Thoughts on Stephen King?

[Turd Burglar]

I'm a pretty big King fan. I like his older stuff better than his newer stuff. It's hard for me to pick a favorite but I'd say probably IT, Carrie, or Misery.

 

[Pomniman]

I'm reading "On Writing" now after seeing it touted on /lit/ for years, and I have to say it's a total disappointment. I've lost what little respect I had for the man reading this book.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I'm reading "On Writing" now after seeing it touted on /lit/ for years, and I have to say it's a total disappointment. I've lost what little respect I had for the man reading this book.

Why's that? I typically hear people say it's good advice (haven't read it myself).

 

[Pomniman]

Why's that? I typically hear people say it's good advice (haven't read it myself).

I'm sure the advice is fine from a completely utilitarian perspective for the average career-minded writer, but the memoir segments come off like the sort of thing you might read on an especially soy-infused section of reddit. No one ever talks about how much cringe he packed into this book.

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

As a writer myself, I unironically consider the man to be an absolute genius. That is not to say that everything he has ever said or written is good, but more to imply that when it is good, its good because he is incredibly talented at the craft of writing. "On Writing" is essential reading for anyone doing any form of writing, not as a technical manual, but as an unfiltered look behind the curtain of what it is to be a writer. As a matter of fact I would say that no aspiring writer should be without 3 books on their shelves, On Writing by King, The war of art by steven pressfield, and writing the novel by lawrence block, and all for the same reason. They all talk about writing as a craft first. Liberal arts people who view writing as an art first and a craft second hardly ever write anything worth while. Stephenie Meyer views writing soley as an art, and she cant write worth a damn. King, Pressfield, and Block view it as a craft and just know that the art will follow the craft.

The reason I state all of this is to try to better describe King. As an English major who was teaching english and working as a janitor living in a run down trailer park when he published his first novel, he started his career with a firm grasp on the mechanical nature of writing, and then when an artistic idea came to him he sat down and wrote it well. He did not try to embellish the writing, he did not try to use overly flowery language, he just wrote the story. When King writes an analogy, its not some poetic treatment on the futility of man, its plain english words used for the purpose of mechanically describing something. He writes dialogue how people actually talk, with proper cadence, with profanity. An artistic writer would say their character 'cursed under their breath', King writes ""Just my fucking luck." he grumbled at the flat tire staring daggers at it as if that would make it fill back up with air, unseen hole plugged".

As for the fucked up shit in his books, such as the "orgy" in It, I wont defend it to the death, but I will submit to you this alternate perspective of it. When interviewed once, King talked about how the one question he gets often is "Why are you so fucked up? What was your child hood like?", to which he replied that his child hood was fine, no skeletons in the closet or anything. He then expanded on this by saying that he just wrote about what scared him, what made him uncomfortable. And because of that, I have always viewed that scene as something that made him uncomfortable, which is why he wrote it. As a horror writer, it is his job to make his audience uncomfortable, so if he writes about things that scare him or make him uncomfortable, then there is a a good chance it will make the reader experience the same feeling. The genius of this is that he respects his readers intelligence and therefore does not pussy foot around. He understands that anyone who has gotten that far into It has already signed up for the long haul, and as long as It is, its a very long haul with this scene being almost exactly half way through a 1,500+ page behemoth of a novel, and its his duty as a writer to keep them on the edge of their seat and uncomfortable. So yeah it is a very disturbing thing to write, very hard to read, but thats not accidental, its surgical.

As for his trope of always writing about a tortured writer or car accidents, I think that is just something that he can not help. He is constantly going around giving talks to fans and English majors about writing, and getting hammered with the same questions over and over, telling the same storied answers over and over, so the fact that he writes about writers being trapped in their own stories and such is just par for the course. If you nearly got crushed by a van and then constantly had to answer questions about how that affected your life and work over and over again dont you think being submersed in that would make it seep into your writing too? Which speaking of his talks, thats actually my favorite thing about him. He is constantly at some college or another giving talks and writing advice to crowds of people, and he mostly does it for free. 9 times out of 10 he donates his fee's to charities and scholarships for English majors. The man might be a bit pretentious, but he is also humble as well.

