# is Stephan King lazy, altzheimery or just fucking with us?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 11, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547 "2012-02-11T20:27:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/81 "2015-11-03T04:04:19Z")
It’s a time travel story and the protagonist got his info from a fellow who had done the TT thing many times and probably messed up the time line in many different ways.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/82 "2015-11-03T04:07:11Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#):
>
> It’s a time travel story and the protagonist got his info from a fellow who had done the TT thing many times and probably messed up the time line in many different ways.
He could not have messed up the timeline, because each trip back is a reset.
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/83 "2015-11-03T04:11:04Z")
Yeah, I forgot about that. Welp, that was my shot at explaining it, carry on!
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/84 "2015-11-03T04:17:42Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#):
>
> Yeah, I forgot about that. Welp, that was my shot at explaining it, carry on!
Well, if there was one portal into the past, who’s to say there aren’t more? Perhaps unbeknownst to the protagonist, someone else went even farther back into time from somewhere else and changed things for him that way.
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### Author:  [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/85 "2015-11-03T04:17:58Z")
Please people. It’s an alternate universe where things like time travel are possible.
Seriously though, I was too engrossed in the story to notice trivia like that. Not that I’d know about Texas geography or the color of police lights in 1960s New England.
Obviously if there was something glaringly wrong - cell phones in the 60s or something - that would take me out of the story, but we’re talking about relatively minor things here.
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### Author:  [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/86 "2015-11-03T04:34:48Z")
I kept wondering what happened to the consumed hamburger every time there was a “reset.” But I didn’t lose any sleep over it.
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### Author:  [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/87 "2015-11-03T05:56:11Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#):
>
> I kept wondering what happened to the consumed hamburger every time there was a “reset.” But I didn’t lose any sleep over it.
Maybe the people who had eaten it lost a little weight. In which case that restaurant owner was ripping them off.
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/88 "2015-11-03T06:51:39Z")
Oh good a zombie time-travel copy-editing failure thread.
I have just read _The Shining Girls_ (ha, you thought it was going to be another Stephen King novel for a second there didn’t you?) and I am being driven nuts by copy-editing fails.
A hospital triage room in Chicago in 1931? Triage? In 1931? I don’t think so.
“Punters.” Not a word most Americans use, not then, not now. Okay, one American I could see, some guy who’s affecting an English accent or reads a lot of Brit novels. But more than one? Nope.
“Estate agent.” Again, not a phrase I’ve heard Americans use.
There are quite a few instances of people using phrases that were not current in 1951, or 1943, or whenever, I mean some that stand out.
I am really trying hard not to be a copy editor as I read but particularly the Britishisms take me out of the story. Especially since it’s quite obvious that the author did a hell of a lot of research in an attempt to make it authentic.
Somebody should go back to 2013 and take another pass at this book.
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### Author:  [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/89 "2015-11-03T07:26:08Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#):
>
> “Punters.” Not a word most Americans use, not then, not now. Okay, one American I could see, some guy who’s affecting an English accent or reads a lot of Brit novels. But more than one? Nope.
I haven’t read the book, or really any Brit novels. To me a “punter” is a “john,” but not ashamed. You know, a frequenter of prostitutes.
How is it used in the book?
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### Author:  [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/90 "2015-11-03T08:08:59Z")
It seems to be as a synonym for “people.” But that’s the thing–people don’t use it here so I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean.
Here: at Wrigley Field waiting for the game to start.
> [@Lauren Beukes](#):
>
> But it’s still a good forty minutes before the punters start streaming in.
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### Author:  [@buddha\_david](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buddha_david)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/91 "2015-11-03T09:07:32Z")
Apparently there’s an entire wiki dedicated to [Stephen King errors.](http://stephenkingbloopers.wikia.com/wiki/Stephen_King_bloopers_Wiki)
The original version of _The Stand_ was set in 1985, which was the same year I first read it. So it was a bit weird to read about pay phones only costing a dime (the price had recently risen to 20 cents) or Larry Underwood’s band opening for Led Zeppelin in 1981. Granted, the book was written in 1978 so neither of these really count, and both “errors” were fixed in the expanded edition (Led Zep changed to Van Halen, etc.) On the other hand, it did add _Rambo IV_ coming out in 1990…
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/92 "2015-11-03T11:48:05Z")
> [@davidm](#):
>
> Obviously if there was something glaringly wrong - cell phones in the 60s or something - that would take me out of the story, but we’re talking about relatively minor things here.
Yeah, but if you were reading a book set in Michigan and they kept on spelling one of the cities “Ditroit”, you’d probably notice, right? 🙂
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### Author:  [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/93 "2015-11-03T12:37:37Z")
> [@JohnT](#):
>
> Yeah, but if you were reading a book set in Michigan and they kept on spelling one of the cities “Ditroit”, you’d probably notice, right? 🙂
Did he do that? If so, I probably thought it was some sort of error that somehow crept in during whatever passes for typesetting these days.
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/94 "2015-11-03T13:25:16Z")
Post #3… wasn’t Detroit, but you should at least spell real-world locations correctly, I would think…
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/95 "2015-11-03T13:51:51Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#):
>
> It seems to be as a synonym for “people.” But that’s the thing–people don’t use it here so I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean.
>
> Here: at Wrigley Field waiting for the game to start.
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > But it’s still a good forty minutes before the punters start streaming in.
Those are the players who kick the, uh, basketball, right?
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/96 "2015-11-03T14:25:54Z")
> [@LH75](#):
>
> I enjoyed Stephen King’s writing much more before he quit drinking
So did Stephen 🙂
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### Author:  [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/97 "2015-11-03T14:38:51Z")
> [@davidm](#):
>
> I have to say that I was so engrossed in the book that, like **Quasi** , I didn’t notice any of the stuff mentioned in this thread.
Yeah, this must be that blissful ignorance thing I heard tell of.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/98 "2015-11-03T14:52:35Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#):
>
> I kept wondering what happened to the consumed hamburger every time there was a “reset.” But I didn’t lose any sleep over it.
As I recall, it was the same with Al in the story.
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### Author:  [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/99 "2015-11-03T17:11:09Z")
> [@JohnT](#):
>
> You live in the Pacific NW so you might not notice that the city of [Killeen](http://www.killeentexas.gov/), Texas is consistently (as in, every time) misspelled as Kileen. There’s also the fact that he has his main character smelling the oil refineries in Midland, TX while in the DFW area, notwithstanding the fact that Midland is over 250 miles away from Dallas. :rolleyes:
So an interview King did from 1981, I think, springs to mind. He was talking about the TV movie, _Salem’s Lot,_ that Tobe Hooper did, and while he more or less liked it, he was complaining about how at one point a character drives to Bangor to see a drive in movie… which would have been a four hour drive…
He liked the movie, but apparently, that little detail sort of itched him.
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### Author:  [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harvey_The_Heavy)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/100 "2015-11-03T21:26:36Z")
> [@dwk4377](#):
>
> Just ran across this thread. One thing I noted in _11/22/63_ was the Chevron station. Chevron, while a product name for lubricants and related items, wasn’t renamed from Standard Oil until the late 1970s. I can’t find a specific reference to the first use as a gas station name but I think King places it a couple of decades early.
[This one](http://www.rreid.net/OldTrails/chevron_NV.jpg) looks old enough. Standard Oil of Southern California used the Chevron name outside of their territory since the 30’s. Most of the Standard locations in their territory were renamed Chevron in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
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