Thoughts on Stephen King?

[Someone in a Tree]

The dude is lost in his own head half the time and the other half of the time he expects you to understand his story based on the meta reality all his stories inhabit.

There is a reason the man views the Dark Tower as his magnum opus. It's his effort to try and explain the meta reality that all his stories live in. It fails incidentally. The only man who can understand Stephen King is Stephen King, but you can get why he can never stick the landing by reading dark tower. When Roland finally reaches the end the hands of fate grab him and drag him back to the beginning.

Why dont Kings novels end well? Because they cant. The hero's of the story are still trapped in the time loop and the demons are still loose in the world and the lines of creation unravel. he even alludes to this at the end, urging you to stop reading and think up your own happy ending for roland after he enters the tower. Everyone keeps reading though and are there when the first paragraph of the first book is repeated

Only with a subtle difference.

I think I’m one of the three people that actually thought the ending to The Dark Tower was appropriate, but I found the attempt to turn the entire narrative into a connected King-a-verse to be really tiresome and cringe inducing. A friend of mine rightfully asked why is M. Night Shyamalan so often called out for this when it’s just as bad with King here, but with not nearly as much criticism? I know a lot of DT readers wondered if King would ever finish the books after his car accident, but I imagine very few would have guessed that he would use it as a pivotal plot point in the final book.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The dude is lost in his own head half the time and the other half of the time he expects you to understand his story based on the meta reality all his stories inhabit.

There is a reason the man views the Dark Tower as his magnum opus. It's his effort to try and explain the meta reality that all his stories live in. It fails incidentally. The only man who can understand Stephen King is Stephen King, but you can get why he can never stick the landing by reading dark tower. When Roland finally reaches the end the hands of fate grab him and drag him back to the beginning.

Why dont Kings novels end well? Because they cant. The hero's of the story are still trapped in the time loop and the demons are still loose in the world and the lines of creation unravel. he even alludes to this at the end, urging you to stop reading and think up your own happy ending for roland after he enters the tower. Everyone keeps reading though and are there when the first paragraph of the first book is repeated

Only with a subtle difference.

The meta element of his fiction is one of the fascinating things about his work, King is essentially writing about a universe that is literally a fictional universe written by Stephen King.

Stephen King books are like comfort food to me. My mom is a huge fan and she got me into them when I was pretty young. I even enjoy some of the weaker books to a certain extent just because the voice is very familiar to me and there are usually atleast a couple of interesting ideas and scares in there.

That's what it comes down to for me as well, it's comfort food, even when a novel of his isn't great they're never a chore to read and they almost always have their moments, King's writing is just so smooth and inherently readable, I've never read an author that is so easier to.... read than him.

Most recently "Batman and Robin Have An Altercation" from The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is a great example of how good his writing is, you really feel like you're there with that guy and his senile father in that Applebees.

King is an incredible story teller and a mediocre writer. I adore his work and will likely go into old timey mourning when he dies. I have none of the shame I should feel about that.

Yeah, it's going to be an extremely sad day when he passes away, he is definitely an icon of modern American culture.

I think I’m one of the three people that actually thought the ending to The Dark Tower was appropriate, but I found the attempt to turn the entire narrative into a connected King-a-verse to be really tiresome and cringe inducing. A friend of mine rightfully asked why is M. Night Shyamalan so often called out for this when it’s just as bad with King here, but with not nearly as much criticism? I know a lot of DT readers wondered if King would ever finish the books after his car accident, but I imagine very few would have guessed that he would use it as a pivotal plot point in the final book.

The Dark Tower series gets really inconsistent starting with the 5th book, but I was fine with the actual ending, so much so that I wonder if King had actually come up with it years prior to actually writing the final 3 books.

 

[CivilianOfTheFandomWars]

I like his horror invoking people and the evil they are capable of a lot more than his monsters and supernatural stuff. Take IT.
Pennywise is a neat monster, but the most memorable parts of the book are about Henry Bowers and Patrick Hocksetter. They come off as more real than Pennywise, because what they do is much more plausible than a Lovecraftian clown-spider.

 

[Dom Cruise]

I like his horror invoking people and the evil they are capable of a lot more than his monsters and supernatural stuff. Take IT.
Pennywise is a neat monster, but the most memorable parts of the book are about Henry Bowers and Patrick Hocksetter. They come off as more real than Pennywise, because what they do is much more plausible than a Lovecraftian clown-spider.

