In doing a little research on Stephen King for Banned Books Week (many of his books have been challenged or banned) I learned something I didn’t know about. I always thought that his first book was Carrie, but Carrie was actually his first published book. I knew King had also previously written under the name Richard Bachman, and I’ve actually read two of them, Thinner and The Running Man (and find both terrifying). But, since I don’t keep up on these things I didn’t know that the first four Bachman novels had been published together. One of the stories included in that omnibus is King’s first novel, Rage, which tells the story of a high school shooter who takes his Algebra II class hostage, and the events that unroll within the classroom walls as everyone reveals their secrets. Rage was published in 1977, and republished with the other Bachman novels in 1985.  According to James Smythe, a writer for the Guardian who is rereading all of King’s work in chronological order (click here to see his commentary on Rage), King actually began writing this book in 1966, when he was still himself in high school. Today it seems unnervingly prescient, and in fact school shootings in 1989, 1996, and 1997  were apparently influenced by the book. After a fourth incident, when a 14 year old boy named Michael Carneal shot eight students at his high school, killing three, and also turned out to have Rage in his possession, King requested that the publisher let the book go out of print. It’s the only one of King’s books to have gone out of print. In a keynote he gave to the Vermont Library Association, he said (and this is a paraphrase):

Do I think that Rage may have provoked Carneal, or any other badly adjusted young person, to resort to the gun?

… There are factors in the Carneal case which make it doubtful that Rage was the defining factor, but I fully recognize that it is in my own self-interest to feel just that way; that I am prejudiced in my own behalf. I also recognize the fact that a novel such as Rage may act as an accelerant on a troubled mind… That such stories, video games… or photographic scenarios will exist no matter what–that they will be obtainable under the counter if not over it–begs the question. The point is that I don’t want to be a part of it. Once I knew what had happened, I pulled the ejection-seat lever on that particular piece of work. I withdrew Rage, and I did it with relief rather than regret.

Rage is not a banned book. If you wanted to, you could, I suppose, seek it out. But, even though King has written another novel about a murderous high school student, Carrie, Carrie doesn’t seem to inspire the uncomfortable feeling Rage did, for him to allow it to go out of print. He continues to write stories and books that inspire terror and horror, or at least unease, and has written other books that have been challenged or banned, something he strongly believes should always be protested.

So perhaps it comes down to this question: What is the responsibility of the author to his or her readers, and to society? The ideas and words contained in a book can be very powerful and it’s always possible that they will lead to destructive (or incredibly inspiring) acts. There’s always someone at the tipping point. That doesn’t mean the person will necessarily fall or that the work should be silenced. Earshot, the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that contained a school shooting and was scheduled to be shown shortly after the Columbine shooting, was pushed back further into that season, but it hasn’t faded into obscurity. In the same keynote address, King noted:

If, on the other hand, you were to ask me if the presence of potentially unstable or homicidal persons makes it immoral to write a novel or make a movie in which violence plays a part, I would say absolutely not. In most cases, I have no patience with such reasoning. I reject it as both bad thinking and bad morals. Like it or not, violence is a part of life and a unique part of American life. If accused of being part of the problem, my response is the time-honored reporter’s answer: “Hey, many, I don’t make the news, I just report it.”

Perhaps it just makes King uncomfortable that the sale of Rage might have been a motivating factor in more than one of the cases I mentioned above. I know I would feel that way. He wasn’t forced into his decision– letting Rage go out of print was a personal decision and a request he made of his publisher. It does beg the question though–  where do we draw the line, as readers and writers? It’s something each of us must do on our own. King drew his. Where would you draw yours?