Thoughts on Stephen King?

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Coleman Francis said:
Gerald's Game
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Gerald's Game would have been A+ Night Shift material or maybe a good addition to Skeleton Crew if it had been a short story. Great premise. Your abusive dickweed husband chains your ass to a bed because he enjoys horrible BDSM sex, then he fucking keels over and you have to get out while flashing back to awful shit that happened in the past. Also works as a metaphor for escaping an abusive relationship. 50-60 pages tops. Good work Stevie, print it. But for some reason he felt the need to stretch it out into an entire novel and it just doesn't work.
 
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Coleman Francis said:
I read two Stephen King books on vacation. First book was misery and I liked it. Never saw the movie but the book was decent. A horrifying situation for sure. Next book was Gerald's Game and I was much less impressed. I'm not a fan of King and this book really illustrates why. Dean Koontz can write a book with conflicted characters who have horrible backstories without having to write detailed molestation reports, just saying. And he can get to the fucking point without going on and on about nonsense.
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Misery was the first of his books that I read and I enjoyed it so much. Out of all the books I've read of his so far I see it to be his best work (also Pet Sematary.) I liked 'Salem's Lot more than most seem to, I think it shows his potential but written later in his career would have been great instead of just good. The only part that bothered me (and it's really not a spoiler) is that there is a description of a boy being tied up and he keeps talking about the pressure the rope put on his testicles and that was needlessly uncomfortable to read about. Same with the scene in IT where Beverly has to pee really bad and it gets worse and worse as the scene progresses. It might add urgency to the scene but I'd rather not have to read about it.

I agree, Gerald's Game was just too long. I forget exactly how long it was but wasn't it something like 40 pages where the lady is reaching for a glass of water? I ended up not finishing that one. I didn't finish Cujo either but went into it rather blind but when I realized so much of it was from the dog's perspective it just got too sad. Might have been a great book but it wasn't something I wanted to read once I realized what it was going to be about so I'm neutral on that one.
 
AnOminous said:
That would be most of the good American novels.
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Showing my horrendously poor taste as a literary critic here but what was Moby Dick written on other than pure crazy? That, that thing is a classic of hilarity and madness and might be my pick for best American novel of all time just because... fucking look at it.
 
L50LasPak said:
Showing my horrendously poor taste as a literary critic here but what was Moby Dick written on other than pure crazy? That, that thing is a classic of hilarity and madness and might be my pick for best American novel of all time just because... fucking look at it.
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I don't think he was an alcoholic but not much was actually known about his personal life. A lot of people view his writings as autobiographical but I doubt all that shit in Moby-Dick went down.
 
AnOminous said:
I don't think he was an alcoholic but not much was actually known about his personal life. A lot of people view his writings as autobiographical but I doubt all that shit in Moby-Dick went down.
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That book had to be writen on either crack or some strange form of brain cancer though because boy is it a trip.
 
Did anyone read Sleeping Beauties? The one where women who go to sleep suddenly start getting covered by cocoons? I got maybe about halfway. I though it read kind of like a Lifetime movie.
Men had ripped them right out of the world-right out of two worlds. Men. There seemed to be no escape from them.
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There was another line that had me rolling my eyes.
They still had that new Star Wars movie playing there,' Celia said, and added, wryly, 'You know, Sheriff, the one where the girl's the hero,'
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Cactuar King said:
Did anyone read Sleeping Beauties? The one where women who go to sleep suddenly start getting covered by cocoons? I got maybe about halfway.
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Too bad you and @Chan Fan below said that sucked because that sounds like a creepy as fuck premise. Women everywhere just start growing chysalises around them and slicing one open to try and rescue them just leaves them a screaming mess, and most of the book is men standing around exchanging "What the fuck is going on?" and "How the fuck do we deal with this?"

Plus you could really build up the dread about what, precisely is supposed to hatch from these things. Maybe even have one guy get desperate and cut his wife/girlfriend/drug dealer out late into the process and scream in terror as the incomplete imago (not described yet, of course, save that for the ending) rips him to shreds.

I guess while we're discussing bugs, Stephen King and spousal abuse, I will admit I found Rose Madder compelling though I haven't read it in quite some time so maybe I'm just remembering it as better than it was. Go ahead and tear me a new one if you all think it sucks.
 
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Your_Fairy_Wish_Prince said:
I think he wrote better when he was a drug addict alcoholic
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Exactly! After he sobered up there were no underage gang bangs in the sewers like IT, no rabid St. Bernard's trying to kill a mom and her son, no social outcast girl with a religious whacko mom with telekinetic powers, and generally nothing but this Dark Tower bullshit. I wish King went back to mescalin, he wrote some of his best shit on it.