Stephen King has always understood that supernatural monsters are just metaphors for the monsters lurking within the hearts of men.

In The Shining for example yeah the hotel is haunted and that's real spooky, but the true terror lies in the idea of your flesh and blood father losing his mind and trying to kill you and your mother.

And the scariest part in IT for me was when Pennywise takes the form of Beverly's dead father and says something like "I only beat you because I wanted to FUCK YOU! I wanted to put your clit in my mouth and eat it up, nom nom nom!", that part scared me so bad I was shaking, because that's an all too real horror, sexual abuse.

It's precisely because the horror works on a deeper psychological level like that that makes it so effectively scary.

 

[CivilianOfTheFandomWars]

Stephen King has always understood that supernatural monsters are just metaphors for the monsters lurking within the hearts of men.

In The Shining for example yeah the hotel is haunted and that's real spooky, but the true terror lies in the idea of your flesh and blood father losing his mind and trying to kill you and your mother.

And the scariest part in IT for me was when Pennywise takes the form of Beverly's dead father and says something like "I only beat you because I wanted to FUCK YOU! I wanted to put your clit in my mouth and eat it up, nom nom nom!", that part scared me so bad I was shaking, because that's an all too real horror, sexual abuse.

It's precisely because the horror works on a deeper psychological level like that that makes it so effectively scary.

Yeah, defiantly. That’s why I liked how Pennywise seemed to work. He didn’t straight up mind control people, he just encouraged them to do evil things. As far as I remember, anyways.
The creepiest part for me was either when Henry poisoned the dog and his father was proud of him for it or when Patrick’s father realized he killed his brother. The scene about Beverly’s father you mentioned was pretty messed up, but I found the actual father’s actions to be more creepy because it was more subdued and let your imagination take over.
But, that’s just how I like my horror, and I’m not discounting your tastes at all. I like when things are less running and screaming and more slow and quiet.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Honestly as a child I grew up reading his books. My first stephen king book and my most favorite was IT. Truth be told his stories are actually really good but most of his movies are not. Most of king's movies are awful except for the mini series IT, the mist and the shining.

The shinning was one of the most famous and best movies of all time but king had a fit and hated the movie because the movie was not of his image in the book with the same name. This is the same man who made a seen with underage kids having a fucking orgy to defeat a giant carnivorous lightbulb in the form of a clown. What I think of king is this, King is an excellent writer but there some problems king need to adress within most his stories. Especially the child orgy scene. God that fucked me up.

That's it.

To an extent I can understand why he dislikes Kubrick's Shining. He wrote it during his alcoholism period, and has admitted during that period he would feel intense dislike, even fleeting hatred at his family. Those thoughts horrified him when he was sober. Jack is pretty much King's author avatar. It's easy to see why that book in particular would mean a lot to him.

That said, it's basic knowledge that when filming an adaptation, things are going to get changed. Especially with a director like Kubrick who gave no fucks and did his own thing. King was still relatively unknown when The Shining was filmed. People didn't know about his personal life. I'd honestly be honored to have one of the greats like Kubrick direct something based on my work. Staying 100% faithful to an adaptation doesn't always mean it will be good. The Shining miniseries from the 90s proved that...and even then with as much bitching King did about Kubrick's movie, he still changed the ending to that diabetes inducing cringefest.

 

[Recoil]

There's a part of Lissey's Story where the protagonist - outta nowhere - talks about getting her ass eaten by her husband until she 'goes insane', it's such a fucking tonal shift and it's obvious that it's just inelegantly jammed in there to make it all seem more human and flawed.... But fuck that, it's like the guy writes from a flowchart sometimes. He uses shock to soften you up for cheap sentimentality.

Which is not to say I haven't been brought a lot of happiness by his work.

 

[Marco Fucko]

King has produced some legitimately great work but I feel like he's the type of guy who needs a tard wrangler. Also writing a sequel to The Shining featuring psychic/mystic hunters or whatever is fucking stupid, I noted this before with him making Pennywise a fucking space spider: stop going the extra mile, it deadens the immersion.

