Thoughts on Stephen King?

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I've read a ton of King's books over the years, and while I do still consider myself a fan, even I'll admit he's got some serious pacing problems, which became especially evident when his editors stopped giving a shit. Pet Sematary for example is an amazing book, but it also needs some trimming because some scenes just feel pointless.

When King gets it right, he can hit it right out of the park. I adored Misery because the whole situation is frightening and King is able to squeeze so much terror out of being stuck in a tiny room in a crazy person's house. Carrie is a ticking time bomb. I mentioned Pet Sematary because it's one of King's more morbid stories, with its constant discussions about death and having a baby splattered by a semi-truck.

That being said, I think the most frustrating thing about King is how he's basically the only horror writer anyone talks about. Off the top of my head, the only other notable horror writers I can think of are Clive Barker and Dean Koontz. It's annoying because I've tried to hunt down horror novels by other writers, but King's stuff makes up like 95% of any best horror novel list.
 
I'm in the minority here because I actually really like Cujo. It was absolutely heart breaking, even if I think that most of the stuff with the husband's advertising job could be cut. RIP Cujo, the best boy.
 
I liked Cujo until the teacher in our mandatory reading period class we had in the 9th grade had removed all Stephan King books because she found out the husband character jacked off to a fantasy or something in it. So much for broadening our minds.

Shining, Misery and The Long Walk are his best and most efficient.

I read through maybe 500 out of 15,000 pages of The Stand but it suddenly became a slog to get through.

Duncan Hills Coffee said:
Dean Koontz
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Phantoms and Whispers are infinitely better than anything King wrote. Too bad the movies suck.
 
I like most of his works, though I think he's better with shorter stories.

Like Sun Dog. I think my favourite bit is where it starts messing with Merrill's mind, but you don't even know it's happened until later on.
 
King is an incredibly talented writer with some very bad writing habits that, I'm sure, his long-time editor overlooks given how rich he is.

King is a master of the short story. (And if you get one of the few shitty ones, it's over fast so don't worry about it.) I've not read as many of his novels, which are hit-or-miss, but he's written some fantastic stuff. (My favorite is The Long Walk.)
 
frozenrunner said:
King is an incredibly talented writer with some very bad writing habits that, I'm sure, his long-time editor overlooks given how rich he is.

King is a master of the short story. (And if you get one of the few shitty ones, it's over fast so don't worry about it.) I've not read as many of his novels, which are hit-or-miss, but he's written some fantastic stuff. (My favorite is The Long Walk.)
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What would you say are some shitty short stories? Because I've read all the collections and while some are better than others, nothing really jumps out to me as "shitty" just "meh" at worst.

The short story collections are my favorites though, I wish he came out with them more often.

The novella collections are great as well, so there's something to be said when he has to be more economical with his storytelling, but on the other hand some of the best novels are The Stand and IT which are over a thousand pages so.... I dunno.
 
frozenrunner said:
King is an incredibly talented writer with some very bad writing habits that, I'm sure, his long-time editor overlooks given how rich he is.

King is a master of the short story. (And if you get one of the few shitty ones, it's over fast so don't worry about it.) I've not read as many of his novels, which are hit-or-miss, but he's written some fantastic stuff. (My favorite is The Long Walk.)
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I'd call it skill rather than talent because everything he does is something he learned by writing for thousands upon thousands of hours. It's impressive in some ways, but anyone could learn to write exactly like him if they made themselves write 1000+ words a day in his style for about 5-10 years. His lack of talent shows through in the weaker aspects of his writing.
 
He has a great imagination; that's what's gotten him as far as he's gone, and he has a good talent for describing sensory perception of things in a vivid and fairly precise manner, which is good for horror (and which Lovecraft, though also possessed of a great imagination, sucked at: "and what I saw was so terrifying beyond the bounds of consciousness that I'm going to give two vague adjectives about it and end the story bye").

There are fish-in-a-barrel things to criticise about his writing, like the way he'll write 200 pages of nothing just because he wanted the book to be longer, but what grates on me about him is his treatment of characters. His characters are either just himself (like Paul Sheldon in Misery) or a "something else" where the character is a woman, a child, or just an unusual adult male, all of which he superficially characterises with a few verbal gimmicks. He can't get in the mind of any character that isn't himself: Fran from The Strand, a major narrator voice, either thinks/speaks simply as a one-dimensional character concept, or as King's mouthpiece at the expense of her (specious) character definition. Very few of his characters have "a life of their own", the way that Thomas Harris' Hannibal does, or even the Harry Potter kids. King can write a compelling narrative, and even a compelling villain (though always third-person and passive in their characterisation) but once you've gotten to know the only interesting protagonist he writes - himself - it can get a bit dull.

