Stephen King's House

October 25, 2007
— During the spring of 1991, a man broke into Stephen King’s house, making a news item of himself for the benefit of us and a danger of himself to the detriment of the horror author. Based solely on the sheer number of them out there, odds are the intruder was a fan. Judging by his homemade bomb of calculator parts and cardboard, he was deranged. And while I don't at all condone the action, of course, I can understand it to a degree...because King's house is a really cool one.

I'm not really a Stephen King fan in the classic sense. Of his heft of work, I’ve read Carrie, ’Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Night Shift, Rage, the first half of Danse Macabre, The Mist, and one other short-story anthology that I can’t seem to remember the title of, in addition to numerous random essays and articles. Even though that experience slants mostly to his earlier work and is such a small percentage of his libratic oeuvre, I believe that’s still enough to develop some communicable idea on his work...and I'm not really that into his books.

Oh, and I’ve seen just about every movie and miniseries based on his work, purely out of cinematic addiction. Obviously, that has no real bearing on my opinion of him as a writer or storyteller, but it does give me insight into his book ideas.

Here’s the thing about King and I. I’ve never not been entertained by a Stephen King book. His style of writing is completely facile, and it’s suspiciously easy to get from sentence to sentence. He definitely keeps my attention, but that's not really a measurement of worth, either. He writes from a real place, his dialogue is natural, and his characters live, although when you bloat a novel like he does and end up spending so much time with them, they’d probably feel real inevitably.

My big problem with King’s books, though, is that I always feel empty after finishing one. Granted, in general I’m a cavernous hollow that reverberates every idea, feeling, and memory into sad loops that bounce painfully off my insides like detached Pong pixels, but nevertheless I usually need to wrestle with literature, and I want it to beat me every time. I want it to change me. His work, though, isn't really for that. When I'm done with a Stephen King book, I'm kind of done with it. 

Still, I can't help but like the guy himself. King’s horror advocacy and his place as a cultural force is pretty awesome. And I think he’s at his best in his nonfiction work. His ability to compose clear, natural prose in an amiable manner is perfect. The introductions to his books often interest me more than the books themselves.

Oh, and he has a cool house. I’ve suffered the self-imposed embarrassment of standing in front of my share of famous houses for pictures (I hate calling what I’m doing “posing”’s more like just taking up space in a frame). Blackbeard’s, Lovecraft’s, Shakespeare’s, Lizzie Borden’s. This is the first time I’ve (sigh) posed in front of a living person’s house, though. Felt uncomfortable like stalking, even if my pockets weren't filled with cardboard and calculator parts.

His house is located in the basically Canadian state of Maine, just outside of downtown Bangor at 47 West Broadway. The surrounding neighborhood is way more inviting than I would have thought. The houses are all large and expensive-looking, but they’re close to the street, which is itself wide and open, and a public sidewalk does what public sidewalks do directly in front of them. I totally see the appeal of living in the place. It’s highly accessible, and you can go there without feeling like the neighborhood watch is burning sideways 8’s into your back with binoculars.

Stephen King’s house is red with white trim, old enough to look historic, and absolutely towers over you. Despite that last, it does look smaller than you’d think it would from the front, but it reaches back far enough that you can’t mistake it as anything but a mansion. It’s also in complete full view and not at all hidden behind the small wrought-iron gate that envelopes the place.

Speaking of which, Robert Frost once wrote something about cool fences making cool neighbors, so based on just that, King must be a hit at the neighborhood yard sales. It’s also a big reason why this house’s appearance is so notable. Spiders, bat-winged creatures, and a three-headed reptile all decorate the black wrought-iron in natural and subtle ways. And by natural and subtle I mean not annoying. It’s exactly something you’d hope a nice guy steeped in horror stories would do to his house. Acknowledge who he is without megaphoning it around.

King wasn’t home. I know this because while I was sitting across the street in my car with its obvious out-of-state plates trying to screw up the courage to be mistaken for a Stephen King fan, a tour bus arrived, out of which jumped about five camera-handed people in raincoats (because it was raining), which definitely put me in perspective and made it even harder to get out of the car.

I think I’ve heard somewhere that the tour bus is only allowed to stop by when King’s not home. Also, that night was game one of the MLB American League Championship Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians. It was in Boston, and apparently Mr. King is Rain Man about attending Red Sox games. An anti-war sign was staked into the front lawn and the front gate was closed, but a side driveway gate was open, down which was parked a champagne-colored Mercedez Benz.

I want to like Stephen King’s work more than I do. I mean, I don't hate it in the way I hate most New York Times best-selling authors and certainly not to the point of bombs made of cardboard and calculator parts. But I do love his house.

Read about my visit to some Stephen King movie filming sites in Maine.