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The Cannibals excerpt
For the first time ever, you will be able to read an excerpt from The Cannibals. This is the story which originally inspired Under the Dome. On September 15th, it will be posted on StephenKing.com
It's an interesting look at a different take on a similar subject: what happens to people when they are bottled up together--in this case, in an apartment building where the doors to the outside won't open.
Comments
John
Yesterday the SK message board moderator hinted that a second excerpt of "The Cannibals" could appear soon.
From the board via Lilja:
I told Steve that everyone was loving what has been released so far. He told me to ask if you'd like another 60 or so pages. I told him I didn't even have to ask--of course you would, but he told me to ask anyway. So, is there anybody out there who would like to see another 60 pages?
Walter Lantz, who manages Artios Books, said the text, which is a copy of an original typed manuscript, appears to be pages from a never-published King book called “The Cannibals.” It includes hand-penned editorial changes that Lantz said could have been made by the famous Bangor horror writer himself.
An Auburn bookstore manager believes he may have a working copy of a Stephen King manuscript that eventually became “Under the Dome,” a novel turned TV series.
The text surfaced last month in a collection of Stephen King books sold to the store by an Auburn woman who was raising money to pay for a relative’s funeral. Lantz said the collection included a number of lesser-known King titles, such as “The Colorado Kid,” in their original shrink-wrap. Lantz said the woman didn’t know how the text came to be in her collection.
Lantz said the manuscript numbers 122 pages. Lantz said if it turns out to be what he thinks it is, he will probably sell it and give the collector a commission, up to 20 percent depending on how much it is worth. But first he wants to talk to King.
“I need to talk to him to know what I have,” said Lantz.
Lantz said Marsha DeFilippo, King’s assistant, visited the store Friday and took about 20 photographs of the work.
“She was very excited,” said Lantz.
He has not heard back from DeFilippo. She could not be reached for comment Saturday.
King wrote about the metamorphosis of “The Cannibals” into “Under the Dome” on his website. He said he started the project in 1978 but lost that 70-page manuscript. Several years later he took another stab at it, this time under the working title “The Cannibals.” He got about 500 pages into it before hitting a wall. “Under the Dome” was a partial rewrite of “The Cannibals.” King said he thought that “The Cannibals” manuscript had been lost as well until it resurfaced in 2009, battered and missing a few pages.
The first 60 pages are available on the Stephen King website.
Lantz said he hopes he can get to the bottom of the mystery soon.
“Either Stephen King did this or someone took a copy of it to proofread it for him,” said
Marsha DeFilippo, King’s longtime assistant, said Sunday the manuscript that was sold to Artios Books last month was definitely a copy of the manuscript, an earlier version of “Under the Dome” entitled “The Cannibals,” which now sits in the author’s office. She said the copy was downloaded from King’s website.
“I think the mystery is solved,” said DeFilippo.
Walter Lantz, manager at Artios Books, believed he had a working copy of an original King manuscript. But DeFilippo said the 122 pages in Lantz’s possession were downloaded from King’s website.
“We scanned in original pages with Stephen’s handwritten edits. There are two pdf documents that match exactly the 120 pages he had,” said DeFilippo.
Lantz said the pages were part of a Stephen King collection sold to the store by an Auburn woman trying to raise money to pay for a relative’s funeral.
DeFilippo said King, who has penned more than 50 novels and hundreds of short stories, has lost manuscripts from time to time.
“Some of them got lost over the years between their moves and I am sure in the early days he may not have kept everything he ever had,” said DeFilippo.
Nevertheless she said it would have been very unusual for a King manuscript to land in a bookshop in Maine.
“I would say it is uncommon, which is why it triggered my curiosity,” said DeFilippo who talked with Lantz by phone on Friday.
DeFilippo said King has donated many of his original papers to the Fogler Library at the University of Maine in Orono.
“Most of it is already at the University of Maine,” she said