Stephen King on Lord of the Flies

Best-selling author Stephen King was interviewed in the Guardian today, where he once again declared his love for Golding’s Lord of the Flies! In response to the question about which book changed him as a teenager, King replied with Lord of the Flies:

‘I was totally invested, totally there. You know the way kids were about Harry Potter at the height of the craze? That was me with Ralph and Jack.’

He also cited Golding’s debut as the book that made him want to be a writer, pointing especially to its appeal to a young reader.  He was able to understand it on a different level as an adult, mentioning the symbolism of the pig’s head, and how this would later inspire his own writing.

King wrote a brilliantly evocative introduction to the 2011 edition of Lord of the Flies, which has since been reprinted in all subsequent paperback versions. In this piece, he wrote:

‘It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands – strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, “This is not just entertainment; it’s life or death”.’