One of the central themes in the story is hope, the one thing to which Andy clings while trying to navigate the boredom and brutality of prison life. Over time, the two men develop a strong friendship, and the details of what happened to send Andy to prison become clear. Red relates the story of Andy Dufresne, a banker who is convicted of murder in 1947. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is narrated by Red, an inmate at Shawshank State Prison. Nevertheless, applying the seasonal theme gave the stories a sense of connection, even if they were very, well, different. King had his tongue in cheek on a couple of those headings, using two clichés (for spring and fall) and outright invoking Shakespeare (winter). Released at the end of August in 1982, Different Seasons contains four stories, each with a seasonal heading: Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption Summer of Corruption: Apt Pupil Fall from Innocence: The Body and A Winter’s Tale: The Breathing Method. The publisher, being no dummy as King had already knocked out several bestsellers, gave the collection the green light. While novellas often showed up in magazines (and in that discussion, King spent more than a few lines talking about how much he loved The Saturday Evening Post for its fiction selections as a young man), it was rare to see single releases, so the group seemed the way to go. King wrote, “When I say it isn’t, it’s hard to tell if the questioner seems relieved or disappointed.” He went on to say that each novella had been written following the completion of a full novel, likening the process to “having gas left in the tank.” However, given the length of the pieces (too short for a conventional novel) and their varied subject matter, King was uncertain about their chances for publication until he pitched the notion of a collection to his publisher. He noted that he is frequently asked if horror is all he writes. King addressed the collection’s genesis himself in the book’s afterword. Stephen King on his writing process (Uploaded to YouTube by Bangor Daily News) These were Stephen King’s Different Seasons.
The collection produced a popular coming-of-age tale, a dark prediction of sinister indoctrination, a story most considered unfilmable, and, quite unexpectedly, the basis for one of the most beloved films ever made. But what happens when you dominate one genre, but still have other kinds stories to tell? For King, the answer was two-fold on one hand, he released some books under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman, and the on other hand, he gathered four novellas into one volume that were (mostly) departures from his famous horror fiction.
In short order, novels like ’ Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and The Stand followed, cementing him as a modern master of horror. After years of slugging it out in short stories, Stephen King rose to prominence with his 1974 bestseller, Carrie.
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