TL;DR he is a very talented and complex individual who has many great works, and plenty of abysmal failures and over rated garbage as well, but he is the real deal. I will say this too, he is like a mans man, but a writers writer. His most loyal fans are writers, and thats because he is the penultimate expert on the craft of writing. Also, he is defiantly not good at making movies. I will be the first to piss on his fans parade by saying he is terrible at making movies, and the new adaptation of 'The Outsider' is going to be another absolute failure, but thats a rant for another day.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Finally someone gets it.

People criticize King for interjecting bizarre sex scenes into everything and he's terrible at writing erotica.

That's the fucking point.

Did the child orgy in It make you feel uncomfortable? What about the tower of power? Or the masturbating re.tard? He's fucking brilliant at being a bad writer and creating an unease within the reader that you can't particularly rid yourself of.

 

[Pomniman]

As a writer myself, I unironically consider the man to be an absolute genius. That is not to say that everything he has ever said or written is good, but more to imply that when it is good, its good because he is incredibly talented at the craft of writing. "On Writing" is essential reading for anyone doing any form of writing, not as a technical manual, but as an unfiltered look behind the curtain of what it is to be a writer. As a matter of fact I would say that no aspiring writer should be without 3 books on their shelves, On Writing by King, The war of art by steven pressfield, and writing the novel by lawrence block, and all for the same reason. They all talk about writing as a craft first. Liberal arts people who view writing as an art first and a craft second hardly ever write anything worth while. Stephenie Meyer views writing soley as an art, and she cant write worth a damn. King, Pressfield, and Block view it as a craft and just know that the art will follow the craft.

The reason I state all of this is to try to better describe King. As an English major who was teaching english and working as a janitor living in a run down trailer park when he published his first novel, he started his career with a firm grasp on the mechanical nature of writing, and then when an artistic idea came to him he sat down and wrote it well. He did not try to embellish the writing, he did not try to use overly flowery language, he just wrote the story. When King writes an analogy, its not some poetic treatment on the futility of man, its plain english words used for the purpose of mechanically describing something. He writes dialogue how people actually talk, with proper cadence, with profanity. An artistic writer would say their character 'cursed under their breath', King writes ""Just my fucking luck." he grumbled at the flat tire staring daggers at it as if that would make it fill back up with air, unseen hole plugged".

As for the fucked up shit in his books, such as the "orgy" in It, I wont defend it to the death, but I will submit to you this alternate perspective of it. When interviewed once, King talked about how the one question he gets often is "Why are you so fucked up? What was your child hood like?", to which he replied that his child hood was fine, no skeletons in the closet or anything. He then expanded on this by saying that he just wrote about what scared him, what made him uncomfortable. And because of that, I have always viewed that scene as something that made him uncomfortable, which is why he wrote it. As a horror writer, it is his job to make his audience uncomfortable, so if he writes about things that scare him or make him uncomfortable, then there is a a good chance it will make the reader experience the same feeling. The genius of this is that he respects his readers intelligence and therefore does not pussy foot around. He understands that anyone who has gotten that far into It has already signed up for the long haul, and as long as It is, its a very long haul with this scene being almost exactly half way through a 1,500+ page behemoth of a novel, and its his duty as a writer to keep them on the edge of their seat and uncomfortable. So yeah it is a very disturbing thing to write, very hard to read, but thats not accidental, its surgical.

As for his trope of always writing about a tortured writer or car accidents, I think that is just something that he can not help. He is constantly going around giving talks to fans and English majors about writing, and getting hammered with the same questions over and over, telling the same storied answers over and over, so the fact that he writes about writers being trapped in their own stories and such is just par for the course. If you nearly got crushed by a van and then constantly had to answer questions about how that affected your life and work over and over again dont you think being submersed in that would make it seep into your writing too? Which speaking of his talks, thats actually my favorite thing about him. He is constantly at some college or another giving talks and writing advice to crowds of people, and he mostly does it for free. 9 times out of 10 he donates his fee's to charities and scholarships for English majors. The man might be a bit pretentious, but he is also humble as well.

