s Lot, It (1986), and The Stand (1978).

The signature characteristics of King’s work are evident throughout You Like It Darker. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” the title character is a high school custodian who lives in a trailer park. He’s antagonized by two investigators, who force his expulsion from the community. “The Dreamers” brings a drifting Vietnam War veteran into the service of an affluent “gentleman scientist.” The veteran uses his stenography skills to make a living after returning from the war. However, he can’t shake off the sense that his employer’s morality has been skewed by his wealth and education.

“Rattlesnakes” is notably a sequel to King’s 1981 novel, Cujo, following the character of Vic Trenton 40 years later. Part of the story is devoted to recounting the events of Cujo, making it accessible to readers who haven’t engaged with the original work. “Laurie” and “Rattlesnakes” take place in the same location (Rattlesnake Key), and “Rattlesnakes” culminates with the protagonist of “Laurie,” Lloyd Sunderland, making a cameo. Additionally, Rattlesnake Key is near the setting of King’s 2008 novel, Duma Key, and “Rattlesnakes” frequently references the destruction of Duma Key, which helped create the whirlpool that allows Vic to resolve the conflict in “Rattlesnakes.”