H. P. Lovecraft once called Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables "New England's greatest contribution to weird literature." Pace Hawthorne scholars, there's a new contender, out of Maine, for the title. At least booksellers today would be unanimous in citing Stephen King, author of Carrie, The Shining, Salem's Lot, The Stand, The Dead Zone, and now Firestarter, best sellers all, as the northeast's preeminent scribe of the spooky.

King has not been taken very seriously, if at all, by the critical establishment. Unfortunately for him, it's all too easy to take cheap shots at his material by lifting bits of it out of context; what is ghastly when the mood has been set can be risible when the lights are up, so to speak. (p. 38)

But King's real stigma—the reason he is not perceived as being in competition with real writers—is that he has...