THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610030340
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
LENGTH: 33 lines
Stephen King accomplished some remarkable feats in September. On Sunday, Sept. 22, like the previous Sunday, he had six books on the New York Times paperback fiction bestseller list. His publisher claims - and no one has disputed - that this is a record.
``That's what Dylan Thomas said after the 25th martini - `I believe that's a record.' Then he dropped dead,'' King commented from his home in Maine. But even he couldn't remain morbid for more than a sentence.
``I feel like Sally Field - `You love me, you really love me,' '' he said.
The six books make up his serialized horror novel, The Green Mile. As each book has come out over the past six months, it has drawn the preceding volumes onto the list, ``like suspects entering a drawing room at the end of a Hercule Poirot mystery,'' in King's analogy.
Then on Tuesday, Sept. 24, bookstores were carpet-bombed with two new King novels in hardcover, Desperation and The Regulators - the second written under his all-too-public pseudonym, Richard Bachman. Each had first printings of more than a million copies; 200,000 of each have been packaged together in a $52.90 set, complete with a ``keep you up all night'' light (batteries not included).
All told, more than 25 million Stephen King books will be sold this year.
Yet he's still modest, grumpy, full of apprehension. In an afterword to the last volume of the series, ``Coffey on the Mile,'' King writes, ``I don't think I'd want to do another serial novel (if only because the critics get to kick your ass six times instead of once).'' by CNB