'Duma Key' finds Stephen King stepping into his own life

By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — The icicle "was the size of a mailbox. I swear it was," says Stephen King, describing what could be a scary scene in one of his novels.
But this was real life: Maine's great ice storm of 1998, and as King tells it, he was out for a walk with his corgi, Marlo, when the supersized icicle came crashing down from a tree and just missed the dog.

"If it had hit Marlo, it would've killed him," King says.

When he got home, he asked his wife, Tabitha, "Why are we still here?" Here, as in frigid Maine.

Until then, he says, "we never really came to terms with the idea that we were rich." When they did, they headed to the west coast of Florida ("surprisingly funky," King says). At first they rented, then bought a winter home, near Sarasota.

Ten winters later, King is visiting New York to talk about his latest novel, Duma Key (Scribner, $28), the first that's set in Florida.

It makes use of a real-life accident that was no near-miss. In the summer of 1999, King, out for another walk in Maine, was nearly killed when a van slammed into him. His right hip was fractured, his right leg was broken in nine places and one of his lungs collapsed.

One other King-like detail: At the accident scene, he remembers telling a paramedic that he knew he was going into shock. He had done research on the subject for his fiction.

In Duma Key, King's protagonist, Edgar Freemantle, a big shot in construction in Minneapolis, has another kind of violent confrontation: A construction crane falls on him. His skull is fractured, a hip is shattered and he loses an arm.

He becomes prone to fits of rage. His wife leaves him. A psychiatrist advises him to find a new life elsewhere, so he moves to an isolated island in Florida.

"Edgar's injuries were worse than mine," King says. "I didn't lose an arm, I didn't lose my wife, but like him, my memory was affected. I know a little about pain and suffering and what happens when the painkillers lose their efficacy, when your body gets used to them."

When King writes in Freemantle's voice that "everything hurt all the time. I had a constant ringing headache; behind my forehead it was always midnight in the world's biggest clock-shop," he's not just imagining it.

But he says the novel also was written "with some distance. It's like Wordsworth once said of poetry: 'Creativity works best when strong emotions are recollected in relative tranquility.' "

Of course, in King's fiction, tranquility usually doesn't stand much of a chance.

In Florida, Freemantle takes up painting, which leads to all sorts of supernatural developments and a question: Can ghosts write on a canvas?

The seeds of the novel were triggered by yet another walk. King may be called "the king of horror"— an unsolicited title that's "gotten rather old," he says — but perhaps he should be crowned the king of literary pedestrians.

Five years ago, he was out for a stroll at his winter home. He recalls that he was still in pain from his injuries and could walk no more than half a mile (these days, he does 3 miles) and that it was dusk, "the time when the world seems to include a lot more than we can see."

At a bend of the road, he saw a sign: Caution: Children. He suddenly imagined "two dead girls holding hands like paper dolls." He didn't write it down, but the image stuck in his mind, which always tells him "there could be a story here."

The girls he imagined never show up in Duma Key, at least as he imagined them. "But that image got me started."

He hesitated about using Florida as a setting: "There are so many good writers who grew up there and know it so much better than I do." He rattles off a list that starts with John D. MacDonald and ends with Dave Barry, a fellow would-be musician in the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of writers who perform at benefits.

King decided that Freemantle, who narrates the novel, would be from elsewhere: "In Florida, he's an outsider, like me." But King, who has set most of his novels in his native Maine, knows that exploring new terrain, even in a novel, is tricky.

Already, he says, a reader from Florida caught a factual mistake: There's a reference in the novel to the Ritz, but at the time, the hotel had another name. "If I really knew Florida, I'd know that."

The early reviews have been good. King acknowledges: "I'm never going to get the critical attention of someone like Salman Rushdie or Martin Amis, nor am I sure I want it. But a lot of today's reviewers grew up reading my fiction. Most of the old critics who panned anything I wrote are either dead or retired. The newer ones read me when they were young, which tends to make for an easier ride and more sympathetic readers."

Both his sons, Owen King and Joe Hillstrom King (who writes under the name Joe Hill) are writers, but he says, "they ask me not to talk too much about them. It's tough. It's like they're in the shadow of a big tree. Not that I'm a better writer, but it's tough to be related to a writer who sells a lot of books."

In 2003, King was awarded the National Book Awards' annual medal for distinguished contribution to American literature, a prize that traditionally goes to high-brow writers such as Philip Roth, Norman Mailer and Joan Didion.

His selection wasn't without controversy. King, who has never even been nominated for the National Book Award for fiction, says, "It's a terrific award, but I know it's not for a book I wrote. It's for being Stephen King. It's like getting the Miss Congeniality Award. You're not the prettiest girl in the beauty contest, but you have a nice personality."

The night of the awards, King had pneumonia related to his weakened lungs. A doctor advised that he would be better off in a hospital, but King told him, "I've got to do this thing. It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

In his speech, he took aim at publishing elites who "make it a point of pride" to say they don't read best sellers, and he asked, "Do you think you get social brownie points for staying out of touch with our culture?"

That night, Shirley Hazzard, who won the fiction award for her novel, The Great Fire, said in her acceptance speech, "We don't need reading lists from Stephen King."

That still rankles him: "It proves my point."

At 60, he's in good health "as far as I know," and he rolls up a leg of his jeans to show off a skinned knee he got playing tennis. He has abandoned all talk of retiring.

"I heard myself using that word in an interview when I was sick and miserable and addicted to painkillers. I no longer wanted to work." All that has changed.

His next book will be a collection of short stories, but he and his publisher can't agree on a title. He wants to call it Unnatural Acts of Human Intercourse, which "could be a tough sell in some markets."

Serving as guest editor for The Best American Short Stories 2007, King says he rediscovered his love of short fiction, although few general-interest magazines continue to publish short stories.

The short story has been replaced by the short chapter, he says, citing writers such as James Patterson and Robert Parker.

"Also, movies don't help," says King, who writes a pop culture column for Entertainment Weekly. "People get socialized to expecting a single story, where they don't have to get to know new characters too often. When was the last time you saw an anthology film, like the Twilight Zone movie?

"The only short-fiction movie to play in the past 10 years was Grindhouse, and it bombed. These two artistic fields are not the same, but the tastes of the audiences overlap in striking ways."

He also has begun work on another novel, but he won't discuss it for fear of "bad luck. If I didn't think it would work out, I'd talk your ear off about it," he says and laughs.

Or, he could just go for another walk and see what happens.