(Mods–I don’t really mean this to be a Pit-oriented thread, but if I end up ranting too much, feel free to move it.)
Having read through the several recent threads on King, I’m just baffled at how popular he is. I’ve read a few things by him (the “short” version of The Stand, Tommyknockers, “The Mangler”, and one or two other short stories), and I Just. Don’t. Get. It. Sure, there are questions about whether he’s jumped the shark, but IMO if The Stand is some of his best material, then he’s firmly in the “third-rate hack” category–and that’s on a good day.
Now, I’ll readily admit that my taste in horror runs to the old atmospheric stuff, so I may just not be part of his intended audience…but here are some of my thoughts after having read his works:
[ul]
[li]He wouldn’t know “atmosphere” if he were locked in a hyperbaric chamber.[/li][li]He’s a first-rate example of the need for good editors. (I actually think that there are decent novellas lurking inside The Stand and Tommyknockers.)[/li][li]He seems to be the Michael Crichton of horror, with rhetoric designed to appeal to people who are raised on TV and the movies and who are willing not so much to suspend disbelief as to hang disbelief by its neck until dead.[/li][li]And has he ever had an original idea for a hook to hang a plot upon?[/li][li]Does he honestly think that throwing in a few product brand names will make his stuff seem modern and relevant?[/li][li]Have his fans read any horror other than the stuff he wrote?[/li][/ul]
Am I alone here? Have tastes changed that much?
And in case you were wondering, here (in no particular order) are some of the horror authors I prefer and whom I would heartily recommend:
Edgar Allan Poe
Manly Wade Wellman
H.P. Lovecraft
Fredric Brown
David H. Keller
E. Hoffman Price
Arthur Conan Doyle
Robert E. Howard
Algernon Blackwood
William Hope Hodgson
M.P. Shiel
Clark Ashton Smith
Henry S. Whitehead
Robert Bloch
Fritz Leiber
David Drake
Guy De Maupassant
Tim Powers
Arthur Machen
Frances Stevens
Robert W. Chambers
F. Marion Crawford
Lord Dunsany
John Collier
C.L. Moore