King to take up pen for magazine Pop culture focus of EW column

Those who can’t get enough of Stephen King can now enjoy a monthly dose of Bangor’s favorite son.

Beginning in the Aug. 8 issue of Entertainment Weekly, the best-selling author will have a monthly column, “The Pop of King.” (It’s the cover featuring the cast of Bravo’s hit series, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” which each week has five gay men make over one straight man. Wouldn’t King, in his trademark leather jacket and jeans, be a natural for that show?)

How did King, whose plate is always overfull, become involved in this project?

King himself explains in the introduction to his first column. “So here’s what happened, best that I can figure. A couple of months back, the editors at Entertainment Weekly asked me to review ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ and either they liked the review itself or liked the fact that it was written in longhand. (For all I know, they might have thought it would be good to have to least one writer on tap who could turn in copy even after a nuclear pulse wiped out the hard drives on all the laptops.) Whatever the reason, they came back and asked me if I’d like to write a column once a month, a thing that I haven’t done since college. I decided I’d like to give it a try.”

Rick Tetzeli, the magazine’s managing editor, saw King and EW as a natural pairing. In his “Letter From the Editor” introducing King’s column, he wrote: “[His column] is about everything that you love about EW: pop culture, in all its wondrous, funny, fabulous glory. ‘The Pop of King’ will dissect movies, books, TV, music and more. It will be opinionated, surprising, current and passionate.”

This marks King’s first regular column since “King’s Garbage Truck,” which ran in the Maine Campus during his student years at the University of Maine in the late 1960s.

His connection with EW started in the publication’s second year, 1991, when he wrote about becoming “America’s Best-Loved Boogeyman.” He’s also been a semiregular in EW’s letters column with his hilarious thoughts on its coverage.

“My relationship with EW goes back to the very beginning,” King wrote, “and I appreciate the wit and intelligence that it delivers every week. I am delighted to be contributing to the magazine.”

In his opening column, King spotlights recent movies, music and books that he liked and didn’t like. An example of his thoughts: “I believe that 70 percent of the fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists is dreck, and that ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ by Dan Brown, stands as a prime example.”

“The Pop of King” will make its second appearance in two weeks, to coincide with the opening of “Freddy vs. Jason.” After that, King’s column will appear monthly, with “Stupid Questions” running the other three weeks.