The Lost Work of Stephen King: A Guide to Unpublished Manuscripts, Story Fragments, Alternative Versions, and Oddities

Stephen Spignesi worte the Stephen King Encylopedia, a book I still read a couple of times a month. He knows his subject and is rather talented as a writer himself. If you've seen the encyclopedia then you've read excerpts of King's immature work. This book concentrates on the lost works : the material King did as a raw kid (This isn't a put down. King's youthful stuff shows that even then he had gift)but don't forget that this is all material that he chose not to publsih or stuck in a drawer somewhere. The Lost Work is really for totally devoted fans, the people who will buy anything that has King's name on it or in it. The rest of us probably won't be as enamored.

This book does not contain any complete work by Stephen King, but it explores many texts or other works that are little known and that are at times difficult to find. It sums up the texts, works, stories, etc, gives the starting line and at times the punch line, analyzes these works and evaluates the chances one may have to get them. Some of these works are nowadays more readily available than said in the book. It is the case of « L.T.'s Theory of Pets » that has been published in an audio cassette version as read by Stephen King himself in London in 1998 (Stephen King Live !, 1999) or of « Lunch at the Gotham Café » read by the author and published in the form of a CD audiobook (Blood and Smoke, 2000). This book gives some insight on how Stephen King works by exemplifying working or alternative versions of some books we know, and by also covering some rare pieces that show how adventurous and compulsive a writer he may be. I particularly appreciate the column he has in The Maine Campus from february 1969 to may 1970. A must, in other words, for the students of Stephen King's works, the Stephen King literate and the Stephen King lovers. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.

A very interesting book. I am rereading now actually