Yes, The Shining Is Banned!

The Shining follows Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic and struggling writer who takes a job as winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies, bringing his wife Wendy and five-year-old son Danny along. Danny has “the shining,” a psychic ability that lets him see the hotel’s violent history. As winter seals them in, the Overlook begins working on Jack, feeding his worst impulses until the man who wanted to save his family becomes the thing his family needs saving from. King has said the novel is autobiographical in its bones: he was struggling with alcoholism when he wrote it, and Jack Torrance’s descent is his own worst fears about fatherhood put on the page.

The Shining has been challenged 9 times in Florida and North Dakota, targeted for violence, sexual content, and profanity. Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation made the story iconic, but the novel goes deeper into Jack’s psychology and Danny’s terror. King’s horror has always been rooted in real human pain: addiction, domestic violence, the failure to protect your children from yourself. The Shining is one of the bestselling horror novels ever written, with over 700,000 copies sold in its first year. Pulling it from library shelves won’t diminish its cultural footprint. It just means fewer people get to discover that the book is even scarier than the movie.