# So what's your opinion of Stephen King? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 7, 2010, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915 "2010-09-07T13:52:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![kapri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kapri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kapri)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/41 "2010-09-07T16:17:24Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > Publishing in the New Yorker hardly means you’re destined for literary immortality. He’s a genre writer. An extremely successful one (even if his best days are behind him), but not someone that is going into the literary canon. Not even close. He’s great (or was great) at what he does, but people tend to get hyperbolic when it comes to their own likes and dislikes. He’s about as destined for literary greatness as Agatha Christie. Agreed. He’s often a good **storyteller,** but he’s generally not a great **writer.** ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Accident](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Mr.Accident](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Accident)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/42 "2010-09-07T16:25:02Z")
Like others said, was great, now sucks. I read everything he wrote up until Desperation/Regulators. Loved most of them, with the exception of Insomnia. Especially the original Children of the Corn short story. Damned creepy. Since Desperation, his writing has really gone down hill. I’ll continue buying/borrowing/checking out his books in the hope that he gets back to being the writer he used to be. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/43 "2010-09-07T16:41:35Z")
I’m not picking a choice, because there is no “has a little curl” option. When he’s good, he’s very, very good, and when he’s bad… He’s written some really good stuff, and I especially like his short stories. I also love _The Eyes of the Dragon_, which doesn’t seem to be very well-known. He’s also written some positively dreadful stuff. I’m not terribly fond of the horror genre, and I’m not his target audience. I usually won’t buy King in new books, only used, or I’ll check out a copy at the library, especially his recent stuff, which is hardly worth reading once, let alone re-reading. ---
**Author:** ![phungi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/phungi/32/395_2.png) [@phungi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phungi)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/44 "2010-09-07T16:54:56Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > > [@phungi](#): > > > > I thought _Cell_ and _Duma Key_ were both great books… > > Duma Key suffered horribly from King-ending-itis, don’t act otherwise. The first half, maybe even two thirds, was fantastic though. I suppose I expect very little from his bloated bizarre endings, but revel in his process of getting there… ---
**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/45 "2010-09-07T16:56:26Z")
King hits and misses. Unlike a lot of authors who start strong then wane over time or who initially are hacks then improve over time, King is very erratic. He can go from crap to greatness and back in back to back novels. Heck, he can do that within a single novel. I don’t think he’s particularly deep, but he’s certainly entertaining and engrossing when he’s on his game. I agree with some of the sentiment above that he’s a good storyteller, but not a good writer. I believe the same thing could be said about Dickens and Hemingway, who both had major weaknesses to their writing styles too. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/46 "2010-09-07T17:12:49Z")
I would like to point out that King is not a horror writer. Yes, he does write good to great horror, but plenty of his works have no horror in them. And his two nonfiction works, Danse Macabre and On Writing, are absolutely wonderful. I also admire the man for having a good, stable, marriage that survived poverty, fame, fortune, and his alcohol and drug use, and especially his survival of being his by an SUV. His three children have turned out fine, his two sons being published writers. And I love wife Tabitha King’s works. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/47 "2010-09-07T17:14:40Z")
\*\*Lynn \*\*(and others) is exactly right. When he’s good, he’s unbeatable. When he’s bad, he’s really awful. I think \*\*CalMeacham \*\*nailed it too: when it comes to dialog and the lower class, King has it nailed. His dialog is fantastic - he simply writes like people talk. ---
**Author:** ![Dogzilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@Dogzilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogzilla)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/48 "2010-09-07T17:18:32Z")
> [@Snickers](#): > > \*\*Lynn \*\*(and others) is exactly right. When he’s good, he’s unbeatable. When he’s bad, he’s really awful. I think \*\*CalMeacham \*\*nailed it too: when it comes to dialog and the lower class, King has it nailed. His dialog is fantastic - he simply writes like people talk. Agreed about his dialogue. Reading it always makes me wonder how many hours he had to sit in a bar listening to people talk to get that just right. Or it could just be where his talent is. Tight endings is clearly not it. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/49 "2010-09-07T17:23:41Z")
