I just finished reading End of Watch, the third book in the Bill Hodges Trilogy. I’ve read everything King has written, except for the tower stuff (too fantasy-ee for me) and I’ve liked pretty much everything. I guess I’m not a very discerning reader.
But what do discerning readers think about King’s work? Is he as good as ever? Going downhill? What? And what do you see happening over time with the quality/quantity of his work?
BTW, I looked up “discerning” and I think I picked the correct word.
PS: King is 68. Ten years older than me, and I have not a single novel left in me. I’m pretty much down to a few haikus.
I hope he has a dozen more… I thought that Bill Hodges trilogy was pretty strong, especially the second book, Finders Keepers. If not…his son Joe Hill isn’t too shabby.
I’m a big King fan and have read almost everything he’s put out over the years. I think I can manage to be at least somewhat objective. I honestly don’t think he has a trajectory. He has had some great books, and some dogs. He has said that the books he himself is the least pleased are from the time when he was in a bad place with substance abuse (and I tend to agree with this assessment). Other than that, whenever I start to feel like he’s on a bit of a weak streak, and people start talking about how he’s going downhill … he’ll come back with something that I think is very strong. (For example, in the mid 2000s, he had Cell, *Lisey’s Story *and Blaze, I don’t think any of which would make any “best of” lists of anything … and then he came back with Duma Key, which I thought was right up there with classic King, as did many reviewers at the time.)
Maybe that’s just part of being 1. a prolific writer, and 2. a prolific writer with a solid market presence – a lesser-quality Stephen King book will, right out of the gate, sell more than some very good books by unknown authors, so it’s not like he has to hustle to get published – that for every ten books, you’re going to get one that isn’t so hot. A lot of great authors don’t even make it to ten books.
After he dies, they will find the equivalent of a tractor-trailer load of unpublished material on his computer, so our great=grandchildren will still be reading Stephen King.
Same for me, except I haven’t read the third one in the trilogy yet. I don’t think being “discerning” is particularly relevant. I enjoy King because I think he’s a gifted storyteller, and I have no interest in whether this is enriching “literature” because I do it for pure mindless entertainment, the same way I might watch a movie that has an entertaining premise but hasn’t been very highly rated. Mainly because the number of truly good movies I want to watch, like truly good books I want to read, are really limited. I kind of read King in the same spirit in which I read Superman comics when I was a kid. As for what he has left in him, I suspect he’s past his peak but who knows what he may yet come up with. There’s no discernible downhill slide – just when you think he’s losing it, he comes up with another one that’s a few notches back up on the scale.
One thing that amazes me about King is that most of his works are original. Mary Higgins Clark has written a lot of books, but she recycles the plots to the point where they are interchangeable. How many children are kidnapped in her novels?
Anyway, I like King. He was raised in utter poverty by a single mother, has a marriage that has survived poverty, sudden fame and fortune, drug and alcohol sue, andd his horrific accident. And when he gets it right, nobody does it better.
Ha! I was just looking at my King shelves yesterday. I have all of his published stuff except for the nonfiction baseball book he wrote with Stewart O’Nan. (I’m sorry, Steve, it sounds boring).
If he writes just one or two more, I’ll have to get a bigger bookshelf. I sure hope he does.
Imagine an X axis that went from “very scary” to “not scary at all” and a Y axis that went from “unbelievable crap dialogue” to “well-written dialogue”. And you’ll have a line that starts in the lower left and ends in the upper right. And underneath the Y axis you could also put in the years 1970s to 2010s.
