Misery is a psychological horror novel by U.S. author Stephen King, first published by Viking Press on June 8, 1987. The novel hinges on the relationship between its two main characters – novelist Paul Sheldon and his self-proclaimed number-one fan, Annie Wilkes. When Sheldon is seriously injured following a car accident, former nurse Annie rescues him and keeps him prisoner in her isolated farmhouse. Misery, which took fourth place in the 1987 bestseller list, was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film directed by Rob Reiner, in 1990, and into a theatrical production starring Laurie Metcalf and Bruce Willis in 2015.
Background The novel's title refers to the eponymous heroine of Sheldon's book series and to King's state of mind during its writing. King outlined the creation of Misery in his memoirs, and mentioned that the character of Annie Wilkes came to him in a dream. The book was initially scheduled for release under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, but King's identity was revealed before publication. One of King's inspirations for Misery was the reaction his fans had to his 1984 novel The Eyes of the Dragon. Many fans rejected The Eyes of the Dragon because it was an epic fantasy book, with virtually none of the horror that initially made his reputation. Paul Sheldon's feeling of being chained to the Misery books by his fans was an expression of King's feelings towards horror fiction. Another element was King's addiction to drugs and alcohol, and his struggle to get sober. He stated: "Annie was my drug problem, and she was my number-one fan." When further addressing the idea of whether Sheldon was a self-portrait, King stated: "Certain parts of him are ... but I think you will find that, if you continue to write fiction, every character you create is partly you." King has also attributed the story's origin to a dream he had while on a transatlantic flight to London. He wrote the idea on an American Airlines cocktail napkin when he woke up so he could make sure to remember it, writing: "She speaks earnestly but never quite makes eye contact. A big woman and solid all through; she is an absence of hiatus. 'I wasn't trying to be funny in a mean way when I named my pig Misery, no sir. Please don't think that. No, I named her in the spirit of fan love, which is the purest love there is. You should be flattered.'" King and his wife, Tabitha King, stayed in London's Brown's Hotel, where he wrote "sixteen pages of a steno notebook". The concierge let him work at a desk once owned by Rudyard Kipling, who had died of a stroke while using it. King thought that the book would only be around 30,000 words, but it ended up being almost four times that at 370 pages. Its working title was The Annie Wilkes Edition. While discussing the pros and cons of pre-plotting novels, King mentioned that he had initially planned for Annie to force her prisoner to write a book, which she would then bind in Paul's skin. When commenting on why he chose not to go down that route, King said:
... it would have made a pretty good story...but that wasn't the way things eventually went. Paul Sheldon turned out to be a good deal more resourceful than I initially thought, and his efforts to play Scheherazade and save his life gave me a chance to say some things about the redemptive power of writing that I had long felt but never articulated. Annie also turned out to be more complex than I'd first imagined her, and she was great fun to write about ..."
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