Stephen King names the only books he wishes he’d written himself: “Such a feeling of jealousy”
As one of the bestselling and most prolific authors of all time, it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that Stephen King has written an awful lot of books. And yet, he still feels the odd tinge of regret whenever he reads a great piece of literature and desperately wishes he’d been the one to pen that story.
With a bibliography containing over 60 novels and novellas, hundreds of short stories, multiple nonfiction titles, and even a few screenplays covering both adaptations of his work and original tales, King isn’t lacking in credits. Still, even the most accomplished writers find themselves wracked with jealousy when poring over something so good that it stops them in their tracks.
He can always cry into his massive pile of cash, though, seeing as he’s become inordinately wealthy from shifting over 350 million copies of his back catalogue, never mind the lucrative revenue stream he’s been generating from Hollywood for almost 50 years since Brian De Palma’s Carrie lit the fuse on King becoming one of film and television’s favourite page-to-screen pipelines.
So many of his stories are woven into the collective consciousness regardless of whether or not they’ve become smash hit, acclaimed, or awards-laden films: The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, It, Misery, Stand by Me, The Shining, Salem’s Lot, Pet Sematary, The Dark Tower, and The Stand were all born from his imagination, which isn’t a half-bad collection of iconic and indelible titles.
However, five novels stand out as the ones that gave him the ultimate pangs of wishful thinking, even if it’s a little unusual that the book he named as his favourite of all time didn’t make the cut. “Lord of the Flies, maybe,” he began when asked which ones he’d most like to have written himself. “A Separate Peace, I wish I’d written that. Catch-22.”
William Golding’s island-set exploration of the evil within, John Knowles’ sprawling odyssey into the loss of innocence, and Joseph Heller’s nonlinear wartime satire are all classics in their own right, and stirred up sentiments in King that most authors have experienced at least once.
“Sometimes you feel such a feeling of jealousy when you read a book and you say, ‘God damn, why him? What about me?'” he continued. “Or sometimes you read a book where the guy did something that was so much above you in terms of either the idea or the execution of the characters. And you say, ‘Aw, no. I want to hide my head.”
One such title was John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. “You just read it and push away,” he said. “It’s like a guy that’s having a perfect day at the plate. You just say you can’t beat him. It’s almost like perfection.” In fact, King called that book the one he wishes he’d written “more than any of the other ones,” albeit with a possible exception: “Except maybe Light in August by William Faulkner.”
It may not have spoiled his enjoyment of those novels, but it just goes to show that even the most successful and well-known writers can suffer from the green-eyed monster when they read an especially riveting tome.