TL;DR he is a very talented and complex individual who has many great works, and plenty of abysmal failures and over rated garbage as well, but he is the real deal. I will say this too, he is like a mans man, but a writers writer. His most loyal fans are writers, and thats because he is the penultimate expert on the craft of writing. Also, he is defiantly not good at making movies. I will be the first to piss on his fans parade by saying he is terrible at making movies, and the new adaptation of 'The Outsider' is going to be another absolute failure, but thats a rant for another day.

I don't normally get this confrontational, but a writer unironically calling him a genius is just something I can't abide by in good conscience. I know what the consensus in this thread is, and I know exactly how this post will be received, but this must be said in absolutely no uncertain terms. I wrote this out as I was literally walking through a rainstorm but only typed it out and posted it after getting home. I want you to know that I had the chance to play it safe by not posting any of this, but deliberately made the choice not to.

It's one thing to find him competent or praise his technical skill, but calling him a genius is a bridge too far. There's giving a man his due (as if he hasn't already lined his pockets) and then there's unwarranted hero worship. To kneel at the altar of King is to warp one's affection for comfortable mediocrity into awe over an imagined greatness.

The general public's affection for him stems more from how folksy and parochial his overall image and worldview are than from any objective look at his works or life. Stephen King isn't really an author anymore; he's a brand. Over the decades, he's become the stereotypical image most Americans over a certain age see in their mind when they hear the word "author". He comes from a schlubby everyman background and in turn spins his little yarns for the schlubby everyman reader. There's nothing wrong with that, but at the same time it's nothing special either.

Of course, those who primarily consume (not read) mainstream fiction will almost inevitably leap to his defense because they've developed an emotional attachment to the man, or at least to their personal conception of him. That's why it must be repeated every single time it's denied: he's not a genius or even a great author. He's not your granddad, uncle, father, or brother either. He's just a man who occupies a particular niche in pop culture. People love ragging on the pretensions of elitists, but the prevailing tastes of the masses are pretentious in their own grubby, overly-sentimental way.

To unironically worship him if you yourself are a writer is nothing short of a mortal sin. He's banality and cowardice incarnate to the point that I'd say there are millions of writers, even forgotten and unknown ones, who are superior to him in every imaginable way, both as artists and as craftsmen. I would even go as far as calling every writer who praises him as effusively as you do a worthless hack. The very things you praise him for should disgust you because they're endemic to a mentality and culture that rejects the transcendent in favor of the mundane and mediocre. To have lofty ambitions and fail spectacularly in attempting to achieve them is more impressive than to competently write cold slop for the swine to dig their snouts into.

It's nothing person(n)a(e)l (kid), but as a writer, and even more so as a reader, I have nothing but contempt for writers like you, who are the literary equivalent of cancer, who fear to go where no one will follow. I've already read my fill of banal and mediocre airport novels. I'd rather read some obscure decades or centuries out of print book by an author I've never heard of who may or may not suck, than waste any more of my time on anything by Stevie KANG or his acolytes, because that's genuinely more fun to me than jacking off to how much KANG "respects" the intelligence or milquetoast sensibilities of his mongoloid fans. If everyone in the world was as cowardly as KANG, this very site we're on right now wouldn't even exist. Yes, I've never even thought about this before, but I'd even rank Null above Stevie KANG as an unintentional "artist" of sorts.

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

I don't normally get this confrontational, but a writer unironically calling him a genius is just something I can't abide by in good conscience. I know what the consensus in this thread is, and I know exactly how this post will be received, but this must be said in absolutely no uncertain terms. I wrote this out as I was literally walking through a rainstorm but only typed it out and posted it after getting home. I want you to know that I had the chance to play it safe by not posting any of this, but deliberately made the choice not to.

It's one thing to find him competent or praise his technical skill, but calling him a genius is a bridge too far. There's giving a man his due (as if he hasn't already lined his pockets) and then there's unwarranted hero worship. To kneel at the altar of King is to warp one's affection for comfortable mediocrity into awe over an imagined greatness.

