Decades Later, Stephen King Is Finishing What He and Peter Straub Started

The Book Review

In this episode of The Book Review, host Gilbert Cruz interviews legendary horror author Stephen King about his upcoming book, 'Other Worlds

Key takeaways

• The new book 'Other Worlds Than These' concludes a trilogy that began with 'The Talisman' in 1984.
• King describes his method of writing the new book as 'literary forgery' to replicate Straub's specific syntax and rhythm.
• The narrative incorporates elements from King's expansive 'Dark Tower' epic, specifically connecting the Territories to Mid-world.
• King discusses the influence of 1950s mass murderer Charles Starkweather on his early fascination with true crime.
• The author expresses a career-long commitment to avoiding 'formula writing' by blending horror with fantasy, sci-fi, and detective fiction.

Main topics

• Posthumous collaboration with Peter Straub
• The Talisman trilogy legacy
• Dark Tower series connections

Notable quotes

I've always been a literary forger.

Conclusion

A poignant look at the enduring bond between two masters of genre fict

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey, it's Anna Martin from The New York Times. What if I told you you'll never have to hear this line again? Speaker 5 (0:06) Wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (0:08) Yeah, no, I actually can't tell you that. But you know what I can tell you? A place I think you might want to go. It's the Shows tab in The New York Times app. The place to listen to and now watch full episodes of New York Times shows. The Shows tab. Find it in The New York Times app. Explore The Shows tab and follow a show today. Speaker 3 (0:29) There's Gilbert. Gilbert! Hello! Are you talking about Molly? Yeah. Can we see Molly? Speaker 4 (0:39) There's Molly. She's so Speaker 3 (0:40) great. Molly is the only reason I'd ever want to get a corgi. The queen never sold me, but you have sold me on corgis. I'm Gilbert Cruz, and this is the Book Review for The New York Times. Our guest today is none other than Stephen King, best-selling horror author and owner of the adorable 10-year-old corgi that you just heard named Molly. To quote the main character of Muriel Spark's novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. Well, Stephen King got me, and I think many of us. at an impressionable age. I was around 10 or 11 when I read his sprawling novel, It, and it kicked off a lifelong love of horror as a genre and of King as a writer. I've since read many of his 70-some-odd books more than once. There's something wrong with me. One of those books is The Talisman. Back in the early 1980s, in the midst of an astoundingly productive period, King co-wrote, with his friend and fellow author Peter Straub, The Talisman. a story about a 12-year-old boy named Jack Sawyer whose mother, a B-movie actress, is dying. Jack discovers that he is able to flip back and forth between our reality and a parallel world called the territories. And so he goes on a quest to find that mystical item of the title in order to heal his mother. The book was a massive success, and 17 years later, in 2001, the writing duo published a sequel called Black House that picked up with Jack as an adult. King and Straub had always planned to write a third and final book to the series, but Peter Straub died in 2022 before they were able to begin work on it. That didn't stop Stephen King, however, because he is finally publishing, with Straub, down as co-author, that book. It's titled Other Worlds Than These. In it, Jack Sawyer is much older, and the new book, like Black House before it, incorporates King's sprawling Dark Tower epic series. Part of the story is also inspired by the crimes of the 1950s mass murderer Charles Starkweather. Steve, welcome back. Speaker 4 (2:46) Thank you very much, Gilbert. It's good to be here. Speaker 3 (2:49) You and Peter first came up with this character, Jack Sawyer, and this concept of the territories in the early 1980s. You revisited both years later in Black House. Tell me about any conversations that you had had with Peter to write a third one. Speaker 4 (3:05) Well, Peter and I started. with the talisman because he had read a book called The Hero's Journey. And there was certain ideas in there that he really liked. I came up with the idea of a young guy who was going to go on a quest to find an object, which was the talisman. And so we wrote the book. We had modems back in the day when... you had this kind of weird chirping noise going back and forth. And we always had designs on a second book, which turned out to be Black House. And it was published one day after 9-11. It kind of got overshadowed by that event, as indeed it should have been and would have been. It was like publishing a book after Pearl Harbor. So we had always thought that we would write a third volume of The Talisman. It was a natural. And so things went on. Peter had his work. I had my work. We kept putting it off and putting it off. And finally, Peter wrote me a letter and he said, We really ought to do this. And he sent me a book called Red-Headed Peckerwood. And it was about Charles Starkweather, but it was a book of photographs. There were no people. It was just found objects from that period and that time when Charles Starkweather went on the first modern killing spree, if you will. Peter said, This would be a great idea for a book. And he wrote me a letter about it. I didn't find it until after Other Worlds and These was actually written. Time went by and Peter got sick and then he passed away. Speaker 4 (5:20) I had this idea for the third book and I just channeled him like crazy. He was with me in the course of writing this book. So it finally turned out to be. Stephen King and Peter Straub. We got the band back together, so to speak. Speaker 3 (5:44) What does it mean to channel Peter Straub? I know the two of you have been friends for such a long time. You'd written two previous books together, but when you're sitting down, you're like, all right, I'm going to do Peter here. What does that look like? Speaker 4 (5:59) Well, I read Ghost Story and some of his short fiction before I started. to try and get his voice. It's like a kind of literary forgery. When we wrote Black House, Peter said to me before we started, I'm going to write like you, and you're going to write like me, and nobody will be able to figure out who wrote what. Because in the first book, The Talisman, people had no problem picking out things that Peter did and things that I did. Speaker 3 (6:38) So Speaker 4 (6:39) I said, okay, we'll do that. We tried as much as we could in Black House so that I wrote like him and he wrote like me. And when I read Ghost Story and the short fiction that he did, I sat down and the first thing that I did was I wrote Here and now, as an old friend used to say, which was a very Straubian line, you know. In terms of rhythm Speaker 3 (7:09) or syntax? In Speaker 4 (7:11) terms of syntax. And there was a way that Peter wrote. I can't explain it any better than that. Speaker 3 (7:19) But Speaker 4 (7:19) I've always been a literary forger. If I read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft, I would write about. tenebrous unknown horrors. You know, Peter has a very clear style. He's got a poetic sensibility combined with a narrative ability. I don't think anybody else has it. Maybe James Dickey a little bit in Deliverance and To the White Sea. Maybe a little bit of Cormac McCarthy, but he never... got floored like McCarthy did. He always seemed to come back to the basic story. And I love that about Peter. I always did. Peter was special. Speaker 3 (8:09) I'm sure you guys would poke each other as friends and longtime collaborators would. What would he say was your style? Speaker 4 (8:16) Oh, man. You know, it's like trying to describe what you see in the mirror. when it's yourself, it's very hard for me to say. Yeah. I'm all about story. primarily. And as time has gone by, I have a tendency to see the whole frame. Speaker 3 (8:40) Yeah. I am curious, you're embarking on the release of this book. You are aware, you know, just like we're having this conversation that you're going to have to talk about your friend a lot, think about him a lot. Is that something that fills you with dread? Is that something you're looking forward to remembering, Peter? Speaker 4 (9:02) I love Peter. And he was one of a kind. There were things that we did not agree on. Music was one thing. He was totally into jazz. And I