The worst book Stephen King ever wrote: “The last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act”
Any prospective author with economic ambitions would do well to enjoy just a single per cent of what Stephen King has achieved. Ever since his debut novel Carrie, the master of horror and suspense fiction has unduly become one of the most successful writers to ever pick up the pen or tap away at the keys.
The world of horror would be starkly missing one of its heroes if it were not for King, and the list of iconic works with his name lettered over the front goes on and on. Through the mind of King, horror fans have profited from the likes of The Shining, Christine and It, just to name a few.
Given the fact that King is such a prolific writer, it may come as some surprise to learn that he once harboured a powerful drug addiction. On the other hand, perhaps it makes sense that King’s output was so consistent because of the very fact that he was using drugs to power through his novels and release them in such high quantities.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, King had once spoken of his drug use and explained that he was using cocaine frequently between 1978 and 1986. The result was that the period was “pretty hazy” to him and that his coke use had some further consequences on his family life, which “started to show cracks”.
King admitted that he would still get up and make his children breakfast and “get them off to school” and that he was still wholly dedicated to writing. Interestingly, though, and unsurprisingly perhaps, King’s writing itself also suffered from his cocaine use, and by his own admission, the end of the period saw a big drop in quality.
Pointing out his worst-ever book, King noted, “The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act.” In more recent times, King had felt that there was a “good book” within The Tommyknockers somewhere, but the “spurious energy that cocaine provides” meant that it came out far too long, around 700 pages.
The Tommyknockers is King’s 1987 science fiction novel that manages to retain King’s overall trademark horror style. It tells of a group of residents of a Maine town who slowly fall under the influence of a strange object that has been buried in the woods, but the drug use of King at the time left it being one of his least favourite works.
King had written another book that he is no great fan of under the influence of drugs, although for very different reasons. In 1999, the author was run over by a van and had to take Oxycontin for his subsequent pain. The 2001 science fiction horror Dreamcatcher was written during this time, and it’s another where King can tell that he was under the influence when reading it in hindsight.
“I don’t like Dreamcatcher very much,” he said. “Dreamcatcher was written after the accident. I couldn’t work on a computer back then because it hurt too much to sit in that position. So I wrote the whole thing longhand. And I was pretty stoned when I wrote it, because of the Oxy, and that’s another book that shows the drugs at work.”
King knew that he had to kick his drug use in order to improve his quality of writing, but he still has a handful of novels that he looks back on with regret, most notably, 1987’s The Tommyknockers.
