Can Steven King be sane?

Question

I mean, what goes on in his head to come up with the feaky, scary and downright weird books he does?

Don't get me wrong, I think they are great but surely the man must have mental health issues!

Sally (sm@rtArse) I know what books he has written, you don't need to list some for me you know.

Sally (sm@rtArse) I know what books he has written, you don't need to list some for me you know.

Answer 1

No more insane than anyone else who has a creative imagination. There are plenty of horror stories/films that are much sicker and twisted than anything devised by Stephen King.
Watch any film by David Lynch. Read stories by Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Shaun Hutson, Richard Layman and Clive Barker and you'll find much darker and nastier worlds.

Suppose they could all be lunatics, but with that logic so is anyone who can imagine something surreal, frightening or unusual. That would be a lot of people.

Met the man a few times at book signings and he's always been really friendly and chatty...of course it's those types you have to watch.

Answer 2

Stephen King did go through a pretty nasty bout of alcoholism earlier in his life, which he has said had a great deal to do with some of his works. I also noticed that after he was struck by a van and spent a good while in the hospital, his next book turned out to be about a guy who was hobbled by a speeding car and, in a more vague sense, dealing with his own mortality.

I've read almost everything he's ever written and I've been a huge for longer than I can remember, but his older books (IT) will always be the ones I remember.

Answer 3

I think Stephen King is a very intelligent man,I don't like his books but my partner does,although I have read quite a few. I've seen & read lots of interviews with him and he has a very good understanding of psychology and knows exactly what freaks us out as human beings-it's not insanity more a very clever sane man with a very,very good imagination and knowledge of the human psyche.

Answer 4

What goes on in his head? Um, I think the technical, mental health professional term for it is (careful, it's a big word):

I-M-A-G-I-N-A-T-I-O-N

If writing horror (or mystery or science fiction or pornography any other genre) means that you have to be sick to think it up, then there are an awful lot of sick people out there.

Answer this: Would you rather meet an author who's written a book about a fictional serial killer or spend time with a real serial killer?

Answer 5

I once read an essay by his wife, Tabitha King, who wrote that people asked the same thing every chance they got. She says that he's a totally normal person, just with a hyperactive imagination, who loves entertaining people (especially their two children).

All that aside, I think there's a little element of madness in his work, but maybe that's the way he "gets it out", so it doesn't effect his personal life.

Answer 6

Hes a bit more saner than James Herbert.
Everyone has a wild imagination - its just that some people use it to write horror stories - others act out the crime....

Answer 7

The fact that he is a Boston Red Sox fan makes me question his sanity. Pax - C.

Answer 8

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them reading valueless books.

Answer 9

In "Danse Macabre", a non-fiction work, King writes that we are all crazy; some of us are just better at hiding it. I suppose he lets his crazy side have an outlet in his fictional works.

Answer 10

Nonsense. Stephen King has the heart of a small boy . . . he keeps it in a jar on his desk.
:-)