Entertainment, Books - Army Times

‘Haunted Heart’ never tells what makes Stephen King tick

In the introduction to this unauthorized biography of one of the most prolific and commercially successful writers of our time, Lisa Rogak tells an anecdote about the trip she took to Bangor, Maine, where Stephen King resides, and a discussion she had with King’s assistant about the book she planned to write.

All the while, she writes, King was eavesdropping outside the door. He never stepped forward to acknowledge Rogak’s presence or introduce himself.

The incident pretty much sums up Rogak’s “Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King.”

King is always present in the book, but he’s hovering on the sidelines.

He’s not the living, breathing center of an obviously ambitious book that doesn’t quite capture the essence of a compelling literary phenomenon.

Fans of King — and they are legion — will soak up this well-researched biography. But they shouldn’t count on learning anything new. It’s straightforward in its presentation of key events in King’s life but lacks new insights or information.

Rogak relies primarily on secondary sources for “The Haunted Heart.” Her book is laced with a few fresh comments from longtime friends or former acquaintances (the guy who used to mow his lawn, for example), but they add nothing to the mix.

Rogak does conjure some cinematic images — the teenage King, cigarette dangling from his mouth, pounding away on the typewriter in an attic room; the challenges he faced in his adjustment to almost instant wealth and fame; and his battles with alcoholism and drug addiction.

But she overworks references to King’s impoverished childhood, his feelings of being abandoned by his father and the fact that people from his past always remember him with his nose in a book.

Rogak, who also wrote “The Man Behind the Da Vinci Code: An Unauthorized Biography of Dan Brown,” never gets to the heart of the man who has written some of the more iconic novels of our time, including “The Shining,” “Cujo” and “Carrie.”

That task should be left up to King himself. For now, his novels and the illuminating “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” his 2000 non-fiction title in which he pulls back the curtain, at least a little bit, on his creative process and writing chops, will have to do.