God in King

I finished reading another King recently. It. The following is not a review of that book. Rather, it is a pontification upon Mr. King's seeming belief in a Deity.

Philosophically speaking, It discusses the tension between plan and chaos. The antagonist, in typical Kingian fashion, actually is chaos personified. Contrary to appearances, however, the protagonist is not the child-later-man who ends up *SPOILER ALERT* besting chaos. Instead, Order quasi-personified is the true protagonist; the humans on whose struggle the story focuses are mere tools in the hands of Order.

As is his wont (and more on that in a future post) King places the final confrontation outside of our plane of existence. The climax takes place in something King calls the "macroverse." (To my mind, the ambiguity of "macroverse" is a cheap sop to relativism, a wild card whose suit Constant Readers get to name for themselves.) Out there in the macroverse, Constant Readers are treated to a slightly-less ambiguous introduction: the Other, the Creator.

What he's touching on is the concept of antithesis. Chaos needs plan to balance it. Without plan, chaos is meaningless. And this is an interesting trait of King as an author: he says he believes in God personally, but God tends to emerge almost organically in King's writing.

I don't believe one's identity should impact one's writing. It can, of course, and if that impact is unforced--well then, so be it. Personal bias sticks closer than a shadow, when it comes to creation. Writers of any sort, however, must beware of forcing their bias into their work. Bias trickles in on its own just fine--it doesn't need any help.

The point of this pontification, if it even has a point, is that I know Stephen King believes in a Deity, because it's an inextricable part of his worldview.

And then I found five dollars.

Long live gutting it out!