Stephen King celebrates his 70th birthday on Sept. 21.
King praisedYouas: Totally original.
Never read anything quite like it.
Credit: KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images/Dowling Pugliese/ Ace Photography
… Hypnotic and scary.
A little Ira Levin, a little Patricia Highsmith, and plenty of serious snark.
I connected with his voice because he was writing like the people I knew and overheard in my life.
Knopf
He hears people, the relationship between interior life and speech pattern.
Thats part of his genius, the distinctive singularity of his range, the unmistakable tone of his voice.
I learned a lot about myself by thinking about what the hell itwasexactly that made his stories click.
Pocket Books
But even before all that, when I was a kid, the man was on my radar.
In our house, my dad had a chair the way so many dads do.
He was always watching something, always reading something.
Early on, I noticed his demeanor would be affected by what he was reading.
The books about spies and missiles made his face drawn.
Put onFantasiaandhewas the kid.
But he was the most fun when he was fired up over something likeThe Stand.
Kings books have this super-psychological effect on people.
They heighten your senses.
Your humor gets dark.
Its as if he gives you a magnifying glass into human sensitivities.
You could feel it in our house.
I wasnt old enough to read Kings stories, but I was already witnessing the power of his talent.
I went through the ritualistic experience where you defy your mom even though you know shes right.
The call to the darkness is too strong.
Your older brother watched it…
The world looks different to you.
The lake is no longer a lake.
There might be monsters in there.
The monsters could very well be the swim instructors (as Id long suspected).
You get older andyourethe monster.
I had so much to say but I didnt know where to begin.
The first short story I wrote as a teenager was from the perspective of a dead girl.
I was genuinely curious about what it might be like to be dead.
The bookOn Writingdidnt yet exist, but the lessons were evident in the Stephen King things Id read.
He wasnt a teenage girl, but tell that toCarrie.
A little later, you readThe Shiningand you connect with this adult character who is failing at adulthood.
Thats why I was loved writing short stories, for the head games.
I got home to my gross apartment and readThe Girl Who Loved Tom Gordonand everything was fine.
I won a fiction contest with a story about a recent college graduate who was pretty lost, too.
There is warped peace in seeing your new, burgeoning fears about connectivity fully realized, for sure.
He says we survive because were the craziest, most murderous motherfers in the jungle.
He writes so many books that sometimes you dont read them right away.
Then one day, youre in a bad place and the world feels flat and you startGeralds Game.
Im forever grateful for the clarity of Prince the dogs voice, his fears, his anxiety.
Hes starving … and here is a dead man, just going to waste.
Prince got my blood pumping.
I mean this is adog.
And this dogs conundrum is heartbreaking and terrifying.
I love that territory, where your head spins.
Poor this one, poor that one, poor humans, poor animals!
The dog is not of service to us humans.
The dog is trying to live.
And life sometimes means death.
It was a few months after my dad died.
And then guess what?
I would pick up my dads books and flip through the pages.
One of those books wasDifferent Seasons.
A bad bruise on the side of his face, a scalp laceration, a bloody nose.
No more at least, no more visible.
People walk away from bar-fights in worse condition and go right on drinking.
Yet the train must have hit him; why else would his sneakers be off his feet that way?
And how come the engineer hadnt seen him?
Could it be that the train had hit him hard enough to toss him but not to kill him?
Those words shook me they bothered me then and they bother me now and they helped.
It was like, okay, this is life now, kiddo.
Find a way to deal with it.
A few months later, I wrote my first book,You.
A couple months after my book debuted, I was blowing my nose in the The Beverly Center.
I had a cold, a fever, but I needed to get presents.
Out of nowhere, my phone started to go crazy.
The good kind of crazy.
Stephen King had Tweeted about my book.
My mom was right.
There was nobody who would have been more excited about this than my dad.
I was halfway to my car when I realized I left my wallet in Kitson.
When I went back to get it I told them about the King tweets.
They looked at me like I was crazy.
After all… its Stephen King!
His name could be in the dictionary.
He means something to us.
As one friend said, Um… there are Kepneses in here.
A girl and her dad.
Is that for you?
Yes, I learned, those Kepneseswerefor me.
Stephen King is a genius, and hes also a generous, smiling soul.
As I well know as a reader, as a writer, his gifts can change your life.
King at 70:
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