The Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King: Night Shift

In the same way as it is not unusual to return to the same music one used to listen in their teens and twenties, I lately feel the need to return to books that I've read in my early youth and that have left a mark on me. Of course, the role both books, music, and the associated communities play in the shaping of one's personality is undeniable, so presumably no matter how many decades past, you'll always be partial and subjective, and it's nearly impossible for the fan to give an objective assessment on these works. It would be still interesting to observe how you perceive them now compared to back then, and what feelings those same books awake in you today.

As a fan of short stories and a lifelong reader of Stephen King, it thus occurred to me to take a closer look at his best work, his short stories, and to launch off the series "The Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King". We will take the chronological path from his first short story collection, Night Shift (which is incidentally my first King book too, I've read it and let it traumatize me, if I recall correctly, as a twelve or thirteen year old child) to his most recent You Like It Darker. I hope you actively follow the series and join me in (re)reading King's best.

Hard facts first: Night Shift was published in 1978 and is a collection of short stories King mostly wrote for various magazines, notably Cavalier and Ubris, although some weren't previously published. It has won the Balrog Award for best short story collection in 1980 and was nominated as best collection for the prestigious Locus Award as well as World Fantasy Award in 1979. Consisting of twenty short stories, the collection was (for its time) and still is (for our time) a treasure trove of horror gems, grabbing and mixing all the best horror tropes and trifles, resulting in an arguably unprecedented concentration, a magnificent horror yardstick for adults.

 

So abundant a treasure it is that from twenty short stories only two haven't been adapted to film, podcast or series, and those that have still keep on getting remakes today, consolidating the collection's significance in popular culture over and over again. The two stories which didn't get adaptations are "One for the Road" and "The Last Rung on the Ladder", but these have been incorporated into other works of King, 'Salem's Lot and The Stand, which then did get respective film adaptations, so indirectly they actually did get adapted too.

 

Depending on their length I will discuss once or twice a month, one to three of the following short stories: Jerusalem's Lot; Graveyard Shift; Night Surf; I Am the Doorway; The Mangler; The Boogeyman; Gray Matter; Battleground; Trucks; Sometimes They Come Back; Strawberry Spring; The Ledge; The Lawnmower Man; Quitters, Inc.; I Know What You Need; Children of the Corn; The Last Rung on the Ladder; The Man Who Loved Flowers; One for the Road; and The Woman in the Room.

So buckle up for our first collective read - next stop is a terrifying New England town with the "bone"-chilling introduction to a cosmic weird vampire saga; Jerusalem's Lot.