No, this happens to most authors. I’ve heard it about two of my long time favorites: Dean Koontz and Jude Deveraux. I don’t let it get to me, since really, what’s it matter?
I personally feel that Robert Jordan jumped the shark about 3 books ago. Others feel he did about 5 books ago. Still more never liked his books at all. Many, many people felt his latest book is a piece of utter shit (including myself), but I can guarantee you that someone out there considers it the best book they’ve ever read.
I have to second this one. There’s something in what Barenlaith says, but I think his jumping point is merely where King began his trip up the ramp. Any number of stories between Misery and Insomnia held a great deal of promise despite a number of flaws.
By Insomnia, it was all gone. I haven’t been able to LOOK at any of his later work after that one.
Clear signs of a tendency to write himself into a situation he didn’t know how to write his way out of were apparent as early as The Stand, which tried to be great but unravelled and wandered off to a dissatisfying whimper because King couldn’t make good on his own buildup.
Leadoff harbinger of a tendency to immerse himself obsessively in a narrow subject entirely capable of boring the starch out of many (if not all) readers was Cujo, a story many of us found neither fascinating nor scary, just dull and sad.
And really, only in The Shining did King aspire to a masterpiece that would work on multiple levels and say important things about The Condition Human and then actually pull it off in a thorougly entertaining book that showed us just how astonishing good he could be when it all came together.
But if he jumped the proverbial finned carnivore, he came back to jump it in the other direction a few times:
The Gunslinger: (entire series) another one with more buildup than delivery
Different Seasons (four novellas) - 1982 3 out of 4 were quite good
Christine - 1983 good story, needed an editor
Pet Sematary - 1983 shivery good story
Skeleton Crew (a collection of stories) - 1985 several very good ones, some forgetabbles
It - 1986 the epitome of long promising buildup that fell flat
Misery - 1987 nail-biting stay-up-all-night pageturner
OP says he Jumps the Shark here
The Tommyknockers - 1987 lots of good imagery, somehow fell flat though
Nightmares in the Sky - 1988 ? haven’t read it ?
My Pretty Pony - 1988 forgettable
The Dark Half - 1989 turgid
Dolan’s Cadillac - 1989 entertaining & well written
Four Past Midnight (four novellas) - 1990 Langoliers was quite good
Needful Things - 1991 dull
Dolores Claiborne - 1992 not as good as the movie; needed an editor BADLY
Gerald’s Game - 1993 King in self-absorbed obsession-mode.
Nightmares and Dreamscapes (collection of stories) - 1993 several good shorts
Insomnia - 1994 yawn
Rose Madder - 1995 had promise, good enough for a reread, wandered off at end thoughh
The Green Mile (a six-part Serial Thriller) - 1996 ? didn’t read ?
Desperation - 1996 godawful unreadable mess
The Regulators (as Richard Bachman) - 1996 and this version wasn’t better
Bag of Bones - 1998 entertaining and even shivery
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 1999 well-written page-turner
Hearts in Atlantis - 1999 another turgid one withotu focus
For me, Stephen King jumped the shark with IT. That was when he began writing in quantity rather than quality. There were indications that all was not well in THE STAND, but I made the mistake of giving him the benefit of the doubt. But I must admit that I enjoyed THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON, the only one of his more recent books that I even opened or owned. (And his movies we all disappointing, except for THE SHINING.)
I think it depends on what order you read his books. After about 4 or 5, you suddenly realize that it’s all sorta the same. Books like IT jump their own shark about halfway through. The Stand too.
The OP thought King jumped in 1987. Would this have anything to do with it …
“In 1989, King signed a deal with Viking that netted him $35 million for four books, a new record. As generous as that deal was, King announced his decision to leave Viking (his publisher of eighteen years) in 1997, in order to establish a new relationship with a house willing to pay a $17 million asking price for his latest novel, Bag of Bones. He soon struck a deal with Simon & Schuster in which he would receive an $8 million advance for the 1,000-page tome, in addition to a 50% share of the profits earned from its sale, and from the sale of two upcoming works, a short-story collection and a nonfiction book about writing”
I think you will find every multiple-published author jumps the shark now and then, but I wouldn’t call it a career killer. Many of them manage to redeem themselves.
Now, I liked Gerald’s Game, Dolores Clairborne and Insomnia , but I didn’t much care for The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Every author will turn out a book that someone considers a clunker now and then. For me, it was Shelters of Stone by Jean Auel. I finished the book and thought, “I waited 12 years for that?”
King is still a popular writer. I’m going to keep reading his books. Some I will reread, and some I won’t.
