Thoughts on Stephen King?

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I like the part in Needful Things where that lady goes to the old decrepit farm house Cujo took place at and digs up a coffee can behind the barn that has pictures of some lady fucking a dog inside of it.
 
CowPox said:
I like the part in Needful Things where that lady goes to the old decrepit farm house Cujo took place at and digs up a coffee can behind the barn that has pictures of some lady fucking a dog inside of it.
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It's actually Ace Merrill that goes to the farmhouse and digs up the coffee can. And I don't think it's specifically the house Cujo took place at, but Ace's uncles house or shed or something, where he supposedly hid a map to a hidden buried treasure (but it's actually photos of women fucking dogs because the store proprietor in Needful Things is Satan and gives you shit and hypnotizes you into thinking it's gold until you do the horrible deeds he asks you to).
 
VargReallyDidNothingWrong said:
It's actually Ace Merrill that goes to the farmhouse and digs up the coffee can. And I don't think it's specifically the house Cujo took place at, but Ace's uncles house or shed or something, where he supposedly hid a map to a hidden buried treasure (but it's actually photos of women fucking dogs because the store proprietor in Needful Things is Satan and gives you shit and hypnotizes you into thinking it's gold until you do the horrible deeds he asks you to).
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J thought she walked through the barn and thinks she hears the ghost of Cujo?
 
VargReallyDidNothingWrong said:
It's actually Ace Merrill that goes to the farmhouse and digs up the coffee can. And I don't think it's specifically the house Cujo took place at, but Ace's uncles house or shed or something, where he supposedly hid a map to a hidden buried treasure (but it's actually photos of women fucking dogs because the store proprietor in Needful Things is Satan and gives you shit and hypnotizes you into thinking it's gold until you do the horrible deeds he asks you to).
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I read that book when I was 14 and do not remember that part.
 
Billy Bob Dick said:
Stephen King is a fun read if you want light entertainment. My biggest beef with him as a writer is how he's constantly chucking contemporary references to TV shows and films into his stories. It's a solid ploy for drawing the reader into the moment and making the horror feel more "real," but it's also a cheap editorial tactic that heavily detracts from the potential longevity of any of his work, because in 100 years nobody is going to remember "Friends" or Ted Koppel or whoever the hell else King references in order to be as ephemeral as possible.

I suppose you could just remove all those references in future editions, but would the stories still hold up as well?
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I felt that in Roadwork he kept throwing so many 70s references around that it boomeranged back to feeling put on.
 
Finished Salem's Lot. Probably my favorite of King's books. Still, I would delete both Ben Mears and Sisan Norton--the two most insufferable and idiotic characters.
IMHO, I think the high school teacher and Mark Petrie should've been the protagonists. I kept throwing up a mental wall just to power through all the Ben Mears and Susan Norton horseshit. I actually laughed when Susan was finally staked because I knew I wouldn't be reading any more about her.

The other characters I really enjoyed and cared about were Jimmy Cody and Father Callahan.
I think Father Callahan really got the shit end of the stick. He's one of the best characters King's written. Why?

1. Callahan is FLAWED, but not a bad person. He's very complex and he has a drinking problem.
2. He has wavering faith, but he DID try to help Mark, Jimmy, and Ben.
3. He did not deserve the fate Barlow bestowed on him.

All that made me want to read more about Father Callahan, but sadly, we only read about 2 or more pages after he leaves the Lot for good.
Isn't Callahan in one of the Dark Tower books? Which one, so I can keep an eye out at the thrift stores.
 
The endings suck, and the concepts are boring and not scary.

Way too much psychological horror, and overexplained monsters, and too much of the supernatural tries to be moral like it is a children's cartoon. There's not a lot of mystery, overly creative monsters, or stuff happening with the reader being left to fill in the blanks.
 
