Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author of bestselling horror novels including The Shining, Carrie, and Misery, known for tales of small-town America corrupted by the supernatural.
On the island
Eight records
Of all the Beatles songs, it seems to me that it's traveled the best over the years to my ear. It's the one that still sounds totally fresh when I hear it today, as it did when I first heard it when I was probably 16 years old.
Desolation RowFavourite
The next record is the place where my father, were he still alive, would probably be dwelling.
I discovered at some point that I'm not really a singer at all in these clubs. I'm a beer salesman, and that's all right.
that's that person that stands out there in the middle of the road and says, Here I am. If you like me, that's great. If you don't like me, get outta here.
a great song, a great eighties barroom anthem by the old ninety-seven great and funny pickup song called Bury a Reef.
It's just straight ahead rock and roll. I think it's what Bruce Springsteen does best... It's just guitar driven, balls to the wall rock.
for me disco never died... I like this because it's it's got a great beat and you can dance to it. What's wrong with that?
for me it it sort of expresses that feeling of we all need some place to go where we can be safe and our imaginations take us there.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:08Why do you want to make your readers scared?
I don't necessarily, and I don't think that it's a given that you can write many different things. I think that you're drawn in certain directions.
Presenter asks
2:46Did [winning the National Book Foundation Medal] make you feel that finally it was one in the eye for people who didn't respect what you'd been doing for all those years?
Well, it's a two-edged sword... It felt like in your eye, guy, take that. Here I am. I'm up here in my tuxedo, and if you don't like it, don't look, you know. But at the same time, it feels a little bit like winning Miss Congeniality in the Miss America pageant... You sure brought a lot of people into the bookstore.
Presenter asks
7:12Did [your mother] ever talk to you in the early years of your childhood about your father?
We got a legacy of shame and secrecy on that subject. We never got any detail. The detail that we got, we found for ourselves in the attic.
The keepsakes
The book
The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Because there's a lot there to read. It's a very thick book. And Auden is very rewarding. And poetry is something that's like music. You can read it again and again, and there's always something there that's new.
The luxury
a water hammock not a water bed, mind you, but a water hammock that I could swing between two palms on the edge of the beach and watch the turquoise water as I listened to my music.
Presenter asks
10:19Given you had this talent to write, there was this drive to write, a lot of people in your position might have just dropped out, saying, Hell, I'm going to be a writer anyway, why do I need a degree?
Well, I know, but my mother wanted me to get the college degree and there was never any question that I was going to try to do what she wanted. She'd never had anything in her life, so to speak, and she deserved that and my brother gave it to her and I wanted to give it to her too.
Presenter asks
14:18What happened [when you started to write Carrie and it ended up in the bin]?
Tabby fished it out. She wanted to see what I'd been working on because I hadn't been able to find traction on anything for a while. And so uh she brushed off the cigarette ashes and and straightened out the pages and sat down in a chair and read'em. And she's got this little Mona Lisa smile that she gets on her face sometimes and she got it then and she said, You ought to go on with this because this is good and good fiction always finds its audience.
Presenter asks
18:04I've read that you say you delivered the eulogy at her funeral drunk. Is that true?
I don't think that I was actually drunk, but I was certainly high. And when she was in the hospital and and on her deathbed I was high most of that time. You know, I'd get about a six pack into me before I went in.
“They can't tax it, the imagination that that belongs to rich and poor alike.”
“I don't think I'd be alive if she hadn't pulled a drug in alcohol... intervention on me in uh I think it was nineteen eighty six, I probably would have gone down the chute.”
“The gift is something that you have, and it's a wonderful thing to have. It's a great thing. The person that I entertain before I entertain anybody else is me, and I have a blast.”