Maybe my parents let me get away with more than they should've as a child.
That doesn't mean that I have bad parents. Far from it, but the point I raise is one that everyone with children struggles with on an almost constant basis.
"Should I let my child watch/read/listen to/do that?"
My earliest Stephen King memory is flipping through my Mom's copy of 'Night Shift', which was amongst a handful of books kept in a wooden magazine stand-type apparatus next to the couch. This was in the house, so it was after we had moved from the apartment, and I couldn't have been more than 7-8 years old.
What do I remember? The rats in 'Graveyard Shift'. The rats. I remember my first understanding that words on a page could scare you as much as the images on a movie screen or a television.
At that early age, I was already reading beyond my age level. My parents encouraged my exploratory development. I listened to Pink Floyd on vinyl, I watched wrestling and GI Joe and the Star Wars movies (on VHS & Betamax, thank you very much), and I read. I read a lot. I read beyond Garfield, Encyclopedia Brown, Farley Drexel Hatcher, and the Hardy Boys.
Stephen King has been a constant companion in my life. Well, his works have. His characters, his worlds, and his words have paralleled my own development. I was, and still am, the Constant Reader. Only once did King himself become of any real importance in my life and that is because I, along with millions of others, worried for his very life after that infamous accident with the van.
Let's be honest: I worried almost as equally about the fate of Roland Deschain as I did about Mr. King, but we'll get to that in due time.
The Guardian UK has a columnist who decided to re-read King's entire output, in order, and write about his experience. Being the type of second-rate unimaginative cover artist that I am, I thought that was a wonderful idea, and decided to do it myself.
Our journeys will be different, because his memories and upbringing are wholly different than mine or yours. I'm following no particular timeframe other than my ground rules to read them in the order they were published, whenever possible. I may post once a week, or more often, or perhaps longer will go by. No matter how many times I've read 'The Stand', each page still counts as a page and it takes a while to get through it.
Speaking of ground rules, let me lay some down:
1. Read the Stephen King bibliography, in order, as originally published chronologically, whenever possible. If a book is unobtainable, I can pass it, but I plan on making every intention to come back to it. There are over 70 works in his bibliography, depending on how you count them.
2. Honor the historical integrity of the publication as it pertains to me. In other words, approach them as I originally did as a reader. 'Night Shift' is a collection of short stories that King published individually through magazines before his big break, but my encounters with it have all been through the book, so I'm going to write about the book. 'Green Mile' was originally published as a 6-part serial release, and I purchased each 'chapter' and eagerly devoured it while impatiently waiting for the days to pass until the next release.
3. Finish the book whether I like it or not. In my recollection, I can only remember abandoning 2 of King's books once I started reading them. I'm not going to allow myself the opportunity to do that this time around.
4. Deal with reissues in the same manner as ground rule number 2. Both 'The Stand' and 'The Gunslinger' are available in two different versions. Because I read both books in their original format long before 'The Stand: Uncut' and the 2003 re-work of 'The Gunslinger' were released, I think it's reasonable and honest to treat them as 4 separate entries into the lexicon.
5. Create any other ground rules on the fly to suit myself as I see fit.
I eagerly anticipate the idea of reading some of these books again. I am looking forward to reading some of them for the first time, because I haven't read them all. I'm hesitant to revisit some of them, because I remember finding them dreadful during the first go'round (I'm talking to you, TommyKnockers).
I'm an avid proponent of re-reading books, because you can discover something new each time. The light shines on them a little differently with each read, and you see some of the little things you missed. You know the end already. He gets the girl, he doesn't get the girl, he wins the game, he loses the game, he was dead the whole time (wait, wrong medium), but you reinvest yourself in the journey. The ability to lose yourself into the author's universe, even for short pages or paragraphs at a time, is a magical thing. I don't discount the importance of reading non-fiction at all. Education is important, and knowing is half the battle (Yo Joe!), but reading fiction is educational, too, and far too many people sacrifice their imaginations and their own entertainment, simply because they find reading to be a chore.
My parents let me read whatever I wanted to read. I don't ever remember a time when I was told that I couldn't read something. I remember plenty of times where I read, or tried to read, something that I couldn't comprehend or understand, but I was never denied the opportunity to experience.
In the long run, my parents did right by me. They fostered my love of reading, music, the creativity of movies and television, and they instilled a hesitance in me that allows me to delay, just long enough to consider my own upbringing, before I tell my children they can't do something.
They're still too young for the rats...
