Someone hold Stephen King down while I KICK HIM IN THE ASS!!!

Cafe Society
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I noticed this the first time around with Everything’s Eventual, but didn’t comment on it then. EE’s a collection of short stories, one of which stars our friend Roland of Gilead. In the intro to the story, Mr. King casually mentions " And by the way, for you Tower junkies, DT5 is now finished, all nine hundred pages of it. It’s called Wolves of the Calla"

O.K. Mr. King, enough is enough. I enjoy the DT series, although I think The Stand is far and away your best work, and I’d like to read how the quest turns out, but you really need to stop teasing us like this. If the book is done, publish it! EE could have waited 6 more months, why not get the DT book out now? I know of your passion for short stories, and I even understand why you feel you need to “keep it real” and write them, but that dosen’t mean that you have to publish them first. I WANT to know what happens next to Roland and his crew, and besides that, it’s permiating your work. The Black House felt like a shill for the DT septology. I was quite disappointed, because I thought the potential of the Territories and especially the multiple worlds concept you aluded to when Jack was in the hotel going after the Talisman, was limitless from a storytelling standpoint. Instead what we get is a story that is entirely ancellary to the real Magnum opus, Roland’s story, and waste a fine character (Jack) and world by subordinating it to the DT story. If you want to write stories that flesh out the world of Roland, short stories are the place to do that, perfectly evidenced by “The Little Sisters of Eluria” the story about Roland in EE.

So, come on, get with the program, finish the DT series and then move on before it permiates all of your other work.

Thank you.

2

Well, he has an explanation

3

While we’re talking about Stephen King, did anyone else immensely enjoy that underage orgy scene in IT ?

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Am I the only one who thinks the underage orgy wasn’t about sex at all?

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Yeah, you probably are. I’m surprised that King had the guts to do that.

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Just my $0.02, but “1408” was the scariest damned short story I’ve ever read. Finished reading the story around midnight, I really, really, didn’t want to turn my lights out and go to bed.

Oh, and I discovered that celing fans can look an awful lot like giant spiders when the light is just so…

7

Just finished Black House. Pretty good (much better than The Talisman which I really didn’t like), but I actually enjoyed the more straightforward aspects of the plot (police procedural/child killer) rather than the more fantastic elements. Good charactertization for Jack and Henry; would have liked more focus on that.

I don’t mind the DT references in other works so much, although some seem a little forced. I liked the way Black House tied into Hearts in Atlantis, explaining a little bit more of the “other worlds” happenings. I thought DTIV was simply outstanding and can’t wait to read the next installments.

I’m glad to hear they are already written for the most part. At least now if King has a coronary or, say, gets run over by a van, I’ll still get to read the stories. Hmmm, that sounds pretty callous, but it’s the truth. DON’T DIE STEVIE! [sub]at least until the DT books are finished.[/sub]
The child stuff in It pretty much ruined what was up to then a pretty entertaining read. The characterization was very good, the plot happenings passable. Yeah, I know the scene wasn’t just about sex, but rather about gathering power through togetherness and bonding (the only way they could defeat the evil)… but still. Bleah.

I’ve noticed that King has trouble with endings. A book will start out fantastic; really hook me…and then peter out at the end. The Dark Half, anyone?

Haven’t started EE yet; it’s on my shelf along with every other SK (all first edition, hardbacks, too! Ahh, my collection…). I’ve been very disappointed with King’s more recent short story output. Hopefully this will be better. I’ll get to it just as soon as I finish Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love.

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I loved The Talisman, but was seriously disappointed to see Black House turn into a DT tie-in. I don’t care for the DT universe at all.

More stories set in the world of Eye of the Dragon would be nice. :slight_smile:

9

Well, they did have sex. So, in part, it was certainly about sex.

10

Did anyone else think Dreamcatcher had “contractual obligation book” written all over it? I just finished it, and I would swear that someone else actually wrote that book. It had almost none of the stuff I’ve come to enjoy in King’s writing.

Put me down as someone else anxiously awaiting the next Dark Tower book. 2003? Geez.

11

King has two problems that make me worry about the rest of the Dark Tower series.

1: Endings. It just sort of fell apart at the end; the final confrontation(s) just couldn’t live up to the atmosphere of immanent evil in the town. Giant spider as nightmare-form from the kids and not the actual evil, I know, but it was in the same category as the “orgy”–you could see what King was trying to get at, but he just didn’t do it particularly effectively.

And It was just about cosmic evil rotting through a town and the buildup to ordinary and good people confronting it because it had to be done. The Dark Tower is about the linchpin and totality of everything…and, well, let’s just say it doesn’t bode well for this reader. Just skeptical is all.

2: Word bloat. Each book so far in the series has grown larger and larger. The Gunslinger is incredibly spartan, if uneven, and the style suited Roland much better at giving the impression of single-minded grim purpose. The Drawing of the Three was, I think, the best in the series at balancing verbiage versus development. The third started to slide into too many words for no particular purpose, and the fourth was at least a third longer than it needed to be. It would be nice if King’s reversed the trend of this curve, but again, skepticism.

