Stephen King On Getting Scared: 'Nothing Like Your First Time'
On why alcoholism plays such an important role in Doctor Sleep
I was interested in [alcoholism] for a lot of different reasons. There does seem to be a genetic predisposition to alcoholism — that's the nature part. The nurture part is that if you grow up in a household where there's a lot of drinking, you have a tendency to become a drinker yourself. I wanted to see if it was possible to escape those things.
The other thing that sort of interested me was that Jack Torrance never tries Alcoholics Anonymous. That is never even mentioned in The Shining. He does what they call "white-knuckle sobriety" — he's doing it all by himself. I wondered what it would be like to see Danny first as an alcoholic and then see him in AA.
On whether his own experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous helped to shape the way he represents it in his novel
One of the traditions of AA is, we try to maintain complete anonymity at the level of press, radio and films — and, as you know, we're on the radio right now ...
Knowing that I was a very heavy drinker at the time that I wrote The Shining and that I haven't had a drink in about 25 years now, you could draw certain conclusions from that, but I wouldn't cop to it. Let me just say this ... I've done a lot of personal research in these subjects.
Read A Review
Book Reviews
Here's Danny! 'Doctor Sleep' Picks Up Where 'Shining' Left Off