The general public's affection for him stems more from how folksy and parochial his overall image and worldview are than from any objective look at his works or life. Stephen King isn't really an author anymore; he's a brand. Over the decades, he's become the stereotypical image most Americans over a certain age see in their mind when they hear the word "author". He comes from a schlubby everyman background and in turn spins his little yarns for the schlubby everyman reader. There's nothing wrong with that, but at the same time it's nothing special either.

Of course, those who primarily consume (not read) mainstream fiction will almost inevitably leap to his defense because they've developed an emotional attachment to the man, or at least to their personal conception of him. That's why it must be repeated every single time it's denied: he's not a genius or even a great author. He's not your granddad, uncle, father, or brother either. He's just a man who occupies a particular niche in pop culture. People love ragging on the pretensions of elitists, but the prevailing tastes of the masses are pretentious in their own grubby, overly-sentimental way.

To unironically worship him if you yourself are a writer is nothing short of a mortal sin. He's banality and cowardice incarnate to the point that I'd say there are millions of writers, even forgotten and unknown ones, who are superior to him in every imaginable way, both as artists and as craftsmen. I would even go as far as calling every writer who praises him as effusively as you do a worthless hack. The very things you praise him for should disgust you because they're endemic to a mentality and culture that rejects the transcendent in favor of the mundane and mediocre. To have lofty ambitions and fail spectacularly in attempting to achieve them is more impressive than to competently write cold slop for the swine to dig their snouts into.

It's nothing person(n)a(e)l (kid), but as a writer, and even more so as a reader, I have nothing but contempt for writers like you, who are the literary equivalent of cancer, who fear to go where no one will follow. I've already read my fill of banal and mediocre airport novels. I'd rather read some obscure decades or centuries out of print book by an author I've never heard of who may or may not suck, than waste any more of my time on anything by Stevie KANG or his acolytes, because that's genuinely more fun to me than jacking off to how much KANG "respects" the intelligence or milquetoast sensibilities of his mongoloid fans. If everyone in the world was as cowardly as KANG, this very site we're on right now wouldn't even exist. Yes, I've never even thought about this before, but I'd even rank Null above Stevie KANG as an unintentional "artist" of sorts.

Never said I worshiped the man, nor did I say that he was the greatest writer of all time. I also did not say that everything he writes is absolute gold. I have my select few books that I really enjoy, and I have an even longer list of his books that I despise whole sale. What I did do is recognize that when it comes to the craft of writing, he has more than earned his place as one of the many greats. If I had to make a top ten he might be able to get on it, mostly because I really liked The Green Mile. With that being said, I doubt he would make it higher than seven. But if I were making a list of authors who have written about the craft of writing, he would easily be top 5.

If you have a hate boner for him thats fine, the man has certainly earned the rightful ire of many, especially if you delve into his political statements, not to mention the mounds of trill shovel pulp that he has written, The Tommy knockers comes to mind, not to mention the low hanging fruit that is the horrible Maximum Overdrive movie.

I also completely agree with you that alot of people just buy his books because he is a recognizable brand and they want social clout, I hate those people probably as much as you do. The only fans worse than social King fans are political science majors who have Animal Farm and 1984 on their shelf but have never read them. Or Ayn Rand for that matter. That being said if someone is interested in being a writer they should definatly read alot, read anything and everything, and they should especially read successful writers. Everyone from King, to Orwel, to Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, Frank Herbert, hell even Tom Clancy when it was actually the man himself. When I was younger I used to read action pulps that where cheap knock offs of Tom Clancy novels, I am drawing a blank on what they were called but there was a whole series of like "Action Force" pulp novels that I read over 50 of. They were probably terrible, but I enjoyed them (I was like 8 though).

If you want a lesser known writer that deserves more attention than what he is getting try out J. Zachary Pike's book Orconomics: A Satire. It is probably the best first fantasy book I have ever read, and he released the second book earlier this year. Or Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence, which is told from the perspective of the evil bad guy. It literally starts right after they slaughter and rape a village and are cutting the fingers with rings off the corpses as loot. There are way better writers than King, but King is a genius of the craft, one of many, and no amount of hate mongering will change that. Dont like him, dont read him.

 

[StrawberryDouche]

The very things you praise him for should disgust you because they're endemic to a mentality and culture that rejects the transcendent in favor of the mundane and mediocre.

