On Predicting Violence | Violence in the Media | Essays | News + Notes | Entertainment Weekly:
"In the wake of the Virginia Tech murders and subsequent reports that Cho Seung-Hui had raised alarms in the English department with his writing, we asked novelist and Entertainment Weekly contributing editor Stephen King for his thoughts on the links between the creative process and violence. Where, exactly, does one draw the line between imagination and disturbing expression that should raise red flags?
I've thought about it, of course. Certainly in this sensitized day and age, my own college writing — including a short story called ''Cain Rose Up'' and the novel RAGE — would have raised red flags, and I'm certain someone would have tabbed me as mentally ill because of them...
...For most creative people, the imagination serves as an excretory channel for violence: We visualize what we will never actually do (James Patterson, for instance... [Cho] may have been inspired by Columbine, but only because he was too dim to think up such a scenario on his own.
On the whole, I don't think you can pick these guys out based on their work, unless you look for violence unenlivened by any real talent."
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