A Worthy Reread: Horror Author Grady Hendrix Revisits Stephen King’s “Cujo”
You can purchase Grady’s latest book My Best Friend’s Exorcism here.
“I was such a King nut when I was a kid,” horror author Grady Hendrix tells me. “It’s so weird to go back and reread him.” For Hendrix, revisiting the overwhelming back catalog of horror fiction’s most prolific writer has become a bit of a calling. Hendrix’s “Great Stephen King Reread”, which started as a public pledge on the Tor website to reread 12 books by King, morphed into Hendrix tearing through 33 of his novels in less than three years.
And as luck would have it, Hendrix’s own writing career took of as he worked through King’s endless backlist. “I started making my living from doing fiction and journalism as I was doing this reread,” he says. “It’s almost like Stephen King is sort of my spirit animal.” Beyond the connection Hendrix felt with King and his words, the reread also helped him appreciate the broader context surrounding each one of his books. “For me, now that I make my living writing, it’s really interesting to go to these books and find out where he was with his life, and career, and what publishing house he was at,” says Hendrix. “And then you can kind of open up the hood and see what’s inside.”
“A book is a multi-dimensional thing that exists in a lot of different states at once.”
While Hendrix has enjoyed taking a second look at many of King’s books, the rediscovery of Cujo is notable because the book didn’t resonate with him during his initial reading of it. “I first read Cujo when I was in 8th or 9th grade,” he says. “I really didn’t like it at all. There wasn’t enough action and it wasn’t scary. And when I went back and reread it was like, ‘Oh my god, Cujo’s this amazing novel.’ I’ve actually picked it up a few times since then, just because it’s so, so well written.”
In his review of the book, Hendrix praises Cujo as “not a simple thriller, but a book that feels like it accurately traces the vast, interconnected web of life.” And while he has learned to appreciate the subtleties of King’s tale of a good dog gone bad, Hendrix worries that beyond his own initial dismissal of the book, many other readers have overlooked it as well. “The problem with Cujo is Stephen King’s mouth,” he says. “In his book On Writing, he talks about how he doesn’t remember writing Cujo because he was drunk at the time. That statement has come to overshadow the book. A lot of people either dismiss it for that reason, ignore it, or devalue it.”
Hendrix believes overlooking Cujo is a mistake. In his eyes, the book is not only a feat of writing that stands on it’s own merits, it is also a testament to King’s incredible range as an author. “King rarely does sequels and doesn’t just give the reader what they want,” he says. “Cujo was his fifth best-seller in a row. He gave readers a haunted hotel. Then he gave them a science fiction book about the end of the world, a book about feeling sorry for a presidential assassin, and a book about a government conspiracy and a telekinetic kid. And then he goes right into this book that’s basically two people trapped in a car.”
“There’s this idea that a book is a single, fixed object that you can come to some conclusion about. And it’s not.”
In addition to showing King’s range, the book gives readers a glimpse into some of the anxieties King may have been channeling as a parent of young children. “It would be hard to find an image of domestic insecurity more on the nose than a housewife and child in a car, trapped in a mechanic’s parking lot because the husband is out of town — and there’s a dog attacking them,” Hendrix says.
And while Hendrix acknowledges the value of considering an author’s personal life when reading a book, he cautions readers against oversimplifying King’s books as a mere reflection of his own life. They should think of his personal life as one of the many influences on his work. “There’s this idea that a book is a single, fixed object that you can come to some conclusion about. And it’s not,” he says. “A book is a multi-dimensional thing that exists in a lot of different states at once.”
To learn more about Grady, check out his Facebook, Tor reviews, and website. You can follow him on Twitter @grady_hendrix.
Bookshelf Beats is a website run by Gino Sorcinelli. I interview people about books that change their lives, inspire them, and/or make them think differently. If you enjoyed this article consider subscribing to my Medium publication.
