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Stephen King: on alcoholism and returning to the Shining

Stephen King: 'I have no wish to shut the door on the past. I have been pretty upfront about my past. But do I regret? I do. I do.' Photograph: Steve Schofield for the Guardian Steve Schofield/Guardian
Stephen King: ‘I have no wish to shut the door on the past. I have been pretty upfront about my past. But do I regret? I do. I do.’ Photograph: Steve Schofield for the Guardian Steve Schofield/Guardian

Stephen King has written a lot of books – at 56 novels, he’s closing in on Agatha Christie – some of which have been great, some of which less so. Still, he says, when people say, “Steve, your books are uneven”, he’s confident “there’s good stuff in all of ’em”. Now and then, a story lingers in his mind long after it’s published. When fans ask what happened to Charlie McGee in Firestarter, for example, King isn’t interested. But when they ask what happened to Danny Torrance, the boy from The Shining, he always found himself wondering. Specifically: what the story would have looked like if Danny’s father – mad “white-knuckle alcoholic” Jack Torrance – had “found AA. And I thought, well, let’s find out.”

Source: Stephen King: on alcoholism and returning to the Shining