Nowadays, it’s easy to see Stephen King’s name and have a conceived notion of his legacy. He remains well into old age one of the most prolific authors of his generation, producing masterpieces that dig under people’s skin and recontextualize fears we’ve long taken for granted. In this Short Stop series, I will explore a period before he was the icon we know and love. Even with a handful of bestsellers to his name, his status had yet to be cemented. That is why I’ve chosen to take a look at his first story collection, “Night Shift,” and hopefully get a glimpse into the writer taking shape, before his style was cemented into a cultural touchstone. Was he always the master of horror, or was there a simpler time when he was as messy and weird as the rest of us? All it takes is turning the page to find out.
Longtime readers may notice something that seems different about this entry. Whereas most Short Stop series begin with the first story, I found a need to start at someplace before the title page. A big reason that I haven’t previously covered the Introduction sections is that most authors I’ve covered haven’t produced their own version. At best, there’s some academic blurb contextualizing what is about to follow. However, one of King’s greatest gifts has long been his transparency, his ability to admit when he’s right and wrong. For someone who would never need to say a word about his success, I deeply admire his need to create preambles and, in later novels, a post-script that adds context to what has just been read.
Many criticisms have been lobbed at King that have some truth to them, but I also feel he’s in a conflicted state with writing horror: a genre often associated with lowbrow tendencies that great authors don’t go for. Growing up as a writer myself, there was this assumption that my passion for reading meant I couldn’t enjoy King’s work. In truth, I came to his novels much later than I did his films; by then, I found myself enamored less with what is and isn’t literature but more the art of storytelling that he broke open and gave to the masses. Even if his work reflects the ideology of a very specific generation, there’s still humanity lurking underneath the grotesque. He’s found humor and tragedy alongside the shock while building one of the most envious literary universes of the past century. Odds are you’ll need to dedicate your entire life to connecting the dots, but the few I’ve found enhance his work, turning even his most trivial tale into a greater commentary on his legacy.
I’m not sure that “Night Shift” is designed as a big picture project given when it came out. However, I’ve long been curious to see where he started and what values have always been there. I should clarify that, despite reading a dozen or so of his books, there are large gaps that will be reflected in this column. For example, I have not read or seen any version of “Salem’s Lot.” While I intend to explore the history of each story beyond its presence here, the focus is likely to be more on form and how successful I find the piece. Like with William Faulkner or Alice Munro before, I want to find a literary identity taking shape. If there’s a difference with King, I already have a good idea of what that looks like.
Returning to King as a larger personality, it’s easy to understand why he’s stood the test of time, even as his work’s quality takes the typical weaves. There may be tons of bad adaptations or novels that come up short. Even so, there will always be a demand for him because he’s something more than a writer. He’s not the pretentious type who sees his work as some greater topic to guard. He’s just a guy from Maine who has a love of schlocky cinema and literary classics. He’s not afraid to go long on what silly thing has been interesting him at the time. He’s so impulsive that he’s transcended any disconnect and feels recognizable. We may live very different lives, but King’s work ethic is something I’ve long envied. His transparency and rapport with audiences are unmatched. You see his name, and you know what to expect. I’m not sure another living author has done as much over as lengthy of a period without ever losing touch.
Compared to most Introductions in King’s work, I’d argue that “Night Shift” is lacking any personal pizzazz. That may simply be the novelty of this being his introductory anthology. He still had the comfort of assuming this could be it. There might not be a greater legacy to deconstruct, so it was best to dig into what the genre he was working within meant to him. There was a need to destigmatize its limited demographic and ask why a wider audience couldn’t give into the thrills and chills that excited him regularly.
