Caroline Bicks, Ph.D., studied Shakespeare at Harvard. She’s written books about William Shakespeare, who’s obviously one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language.
But not so far behind the Bard is Stephen King, who is the subject of Bicks’ most recent book, “Monsters in the Archive: My Year of Fear with Stephen King.”
Bicks was granted extraordinary access to King’s archive, and her book is an attempt to what she calls King’s knack for “bibliomagic.” Bicks joined The Show to talk about it.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: To start, tell us what you mean when you say bibliomagic.
CAROLINE BICKS: Well, that's actually something that King himself writes about in his book "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft." He talks about books being a uniquely portable kind of magic, because it's where reader and writer meet in an imaginative space. So I might have come up with bibliomagic, but it was coming off of his concept of this portable magic.
DINGMAN: I see. Sort of like a name you've given to this phenomenon that he describes.
BICKS: Right. Yeah.
DINGMAN: Well, at the risk of asking you an overly simplistic question, this archive that you got access to, it's a pretty remarkable trove. Can you describe what you saw when you were in there?
BICKS: Yeah. And if you don't mind, I just wanted to quickly say the reason I was able to get that access is because I took the position of the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine in 2017. So it's not like I just cold-called him. [LAUGHS]
I had been an English professor at Boston College, a Shakespearean. And then the English department at UMaine wanted a Shakespearean, but had this endowed chair in King's name — because he's our most famous alum at UMaine.
So four years into the job, I got a call from him. I had had no contact with him.
DINGMAN: So, he cold called you? [LAUGHS]
BICKS: He reached out. He did cold call me just to say he thought it was time we meet. And that was the beginning of a really lovely working relationship. And that's when I asked him and his wife, Tabitha, if I could spend my sabbatical year that was coming up in their newly collected archives of all of his manuscripts that they have access to.
They attached them to the back of their iconic home in Bangor, Maine, and put in a new climate-controlled space. But they hadn't let anyone in there yet. So it was really a remarkable opportunity. I'm so grateful that they trusted me to be the first person in there.
DINGMAN: Incredible, incredible.
BICKS: Yeah. So it gave me access to focus just on the five iconic books from the '70s that really scared me when I was a teenager reading them for the first time. And I really wanted to sort of see, well, how did he craft these stories that got into my head and never left? So that's why I focus on the five: "Shining," "Carrie," "Salem's Lot," "Night Shift" and "Pet Sematary."
DINGMAN: Yes, well, and one of the fascinating things about this archive is it's a bit of a time capsule, right? Because the evidence of King's back-and-forth exchanges with his editor physically exists on the page.
BICKS: Yeah, yeah. In a way that they just don't anymore now that we're in a computer culture. So these are typewritten pages with his handwritten comments on them. Draft after draft, you can really see how intentional he is about his word choices. And as you say, in some cases, back-and-forth with the copy editor, sticky note comments that he's written.
So it's really — it was indeed a treasure trove. And I learned so much about his, his crafting process and what matters to him. And I also had the added incredible gift of having conversations with him as I went. So asking him, "Why did you change this?" Because there are really some remarkable different alternative endings.
DINGMAN: Yes. And you mentioned word choices. There's one that I wanted to flag that I thought was really fascinating. He uses the word clitter ... in "Pet Sematary." And that was important to him.
BICKS: Yeah, it was really important to him. And I didn't realize this, this was day one when I was in the archives and I found this draft that had all the copy editor comments and sticky notes. And the copy editor had circled that word clitter. And he's using it in the dream sequence when Victor Pascow is taking him past this deadfall and toward the Pet Sematary.
And he imagines that this deadfall is made up of bones. And he describes that they are "clittering." And the copy editor circles it and he's like, "Word OK?" Because I had never heard of that word either. So I was like, yeah, good catch, copy editor.
But King said nope. He said that is the correct word. He says a clitter is a very ghostly, soft clatter. And I was like, oh, that's perfect. Right. Of course.
And that's really launched me into a conversation with him and really appreciating how important word sounds are to him, that he's not just thinking about what he's creating and how that's scary as an image but how the words themselves are resonating in the reader's ear and echoing.
DINGMAN: Well, you mentioned that you spoke with King directly for this project, both in person and over email. And it seems to me that one of the things that's critical to understanding King and his process — in particular, early in his career as we've been talking about — is that at that time, King and his wife were barely scraping by, right?
BICKS: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's part of Stephen King lore. They had disconnected the phone. They were living in a trailer. He was teaching high school English for $6,400 a year and working at the laundry to make extra money, trying to sell his stories to men's magazines to make money.
They had two tiny children. Tabitha's working at Dunkin Donuts. So it's — yeah, it's just remarkable to think that here's this man who puts in a full day's work and then just keeps writing.
As he told me, he's like, "I was just pouring out copy at that time. And really, it was like to get by, to make money. And obviously, because he loves writing and it's what he wanted to be doing.
But it's really inspirational hearing this story, but also how close he came to giving up, you know? But thankfully, that "Carrie" manuscript sold. The news had to arrive via a telegram, because they disconnected their phone. [LAUGHS]
So, you know, thank goodness.
DINGMAN: Well, we have just about 30 seconds left here, Caroline. But I wanted to ask you, you mentioned that you grew up reading King. How did spending all this time with him and the raw material of his stories impact your experience and memory of those stories?
BICKS: Oh, I love that question. I mean, I went into this project thinking, "Oh, I'll just go in there with my analytical mind, and I'll beat all those scary monsters that scared me. I'll figure out how he crafted them."
And what I left with was really the realization that the reason these stories endure is not because of the monsters. It's because he's able to tap into very real human fears about grief and loss. And those you're never gonna be able shake.
So I think that's what I came away with after talking to him and reading how he drafted and crafted these remarkable stories.
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