L50LasPak said:
That book had to be writen on either crack or some strange form of brain cancer though because boy is it a trip.
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Dude, the nigga was gay as fuck in a time when sodomites were killed. There is no way you can't see a homoerotic undertone between Ishmael and Queequeg. Hell they sleep together more than once. He's even mentioning how his muscular savage lover would throw his leg over him and playfully pull it away. That's some straight up fag shit. Which nowadays is still more virile than the fags we have crying about Trump and people who pee standing up but still, it's pretty gay.

That probably is what made him do drugs. Melville was part of the club scene before it was cool...
 
Maxliam said:
Dude, the nigga was gay as fuck in a time when sodomites were killed. There is no way you can't see a homoerotic undertone between Ishmael and Queequeg. Hell they sleep together more than once. He's even mentioning how his muscular savage lover would throw his leg over him and playfully pull it away. That's some straight up fag shit.
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Oh I agree its the gayest thing ever written, and you're right that the pressure of being gay in that era must have led to some kind of substance abuse, but I have to wonder what it was since I've never heard mention of him being a cocaine or heroin addict.

That said, this was also the era where you could just buy cocaine or heroin over the counter like you were buying aspirin, so maybe if he really was an addict nobody noticed.
 
L50LasPak said:
Oh I agree its the gayest thing ever written, and you're right that the pressure of being gay in that era must have led to some kind of substance abuse, but I have to wonder what it was since I've never heard mention of him being a cocaine or heroin addict.

That said, this was also the era where you could just buy cocaine or heroin over the counter like you were buying aspirin, so maybe if he really was an addict nobody noticed.
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I mean people also drank themselves to death and nobody really bitched except the soccer moms of the day, the Temperance Union. Same people that kept settlers from banging some brown strange that didn't have that stuffy puritanical view on snu-snu. God damn moral crusaders ruin all the fun. Same reason we can't go into a gun shop like in Highwaymen and buy machine guns without a third degree from the government.

But yeah, I was just assuming the dude was a drunk or drug addled because holy shit he comes off as a tormented faggot who lived in an era where buggery would have gotten him the rope.
 
Chan Fan said:
I did not, but I saw a review from a leftist saying he virtual signaled way too hard in that book (and if a leftist is saying that it has to be bad.)
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I'm certain King is completely fucked up. There's no other reason to virtue signal so hard unless the left has something that could bury you the minute you try to be the voice of reason. Much like the Religious Right and their "completely Devoted to God" people.

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You know, something that has and does bother me about King's works ever since I read Rose Madder is that he often writes about abusive relationships.

Off the top of my head there's an abusive relationship in: Gerald's Game, IT, Insomnia, The Dark Tower (several either shown or described), and many in his collections of short stories such as Night Shift, Skeleton Crew and Hearts in Atlantis (I think there's one in Four Past Midnight? I can't remember I read all this shit in high school) and of course the aforementioned queen of these in my opinion is Rose Madder.

Those are just the ones I've read, but usually in my opinion, said abusive relationships are well-written. For instance: its nail-biting in Rose Madder when the main character is trying to figure out how to escape her neighborhood without anyone thinking something's up and alerting her creep husband. Another example is the scene where Beverly escapes her abusive husband in order to get back to Derry in IT.

Now, the thing that bothers me is King's wife. She's stayed with him faithfully for decades now. Even when they were broke, even when he was on tons of drugs and an alcoholic.

I mean, put the pieces together. Those spousal abuse scenes are probably so well-executed because the man at the typewriter probably was the one to do shit like that in the first place. I know this is borderline #MeToo but you have to admit its a very likely theory given how fucked up their early time together was.
 
Not sure how you missed The Shining, especially considering the lead character/villain in it is so obviously a self-insert.
 
AnOminous said:
Not sure how you missed The Shining, especially considering the lead character/villain in it is so obviously a self-insert.
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I just mentioned the ones I actually read and in those years I randomly picked them off my Dad's bookshelf so I never got around to it.

There's a neat theory floating around that the movie is Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of the spousal abuse self-insert and that's part of the reason why King hated it so much. I think it got paywalled by the creator and I didn't bother to pirate it at the time so no link, sorry.
 
L50LasPak said:
but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it was completely unintentional and he was somehow unconsciously acknowledging that some important part of himself died that day.
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That's one way of looking at it, but eh, I'm not sold.

Things were certainly touch and go after the accident for a good long while, but I do think he gradually got his groove back, I enjoyed the hell out of 11/22/63, I dare say it's as good as any of his classics.

I can't seem to find any info about this online, but I seem to remember hearing back in 2004, around the time of the last Dark Tower novel, that he was contemplating retirement, I'm glad he changed his mind.

Because the thing about King's modern output is still at least clearly gives a shit, he's trying, he's not on autopilot or doing it purely because he feels like he has to or just wants money, he clearly still has passion for and enjoys writing, that counts a lot for someone who's been doing something for decades.
 
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