Constellationzero said:
Finished Salem's Lot. Probably my favorite of King's books. Still, I would delete both Ben Mears and Sisan Norton--the two most insufferable and idiotic characters.
IMHO, I think the high school teacher and Mark Petrie should've been the protagonists. I kept throwing up a mental wall just to power through all the Ben Mears and Susan Norton horseshit. I actually laughed when Susan was finally staked because I knew I wouldn't be reading any more about her.

The other characters I really enjoyed and cared about were Jimmy Cody and Father Callahan.
I think Father Callahan really got the shit end of the stick. He's one of the best characters King's written. Why?

1. Callahan is FLAWED, but not a bad person. He's very complex and he has a drinking problem.
2. He has wavering faith, but he DID try to help Mark, Jimmy, and Ben.
3. He did not deserve the fate Barlow bestowed on him.

All that made me want to read more about Father Callahan, but sadly, we only read about 2 or more pages after he leaves the Lot for good.
Isn't Callahan in one of the Dark Tower books? Which one, so I can keep an eye out at the thrift stores.
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Callahan shows up in book 5 of the Dark Tower series, Wolves of the Calla.
 
PaleTay said:
The endings suck, and the concepts are boring and not scary.

Way too much psychological horror, and overexplained monsters, and too much of the supernatural tries to be moral like it is a children's cartoon. There's not a lot of mystery, overly creative monsters, or stuff happening with the reader being left to fill in the blanks.
Click to expand...
I think King, or at least his best works, are actually better than he is commonly given credit for. Especially early things like The Shining, Christine, and Carrie were well-plotted, presented actual stories and (unlike a lot of his later work) actually had endings. These were actual novels, with themes, characters, and events leading to a conclusion.

When King went off the rails was when he became so big he basically got final cut over his own books, and couldn't be edited. This is when you have absurdly long novels like It and The Stand where they'd be vastly improved by removing a third to a half of the actual text and, you know, putting an ending in. And maybe telling him, "dude, I know you were on a huge coke bender but couldn't we just cut that underage sewer orgy? I mean, like really dude."

And the final stage of him sucking was seriously when he quit boozing and doing drugs. I hate to say it but there are writers who are just better when they're wrecking their own shit with substances and King was one of them.

I do think he is (or at least was) a skilled writer and some of his books are in fact really good.
 
My grandmother was a massive King fan, so I have almost all of his books until about 2000ish. I read almost all of them in Middle and High School and thought he was fantastic. Even things like Christine while not scary, were fun reads. It scared me so bad in 6th grade I had to stop reading it for a bit, the only time that’s ever happened.
I also read a lot of Dean Koontz as my grandmother thought that was a penname for King. Truthfully, I think he’s a better author. Maybe not as strong of a wordsmith, but his concepts and characters are more fun. I highly recommend him if ya like King: Phantoms is a great place to start.
 
Constellationzero said:
I think Father Callahan really got the shit end of the stick. He's one of the best characters King's written. Why?

1. Callahan is FLAWED, but not a bad person. He's very complex and he has a drinking problem.
2. He has wavering faith, but he DID try to help Mark, Jimmy, and Ben.
3. He did not deserve the fate Barlow bestowed on him.
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This needs some context. When Salem's Lot was published, the Vatican II conference was only seven years old. So there was that friction between religious priests and social justice priests. Callahan is a priest that is still steeped in the older rituals and beliefs of a pre-Vatican II Catholicism, but he's still a product of his time. He thinks and believes he wants to confront evil in all its facets but is unable to rise to the occasion for many reasons. He has no support network, he's an alcoholic, and he's intellectualized his own struggles.

It doesn't matter that he's, overall, a good person. A good person encumbered by sin is one thing; the living representative of Jesus Christ letting himself be dragged down by his own vanity is another. He had the power of God in his hands and felt it, physically and spiritually, but he talked himself into the modern faith instead of staying true to the old rugged cross. Deserve has nothing to do with it; he had an opportunity to walk in the steps of Jesus and faltered.
 
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