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New Hampshire’s Stephen King Connection
If there is a trope about Stephen King novels, it would be this: A white, male novelist (or teacher) uncovers an otherworldly threat. The outside world is unable to help, so he surreptitiously fights it on his own. He’s joined by a slow-to-believe friend or two, perhaps with a potential romantic partner. There is a confederate in their midst, someone who will complicate their mission. And all of this happens in Maine. Always in Maine.
It’s not uncommon for an author to use a familiar location across the breadth of their body of work. John Steinbeck often set his novels in Salinas, California. Washington Irving set many of his short stories in New York’s Hudson River Valley. Most of James Ellroy’s crime tales take place in Los Angeles. The setting for William Faulkner’s novels is fictional Yoknapatwpha County. Who can begrudge King his Castle Rock, his Little Tall Island, his Derry?
But over a span of 50 years, 64 novels and more than 200 short stories, even Maine’s favorite literary son has spread it out. The more well-known locales would be an old hotel in the Rockies, a prison in Louisiana, an oasis for the righteous in Boulder, and a post-apocalyptic Gomorrah in Las Vegas.
Less recognized is that a considerable number of the tales in the King oeuvre are set in New Hampshire. It’s a slim slice in a very large pie, but Maine’s neighbor has not been ignored by the Master of Horror. In fact, King rivals John Irving for the number of major novels with scenes set in the Granite State.
>>> Read more (features interview quotes with Dr. Anthony Magistrale, a professor at the University of Vermont)