If everything were transcendent, nothing would be.

Just because one may enjoy the occasional hot dog like King, doesn't mean one has rejected the sublime cuts like Dostoevsky.

Your entire post nearly reads as a parody of a disaffected, misanthropic snob. Nearly. You could be a King character.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

It's nothing person(n)a(e)l (kid), but as a writer, and even more so as a reader, I have nothing but contempt for writers like you, who are the literary equivalent of cancer, who fear to go where no one will follow. I've already read my fill of banal and mediocre airport novels. I'd rather read some obscure decades or centuries out of print book by an author I've never heard of who may or may not suck, than waste any more of my time on anything by Stevie KANG or his acolytes, because that's genuinely more fun to me than jacking off to how much KANG "respects" the intelligence or milquetoast sensibilities of his mongoloid fans. If everyone in the world was as cowardly as KANG, this very site we're on right now wouldn't even exist. Yes, I've never even thought about this before, but I'd even rank Null above Stevie KANG as an unintentional "artist" of sorts.

Your writing is overwrought and it sucks. Hope that helps.

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

If everything were transcendent, nothing would be.

Just because one may enjoy the occasional hot dog like King, doesn't mean one has rejected the sublime cuts like Dostoevsky.

Your entire post nearly reads as a parody of a disaffected, misanthropic snob. Nearly. You could be a King character.

Gonna earn a well deserved autistic rating here, but I have to drop this one and only quote I know from Stephen Universe just because I was reminded of it. "If all pork chops were perfect we wouldnt have hot dogs". My shame is immense and I deserve no pity.

 

[AnOminous]

He's fat.

 

[Pomniman]

Never said I worshiped the man, nor did I say that he was the greatest writer of all time. I also did not say that everything he writes is absolute gold. I have my select few books that I really enjoy, and I have an even longer list of his books that I despise whole sale. What I did do is recognize that when it comes to the craft of writing, he has more than earned his place as one of the many greats. If I had to make a top ten he might be able to get on it, mostly because I really liked The Green Mile. With that being said, I doubt he would make it higher than seven. But if I were making a list of authors who have written about the craft of writing, he would easily be top 5.

If you have a hate boner for him thats fine, the man has certainly earned the rightful ire of many, especially if you delve into his political statements, not to mention the mounds of trill shovel pulp that he has written, The Tommy knockers comes to mind, not to mention the low hanging fruit that is the horrible Maximum Overdrive movie.

I also completely agree with you that alot of people just buy his books because he is a recognizable brand and they want social clout, I hate those people probably as much as you do. The only fans worse than social King fans are political science majors who have Animal Farm and 1984 on their shelf but have never read them. Or Ayn Rand for that matter. That being said if someone is interested in being a writer they should definatly read alot, read anything and everything, and they should especially read successful writers. Everyone from King, to Orwel, to Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, Frank Herbert, hell even Tom Clancy when it was actually the man himself. When I was younger I used to read action pulps that where cheap knock offs of Tom Clancy novels, I am drawing a blank on what they were called but there was a whole series of like "Action Force" pulp novels that I read over 50 of. They were probably terrible, but I enjoyed them (I was like 8 though).

If you want a lesser known writer that deserves more attention than what he is getting try out J. Zachary Pike's book Orconomics: A Satire. It is probably the best first fantasy book I have ever read, and he released the second book earlier this year. Or Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence, which is told from the perspective of the evil bad guy. It literally starts right after they slaughter and rape a village and are cutting the fingers with rings off the corpses as loot. There are way better writers than King, but King is a genius of the craft, one of many, and no amount of hate mongering will change that. Dont like him, dont read him.

"I never said I worshiped him, I just think he's a genius"

Ok there, sport.

If everything were transcendent, nothing would be.

Just because one may enjoy the occasional hot dog like King, doesn't mean one has rejected the sublime cuts like Dostoevsky.

Technically true, but you're completely missing the point.

Your writing is overwrought and it sucks. Hope that helps.

Fo sho my nigga. I'm definitely no Stevie "my fat babysitter smacked me upside the head then farted in my face" KANG.