His imagery is always has a dark and slightly tenebrous quality, surreal and faintly gothic. Kind of like a spooky Dalí painting. That said, it would only work well for horror; if you've read his "happy ending" kind of fiction you know what I mean. He could not, for example, give an arresting description of a beautiful woman; he tries to do this in some books, and it's only memorable for how jarring it feels. He can't bring out the luminous qualities in a subject, only the shadows. But he does it very well. His imagination and gift for the macabre are what have given him success, and he has profusely evidenced both qualities. He's dismissed by pseuds because of things like pacing, but discounting an entire opus just because it has structural problems is autistic and shows underveloped aesthetic senses. Nobody reads Tolstoy, apparently.
 
So did you know King and JJ Abrahms collaborated on a TV show that's apparently a mix of everything King wrote? Neither did I till YT pushed an ad for Castle Rock on me

m.youtube.com

Castle Rock - Season 2 Trailer (Official) • A Hulu Original

In Season 2, a feud between warring clans comes to a boil when budding psychopath Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan), Stephen King's nurse from hell, gets waylaid i...
m.youtube.com m.youtube.com

So is Annie Wilkes supposed to be the heroine or something?
 
If anyone here hasn't read the 'Hot Zone' by Richard Preston then I'd recommend looking into it. It's not a Steven King work, but the reason I mention it here is because of Steven's feelings about the novel. He said something along the lines of the first chapter of Hot Zone being the most "terrifying thing I've ever read, and then it only gets worse from there."

He's not wrong either. The first chapter is bloody terrifying and the entire book is a great read. It's very loosely based on a true story. I think the author also self narrated an audobook edition as well. They recently made a mini-series but it doesn't do the book any justice.
 
Second Hand Syringe said:
If anyone here hasn't read the 'Hot Zone' by Richard Preston then I'd recommend looking into it. It's not a Steven King work, but the reason I mention it here is because of Steven's feelings about the novel. He said something along the lines of the first chapter of Hot Zone being the most "terrifying thing I've ever read, and then it only gets worse from there."

He's not wrong either. The first chapter is bloody terrifying and the entire book is a great read. It's very loosely based on a true story. I think the author also self narrated an audobook edition as well. They recently made a mini-series but it doesn't do the book any justice.
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I saw part of that mini-series, and it was really good but holy shit is it scary.

Thing is, that book is based on a real event and on a real disease (Ebola), so it's kind of cheating considering that real life can be a hell of a lot scarier than a fictional work a writer can cook up.
 
He writes good books, he just really struggles with endings. The Stand comes to mind. The ending for the dark tower feels like a bit of a cop out too. I haven’t read to much of his newer stuff, it seems like he’s moving away from horror into thrillers, and those tend to not interest me as much.
 
I love The Shining, for me it's a modern classic. But I hated the film, have tried to watch it three times and it just bores me.
Misery was good as was Carrie and the films were good too.
Dreamcatcher just was something else entirely. Sticks with me because it was so out there. I mean all I really need to say when talking about that book is Shit Weasels and people are intrigued. Loathed the film.

And in regards to his short stories, I cannot believe no one has mentioned Nightmares and Dreamscapes, off to see if I can get that on my Kindle now.
 
Alto said:
King's books are a mixed bag.
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Same here. The best books he ever wrote were Carrie and Rage. He really likes to retread similar stories like The Stand, Tommyknockers, Needful Things and Under The Dome characters can be interchangeable with the story of town is scared of {insert danger here}.
 
Shitassdeaddude said:
The Gunslinger was the best Dark Tower book. Fight me.
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Gunslinger is great, but Wastelands is by far my favorite of the series.

Sucks that it was all downhill from there though and it never quite reached those same highs again, I know a lot of people really like Wizard and Glass, but I found that one to be kinda tedious wheel spinning, it's certainly not bad, just didn't quite have the effect on me that it seems to have on most.
 
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