WHEN DOES HORROR REALLY GET SCARY…?
1143 by Jeff Hess
On Jill’s blog I left the comment that if we’re going to judge the potential dangers of someone by their writing, then we’re going to end up locking up Stephen King. Well, Entertainment Weekly had much the same thought and went to the master of horror to see how he feels about the English major Cho Seung-Hui and…
Where, exactly, does one draw the line between imagination and disturbing expression that should raise red flags?
King responded:
I’ve thought about it, of course. Certainly in this sensitized day and age, my own college writing – including a short story called ”Cain Rose Up” and the novel Rage – would have raised red flags, and I’m certain someone would have tabbed me as mentally ill because of them, even though I interacted in class, never took pictures of girls’ legs with my cell phone (in 1970, WHAT cell phones?), and never signed my work with a ?.
As a teacher, I had one student – I will call him George – who raised red flags galore in my own mind: stories about flaying women alive, dismemberment, and, the capper, ”getting back at THEM.” George was very quiet, and verbally inarticulate.
It was only in his written work that he spewed these relentless scenes of gore and torture. His job was in the University Bookstore, and when I inquired about him once, I was told he was a good worker, but ”quiet.” I thought, ”Whoa, if some kid is ever gonna blow, it’ll be this one.”
He never did. But that was in the days before a gun-totin’ serial killer could get top billing on the Nightly News and possibly the covers of national magazines.
I have to wonder, does King know where George is today? What kind of member of society did George become? And how does King feel about that?
Thanks to reader Cailin for alerting me to this story.
My dad isn’t the only one who sends me fun stuff via email. A good friend and educational mentor also routinely passes along her share of chuckles — intermixed with not a few requests for veracity on things viral and outrageous. Don’t worry, there still plenty of stuff to come 
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. 
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is 
One of the fun things to do periodically is to take a look at the search engine hits that bring people to Have Coffee Will Write. I was inspired this morning by she who 
