When times are dark, do people want more fictional horror, or less?
It probably won't come as much of a surprise, but Stephen King thinks the answer is more. And in the clip above from The Late Show, he tells Stephen Colbert why during a conversation about the coronavirus pandemic.
"I think people do kind of gravitate towards horror stories when times are tough, and times are scary — and that's certainly true now — because when you go to a horror story like If It Bleeds, or Gerald's Game, or any of the stuff I've written [...] you read it, and the situations are even more horrible than being under house arrest with no toilet paper," explains King.
"And when you finish, you close the book and you've had a place to put your fears for a little while. You've been able to say, 'These problems are much worse than my problems.' And then you close the book, and you can go to bed and sleep like a baby. At least that's the theory."
Elsewhere, King also talks about life under lockdown, his predictions for the coronavirus, and which of his characters he'd least like to be stuck at home with with (unsurprisingly Misery's Annie Wilkes makes the top spot).
Topics Books Stephen Colbert Stephen King COVID-19
