Stephen King had to change the setting of his new book because of coronavirus. Despite many of the world’s day-to-day routines being drastically altered by the pandemic, it’s often easy to forget how the virus can also have subtle effects on life.
So far, the world has watched as one major event after another has been canceled. Anything and everything that brings large groups of people together in close proximity has been put on hold. While it’s anything but convenient, it is an unfortunate yet necessary measure. The coronavirus (aka COVID-19) has infected 1.5 million people around the globe, and an end to the pandemic still isn’t within sight. While initial measures such as event cancellations and eventual lockdowns have made it clear what sort of stranglehold the virus has on the world, everyone is experiencing their own issues and difficulties during this challenging time. However, as with everything, there is always an upside. For creatives, at least, being forced to stay home can potentially unlock new ideas and projects. With nothing but time on their hands, some artists have seen a surge in creativity.
At age 72, American author Stephen King has earned a career in which he is internationally known as one of the greatest horror novelists of all time. King has already touched upon the issue of a pandemic in his 1978 novel, The Stand. But while the plague that haunts the characters of that novel is far more severe than that of coronavirus, King has found himself affected on a creative level by the real-life pandemic. On the one hand, social distancing and a lockdown have helped him to get to work on a new novel. Still, as King revealed in a recent interview with NPR, the unexpected rise of coronavirus has made creative alterations necessary as well:
“I set [the book I'm working on] in the year 2020 because I thought, "OK, when I publish it, if it's in 2021, it will be like in the past, safely in the past." And then this thing came along, and I immediately looked back through the copy that I'd written and I saw that one of the things that was going on was that two of my characters had gone on a cruise. ... And I thought, "Well, no, I don't think anybody's going on cruise ships this year." And so I looked at everything and I immediately set the book in 2019, where people could congregate and be together and the story would work because of that.”
The title of the new novel has yet to be revealed, but it does appear that the current global situation is steering the narrative in a direction that King had not anticipated. It may seem that those small details, such as whether or not people would be taking a cruise in 2020, are very minor, but, whether we like it or not, the coronavirus has now made itself into a significant historical landmark. For King to ignore even a cursory mention of the disease in his work would feel wrong - like omitting any mention of World War II in a novel set in the 1940s. It’s because King has the foresight to understand how such an event will be seen in hindsight that makes him such a skilled author. Tapping into the fear and uncertainty of his subjects is part of what has made King so successful.
Whether or not the coronavirus and its grim global reality will gradually make up more of King’s new novel remains to be seen. However, King is certainly no stranger to the whims of creative inspiration. Many of the author’s past novels have come about as the result of a slight incident or experience that suddenly took precedence in his life. Coronavirus has certainly taken precedence in all our lives at the moment, and it will be interesting to see just how this tragedy affects King’s creative work.
Source: NPR
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