The Troubled Life of Stephen King

Script Written by Laura Keating

The Tragic Life of Stephen King

There can be no doubt that Stephen King, one of the most popular writers of all time, has found literary success and financial security. But things weren’t always so comfortable. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’ll be discussing The Tragic Life of Stephen King.

King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947 to Nellie “Ruth” Pillsbury and Donald Edwin Pollock (who went by the surname of King). His troubles began early in life. When he was two, his father went out for cigarettes - and never came back, abandoning the family. This left Ruth to raise Stephen and his older brother, David, on her own. Now the sole breadwinner for two little boys, she was forced to move often as she searched for stable work, frequently relying on the support of relatives.

From Maine, they moved to Wisconsin, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. While living in Wisconsin, a four-year old Stephen went out to play with another kid only to return home abruptly, unable to say a word until the following day. King claims to have no memory of what transpired but said that his mother later told him that his friend had been struck and killed by a train.

Personal injury would also take its toll. When he was six, King fell sick. In an incredibly painful and traumatic procedure, his eardrum needed to be punctured multiple times. Shortly afterwards, he had his tonsils removed. As a result of his poor health and multiple hospital visits, King missed a lot of classes and it was agreed that he should be pulled from school to be re-enrolled and start all over again the next fall.

He spent most of the rest of the year in bed or stuck at home. However, there would be an unexpected benefit of this delay in structured education: reading. Without a TV at home, King read everything he could get a hold of, beginning his lifelong passion for the written word. He also discovered that his father had been an aspiring, but unsuccessful writer. It wasn’t long before King started to write imitations of some of his favourite stories. With his mother’s encouragement, he started to write original stories of his own. His mother paid him a quarter a piece for each of his stories. As he later remarked in his memoir, “On Writing”, these quarters represented his “first buck in the business.”

Like many working-class families, money was a constant source of distress. His mother worked multiple low-paying jobs. Eventually, when King was aged 11, she moved back to Maine to take care of her aging parents while the rest of the family helped her and her boys. It was not a situation she enjoyed, and one that would motivate King to avoid the same poverty trap.

As a teenager, he began writing and submitting stories for publication. He continued to write while a student at the University of Maine. After years of rejection, he sold his first story ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. At university he met Tabitha Spruce, a talented writer in her own right. In 1970, they had their first child, daughter Naomi (nay-oh-me), and married the following year. In 1972, they became a family of four with the birth of their first son, Joseph. King earned an education certificate as he continued to work at being a professional writer. But teaching jobs were scarce, and he and Tabitha struggled to earn enough money for the family. Working at an industrial laundry, he despaired that he was fated to repeat his mother’s life. Sales of short stories published in men’s magazines like Cavalier were often used to bail out last-minute expenses, but barely kept their heads above water. Even after landing a teaching job at the local middle school, King kept working at the laundry in the summers. At this point, the family were living in a doublewide trailer in a small town called Hermon.

Life changed dramatically, however, when King was inspired to write a tale about a bullied teenage girl with secret and dangerous powers. He began the story but quickly grew discouraged and threw the pages out. Tabitha, noticing the pages in the trash, recovered them. With her encouragement, King finished “Carrie.” It was not the first novel he had ever written but it would be the first one he managed to get published. It would sell to Doubleday with a $2,500 advance. But the real shocker would come when the paperback rights sold for an incredible $400,000, half of which went to King - a windfall that was almost unimaginable to the young writer.

But just as fortunes seemed to be turning, tragedy reared its ugly head again. King’s mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer in 1973. Chapters of “Carrie” were read to her aloud to her from an Advance Galley Copy, but she would not live to see the book that launched her son’s career make it to full publication. The death hit King hard, and he admitted that he was drunk while he gave the eulogy.

With the huge success of “Carrie,” King was determined to keep the good times rolling. He quickly published his second novel, a tale of vampires in small-town America, “Salem’s Lot.” It, too, was a hit. But it was in 1977, less than three years after the publication of “Carrie,” that he published one of the seminal haunted house stories of the 20th Century and perhaps his best-known work: “The Shining.” Stephen King had officially become a sensation.

But with his growing success came a growing problem. Having experimented with alcohol from the time he was 18, he knew himself to be susceptible to substance abuse. However, with his new lucrative income, fear of financial ruin, and almost obsessive drive to write, he had access to more invigorating (and harmful) chemicals. Drugs and alcohol became a part of his everyday life, and in some way overshadowed it. To this day, he claims he cannot remember writing the story of the killer Saint Bernard “Cujo,” because he was so high. When his family staged an intervention, he knew he had a terrible problem and a choice to make.

By the 90s, he was sober and fully established as a horror and cultural powerhouse. But all that was almost taken away on June 19, 1999. While on a walk near his home in Maine, King was struck by a minivan. His injuries were severe and the recovery long. While he had ideas for stories, he had little interest in writing them as sitting for long periods was a source of great pain. He briefly considered retiring from writing. But in time, he began to heal. He would work his accident into his magnum opus “The Dark Tower,” rushing to finish the final three novels in the series so his great work would not be left unfinished.

Eventually, he got back into the swing of things. His pace slowed, but still there seems to be no end to King’s creative well; he continues to write and publish steadily. Most people might be content to sit back on their laurels and enjoy a well-earned break - and with an estimated net worth of $400 million dollars there is a lot to enjoy. With new books, and adaptations for film and television coming out regularly, Stephen King has become a household name. Recognized as an important literary figure, he was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2004; the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 2007; and in 2014 the National Medal of Arts for his contributions to literature.

But despite all his successes, he remains incredibly humble, still calling Maine his home and eschewing the celebrity lifestyle. With all he’s earned, he believes in giving back and he and Tabitha often donate (without fanfare) large sums of money to charitable and local causes.

No one can say that Stephen King has not found success, and audiences everywhere - having been given some of the greatest stories and timeless characters of the last 50 years - are all the richer for it.