# Am I the only person who DOESN'T like Stephen King? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 14, 2004, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293 "2004-03-14T21:40:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![epepke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9de0a6/32.png) [@epepke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epepke)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/41 "2004-03-16T20:15:15Z")
I don’t like him much, either. My biggest problem is that he uses way too many words, which has the effect of beating a dead horse into its subatomic consituents. I remember one particularly loathesome short story about an old woman who had “bad spells.” Of course, she was a witch, so these were really “bad spells.” The pun formed the basis for the entire story. King felt it necessary to hit the reader over the head with the pun at least a half a dozen times. ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/42 "2004-03-16T20:17:28Z")
> [@Moody Bastard](#): > > You didn’t care for “Jerusalem’s Lot,” eh. Ah well. The 19th-century epistolary format is fairly ambitious for King; part of the reason I may remember it so fondly. Enh. It’s the Inevitable Mediocre Lovecraft Pastiche™. > [@](#): > > If you don’t dig “Children of the Corn,” though, you’re right, you probably shouldn’t waste your time reading him anymore. 🙂 Quintessential! It was okay, but there’s just something about King’s rhetoric that bugs me. And didja ever see _The Wicker Man_? > [@](#): > > btw, **HH** , I assume you’ve read Edith Wharton’s ghost stories? “Afterward” has to be one of my favorite traditional ghost stories of all time. Actually, no I haven’t. I’ll see if I can check 'em out sometime. ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/43 "2004-03-16T21:03:57Z")
And so here are my thoughts so far on _Night Shift_: “Jerusalem’s Lot”: It’s the Inevitable Mediocre Lovecraft Pastiche™. “Graveyard Shift”: Ooh! Yet another What Monstrosities Lurk Beneath The Ground We Think We Know So Well™ story! “Night Surf”: See _The Purple Cloud_ (1930) by M.P. Shiel. “I Am the Doorway”: This is one of the signature cliched plots in science fiction, combined with bad '50s horror comics for his anatomical issues. “The Mangler”: See “Etaoin Shrdlu” (1942) by Fredric Brown. “The Boogeyman”: See “The Thing in the Cellar” (1932) by David H. Keller for the basic plot hook, and bad '50s horror comics for the twist-ending cliche. “Gray Matter”: See “The Voice in the Night” (1907) by William Hope Hodgson. “Battleground”: See “Burn, Witch, Burn!” (1933) by A. Merritt. “Trucks”: See “Killdozer!” (1944) by Ted Sturgeon. “Sometimes They Come Back”: Haven’t read this yet. “Strawberry Spring”: This is one of the signature cliched plots in mystery fiction. “The Ledge”: Haven’t read this yet. “The Lawnmower Man”: Unless the protagonist was using a mower from, like, the 1930s, the premise is bad. And see Arthur Machen for a better treatment of the “ancient religion restored” theme. “Quitters, Inc.”: This one wasn’t too bad. It seems really familiar, but I’m blanking on a specific story that it resembles. “I Know What You Need”: Haven’t read this yet. “Children of the Corn”: See _The Wicker Man_ (1973). Also, how is it that a gun is a rifle on one page and a shotgun on the next? Wouldn’t some basic editing have caught this? “The Last Rung on the Ladder”: Since when do people keep huge piles of loose hay on the ground level in barns? “The Man Who Loved Flowers”: This is one of the signature cliched plots in mystery fiction. “One For the Road”: A stranger stumbles in out of the storm…nope, haven’t heard _that_ one before… “The Woman in the Room”: Haven’t read this yet. In short, most of the stuff has already been done better, or there are other fundamental flaws with the stories. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/44 "2004-03-17T01:34:47Z")
Much of SK’s writing is too heavily into the supernatural for my taste. But I did like _Dolores Claiborne_. _Hearts in Atlant_is was not bad, either. ---
**Author:** ![Mal\_Adroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@Mal\_Adroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mal_Adroit)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/45 "2004-03-17T13:50:56Z")
Geez, **HH,** if you don’t enjoy the guy’s stories, taste is at least defensible. But as a certain English playright (who himself wasn’t afraid to recycle a plot or two) said centuries ago, there is nothing new under the sun. Grading a succession of tales based on whether or not an earlier work revolved around the same premise seems kind of pointless, doesn’t it? Should Bram Stoker not have written _Dracula_ because Sheridan LeFanu had already beaten him to a vampire story? ---
**Author:** ![Sauron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Sauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sauron)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/46 "2004-03-17T14:33:04Z")
> [@Hunter Hawk](#): > > “The Last Rung on the Ladder”: Since when do people keep huge piles of loose hay on the ground level in barns? Where the hell do you think they put it? It doesn’t pitchfork itself into the loft, you know. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/47 "2004-03-17T15:35:22Z")
