This is a particularly bold statement, seeing as how the Nobel Prize committee awards the annual prize in Literature to a person who has produced a lifetime body of work that enhances the understanding of the human condition and speaks to mankind throughout the generations, evincing an individual idealism along the way. John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Pearl S. Buck, Ernest Hemingway, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were all awarded the Nobel Prize, and all have contributed works that, at one time or another, have been cited as some of the best of the 20th century.
Stephen King possesses a talent unique even among the literary heavyweights listed above: he creates worlds. He fills these worlds with flesh and blood characters, people with identifiable and distinguishing personalities in a manner highly reminiscent of Charles Dickens. Dickens would often hold conversations and exchange correspondence with characters he had written and whose stories were already published; to him, they were real, and they kept on living after he was done writing. King oftentimes brings characters back in his novels and short stories, showing where they have been since, or the events leading up to, their initial appearances. His work is a continuum, a vast (63 books since 1974), far-reaching epic that connects virtually all of his novels and links them to a single, epic narrative of revenge and redemption. William Faulkner had Yoknapatawpha County, and Stephen King has the Universe.
His literary output is astounding. Like Joyce Carol Oates (herself a longtime “favorite” for a Nobel Prize), he averages more than one book a year. With over 50 novels and nearly a dozen collections of short stories written and counting, King is a dedicated writer, a man seemingly possessed of an inexhaustible desire to compose, to craft, to tell stories.
Unlike many authors considered to be great, King’s later novels are just as good if not better than his first works. The quality of his writing is constantly refined, becoming sharper and more focused throughout his career. His distinctive narrative voice is a lively and welcome intrusive presence. His asides to the “Constant Reader” and callbacks to previous works give the impression that the story is actually being told to the reader rather than being read by the reader. Stephen King knows about story-structure—how to craft an engaging plot and sustain dramatic tension across a long work.
He is often labeled a horror writer, and many of his works do contain horrific elements within them, but it would be inaccurate to state that all of the terror comes from the supernatural. Annie Wilkes from Misery, Henry Bowers in It, Sonny Elliman in The Dead Zone and From a Buick 8, and Cujo the friendly Saint Bernard in the eponymous novel that has unanimously come to mean any large, ill-tempered dog: the horror these characters present works on an entirely different level than those of the various Eldritch Abominations and monsters in the novels. While the deadlights of the Spider’s eyes in It may keep you up at night, it is the all-too-real sadism and malicious human evil of Henry Bowers that cause your pulse to quicken in the daytime. King seems to know that almost everyone has met a kid like Henry: an unfeeling bully that finds delight in cruelty. It has been said that William Shakespeare wrote us, that is, he created vivid characters and situations that captured humanity so distinctly and have informed life to such a degree that he seems to have created the world on the page. If such a thing is true, then surely Stephen King wrote our nightmares, never having to teach us what to be afraid of because he drew deep from the collective unconscious and brought forth our most common dreads, the greatest of all being death and what lies after; in King’s universe, you may suffer and die, but that will not necessarily end your suffering, especially if you are an evil character.
Although the basic plots of his novels deal with what frighten us, he does not exclusively write horror fiction. King is also a master mystery writer and has been named as a Grand Master by the Mystery Writer’s Guild of America (Elmore Leonard, of whom it can be said that if Shakespeare wrote us and King wrote our nightmares than Elmore Leonard wrote our dialogue, also shares the title of Grand Master). His novel Bag of Bones is more romantic and has more to say about love and loss than any and all of Nicholas Spark’s books combined.
The current state of the Nobel Prize for literature is one of lackluster European-centric, heavily-politicized writings. Has anyone actually read anything by JMG Le Clézio or Herta Müller, the awardees for 2008 and 2009, respectively? The list of people who did not receive a Nobel for Literature and should have is nearly as long as the list of those who have. Mark Twain, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip Roth, and Arthur Miller share the commonality of having written tremendous works of literature and of being ignored by the Nobel committee. An American has not been awarded the Nobel for seventeen years, during which time 13 Europeans were awarded the prize. In 2008, a member of the Academy for nomination and award stated that “Europe is still the center of the literary world” and that “the US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature.” Stephen King’s works have been translated into over 32 languages, most of them European, although his works have been published on every single continent except Antarctica. He is arguably the single most recognized name in world literature today, with a reputation that almost everyone instantly recognizes. Without going so far as to address in full the rather specious assertion that Europe is the center of the literary world, it is clear that the majority of books read and sold in the world are written by American authors. Stephen King has not written a single book that has not been a bestseller. He is widely read and widely studied (his work appears on college campuses and in high school libraries, although his novels have been a frequent target of censorship), and he has amassed a solid selection of beautifully written novels that have become a part of the common consciousness that is popular culture.
His work is iconic. He did not invent the “weird small town” story, but he perfected it to such a spectacular degree that “Children of the Corn” has become synonymous with an unsettling stillness in a small town. The Shining is nearly prototypic in its status as the haunted house story, and frankly, without Stephen King’s revitalization of the vampire story with ‘Salem’s Lot, the current maniacal obsession with vampire’s in today’s culture would not exist (Stephanie Meyer, whom King does not consider to be a good writer, essentially took ‘Salem’s Lot, watered it down by removing the sexual allure and violence of the vampire, and made it chaste and saccharine-sweet). If you are afraid of clowns, it probably has more to do with King’s Pennywise than with John Wayne Gacy. Imagine that: King is responsible for inducing a fear of clowns with a fictional novel than an actual serial killer who moonlighted as a clown ever did.
When it comes to the idealism that has to be present for the original stated goal of Nobel consideration, King has it in spades. His universe is full of monsters both human and supernatural, of killers, spousal abusers, rapists and thieves, and yet his is not a nihilistic or inherently evil universe. As the titular hero from The Gunslinger states, many of King’s characters “are made for the Light.” Evil and injustice are not things that can go unpunished in the world of King’s fiction. The bad always receive their comeuppances, which evinces a sort of positivism that real life all too often does not. Stephen King shows in his work that good does triumph over evil, usually through a combination of the grace of God and pure human courage. For all the evil that happens in his novels, they are universally positive in the message that goodness can be stifled and sometimes contained, but it can never be vanquished.
The Nobel Prize for Literature is the highest honor that can be given to an author. The Prize comes with an award of over a million dollars, but money is something that Stephen King has not needed for nearly forty years. He probably does not need the recognition for himself, either. Awarding him a Nobel would be the world’s equivalent of a thank you.
Until the Nobel committee comes around, I will express my own gratitude. Thank you, Mr. King, for sharing your imagination with us, for sharing your fears with us, for probing our minds and finding what we are most afraid of and for showing us that while it may be frightening, it can never truly stand up to the awesome power of goodness; thank you for your prolificacy and for your dependability; thank you for your inspired commentary on life, on love, on being; and thank you, most of all Mr. King, for the entertainment and for being so much fun to read.
Stephen King Deserves a Nobel Prize
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Originally Posted by ICry4Oy
Obama didn't get it for literature, that was a different Nobel Prize.
