Richard Bachman
Encyclopedia
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
used by horror fiction
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
author Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
.
Origin
At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view among publishers was such that an author was limited to a book every year, since publishing more would not be acceptable to the public. King therefore wanted to write under another name, in order to increase his publication without over-saturating the market for the King "brand." He convinced his publisher, Signet Books, to print these novels under a pseudonym.In his introduction to The Bachman Books
The Bachman Books
The Bachman Books is a collection of short novels by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman between 1977 and 1982.The book was released in 1985 after the publication of the first hardcover Bachman novel Thinner in order to introduce Bachman to fans who did not know about King's...
, King does state that Bachman was also an attempt to make sense out of his career and try to answer the question of whether his success was due to talent or luck. He says he deliberately released the Bachman novels with as little marketing presence as possible and did his best to "load the dice against" Bachman. King concludes that he has yet to find an answer to the "talent versus luck" question, as he felt that he was outed as Bachman too early to know. The Bachman book Thinner
Thinner (novel)
Thinner is a 1984 novel by Stephen King, published under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman. It would be the last novel which King released under the Richard Bachman pseudonym until the release of The Regulators in 1996 . The photo is claimed to have been taken by Claudia Inez Bachman...
sold 28,000 copies during its initial run—and then ten times as many when it was revealed that Bachman was, in fact, King.
The originally selected pseudonym was the name of King's maternal grandfather; but at the last moment King changed it to "Richard Bachman," in tribute to crime author Donald E. Westlake
Donald E. Westlake
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American writer, with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into science fiction or other genres...
's long-running pseudonym Richard Stark. The name Stark was used in King's novel The Dark Half
The Dark Half
The Dark Half is a horror novel by Stephen King, published in 1989. Publishers Weekly listed The Dark Half as the second best-selling book of 1989 behind Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger. It was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1993.Stephen King wrote several books under a...
, a novel about an author with a pseudonym. The surname was in honor of Bachman–Turner Overdrive, a rock and roll band King was listening to at the time.
Identification
King dedicated Bachman's early books — Rage (1977), The Long WalkThe Long Walk
The Long Walk is a novel by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1979 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, and has seen several reprints since, as both paperback & hardback...
(1979), Roadwork
Roadwork
Roadwork is a novel by Stephen King, published in 1981 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, which is no longer in print...
(1981), and The Running Man
The Running Man
The Running Man is a science fiction novel by Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books...
(1982) — to people close to him, and worked in obscure references to his own identity. These clues, not to mention the similarity between the two authors' literary styles, aroused the suspicions of horror fans and retailers.
King steadfastly denied any connection to Bachman and, to throw fans off the trail, dedicated Bachman's 1984 novel Thinner
Thinner (novel)
Thinner is a 1984 novel by Stephen King, published under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman. It would be the last novel which King released under the Richard Bachman pseudonym until the release of The Regulators in 1996 . The photo is claimed to have been taken by Claudia Inez Bachman...
to "Claudia Inez Bachman," who was, supposedly, Bachman's wife. There was also a phony author photo of Bachman on the dust jacket
Dust jacket
The dust jacket of a book is the detachable outer cover, usually made of paper and printed with text and illustrations. This outer cover has folded flaps that hold it to the front and back book covers...
, credited to Claudia. He also has one of the characters describe how the strange happenings are like a "Stephen King" novel in the book.
The link between King and his shadow writer became exposed after a persistent Washington D.C. bookstore clerk, Steve Brown, could not believe that Bachman and King were not one and the same. Brown located publisher's records at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
and discovered a document naming King as the author of one of Bachman's novels. Afterwards he sent a letter to King's publishers, with a copy of the found documents, and asked them what to do. Two weeks later Stephen King telephoned Brown personally and suggested he write an article about how he discovered the truth, allowing himself to be interviewed. This led to a press release heralding Bachman's "death" — supposedly from "cancer of the pseudonym," and an article written by Brown in the Washington Post. At the time of the announcement in 1985, King was working on Misery, which he had planned to release as a Bachman book.
Post-outing
In 1987, the Bachman novel The Running ManThe Running Man
The Running Man is a science fiction novel by Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982 as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books...
inspired the Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
film of the same name
The Running Man (film)
The Running Man is a 1987 American action film loosely based on Stephen King's 1982 novel of the same name. Directed by Paul Michael Glaser, the film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, María Conchita Alonso, Jesse Ventura, Jim Brown, and Richard Dawson....
. King insisted that his name not be on the credits, and the screen credit for the film went to Richard Bachman.
King used the "relationship" between him and Bachman as a concept in his 1989 book The Dark Half
The Dark Half
The Dark Half is a horror novel by Stephen King, published in 1989. Publishers Weekly listed The Dark Half as the second best-selling book of 1989 behind Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger. It was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1993.Stephen King wrote several books under a...
. In the novel a writer's darker pseudonym takes on a life of its own. King dedicated The Dark Half to "the late Richard Bachman." Originally there were plans to make the book a collaboration between the two, although this was later scrapped.
