On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Throughout the memoir, King makes frequent reference to bizarre and grotesque occurrences in nature. He is fascinated by the “jungle,” an area by his apartment building in Connecticut, which is a “huge tangled wilderness area with a junkyard on the far side and a train running through the middle” (30). This strange area captures King’s imagination, and he spends time there with his brother. He notes that the jungle appears in many of his later works, including IT.

These bizarre elements of nature continue as King grows older. When he works in a factory, he hears a story about giant rats, “Some of them, goddam if they weren’t as big as dogs” (60). Their large size strikes King as strange and interesting and inspires him to write “Graveyard Shift.” Also, when he works at the laundromat, he washes restaurant tablecloths, and“[b]y the time the tablecloths upon which [lobsters] had been served reached [him], they stank to high heaven and were often boiling with maggots” (68). He is horrified and captivated by the unlikely appearance of maggots. All of these images infiltrate King’s imagination and influence his work.