The discussion seems to hinge more on the quality of King’s plots than the quality of his prose, which is fine- I realize there aren’t many people picking up a Stephen King novel for rich lyricism or evocative wordplay. But in ruminating over the point at which his work seems to take a notable dip, one thing that plays a big part, at least for me, is the general sloppiness and flat-out cheesiness that’s crept into his prose over the years. Go to any descriptive passge in Salem’s Lot, The Shining, or The Dead Zone and compare it with a similar passage from, say, The Regulators, or any story from Nightmares and Dreamscapes. His tone today, more than not, is that of a bloated rock star, happily confident in our love of him and overly relaxed in crafting sequences with care or restraint. Lazy and corny pop-culture metaphors fly at our faces like phony snakes from practical-joke jars. Internal monologues betray an author having way too much fun listening to himself riff, while spending way too little time cutting away the gristle.
This devolution certainly didn’t occurr between one novel and the next. (And from what I understand, there are recent exceptions, like Bag of Bones, which I’ve yet to read.) But despite his self-deprecating claims in Danse Macabre of always having been a “hambuger and fries” author, his early novels were marked by much graceful, and yes, even lyrical writing. For me, this has been the saddest thing to watch degenerate, not whether Desperation was as sound an idea for a novel as Carrie. It was easily as sound an idea. But the writer who wrote Carrie cared a lot more for his craft.
I don’t think King ever jumped the shark. Like someone else said, he plays hopscotch all over the shark. Don’t forget that everyone has their own opinion about various books - different books connect with different people. I think that it is impressive that King’s work can vary so much that one person hates book A and loves book B and another person loves book A and loves book B. It shows he is really reaching a widely varying audience.
To show how differently some people feel about the books, here are my personal ratings of each book on a 1-10 scale. (only included the full size novels that I have read)
Carrie - 7
’Salem’s Lot - 9
The Shining - 10
The Stand - 8
The Long Walk (as Richard Bachman) - 9
The Dead Zone - 8
Firestarter - 5
Cujo - 9 (I don’t know why people don’t like this one - it had me freaked)
The Running Man (as Richard Bachman) - 3
The Gunslinger: DT1 - 6
Christine - 3
Pet Sematary - 7
The Talisman (with Peter Straub) - 7
It - 9 (I agree the ending wasn’t satisfying, but I don’t think a satisfying ending was possible compared to the incredible build-up of all the characters’ backstories and experience - THAT was the part of the book that sticks with me)
The Drawing of the Three: DT2 - 9
Misery - 8
The Tommyknockers - 1 (agree this was horrible)
The Dark Half - 8 (Another one where I don’t understand the general disdain - I loved it!)
Needful Things - 7 (Enjoyed this one too - very intricate and well-thought out plot)
The Wastelands: DT3 - 9
Dolores Claiborne - 9
Gerald’s Game - 3
Insomnia - 6 (this one was way too long, but I still enjoyed it)
Rose Madder - 2 (only slightly better than Tommyknockers)
The Green Mile - 9
Desperation - 4 (had some good parts, general plot was poor)
The Regulators - 2 (awful and incomprehensible)
Wizard and Glass: DT4 - 9 (my favorite of the Dark Tower series)
Bag of Bones - 5 (long and slow, but a decent story)
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 7
Hearts in Atlantis - 8
From a Buick 8 - 6 (I kept waiting for something to happen - I didn’t buy the ending)
Wolves of the Calla - 4 (Women throwing metal disks at robotic wolves? Please. Riza my ass.)
So you see, we’re all different. Let everyone enjoy what they enjoy. King is still a good author - his work is just more varied nowadays, and each work does not appeal to everyone.
It’s interesting to see how opinions differ; for me the heading-up-the-ramp moment was the Tommyknockers;it wasn’t THAT bad, bad he had done better.
The absolute jump-the-shark moment for me was Needful Things. Good heavens, talk about much ado about nothing! Then it seemed he was done for good with Dolores Claiborne, Gerald’s Game andRose Madder all coming soon after.
He regained some credibility with the Green Mile Series and it’s been hit or miss since then. Some things, like the Dark Tower series(which I admit I hated at first, but now believe may be the best thing he ever wrote) show signs of his slowly fading brilliance; others, like Dreamcatcher(to date the ONLY Stephen King book i have no interest in finishing) are just so godawful that you think"Man, I hope for his sake he saved his money, because he’s through".
As always, YMMV
I dunno. I have only liked a very few of his works. Those that I liked, I liked a lot, but I found so many of them difficult to read. I hated Cujo. I really enjoyed Firestarter and Thinner. He has never been one of the greats as far as I’m concerned.