As expected, this is a bit overlong and lacking in personal anecdotes. While he weaves in his young journey of sending stories to publishers and believing that nobody reads Introductions except those closest to him, the greater narrative centers around an all too droll breakdown of horror being not dissimilar from more acclaimed genres and, if anything, is undervalued for how much more potential it can provide. There’s a willingness to delve into the unknown, the abstract that we know is fiction, but still give ourselves over to achieve greater catharsis. He suggests everyone has a morbid curiosity, and it’s important to foster that impulse. It helps you grow and to see a world as more complicated than what you’ve always known.
To an extent, this feels like a test run for the ideas that would be present in his more accomplished “On Writing” book. It’s a breakdown that ultimately gets down to what drives his motivation. There’s the typical penchant for engaging language that connects him directly with the audience, starting with the familiar Q&A set-up before unraveling their disbelief that writing horror is healthy. Whether this is based on truth or merely a narrative tool, it works as a sales pitch from a man who always knew how to sell to the common man. Even as he delves into literary history, there’s more of a sense of him sharing passions than insisting that he’s overcompensating with highbrow references.
The most clever part shows up midway through when he tears away the jargon and gets to the heart. He writes horror because that’s how his brain sifts through detail. He’s not selfish, believing that the reader is also capable of finding details that are more interesting to them. He embraces diversity before giving an example that ties everything back to the history he sees in his career.
Somewhere alongside the talk of b-movies and 19th century Edgar Allen Poe torture stories, he finds room to compare himself to Louis L’Amour. The reader doesn’t need to know his work to appreciate the analogy. Much like his previous point of everyone’s perspective being different, he highlights how they both could stare at the same lake and find different inspiration. L’Amour was a western writer and thus would romanticize the landscape, while King would be more likely to do something insidious. His accessibility is another reason his work has transcended time so well. He’s first and foremost a storyteller. If he can’t keep people turning the page, then what good is any of this?
There are several literary devices used to enhance this essay, and I have to believe it’s a coda for his personal values. It’s there in the way he mixes in his own fantasy of an outside nature beating down on his house. It’s there in the academic talk that never becomes too isolating. For another author, this Introduction would be easier to read as a last grasp of a simple life clashing with the ideology that they’ll hide behind in future essays. There could be a world where King matured into a less ambitious writer, whether by “selling out” or merely age slowing him down. Instead, time has made him a champion of unlimited creative potential. This essay, for all of its overcompensation, captures that beautifully.
More than his overactive imagination, what grounds the piece is ultimately how King sees himself. His expectations are humble regarding who he imagines is reading this essay. There’s no need to make this the defining work of his life, and yet it serves as a brief check-in before discovering what has garnered him popularity. It’s also a chance to notice where he is in terms of drug addiction and his marriage. Given that this was objectively the calm before the storm, it’s fun to see him have gratitude for the small accomplishments that come with publishing stories less because he needed the money, but more because he felt inclined to share his goofy perspective.
I would also argue that moments like these have defined how I approach fiction as well. There’s a chance that a more impersonal deconstruction of my work could convey the points more effectively, but I need that moment of transparency to let people know what writing means to me. Again, I think King has written better essays that connect his mentality to his work, but here it feels like the perfect mishmash for a collection that I have to believe is just as soporific as the rest of his career. I have to wonder what a less formed Stephen King reads like. Will there be something there that is more profound or lacking, possibly tragically lost as he developed a richer style? At this point, he’s mostly just an author trying to prove why he belongs. We take that for granted now, but I believe somewhere in these smaller ideas is a voice taking shape. I’m curious to see where it builds to.
Another reason I started here was that my time management backfired, and I couldn’t read the 50 pages of “Jerusalem’s Lot” in time for a proper assessment. I promise that next week’s entry will finally get into the nitty-gritty of his work. For now, I felt like doing something special. There was a need to contextualize King’s work within both his career and my life. I’m not sure how far down the rabbit hole things will go, but I’ll start by stumbling forward blindly into the great unknown of 1978 and a world that didn’t know what was going to happen next for a young horror writer still finding his place in the zeitgeist.
Coming Up Next: “Jerusalem’s Lot”
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