No wonder he didn’t answer your email. He’s been drinking.
Topic? Oh, yeah. I think King is all over the map. Some of his stuff I really like (The Stand, The Green Mile, Salem’s Lot), the other stuff I really hate (Insomnia, Dreamcatcher, Tommyknockers).
As others said King can be unsteady. When he is good he is great but when he sucks, well dog poo comes to mind.
I think his early work stands out. His middle period was really uneven. King has [URL=http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King]admitted[/UR] to drinking rather heavily for awhile during that period. IIRC King said he really didn’t remember writing The Tommyknockers(Which I could believe as that IMHO is his worst book). His later stuff got better.
I have recently read “From a Buick 8” and “Everything’s Eventual” and found them to be some of his better work. “Autopsy Room 4” from “Everything’s Eventual” has one of the funniest yet sick endings I have ever read.
Slee
What?
Sleestak, I agree wholeheartedly. That book contained some totally “eventual” stories!!
That would be:
Translation:
“Better late then never
Czarcasm”
with the last letters of each word missing.
This leads nicely into my question, “Why are the last letters of each word missing?”
Oh, nevermind. I figured it out. Mocking the OP for leaving the “d” off of “Good”.
Anybody else hear a “whooshing” sound? :smack:
I pretty much concur with Slee down the line on this one. He can be great or he can suck badly.King is capable of writing great stories and characters as long as he doesn’t take himself to seriously.
I also agree with Slee as to the qualitative arc of King’s work. I like most of his early stuff (Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone) but some of his stuff after that got a little too ponderous and self-indulgent. I think that when he takes a simple idea and keeps it lean and mean (The Running man, Misery) he can be as engrossing and entertaining as it gets, but sometimes he just gets too windy or has ideas that are just plain silly (Insomnia, Desperation. He seems to be getting some of his mojo back lately, though, as Slee pointed out, with his last two books. I guess the drinking probably was hurting his work quite a bit.
I think King will be remembered for his great stuff and people will forget all about his crappy stuff.
I like most of his books, but haven’t read that many of his recent works. I am a BIG Dark Tower fan, though, and I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t tried it. I know some people read The Gunslinger and didn’t love it, but I think many of these people would be hooked if they read The Drawing of the Three and subsequent DT books. There was a recent thread here about the Dark Tower series if you’re interested.
Tangent, for years I said “I don’t want to read DT, I don’t want to read DT,. . .”, then my MIL found The Gunslinger at a library sale for a quarter. Not knowing much about King except that I was a fan, she bought it for me. I still didn’t want to read it. But when I ran out of other stuff to read, I finally picked it up, I LOVED it!! Couldn’t wait to read the next ones! IMHO, the most recent one was the worst of the bunch.
That last one was just ugh.
Sometimes less is better.
What makes King work, for me, is his ability to get you into each one of his characters. They all become real, to a certain extent.
With some authors, if a character disappears for thirty or forty pages and then pops back up again, I have to stop and say “Now who was that?” and go back and reread. With King, that almost never happens.
In my opinion, that’s why he writes some of the scariest, funniest and most intriguing books around – he combines good plot (usually) with great characters (almost always).
Now, there have been some stinkers, without doubt. But King has become, for me, one of those authors (along with Harlan Ellison, Charles Beaumont, James Thurber and others) whose books I will pick up with no hesitation whatsoever.
This thread was more fun when it was Stephen King: Goo or Not?
BRING BACK THE GOO!!! 
Ditto here… and it’s been that way for me for some time.
Despite a few stinkers here and there (The Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher come leaping to mind), most of King’s work is quite good. Also, it’s interesting to see his substantial growth as a writer over the years. From simple, “lean and mean” (thanks Diogenes!) books like Carrie or The Dead Zone to his more expansive, complex efforts such as Everything’s Eventual and From a Buick 8, I am rarely disappointed by King’s work. If anything, I have been pleasantly surprised. Overall, King’s is a voice I am comfortable with, even as he explores new territory.
My favorites among King’s work are probably On Writing, and the whole of the Dark Tower series so far.
I hated most of what King’s written since The Stand. It had some good moments, but the resolution
that the only way to beat the evil cthulhoid space spider is through tantric kiddie-sex
was just stupid and ick.
I hated the stated message of The Stand (that Satan loves techies and God loves Luddites. A more desperate plea for ignorance, I’ve never read.) That said, it’s powerful and compelling.
The other thing I hate about King is that his characters are always so dumb. When given a choice, they always make the most stupid, obviously self-destructive one. Carrie votes for herself in the prom. Stu turns the gas off. Harold doesn’t let go of his anger. And on and on and on. I don’t enjoy reading about losers.
Frankly, the earlier you go in his work, the better the stuff is. Somewhere around Misery, King seemed to decide that he was an artiste’, not a writer and has stopped telling stories and instead just vomits out what he seems to think of as art. (and whoever said that reading Dreamcatcher was like chewing on tinfoil was dead on. So was The Tommyknockers.)
Fenris
Yes, Stephen King is a good author. Want to know why? Because people read his books and enjoy them. All the English teachers and English majors in the world can stick their deconstructionism up their wahoos, AFAIC. Sometimes a red wheelbarrow is just a red wheelbarrow.
Minor nitpick: They’d already defeated It (the first time) when the scene you mentioned occurs.
I’m not sure I understand this. People make self-destructive choices in their lives every day. To me, King has the ability to show people at their best and their worst, and to articulately express his characters’ thoughts.
And how is Stu turning off the gas “self-destructive”? (I’m assuming you’re referring to the opening of The Stand.) That action saved his life, and the lives of the others in the gas station.
Unless I’m being completely wooshed here, sleestak has trouble separating truth fromThe Onion
That may be so, but to throw him a bit of a bone, I do remember King saying (perhaps in On Writing?) that during the period he was heavily into drugs, he has large gaps in his memory. He apparently doesn’t recall writing (or re-writing) large portions of Cujo, IIRC.
King is by far my favorite writer, and yes, I think he’s very good. I haven’t read all of his books, but I’ve read a few from each part of his life. His books are a bit uneven from one to another, each with different tones and different pacing, but for the most part he’s one of the best writers on the market today. I don’t read stories for symbolism or allegory; I like to read them because almost all of his characters are lifelike and easy to identify with. You don’t find Koontz’s perfect characters, or Clancy’s single-dimensional ones. In King’s stories, the characters take precedence, and the story evolves around them, like the best fiction always seems to do.
Well, first of all I never read “The Onion”. I hate The Onion.
Second, here is a link that quotes King as saying:
So I got the wrong book. Sorry, I should have googled for it. Right idea, wrong book. And in my post I meant to say that King didn’t remember writing parts of the book, not that he didn’t remember it at all.
Slee