I agree with the OP as far as “shark jumping territory”, I think Misery was the last one of his books that kept me up all night, you know, can’t stop until you finish it!
I guess the thing that keeps you coming back is that all the books after that , every once and a while showed a little of that old magic. It kept you coming back for more, of the old magic that is.
Even the Gunslinger series, which I think started out very strong, has become, in my opinion all drawn out, almost diluted in a sense. Maybe it because I was always expecting the concentrated form, that I grew to love.
I agree that maybe he taking a hit from changing themes some, but you know, maybe he is just running out of ideas, he has been writing quite a while.
I don’t know, I think King’s good habits and bad habits are about the same as ever.
Good:
he’s damn good at telling any story. Somebody said once that Stephen King’s laundry list would be a bestseller. Even stories with a weak plot are usually very engaging to read (IMHO).
he uses prose that is clear and undecorated, and yet can be (as said above) lyrical.
when there’s no supernatural element, we usually get something with a lot of humanity (think of the stories in Different Seasons, Misery, etc.)
Bad:
his stories can be so long that they run out of gas. As a result, I enjoyed reading most of his books, but I often don’t remember how they ended.
gratuitous use of supernatural elements. I think King doesn’t consider enough why he’s including magic in his books. On a bad day, King might have written a version of Misery where Annie Wilkes turns into a dripping, winged succubus at the end of the book. And (IMHO) The Stand would have been better if RF’s magical powers were subtle like Ma Abbie’s. I hate the way The Stand ends.
tired references to pop culture, and tired King verbal cliches. A sense of shark jumpery might be heightened because over-used phrases like “If you’re man enough…” become more and more noticeable. Inevitable for a prolific author, but King certainly is man enough to do better.
To see if his good and bad habits are evenly distributed over time, I’m borrowing a list of books from another poster (dil, I think) including only the ones I’ve read.
Carrie - engaging, necessary use of supernatural, but very much a “first novel.”
’Salem’s Lot - I don’t remember much about how this ended, so I suspect it ran out of gas. But I did enjoy reading it.
The Shining - Perfect. All the good, none of the bad.
The Stand - It’s a page turner, but this truly does run out of gas. Much gratuitous magic.
The Long Walk (as Richard Bachman) - Also perfect. A sad, sad story.
Firestarter - Another one that I don’t remember well, so probably has a weak ending. But supernatural powers are used well, and a very poignant story.
Cujo - Another lazy, pointless book. I only remember the ending because it was tragic.
The Running Man (as Richard Bachman) - Come to think of it, all of Bachman’s books (that I’ve read) are really sad and quite well told, and get the job done without using the supernatural at all.
The Gunslinger: DT1 - 6 - I liked this when I was a teenager. The re-edited version is probably better, although the confrontation with Walter is something that only a teenager could love. Still is very effective in establishing a compellingly surreal world.
Christine - There’s nothing good about this novel, except its readability. YMMV.
Pet Sematary - Ditto. There seems to be a class of books that includes Christine, Cujo, Needful Things… and this one.
The Talisman (with Peter Straub) - Again I don’t remember how it ended, but IIRC it was mediocre and full of meaningless supernatural pyrotechnics. Compelling alternate reality, though.
It - I just re-read that, because I was interested to see if this novel, told from both a kid’s and adult’s perspective, reads differently now that I’m an “adult.” It does. The novel manages to be tedious, and the end doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. What is the point of the revelation that Pennywise is from Outer Space? Introducing one of the Guardians of the Beam is reasonable here, but hardly brilliant.
The Drawing of the Three: Just okay. Discovered here that King doesn’t write well about combat.
Misery - Another perfection.
The Tommyknockers - Uh. No.
The Dark Half - Just bad. As usual, a page turner, but a recognizably bad one.
Needful Things - It’s a shame that King had to fall on the supernatural crutch to end this. It could potentially have been quite good.
The Wastelands: This is the weakest of the DT series (which I incidentally love). This is another relatively uncommon book where King manages to be tedious. The description of the Rose is beautiful, and would have been better still if the lot weren’t described as being full of ghosts. But I have a big issue with the end. Tic-Toc Man’s disposal was pretty lame. And the last chapter crossed the fine line between a nod to another author (Tolkien) and stealing.
Dolores Claiborne - Another terrific book.
Wizard and Glass: DT4 - I believe this may be Stephen King’s first love story. Roland’s childhood is beautifully realized. Supernatural elements and violence have a perfect fit in the novel.
Bag of Bones - Another in the “Christine” series.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - I thought it was okay.
Wolves of the Calla - Well written, and the chemistry between Roland and all of the other characters is very well portrayed. But there’s a tendency for the writing to go flat every time somebody visits New York.