King (1929–2012) had a wide range, from “Confessions of a White Racist,” nominated for a National Book Award, to the Playboy article that inspired “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”

I have pretty much revised my thinking on how I will use my year—not digging in pursuit of refinement of my knowledge about the American Past in general, but concentrating in the main on the novel. I am taking several approaches to this, having found three good courses … on writing and all taking different approaches. One course is a creative writing offering on the novel and the short-story, taught by an aged New England gentleman of excellent reputation, Theodore Morrison, whose main claim to fame in a public sense is that he taught an ex-Nieman named A.B. Guthrie (“The Big Sky,” as you will recall, and others) how to write fiction. Morrison is teaching me something, too: Sometimes I find that I knew, or in some corner of my soul suspected, some of his favorite maxims; it helps, however, to hear them articulated; other of his ideas are entirely new and helpful. He is, in short, putting the abstract “rules” of the novel into words I can grab with my brain, organizing my thinking a bit.

King’s narrative journalism is featured on Nieman Storyboard From “Larry L. King: A Writer’s Life in Letters, or, Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye,” edited by Richard A. Holland

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