 

[GrandmotherDeathsed]

To an extent I can understand why he dislikes Kubrick's Shining. He wrote it during his alcoholism period, and has admitted during that period he would feel intense dislike, even fleeting hatred at his family. Those thoughts horrified him when he was sober. Jack is pretty much King's author avatar. It's easy to see why that book in particular would mean a lot to him.

That said, it's basic knowledge that when filming an adaptation, things are going to get changed. Especially with a director like Kubrick who gave no fucks and did his own thing. King was still relatively unknown when The Shining was filmed. People didn't know about his personal life. I'd honestly be honored to have one of the greats like Kubrick direct something based on my work. Staying 100% faithful to an adaptation doesn't always mean it will be good. The Shining miniseries from the 90s proved that...and even then with as much bitching King did about Kubrick's movie, he still changed the ending to that diabetes inducing cringefest.

That ending is a lot more of a colossal turd than the cheesy spider ending from the IT minie series. In fact the shinning mini series was fucking garbage anyways.

 

[afternoon_tea]

Most recently "Batman and Robin Have An Altercation" from The Bazaar of Bad Dreams is a great example of how good his writing is, you really feel like you'r
The Dark Tower series gets really inconsistent starting with the 5th book, but I was fine with the actual ending, so much so that I wonder if King had actually come up with it years prior to actually writing the final 3 books.

I liked the actual ending of the Dark Tower too and I can't imagine any other ending. I had some nitpicks about the last few books (I thought the "sneetches" in Wolves of the Calla was so corny) but overall I really liked them and I was prepared for the possibility of being let down after waiting for so long.

I don't mind that so much of that universe is seeded in the other books, but there were times when it felt a little forced, like tying The Talisman in with Black House. I actually really liked Black House but I still find it hard to buy that the Talisman was ever supposed to be part of that world.

Some of the ways things were tied together were great and had an organic feel, but other times I felt like "Man, did you just reread all your books and think 'hey, I'm going to make that a Dark Tower thing too'?"

 

[GrandmotherDeathsed]

I liked the actual ending of the Dark Tower too and I can't imagine any other ending. I had some nitpicks about the last few books (I thought the "sneetches" in Wolves of the Calla was so corny) but overall I really liked them and I was prepared for the possibility of being let down after waiting for so long.

I don't mind that so much of that universe is seeded in the other books, but there were times when it felt a little forced, like tying The Talisman in with Black House. I actually really liked Black House but I still find it hard to buy that the Talisman was ever supposed to be part of that world.

Some of the ways things were tied together were great and had an organic feel, but other times I felt like "Man, did you just reread all your books and think 'hey, I'm going to make that a Dark Tower thing too'?"

The dark towers was the best amongst king's work. I'm in the same boat as you when I reread these books. They were a big part of my childhood.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

There are so much boring & unecessary ramblings in tons of his books. It just goes on & on and leads to nowhere. This shit should have been edited out. It's really annoying & reading it is a chore.

 

[Pomniman]

I got into reading with his books because they're easy to read and tend to be readily available in every library I've ever been to, so I shouldn't rag on him too much, but he can definitely be called a cheap schlockmonger. Also he's usually a lot better with short stories than novels because having less time to tell a story does a lot to keep his worst habits in check.

 

[Liquid Kent]

Spoiler: Sentimental Autism

I got to know Stephen King as a latchkey kid watching reruns of movies like IT, The Shining, Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption and seeing this intersting-looking series of books they were pushing at the local bookstore. (Dark Tower anthology set, at the time the latest book was Wizard and Glass) so you could say I was one of those peon plebs, but I -was- 9.

It was only in my first job at a comic book store in my teens that they had the ongoings and eventual hardcovers of the Dark Tower prequels by Peter David and Jae Lee. They were always more expensive than the usual collected editions but there was something that made me interested in this high-falutin'-fantasy Western it seemed to be.

My first relationship was over as I went into the military but my Dad got me the first edition of Vol. 1: The Gunslinger and I was hungry for more. I bought the full 7 book saga but reached only the beginning of Book 4, because I felt that somewhere around the second book, Drawing of the Three, it was... Weird. Not Grant Morrison-surreal-longform-weird, but this was a stream-of-consciousness-no-plan-whatsoever-weird. I had to rationalize that it was King's version of writing a Fallout scenario.

