Overview

Stephen King has received enormous attention from both the popular press as well as academics seeking to explain the unique phenomenon of his success. Books on King explore his canon in religious contexts, in political and historical contexts, in mythic contexts, in Gothic/horror contexts, and in a wide variety of other contexts appropriate to a writer who has become ""America's Storyteller."" Beginning with a never-published chapter authored by Stephen King himself on the influence of the genre on his own writing, King Noir makes an invaluable contribution to King scholarship by placing King's works in conversation with American crime fiction. In interviews, King has acknowledged his debt to earlier writers in the genre, and he much more often references hard-boiled writers than he does horror writers. One could speculate that King became a writer because of his love of pulpy crime fiction, which he continues to hold in high esteem. From The Dead Zone to Mr. Mercedes, from the crime fiction of his pseudonym Richard Bachman to Holly, King returns obsessively to patterns established by American sleuths of every stripe, paying homage to them at the same time as he innovates on the formulas he has inherited. To focus upon a hard-boiled Stephen King is to discover exciting new avenues for inquiry into one of America's most enduring, and adaptable, storytellers.

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Tony Magistrale is author of numerous books and articles, most of which have centered on defining and tracing Anglo-American Gothicism from its origins in nineteenth-century romanticism to its contemporary manifestations in popular culture, particularly in the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King. He has published three separate interviews with King, and Magistrale and Michael J. Blouin both served as research assistants to Mr. King. Michael J. Blouin has published extensively on the American Gothic, especially on Stephen King's fiction. In addition to his monograph Stephen King and American Politics, Blouin coauthored Stephen King and American History (with Tony Magistrale); one of the chapters of that book won the Carl Bode Award for the best essay published in the Journal of American Culture in 2020. He is also author of Democracy and the American Gothic. Stephen King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers. His recent work includes The Bill Hodges Trilogy--Mr. Mercedes (an Edgar Award winner for Best Novel), Finders Keepers, and End of Watch; the short story collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams; Revival; Doctor Sleep; and Under the Dome. His novel 11/22/63 was named a top ten book of 2011 by the New York Times Book Review and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Mystery/Thriller. He is the recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Arts and the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King. Paul Heitsch has been narrating audiobooks since 2011, after having worked as a pianist, composer, recording engineer, producer, and sound designer for many years. His work is often cited for the authenticity he brings to the narrative and characters he portrays, as well as his versatility, and clear, smooth delivery. He has been a presenter at several webinars and seminars for the Audiobook Publishing Association and SAG-AFTRA.

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