I’m glad that he’ll at least finish the thing, though. For quite awhile there, it looked like the series would always only be half-done.

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As for the “publish it, dammit!” idea: didn’t he come up with the Richard Bachman name in order to prevent Stephen King books from flooding the book market? He maximizes sales by spreading the release of books over time; if too many came out at once, people would decide, “Well, I’ll buy Wolves of the Calla and Everything’s Eventual now, and by the time I’m done with them, Dreamcatcher will be out in paperback!”

It’s all about the money.

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I realise an SK ‘newbie’ question might irritate the aficionados, which isn’t my intention, but just in case you want to help me…

  1. I don’t know much about SK, except that I’ve enjoyed some of the hit movies based on his books (especially Misery). If I wanted to start getting ‘into’ SK as a writer, instead of just schlepping around the movie adaptations, where would be a good start? I like short stories, and I like normal-sized novels, but if he’s written any utter forest-gobblers I can probably leave those until last…

Oh, and I really like being scared witless by utterly frightening ideas I would never have thought of myself.

  1. What, er, exactly is this thread all about? Not being familiar with SK’s work, I obviously don’t really follow the points being made, and if for no other reason than curiosity I’d like to know what’s going on!

Thanks for the advice, sorry if I’ve hijacked.

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  1. I’d say to read them in the order he wrote them. Start with Carry, move on to The Shining. I’ve read every single one of his books (several times) and I personally suggest that you stay far, far away from The Tommyknockers.
    Also, keep in mind that not all of his books are horror-novels. (Dolores Claiborne springs to mind.) I personally think everybody should read The Stand (terrifying on several levels) and IT (other than a few minor points, a very good read.)

  2. Like I mentioned before, not all of King’s books are horror novels. In the 70s he wrote a fairly short novel called The Gunslinger. He later wrote a sequel called The Drawing of the Three. These books are very, very good and very popular. They are nothing like his other novels, in that they are more Fantasy with a bit of Western and Sci-Fi thrown in. He’s now written 4 books in the Dark Tower Series, but the Dark Tower world touches all the worlds, and there are several references in other books to the DT world, and in the DT books to other worlds. (For instance, the antagonist in The Stand is also the Big Bad in the DT–or so it would appear.)
    I highly recommend these books to everybody as well. Even my husband, who as a rule doesn’t like to read, loves these books and can’t wait for 5, 6, and 7.
    The problem is, it takes forever for SK to publish these books (more than 20 years between 1 and 4), so the fans have a very long wait…and we’re getting restless.

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Rose Madder is also really good.

It’s my favorite King book, in fact. Well, tied with It.

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As har as Black House goes, was anybody as annoyed as I was that it was written in first person plural with the reader being part of “we”. (“As we float up from the living room we see the distrought mother weeping, but we have other things to see as we pass through the rooftop. We don’t make a hole in the roof, we just pass through it as we are like an invisible apparition. Shall we pay a visit to the police station? Yes, we shall.*”) Ug. His worst ever.
[sub]*Obviously, not an actual quote[/sub]

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Wow Beeblebrox–that was actually one of my favorite things about the intro to BH. I loved the “floating through town and checking stuff out” perspective. Actually, in a way, it kind of reminded me of the scene in Evil Dead where the wind and evil are all rushing the cabin and you’re seeing it from the perspective of the evil. Silly maybe, but I thought it was very effective for getting to know a lot of basic character info, as well as drawing in the reader with an intimate, familiar tone.

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Actually the publishers are the ones who are concerned about over saturating the market. King has written about this in more than one interview. (I’d google it but I am lazy)

I do remember that in one interview King said that Bachman was not only a way to publish more books but also an attempt to see if he could sell books without the “King” hype. IIRC, King was going to publish ‘Misery’ as Bachman and King thought ‘Misery’ was going to put Bachman on the best seller list.

Slee

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Count me in as another hurry-up-and-publish-it-already! vote. In a way, I feel like King can’t win. I was annoyed when I didn’t know when (if ever) the next book in the Dark Tower series was going to come out, and now that I have an idea, I think I’m even more impatient. Basically, I think I’d complain either way. :stuck_out_tongue:

Regarding Black House,

I felt it was a poor rehash of The Talisman. I thought Henry was just like Wolf. Henry’s handicap - blind. Wolf’s - mentally slow. Henry has lot’s of catch phrases and so does Wolf, God pound it! Guess what happens to Henry & Wolf, but somehow Jack manages to go on? They both have secrets, one’s a DJ - one’s a Wolf! I dunno, I love Wolf and Henry was a nice character, but c’mon. I wanted something new the second time around.

20

Yeah, he said something about that in the introduction to the Bachman books - (Rage, The Long Walk, Running Man and Roadwork all collected together).

He added something along the lines of “But the fact that Thinner sold 28,000 copies when Bachman was the author and 280,000 with King on the cover says something.”

He wasn’t being egotistical about it, just making the point that the quality of the story doesn’t necessarily matter at first; you’ve got to get potential readers to pick the book up before they can see how good/bad the story actually is, and a “name” on the cover does that. In both King and Bachman editions, the story was the same.