I think King will eventually be ranked alongside Dickens and Twain - two other authors who were not seen as “important” by their contemporaries but who now stand far above the supposedly better authors of their day. And I also agree with those who say that King is not perfect. He writes a lot and plenty of times he misses the mark. But that’s true of any author with a significant body of work. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/50 "2010-09-07T17:25:50Z")
I love his writing, generally, although I will agree some of his endings suck (The Dome, for example). I did enjoy most of _IT_ and love a lot of his short stories, many mentioned here. My favorite longer one is _The Talisman_. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/51 "2010-09-07T17:35:59Z")
In _On Writing_, King states he hates using words to described what people are saying, like ejected, explained, etc; and angrily, sadly, menancingly, etc. The dialogue should tell you how the person is speaking. The only verb he uses is “said.” He also wrote that the writer simply takes two separate ideas and puts them together. Since reading that, I find it true not only in King’s works, but in about 90% of what I read. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/52 "2010-09-07T17:39:22Z")
> [@Dogzilla](#): > > He has really soft hands, like the hands of a man who doesn’t do manual labor for a living. > > I shook his hand at a reading a couple years ago. I looked the man dead in the eye and thanked him. He may not have realized, I wasn’t thanking him for his stupid autograph; I was thanking him for his years of influence on me as a writer. Bless the man, he _is_ the modern-day Poe. (Not all of Poe’s work was full of Teh Awesome either. Believe me, I’ve read most of both of 'em.) > > I think you can’t judge King by reading just one or two of his books. Some have just little tiny snippets of brilliance in them. Some are pure genius from page 1 to the end. Most are somewhere in the middle. After _Carrie_ and _Salem’s Lot_, there isn’t a whole lot of scary monster/gory horrorshow stuff. You can only do vampires, ghosts, and zombies in so many ways before it all starts to be a cliche of itself, right? Most of is work after those first 4 or 5 novels are about the Unknown that scares the bejeezus out of most of us. The really creepy stuff is what’s in our heads. When King shows us this, it makes a lot of readers very uncomfortable to think about the idea that _I_ might have some sick and twisted shit rattling around in my head too. > > Some artistic/literary merits to King’s work, IMO: > > •He writes great women. His female characters feel _real_ to me and do not sound like a man trying to write from a woman’s perspective. (See Ira Levin for the anti-example of this. His women are vapid idiots and do not resemble real women in real life at all. John Updike’s women also are one-dimensional bullshit characters.) For some really awesome examples of writing female characters with realism and integrity, see also _Delores Claiborne_ (“Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to.”), _Rose Madder_ (brilliant description of the mindset of an abused wife, very accurate), and _The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon_ (written from the point of view of a 12-year-old girl, which is DEAD ON). Also, _Misery_ is brilliant too. > > •He is the master at building suspense. This is much more difficult to do as a writer than one might think, especially when coupled with creating characters a reader actually cares about. In Delores Claiborne (IMO, one of his masterpieces. Can you tell it’s my favorite?), you find out who dies by page 3. Not only does he step outside of the standard third-person voice in that book and tells the entire store in flashback from a single, female character’s point of view, but he builds the suspense backwards. You already know the who died and who done it in the first chapter. The only reason to keep reading to the end is to answer the Why. Brilliant use of suspense and voice. Fucking brilliant. > > My advice to those who aren’t as familiar: stick to the earlier works, try to enjoy the more obscure/less mainstream novels and short stories, and avoid anything he wrote while coked out of his brains. That would include the _It/Tommyknockers_ era, most of which was complete crap. _It_ was just offensive to me on so many levels; he could have done so much more with the fear-of-clowns trope. I agree about his ability to develop characters very quickly and thoroughly. He gets inside the head of a typical 12-year old kid like no other writer I’ve ever read. His short story _The Body_ was the pinnacle of writing from the child’s viewpoint. It strongly evoked my own childhood, right down to the description of the summer days. I was absolutely addicted to his books right up until _Tommyknockers_, which was, hands down, the worst piece of shit I’d read up to that point in my life. ---