I don't know the circumstances but I was spoiled the ending of the Dark Tower and felt really cheated, especially finding out that these books were basically unplanned with no definitive ending in mind when he began. I felt Stephen King is a lot like George Lucas and Hideo Kojima - he needs a check in place to bounce ideas off of, an Editor to tell him "no, you're crazy".

It's why when the Dark Tower movie came out, I was among the minority of liking the movie because it wasn't chock-full of 1001 ideas he wrote about, rather just stripping it down without the weird focus on sex, questionable characters like Loretta Dean (I think that was her name) and the subplot with the serial killer who made her a Schizo and killed Jake.

TLDR - Stephen King is flawed but he's solid as they come. Thanks to a writer such as he who's been there every step of my life giving me great unforgettable experiences, both good and bad.

 

[オウム 2]

He's got a weird upper lip, like he has FAS or something. Very simian. His books are okay.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Spoiler: Sentimental Autism

I got to know Stephen King as a latchkey kid watching reruns of movies like IT, The Shining, Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption and seeing this intersting-looking series of books they were pushing at the local bookstore. (Dark Tower anthology set, at the time the latest book was Wizard and Glass) so you could say I was one of those peon plebs, but I -was- 9.

It was only in my first job at a comic book store in my teens that they had the ongoings and eventual hardcovers of the Dark Tower prequels by Peter David and Jae Lee. They were always more expensive than the usual collected editions but there was something that made me interested in this high-falutin'-fantasy Western it seemed to be.

My first relationship was over as I went into the military but my Dad got me the first edition of Vol. 1: The Gunslinger and I was hungry for more. I bought the full 7 book saga but reached only the beginning of Book 4, because I felt that somewhere around the second book, Drawing of the Three, it was... Weird. Not Grant Morrison-surreal-longform-weird, but this was a stream-of-consciousness-no-plan-whatsoever-weird. I had to rationalize that it was King's version of writing a Fallout scenario.

I don't know the circumstances but I was spoiled the ending of the Dark Tower and felt really cheated, especially finding out that these books were basically unplanned with no definitive ending in mind when he began. I felt Stephen King is a lot like George Lucas and Hideo Kojima - he needs a check in place to bounce ideas off of, an Editor to tell him "no, you're crazy".

It's why when the Dark Tower movie came out, I was among the minority of liking the movie because it wasn't chock-full of 1001 ideas he wrote about, rather just stripping it down without the weird focus on sex, questionable characters like Loretta Dean (I think that was her name) and the subplot with the serial killer who made her a Schizo and killed Jake.

TLDR - Stephen King is flawed but he's solid as they come. Thanks to a writer such as he who's been there every step of my life giving me great unforgettable experiences, both good and bad.

Oh wow, I completely forgot about the Dark Tower prequel comics, a decade on from reading the novels and I never read those, thanks for the reminder.

 

[Tootsie Bear]

I got into reading with his books because they're easy to read and tend to be readily available in every library I've ever been to, so I shouldn't rag on him too much, but he can definitely be called a cheap schlockmonger. Also he's usually a lot better with short stories than novels because having less time to tell a story does a lot to keep his worst habits in check.

King's short stories are a fun walk through the park. Sure there are some stinkers! However, if you browse through his short story collections you're sure to find a good one that's straight forward and more scary read to his novels.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

I'm not sure I an add much that hasn't already been said, but King is very good at making his books engaging page turners. He always has an interesting set up and/or enough mystery to keep you reading up until the end.

The problem though is that more often than not, once you're done reading, there is a big chance you'll be scratching your head, thinking that it ultimately didn't make much sense or the ending was lame.

But like I said, he knows how to keep the readers engaged for most of it.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I think he's a better filmmaker than writer.

 

[Caesare]

There are so much boring & unecessary ramblings in tons of his books. It just goes on & on and leads to nowhere. This shit should have been edited out. It's really annoying & reading it is a chore.

Seriously! His books could all probably be 100 pages shorter or more and not suffer at all. Some would probably be even more interesting if they were trimmed back a bit.

I like King's books a lot but I think Dean Koontz is the superior author because he knows how to get the job done without dragging down the narrative with pages and pages of nonsense.

I also like how Koontz writes his villians as completely hatable scumbags. It makes it all the more rewarding when they get their comeuppance from the protagonist.