In 1996, Bachman's The Regulators
The Regulators
The Regulators is a novel by Stephen King under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was published in 1996 at the same time as its "mirror" novel, Desperation. The two novels represent parallel universes relative to one another, and most of the characters present in one novel's world also exist in the...
came out, with the publishers claiming the book's manuscript was found among Bachman's leftover papers by his widow. Still, it was obvious from the book's packaging and marketing campaign that it was really written by King. There was a picture of a young King on the inside back cover, and the "also by this author" page listed not only works Bachman was credited with writing, but also works he wrote "as Stephen King." The Regulators was released the same day as the King novel Desperation, and the two novels featured many of the same characters; the two book covers were designed to be placed together to form a single picture. In the foreword by King included with Desperation he said that there may be another Bachman novel left to be "found."
The next Bachman book to be discovered was Blaze
Blaze (novel)
Blaze is a crime novel by Stephen King, published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. King announced on his website that he "found it" in an attic. In fact it was written before Carrie and King offered the original draft of the novel to his Doubleday publishers at the same time as Salem's Lot...
. Blaze was, in fact, an unpublished novel of King's written before Carrie or the creation of Richard Bachman. For its publication King rewrote, edited, and updated the entire novel. In February 2007 it was confirmed that Scribner would be publishing the book in June 2007.
King has taken full ownership of the Bachman name on numerous occasions, as with the republication of the first four Bachman titles as The Bachman Books
The Bachman Books
The Bachman Books is a collection of short novels by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman between 1977 and 1982.The book was released in 1985 after the publication of the first hardcover Bachman novel Thinner in order to introduce Bachman to fans who did not know about King's...
: Four Early Novels by Stephen King in 1985. The introduction, titled "Why I Was Bachman," details the whole Bachman/King story. (In 1996, the collection was reissued with a new King essay, "The Importance of Being Bachman.")
Richard Bachman was also referenced in Stephen King's The Dark Tower
The Dark Tower (series)
The Dark Tower is a series of books written by American author Stephen King, which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror and western. It describes a "Gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. King...
series of books. In the fifth book, Wolves of the Calla, the sinister children's book Charlie the Choo Choo is revealed to be written by "Claudia y Inez Bachman." The spelling discrepancy of the added 'y' was later explained as a deus ex machina
Deus ex machina
A deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.-Linguistic considerations:...
on the part of "The White" (a force of good throughout King's Tower series) to bring the total number of letters in her name to nineteen, a number prominent in King's series. In the next novel of the series, Song of Susannah, Stephen King shortly discusses his Richard Bachman pseudonym.
After the Heath High School shooting
Heath High School shooting
The Heath High School shooting occurred at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, United States, on Monday, December 1, 1997. Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal opened fire on a group of praying students, killing three and injuring five more....
, King announced that he would allow Rage (which was itself about a high school shooting, a phenomenon completely unheard of in 1977) to go out of print, fearing that it might inspire similar tragedies. Rage for a time continued to be available in the United Kingdom in The Bachman Books
The Bachman Books
The Bachman Books is a collection of short novels by Stephen King published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman between 1977 and 1982.The book was released in 1985 after the publication of the first hardcover Bachman novel Thinner in order to introduce Bachman to fans who did not know about King's...
collection, although the collection now no longer contains Rage. In a footnote to the preface of Blaze
Blaze (novel)
Blaze is a crime novel by Stephen King, published under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. King announced on his website that he "found it" in an attic. In fact it was written before Carrie and King offered the original draft of the novel to his Doubleday publishers at the same time as Salem's Lot...
, dated 30 January 2007, King wrote of Rage: "Now out of print, and a good thing." King's other Bachman novels are available in the US in separate volumes.
In 2010, King appeared on the FX television show Sons of Anarchy
Sons of Anarchy
Sons of Anarchy is an American television drama series created by Kurt Sutter about the lives of a close-knit outlaw motorcycle club operating in Charming, a fictional town in Northern California...
in a cameo role. His character, named Bachman, performed contract work quietly disposing of deceased bodies.
In issue 29 of the comic adaptation of The Stand
The Stand (comics)
The Stand: Captain Trips is a five-issue comic book miniseries, the first of six The Stand series by Marvel Comics, adapting Stephen King's novel of the same name. It is to be overseen by King, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, illustrated by Mike Perkins, and colored by Laura Martin...
, Richard Bachman appears as one of the top lieutenants of Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg
Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in seven novels by King, sometimes as the main antagonist and others in a brief cameo. He often appears under different names; most are abbreviated by the initials R.F. There are exceptions to this rule; in The Dark...
. He is drawn to resemble King. He replaces the character of Whitney Horgan from the original novel.
Other pseudonyms
King wrote a 1973 short story, "The Fifth Quarter", under the pseudonym John Swithen. This story was reprinted in King's collection Nightmares & DreamscapesNightmares & Dreamscapes
Nightmares & Dreamscapes is a short story collection by Stephen King published in 1993.-Stories:-Adaptations:"The Night Flier" and "Dolan's Cadillac" were both adapted to films of the same respective names. "Chattery Teeth"' was adapted into a segment of the film Quicksilver Highway...
in 1993 under his own name.
In the introduction to the novel Blaze, King (writing about Bachman) claims, with tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek is a phrase used as a figure of speech to imply that a statement or other production is humorously intended and it should not be taken at face value. The facial expression typically indicates that one is joking or making a mental effort. In the past, it may also have indicated...
, that "Bachman" used the pseudonym John Swithen for "The Fifth Quarter".