**Author:** ![Dogzilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@Dogzilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogzilla)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/53 "2010-09-07T18:12:23Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I agree about his ability to develop characters very quickly and thoroughly. He gets inside the head of a typical 12-year old kid like no other writer I’ve ever read. His short story _The Body_ was the pinnacle of writing from the child’s viewpoint. It strongly evoked my own childhood, right down to the description of the summer days. I was absolutely addicted to his books right up until _Tommyknockers_, which was, hands down, the worst piece of shit I’d read up to that point in my life. And **Stand By Me** – the movie that was based on _The Body_ – is one of the better “Stephen King movies” (movies adapted from his works) because it stayed so faithful to that inside-the-head-of-a-kid thing he had going in the short story. Misery (the movie) scored well in my book for the same reason. He had that Batshit-Crazy-Number-One-Fan thing going in the book that totally carried into the screen. Kathy Bates was awesome in that role as well. She did a very, very good job, I thought. I think she must have read the book. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/54 "2010-09-07T18:49:33Z")
I have a very mixed opinion of Stephen King. Some of the books are great, some are crap. Like others have said, I’ve hated many of his endings. And yet, he can capture a scene like no one else. I remember moments in ‘The Stand’ like the description of Larry and the New York socialite’s escape through the Lincoln Tunnel or the passage where Stu, Hawk and whatshername go to the Centre for Disease Control and find it deserted. The passages from ‘Salem’s Lot’, like where the lapsed priest confronts the vampire and has his crisis of faith, buys a fifth of whisky and gets on the next Greyhound to spend the rest of his life becoming a drunk, or where the kid is tied to the bed upstairs and has to get out before sunset. I can’t call anyone who can craft scenes like that a hack - how many similar things can I recall from Clive Barker, or Peter Straub? Nothing is coming to mind at all, yet I think at one time or another, I’ve read everything of theirs. So, I’m prepared to forgive him books like ‘Cujo’ and ‘Firestarter’ based entirely on his having written books like ‘The Shining’ and ‘Salem’s Lot’. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/55 "2010-09-07T18:50:49Z")
Both of which actually have endings that didn’t make me want to throw the book in the fire, by the way. ETA - and thanks to _The Shining_ I don’t go into people’s bathrooms that have bathtubs with drawn curtains without pulling the curtain aside before I lock the door. I am thirty fucking years old and I still think, deep down, that there might be a dead woman in the tub. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/56 "2010-09-07T19:10:54Z")
I didn’t see any mention of _Hearts in Atlantis_, which I thought was great and had some decent tie-ins to the Dark Tower series (which is definitely my favorite King stuff). I also thought \*Needful Things \*was pretty solid and The \*Long Walk \*is a great short story, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/57 "2010-09-07T19:24:57Z")
> [@](#): > > The Long Walk is a great short story, IMO. Short story? It was originally published as a stand-alone _novel_ as by Richard Bachman. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/58 "2010-09-07T19:36:29Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > Both of which actually have endings that didn’t make me want to throw the book in the fire, by the way. > > ETA - and thanks to _The Shining_ I don’t go into people’s bathrooms that have bathtubs with drawn curtains without pulling the curtain aside before I lock the door. I am thirty fucking years old and I still think, deep down, that there might be a dead woman in the tub. Thanks to the short story, _1408_, every time I go to Safeway and they’re announcing numbers over the intercom (I don’t know why - every so often they announce, “Deli, 33. Bakery, 44.” or something like that), I mutter under my breath, _“NINE! NINE! NINE!”_ That short story scared the shit out of me. I don’t read horror; I read Stephen King. I’ve read most of what he’s written, and I can agree that some of it is quite weak, but most of it was so engrossing that I never wanted to put the book down. Honestly, I’m not looking for anything more than that in an author. ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/59 "2010-09-07T19:38:20Z")
His story ideas are OK but his prose not so muck. To me it’s very basic, no poetry. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2010, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915/60 "2010-09-07T19:42:56Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > The Long Walk is a great short story, IMO. > > Short story? > > It was originally published as a stand-alone _novel_ as by Richard Bachman. Yeah, I read it in Bachman books 15 years or so ago and remembered it being shorter than it is - 384 pages according to Wikipedia. Definitely not a short story. Although compared to the 845 pages of the final dark Tower, maybe it is 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-whats-your-opinion-of-stephen-king/552915.md?page=4)