Just my opinion, (as the self-confessed doubting King fan), but it sounds like you went into those stories LOOKING for what was wrong. The Last Rung on the Ladder, IMHO, was superbly written, and well executed… As were about 75% of the others (there were a few in there I didn’t care for). And I have to agree with **Moody Bastard** on the recyled plots defense. I challenge you to find me a novel, novella, or even movie today that hasn’t been done before. Quitters Inc was one of three shorts on TV called “Cat’s Eye” - James Woods played the Quitter, IIRC, maybe that’s where you recognize it from? The other two were the Ledge (Robert Hayes, I think?) and one with Drew Barrymore - the name currently escapes me. At any rate, I fully accept that some people don’t like King - I am waning in my fanhood myself - but I do think that approaching Nightshift with the book held out at arm’s length, and a sense of “Fine, let me drudge through this so I can figure out why I don’t like it” would do the stories therein some serious injustice. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/48 "2004-03-17T16:44:50Z")
**Hunter Hawk** I admit to not reading this particular collection, but just based on the post, I agree with the others - it looks like you _wanted_ to find reasons to not like the stories. My preferred approach to a book is not to care over much who wrote it and when (other than for purposes of recommendation - a good writer is more likely to produce an entertaining story), but rather to care about whether the story is fun, entertaining, moving … or not. Now it could well be that King is none of these things. I would disagree, because _some_ of his stuff I think is good - but reasonable people could disagree. What I don’t understand is this overly-contexual approach. I don’t understand why one cares whether William Hope Hodgeson wrote a similar short story in 1907 or whatever (although I must admit to liking “House on the Borderlands” a lot …). Was it a _good_ story? Did it entertain, enthuse, enlighten? ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/49 "2004-03-17T21:24:42Z")
Oh, I’m sure that I went in looking for things that were wrong–but that was only because of my previous experience with King’s writing. Hell, when I read _Jurgen_, I sure wasn’t thinking “Oh, jeez, yet _another_ picaresque adventure–didn’t the _Golden Ass_ cover that already?”–because Cabell’s writing pulled me into the story. In contrast, I think King’s writing is weak enough that I wasn’t at all engaged in the story, which makes the other aspects of his rhetoric stand out. There’s a difference between (a) recycling an old plot hook and giving it an interesting new treatment and (b) recycling an old plot hook. Incidentally, since my last post I’ve read “The Woman in the Room” and “I Know What You Need”. I thought both were decent little stories, though I think “I Know What You Need” would have been more interesting if King had examined the female protagonist’s exploitation of the villain in addition to his exploitation of her. > [@Sauron](#): > > Where the hell do you think they put it? It doesn’t pitchfork itself into the loft, you know. Which is why you have a ramp or pulleys or whatnot to get the hay into the hayloft rather than storing it on the ground floor. ---
**Author:** ![owlofcreamcheese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/97f17d/32.png) [@owlofcreamcheese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/owlofcreamcheese)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/50 "2004-03-17T23:35:36Z")
no, infact its real trendy to hate steven king… its the “I’m elite so I don’t like stuff the common man likes” phenominon, your not nearly alone. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/51 "2004-03-18T00:11:53Z")
> [@Hunter Hawk](#): > > … > > Which is why you have a ramp or pulleys or whatnot to get the hay into the hayloft rather than storing it on the ground floor. Hmmm… They have laundry baskets but that never stopped my ex from leaving clothes on the floor 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/52 "2004-03-18T00:34:16Z")
> [@Hunter Hawk](#): > > Oh, I’m sure that I went in looking for things that were wrong–but that was only because of my previous experience with King’s writing. Hell, when I read _Jurgen_, I sure wasn’t thinking “Oh, jeez, yet _another_ picaresque adventure–didn’t the _Golden Ass_ cover that already?”–because Cabell’s writing pulled me into the story. In contrast, I think King’s writing is weak enough that I wasn’t at all engaged in the story, which makes the other aspects of his rhetoric stand out. There’s a difference between (a) recycling an old plot hook and giving it an interesting new treatment and (b) recycling an old plot hook. But that is just the point - you don’t like King’s writing, not for any of the reasons you mentioned, but because it doesn’t “grab” you. Which is fair enough. On the other hand, it does seem to “grab” a lot of other people, not _all_ of whom are know-nothings who haven’t read all of the great stuff you have read-and listed. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/53 "2004-03-18T00:40:05Z")