 

[StrawberryDouche]

Technically true, but you're completely missing the point.

No, I got the point- it was just dull.

There is nothing about this present day culture that makes it more accepting of the mundane and mediocre. Why the fuck do you think Dickens was so lauded in his day? I've read him. He's pretty fucking unreadable, yet remains hugely popular.

eta: To clarify, there are interesting things to be gleaned from Dickens insofar as social and class politics of the Victorian age go. But as a writer? As a technician? Absolute shit. He just vomited bilge and people ate it up faster than he could produce it.

 

[L50LasPak]

Why's that? I typically hear people say it's good advice (haven't read it myself).

I'm sure the advice is fine from a completely utilitarian perspective for the average career-minded writer, but the memoir segments come off like the sort of thing you might read on an especially soy-infused section of reddit. No one ever talks about how much cringe he packed into this book.

Its great from the perspective of being a 15-year old who never tried drugs or booze early. Or was that Danse Macabre? Fuck.

 

[Captain Manning]

I think he's a better filmmaker than writer.

Nice!

I unironically like Maximum Overdrive though. It's so fucking idiotic it's actually a fun watch. Supposedly he was on coke most of the time he was on set and has since referred to it as a "moron movie."

He writes good books, he just really struggles with endings. The Stand comes to mind.

The ending to The Stand is literally Deus Ex Machina.

Like, the book and movie should be exhibits A and B when you try to explain to somebody what that term means.

 

[Elric of Melnibone]

There is nothing about this present day culture that makes it more accepting of the mundane and mediocre. Why the fuck do you think Dickens was so lauded in his day? I've read him. He's pretty fucking unreadable, yet remains hugely popular.

Ah Dickens, so many run on sentences full of contradictory yet flowery language.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. "

You also have to remember the writers who were really really good at world building and lore but were an absolute chore to read like Tolkien. Dude essentially built the entire lore of D&D and high fantasy, but reading his books is like reading the rape baby of an english comp book and a history book. Dude would write for pages just describing a tree on a hill, and the history of that hill, and how the local culture worships that hill because it once had virgin blood in the soil yadi yada yada. This is also true of Lovecraft who's formula for writing was to look up synonyms for every single word he wrote and pick the longest and most obscure one.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

No, I got the point- it was just dull.

There is nothing about this present day culture that makes it more accepting of the mundane and mediocre. Why the fuck do you think Dickens was so lauded in his day? I've read him. He's pretty fucking unreadable, yet remains hugely popular.

eta: To clarify, there are interesting things to be gleaned from Dickens insofar as social and class politics of the Victorian age go. But as a writer? As a technician? Absolute shit. He just vomited bilge and people ate it up faster than he could produce it.

It's more an artifact of the serial novel genre. If you read, like, one chapter of Great Expectations per week (as Londoners did) then you won't have the feeling that you need to blow your brains out from Dickens' tedium.

 

[Pomniman]

No, I got the point- it was just dull.

There is nothing about this present day culture that makes it more accepting of the mundane and mediocre. Why the fuck do you think Dickens was so lauded in his day? I've read him. He's pretty fucking unreadable, yet remains hugely popular.

eta: To clarify, there are interesting things to be gleaned from Dickens insofar as social and class politics of the Victorian age go. But as a writer? As a technician? Absolute shit. He just vomited bilge and people ate it up faster than he could produce it.

No, you absolutely have no idea if you're comparing the trash of the Victorian era to the garbage of today. The point flew straight over your head.

 

[AnOminous]

You have to admit this dude has written more shit that was turned into movies than literally anyone. It's ridiculous how many of this guy's writings have been made into movies.

No, I got the point- it was just dull.

There is nothing about this present day culture that makes it more accepting of the mundane and mediocre. Why the fuck do you think Dickens was so lauded in his day? I've read him. He's pretty fucking unreadable, yet remains hugely popular.

eta: To clarify, there are interesting things to be gleaned from Dickens insofar as social and class politics of the Victorian age go. But as a writer? As a technician? Absolute shit. He just vomited bilge and people ate it up faster than he could produce it.

Don't talk shit about Dickens you fag.