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This past Friday night I filed into a downtown auditorium along with my friend. She is a long-time Stephen King fan who made the trip from Ottawa to attend with me. I, on the other hand, probably haven't read a Stephen King novel since high school. But still when I heard that Stephen King was making his very first public appearance in Canada I hopped online and got some tickets. The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to King by the Canadian Booksellers Association. In the past it has been given to authors like Timothy Findley and Pierre Burton, as well as booksellers such as Charles Burchell. Friday was a historic event on more than one front - in addition to it being King's first Canadian appearance it was also the first time this award was given to a non-Canadian.
When I first looked at the program for the night I must admit I was a bit surprised to see one name on the list - Margaret Atwood. She was one of the authors that was there to toast King. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in wondering what the connection between Atwood and King would be. In fact, Atwood opened her toast by saying to the audience, "I bet you didn't expect to see me here!" It turns out that she's referenced King in at least two of her non-fiction critical writings about literature (aptly enough, he's referenced her 2002 book, Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing). Who knew?
After Atwood finished her praise of King, Clive Barker took the stage for his turn. I'm afraid I missed his first few statements as I was distracted by the statement his pants were making. Oh my those were some colourful jeans. Sadly the zoom on my camera did not stand up to my balcony seats so you'll have to use your imagination (at least for now, I've heard that this will be televised at some point). Barker credits his success to Stephen King. After his first novel was published in England he said there was a deafening silence. And then one voice spoke and it was not any voice, but the voice of Stephen King and he calling Barker the future of horror. It was perhaps the best thing that anyone had done for him professionally and he says he does his best to pass on such acknowledgements to other up and coming authors.
Barker was followed by Susan Moldow. She has the lucky distinction of the being Stephen King's North American publisher at Scribner. She spoke of his generosity as a person and as a writer. She also described him as "one of the most important cultural forces on the planet." This makes sense to me as I personally blame King for a large chunk of my serious fear of clowns and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one (I was still pretty young when I was exposed to It...someone possibly should have been screening my reading choices a bit more closely) .
Following that Chuck Klosterman sat down with King on the stage for a cozy interview. It was like dueling geeks! It was wonderful! After all of the above it's no surprise that when King was asked at the beginning of the interview what he thought about the night so far he responded with, "It's like being dead and going to your own funeral." Despite the fact that, yes, Klosterman asked that question that all people ask successful authors ("How do you do it?") the interview covered a lot of ground. It spanned from the early years of writing, touched on King's alcoholism, and discussed his 1999 car accident. When asked why he writes King's answer made me grin, "I just like to make shit up."
I don't think anyone could interview Stephen King and not ask about the supernaturalness that he applies to normal situations. When talking about the point where he crosses over between the normal and the supernatural King has this to say:
What I really like to do is sew that seam so fine that you don't even realize that you're crossing over.
He's exceptionally good at doing this in such a way as to scare the crap out of us and make us paranoid (please see the above comment regarding my serious fear of clowns).
After the interview King went on to accept his award and displayed a
