I think I'm afraid of Stephen King

I have a confession to make: I'm a big fan of Stephen King but I've only read one Stephen King novel, The Dark Half.  I used to enjoy his column for Entertainment Weekly.  His Twitter feed is fantastic - full of good recommendations and interesting opinions.  I admire how his books have permeated the culture.  And he seems like a good guy.  But aside from reading the one book, a novella, a short story or two, and an unfinished experiment with electronic publishing he tried a long time ago (The Plant) I haven't read much of his work.

King is so popular that one does not necessarily need to read the books to know about them.  I know all about It, The Stand, Cujo, Carrie, Misery, Under the Dome, The Shawshank Redemption, and many others, all by osmosis.  For several years now I have been REALLY wanting to read him.  No more FOMO for me.  So I tried.

He has a new novel out called The Outsider.  I skimmed a review or two and it looked like a good crime novel (which is what I really love to read) so I thought I would give it a try.  I got a nice, fat, clean new copy from the library and tore into it.  Thought it was great.  I mentioned to a friend who is a big King fan what I was doing and she told me that I had to stop reading The Outsider and go back and read Mr. Mercedes, the first of a three book series he wrote about a retired detective named Bill Hodges, because it ties into The Outsider.  I was miffed but this person knows her stuff so I complied.

I got a grubby, yellowed copy of Mr. Mercedes from the library and started.  And it was pretty good.  Until I got to the part where Mr. Mercedes, a mass murderer, accidentally kills his mother with gopher poison-laced ground hamburger and I had to stop.  I thought people were having fun reading Stephen King novels.  This was terribly disturbing.

I put Mr. Mercedes to the side and will go back to it in a few weeks.  I suppose it is a testament to King's skill that he could provoke such strong feelings in me.  And I guess I can't say I wasn't warned, I mean, all of America knows he's the king of horror.  But still, it threw me for a loop.

PS: I just found out Mr. Mercedes is now a TV show.  And I just heard a review of another Stephen King TV series, Caste Rock.  Castle Rock is sort of a mash up of dozens of Stephen King villains and properties, sort of like the BBC did with Dickensian a few years ago.  It's truly amazing that King's body of work is so vast and so well known that it is not possible to create a new show out of parts of his books.  And it makes me wonder if 150 years from now Stephen King will be remembered the same way or as well as Charles Dickens is now.  This makes me want to go back to the books, as soon as I recover from Mr. Mercedes.