King profile on CBS lightweight> Little information is new

Maybe people from away will gain some insight into Bangor’s favorite son from a profile this Sunday on “60 Minutes,” during the middle of the CBS news maagzine’s three segments.

But the 13-minute interview of Stephen King by Lesley Stahl doesn’t provide much new for the horror master’s more knowledgeable Maine fans.

We already know about the famous mansion behind the wrought-iron gates on West Broadway, his stints with the Rock Bottom Remainders, his philanthropic works and his passions for baseball, music and his Harley.

About the only news not readily known to the general public that the interview produced was that King suffers from a retinal condition known as macular degeneration. In such a condition, straight-ahead vision gradually fails, while peripheral vision remains sharp.

King even managed to turn this into a positive: “That’s the part I want to keep, as a man and as a writer, is what I see out of the corner of my eyes.”

The piece features footage, shot in mid-December, of such Bangor sights as King’s home and office, the Mansfield Complex, Bangor Public Library and the Panda Garden restaurant.

Stahl’s questions were slightly more penetrating than asking him what kind of tree he would be (my guess is the spooky kind with leafless branches that scratch on the windows).

But King deflected most attempts by Stahl to delve beneath the surface and the cliches.

When she asked if he had ever been to a psychiatrist, he replied, “I’ve never gone to a psychiatrist because what you do at a psychiatrist is to pay $75 or $90 an hour to get rid of your fears, whereas if I write them down, people pay me. It’s good.”

When she broached King’s childhood, he said, “Whenever an interviewer starts, `When you were a kid,’ what they’re really asking is, `What screwed you up that you’re doing what you’re doing now?’ Nothing. I didn’t light fires as a kid.”

His wife, Tabitha, also testified to the normalcy of King and his work: “I think one of his tremendous appeals to people is that he puts you in a world that you recognize, among people that you know. And if bizarre things happen to them, well, the world is a very strange place.”

King seemed uncomfortable when discussing the effect his works have on some people, including the Washington state teen who acted out the scenario from King’s book “Rage,” holding his classmates hostage last year; and the bomb hoaxster who broke into King’s own home in 1991.

“Most people who commit crimes of that nature are already so disturbed that if they didn’t commit crimes one way, they’d do it another way,” King said.

King, who himself has called his work “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries,” admits he hasn’t read some of the classic works of literature. “But I’ve read most of what Dean Koontz has written,” he joked, referring to the prolific horror/suspense novelist.

Perhaps it’s harsh to expect a TV interview, a fast-food form of biography, to yield many revelations. But from “60 Minutes,” the most illustrious news magazine show in TV history, you just expect a little bit more than Stahl’s profile offered.