I’m very skeptical that King even has an editor, and while I appreciate that he’s a pantser like yours truly, he doesn’t know how to end a book. I’ve seen him stick the landing a few times (The Long Walk) but usually it is a massive anticlimax. It speaks to how good he is that I keep going back to that well anyway.
He really shines in short form, IMO, where he doesn’t have to come up with some spectacular ending.
Also, he has to do some gross humor somewhere in every book.
And he really likes killing four-year-olds for some reason.
Scene: The Clarion Science Fiction Writer’s Workshop 1972. Out of town participants were housed in an old dorm on the UWashington campus. One of its few features proved to be the giant beams that crossed the hallway ceilings.
Most of us who lived on that hall were college aged, with predictable hijinks. John Shirley, who became a well known horror writer, was tall and lanky. By putting his hands on one wall and his feet on the other he could “walk” up to the ceiling and hide behind a beam, dropping on surprised people as they walked by.
Harlan was the fourth writer in residence. (The others were Avram Davidson, Terry Carr, Robert Silverberg, Ursula Le Guin, and Frank Herbert. Yeah. Wow.) His appearance in the hall created a stir.
John was prodded to do his thing. His favorite beam was by the doorway to my room, so Harlan stood there as the spectacle progressed. When John returned to the floor, I pointed at my doorway and said to Harlan, “Why don’t you try it?”
He pushed me up against the wall, but probably humorously.
Haters should note that he was terrific all week long.
Not quite that bad, but I read his expanded version of The Stand. I liked parts that he added back in that had been edited out originally, and absolutely HATED where he tried to modernize the story. Those parts felt very ham-handed.
I read a lot of Heinlein in college, and a lot of Asimov. Both of them tried, late in their careers, to have one “universe” where their stories took place. Asimov’s was was smoother, but still some of it was forced. Heinlein went through some nasty convulsions that strained credulity.
In the Preston/Child novels featuring Aloysius H.X. Pendergast, lock-picking is taken to an extreme. Pendergast is able to rapidly open most (or all) locks with ludicrous ease.
As far as killing someone in Nero Wolfe mysteries by hitting them with a car goes, there are a lot of hit-and-run accidents in NYC where someone is seriously hurt or killed, and the perpetrator gets away with it, at least for quite awhile. 70 years or more ago forensic science was more primitive in identifying hit-and-run vehicles, and probably it was a lot easier to hot-wire cars to steal them.
I’ve read 5 or 6 novels by King, without noticing the superfluous paranormal, but it jumped out at me while watching the film version of The Green Mile. It was a fine story and then mystical powers popped up — needlessly as far as I could see. The plot functioned fine within them.
So the film was less affecting, due to a hefty addition of, “whaaaa?”.
I stopped reading the Scarpetta books when Cornwell went all wacky about Jack the Ripper. It was too much a look into her mind, and I can watch Roman Polanski movies without cognitive dissonance.
Dorothy Parker is one of my favorite writers. Unfortunately, one of her favorite writers was Hemingway, who leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Whenever she gets to waxing sycophant over Hemingway, I start skimming down the page, pretending it isn’t happening, and kind of “lalala-- can’t hear you!” with my inner voice.
And Parker, who I love unconditionally nevertheless, was unfortunately sexist. A great deal of it was a product of her times, but on the other hand, she was a contemporary of people like Vera Brittain and Alice Paul, not to mention Helen Keller, and she was a great advocate of lots of progressive causes, to the point of leaving her estate (she had no children) to Dr. Martin Luther King, jr.
She marched to free Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Rosenbergs; and to support the Republic during the Spanish Civil War.
So one does get the feeling she dropped the ball of feminism.
Tolkien is my favorite author. I read the Lord of the Rings every year from 2nd grade (when it took me the whole year to read) and senior high school. I’ve reread it a few times since, most recently less than a year ago, and still really get wrapped up and enjoy it.
But his racism and classism get harder and harder for me to take. He was also pretty “woke” for his time. And you can see in his works, how he kept changing the origin story of the orcs because on some level, he recognized he was doing a bad thing in how he wrote them. But his time was incredibly racist and classist. And that’s a problem with his books.
Can’t help you right now; it’s been decades since I watched it. If it’s on one of my streaming services I might be able to defend or withdraw my contention in a day or two.
I’ve been reading a lot of low brow space operas by authors that can write them almost as fast as I can read them. One endless series (USS Hamilton) is by the remarkably prolific Mark Wayne McGinnis who fearlessly ignores logic to tell a good story. That’s not a flaw so much as part of the charm of these stories.
Like all Trek inspired tales, his crew is diverse (one of each). Still not a problem. What annoys me is that he continually feels the need to point out and empathize the race of the non-white characters every time they appear on the page. Crewman so-and-so always has “sweat glistening on his ebony skin”. Dr. Whosit always replies in his “sing-songy Mumbai accent”. I only need to be told once, thank you.
Well, it’s not on my streams (and damn, 189 minutes), but using the Wikipedia summary and some RotTom reviews to supplement my perforated memory here’s an answer.
The story of a gigantic man-child facing execution on doubtful evidence is already emotionally loaded. Giving him an extraordinary talent is piling things on — it could be singing, training birds, a photographic memory of a brutal childhood. Making the talent something that no one has managed since Jesus and the saints? I’m just not sure that’s necessary. Especially since (to quote RotTom ‘top critic’, Steven Greydanus) “Those whose lives Coffey touches may find relief from physical ailments, but they seem no freer, more hopeful, or nobler for the experience”.
My memory says the only reason for including the supernatural power was to make the brutally botched execution an extra special, oh-my-gosh-no-doubt-about-it, super shame. There was no need to put that gigantic thumb on the scale.
But like I said, it’s been 20 years. A rewatch might change my mind. (But 3 hours and 9 minutes?)
Which is disappointing, because it’s one of my favorite King books (and the miniseries wasn’t bad, either).
If I have one complaint about King as an author, it’s his inability to consistently stick the landing with regard to the endings of his story. For instance, Under the Dome’s reveal that the barrier is placed by a couple of alien kids, like we would see animals in a terrarium, was a phenomenal let-down to me.
I absolutely love Stephen King, and although I recognize the things mentioned above, none of them bother me.
Another favorite author is Stephen R Donaldson. His depiction of The Land in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is one of a kind. I really enjoyed the first trilogy when I was in my 20s, but looking back I can’t believe I slogged through all of the hair pulling, teeth grinding and self-hate of the antagonist. Yeah, we get that he is an antihero, but let us form our opinions of him ourselves.
Since Stephen King is a popular subject in this thread, there are a few things that consistently bug me:
He’s not great with dialogue, especially slang, especially kids. Her poked fun at himself a little on this subject in the final Dark Tower novel.
His insistence on keeping his novels contemporary sometimes results in him awkwardly shoehorning in cultural and political references where they don’t really belong.
His obsession with breasts. I recall one minor character in the Dark Tower who every time she appeared on the page, he referred to her as “the small-breasted woman”. Her role in the story was in no way dependent on her breasts. It’s one thing in a sex scene, but otherwise I don’t really care about anyone’s breasts.
You have remembered the face of your father!
I also see Mr. King’s flaws, and am not inclined to bag on him. His early work bought me for a lifetime. That said… I cringe a little when he mentions Trump, because I know it will distract people from the story, and also, it’s what I’m reading to get away from.
Okay now, that said… I hate Trump too, and I think the King and I should get together for a long palaver! I’ll buy dinner.