To be perfectly honest, **HH** , that’s like saying, “Well, yeah, I went into the relationship looking for problems, but only because of my previous experiences with men.” In your refusal to treat every book and story as a separate, individual entity, you’re not giving them a fair shake. Besides, your justifications are really weak. It’s like eating a dinner at someone’s house and saying they’re not a good cook for three reasons: you had a dinner you didn’t care for there before, roasting a chicken is such a typical, cliche thing to do and besides Julia Childe did it better fifty years earlier. Those who regard King as a good writer tend to do so for a couple of reasons, really. The main one is his characters. He writes characters who are so real I feel like I’ve known them all my life, and I’d read about them making out a grocery list just to find out what happens to them. When I read _Delores Claiborn_ (it’s a book anyone who claims to be character-oriented really ought to read), I could hear that crusty old broad’s voice in my head from the second paragraph on. When I read _The Stand_, I threw the book across the room in a fit of anger when I thought he’d killed off Stu. King has a way of making you identify with his characters, even the ones you don’t like, because they have facets of your own personality or the personalities of the people around you. The other thing that King tends to be praised for is the feeling of reality his works tend to convey. Like the cleaning woman in _The World According to Garp_ says, it feels true. His descriptions of stuff from the mundane to the magnificent, have the ring of truth about them that makes you think, “yes, that’s exactly what it’s like!” Read “LT’s Theory of Pets” sometime, especially the part where Lulu’s going on about men leaving the toilet seat up. King’s nailed the experience far better than I ever could, even in my many arguments with my husband on the subject. In a lot of his books and stories, he uses this feeling of reality and truth to draw the reader into a world where normal people are going about their normal lives, and then before you realize what’s going on, everything’s turned crazy as shit. I think one writer described it as “suddenly taking a screaming left turn into darkness.” At that point, it doesn’t matter how implausible the plot might become, because it still _feels_ real and thus seems plausible enough. It’s like King himself talking about always making sure that his feet are under the covers and fully on the mattress. His rational mind knows good and well there’s nothing under his bed, the very idea is ridiculously implausible. Still, the idea feels real enough to him that he doesn’t let his feet hang off the bed, because if a cold, clammy hand were to reach up and grip his ankle, he just might scream. I suppose, though, that a normal situation suddenly becoming horrifyingly abnormal is just more evidence that King is a hack, since Shirley Jackson already used it in “The Lottery”. ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293/54 "2004-03-18T20:10:13Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > To be perfectly honest, HH, that’s like saying, “Well, yeah, I went into the relationship looking for problems, but only because of my previous experiences with men.” In your refusal to treat every book and story as a separate, individual entity, you’re not giving them a fair shake. Actually, I think a more apt analogy would be “Well, yeah, I went into the relationship with Joe Schmoe looking for problems, but only because the previous time we dated, he was abusive.” Sure, in a perfect world I’d approach each new story in a pristine state of tabula rasa-dom (this is why review copies of academic papers are anonymous–I’m not a fiction writer, so I don’t know if fiction magazines have the same policy), but given my previous experience it was hard to approach the new stuff with anything but a jaundiced eye. > [@](#): > > Those who regard King as a good writer tend to do so for a couple of reasons, really. The main one is his characters…The other thing that King tends to be praised for is the feeling of reality his works tend to convey. Well, now, I suppose I’ll have to take your word on this. > [@](#): > > I suppose, though, that a normal situation suddenly becoming horrifyingly abnormal is just more evidence that King is a hack, since Shirley Jackson already used it in “The Lottery”. Pfft. As if we needed yet _more_ evidence that King is a hack. 😃 > [@Malthus](#): > > But that is just the point - you don’t like King’s writing, not for any of the reasons you mentioned, but because it doesn’t “grab” you. No, I think my dislike is more inclusive–the writing doesn’t grab me, so the other reasons stand out more. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/am-i-the-only-person-who-doesnt-like-stephen-king/234293.md?page=2)