Over the past 40 years, one of the most frequent and colorful writers of letters to the editor to the Bangor Daily News has been Stephen King, the Queen City’s most famous son.

Though in more recent years he’s only sent a few — including some to endorse political candidates — back in the 1980s and ’90s, King wrote to the BDN about a number of things. From musings on specific local issues, to taking various levels of issue with the ways the BDN did or did not cover the news of the day, King did not mince words. There’s no better example of that than a 1985 letter expressing his outrage at the censorship of a “Doonesbury” comic strip about abortion.





We’ve collected all the letters from King we could find, beginning with a 1983 letter about the town of Hermon. We couldn’t find the BDN story that prompted King’s letter in this specific case, but the fine folks of Hermon shouldn’t take too much umbrage with a 35-year-old letter.

June 22, 1983

You can please some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Mark Twain, who never made it as far north as Hermon, said something like that.

The town manager of Hermon may want to erect a Mark Twain museum on my old trailer pad, because he has never been there — if he had been, they would have to look for yet another writer. I dread to think what Mark Twain would have made of Hermon.

I’ve lived in Maine all my life, and people who know me and know my work will know I’ve had very few bad things to say about my home state. In fact, I have found a fair number of good things to say.

In Hermon I was evicted from my home, harried by my landlord and someone shot my dog. My wife carried the poor mutt out of the back field with one leg hanging by a string.

I’m sure there are lot of good people in Hermon, but it’s still never going to be one of my favorite places.