Worst of Stephen King - Worst books or stories

[TokiBun]

For a while, I wanted to know why King didn't get a cancelling over Dedication. Then I remembered (again), that none of these NPC SJW retards are able to read at their appropriate age level. This is why everything is framed against Star Wars and Harry Potter.

Because that story was the most batshit, degenerate, and (I'm sure) ignorant story with all black characters (except for the "racist" white author who the black protagonist was licking up his jizz from the hotel bedsheets) I've ever seen.

You have a point twitter libs really don't read books. They barely have the attention span for twitter threads let alone books.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

“Nigger” is unironically Stephen King’s favorite word.

Reminds me when they has king ask Paul Mooney a question on Chappelle's "ask a black man" bit

https://youtu.be/awstNUsGRmI

About 1:55 in.

 

[Banks Davenport]

The Jaunt isn't all that great. The gory ending is decidedly creepy, but it takes a while to get to that moment. The backstory of a scientist in a barn discovering the jaunt tech, and some wiseguy agreeing to be a test subject, are more like sketches for other stories.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

The Jaunt isn't all that great. The gory ending is decidedly creepy, but it takes a while to get to that moment. The backstory of a scientist in a barn discovering the jaunt tech, and some wiseguy agreeing to be a test subject, are more like sketches for other stories.

Also the fact that "jaunting" would be obsolete by now kinda dampens the horror factor

 

[Sorlock]

Pet Sematary is his scariest book, IMO.
Both of the movies sucked, but the book is great.

Maybe the Ramones song makes up for the movies...

 

[Internet War Criminal]

Is Dark Tower worth reading (if you stop before the events in the tower itself) or not and if not any better alternatives? Also now I am really not sure what from Stephen King to read since well... the stuff mentioned in the last few pages of this thread is really uncomfortable

They definitely are. The first five (well, six if you include the 8th one that's really a continuation of the 4th) are really really good, the sixth is... mid but also thankfully very very short. It has a few really good passages and sets up the last one.

I went in knowing that the last book and the ending were retarded and what not, so I didn't have too high of an expectation and as a result I really enjoyed it as well. I thought the way it ended was really the only way it possibly could. Definitely worth reading. 3-4-5 imo are amongst the best things King has ever written.

Just finished his latest, Fairy Tale, and while it's never going to be up there with his top work it's a pretty good yarn. No kiddie or fetish stuff and very little political sperging, and King limits himself to one entirely gratuitous sex scene at the end. 6.5/10

Mostly agree with you, but I still think it's one of the best things that King has written in the last 20+ years and I'd say it's an 8 out of 10.

 

[Snappy Turtle]

Doctor Sleep. The movie was all right but I hated the book. Don't entirely remember why but I remember thinking Rose the Hat and all of the Shining characters parts were cringe

 

[regginknurd]

Dr. Sleep or 11/22/63.
I read all the way through Dr. Sleep and felt like it underwrote all of The Shining.
I couldn't make it past the backyard barbecue/picnic/whatever in 11/22/63 and I tried several times. I just stop there. Maybe it's the chick or because other than Chuck P or Bukowski I'm not a fan of first person narrative.

 

[skykiii]

Dr. Sleep or 11/22/63.
I read all the way through Dr. Sleep and felt like it underwrote all of The Shining.
I couldn't make it past the backyard barbecue/picnic/whatever in 11/22/63 and I tried several times. I just stop there. Maybe it's the chick or because other than Chuck P or Bukowski I'm not a fan of first person narrative.

What does "underwrote" mean in this context?

......

Unrelated but somehow I wound up on the TV Tropes page for the Langoliers (I am decontaminating as we speak) and saw this:

• 
  Accidental Child-Killer Backstory: Nick Hopewell volunteers for a certain death task that must be performed — because, as a younger man, he accidentally shot some children who were throwing potatoes painted grey that he mistook for grenades.

..... Aren't potatoes already gray-ish? Why would you paint them?

 

[My Name is Ed]

..... Aren't potatoes already gray-ish? Why would you paint them?

While admittedly I don't know why you'd paint a potato grey just for the heck of it,

Spoiler: uhh

I don't know what kind of lead-contaminated potatoes you grew up with

Some of them are even purple. I don't like them quite so much.

 

[The Taco Santo!]

“Nigger” is unironically Stephen King’s favorite word. On one hand: it’s a cheap and easy way to set tone or setting or characterization, and in the other: he clearly gets a child-like glee from saying bad words.

Like a kiwi.

What does "underwrote" mean in this context?

......

Unrelated but somehow I wound up on the TV Tropes page for the Langoliers (I am decontaminating as we speak) and saw this:

• 
  Accidental Child-Killer Backstory: Nick Hopewell volunteers for a certain death task that must be performed — because, as a younger man, he accidentally shot some children who were throwing potatoes painted grey that he mistook for grenades.

..... Aren't potatoes already gray-ish? Why would you paint them?

So they'd be mistaken for grenades and the cops/army shoot civilians. I'm sure I've read about real-life incidents like this happening in Northern Ireland.

 

[regginknurd]

What does "underwrote" mean in this context?

nothing, i'm a fucking retard and used the wrong words. I get drunk a lot and write replies to forums.

Maybe the word i was looking for was UNDERCUT, but that might even be wrong word.
for me, Dr Sleep kind of took the bite out of the shining. Something about old alcoholic Danny, and psychic vampires, all existing in a world where the Shining took place felt like some MCU type bullshit.

 

[skykiii]

nothing, i'm a fucking retard and used the wrong words. I get drunk a lot and write replies to forums.

Maybe the word i was looking for was UNDERCUT, but that might even be wrong word.
for me, Dr Sleep kind of took the bite out of the shining. Something about old alcoholic Danny, and psychic vampires, all existing in a world where the Shining took place felt like some MCU type bullshit.

I haven't read either book (I only know the Shining from the Kubrick film) but I think I understand what you're trying to say here.

Basically its something similar to the common capeshit issue of "how actually is there any crime at all--much less hellholes like Gotham--in a world where a significant chunk of the population is demigods with a strong sense of justice and high work ethic?" Am I on the right track?

 

[Alouatta Simia Belzebul]

I'm mostly uploading this because I'm surprised it hasn't appeared in the thread yet.



That's child Drew Barrymore at the premiere of Firestarter, the film of King's book. Barrymore has said that she was molested by some legendary figures in the entertainment industry who she wouldn't be willing to name until after they are dead, and maybe not even then. That said, she has done interviews with King as an adult to commemorate the anniversary of this film and also cat's eye, so clearly she's still okay with being around him. Photo is creepy as fuck though. He's down on one knee, btw.

King was also pretty 'good buddies' with Richard Laymon, a dead horror author who wrote 45 horror novels for adults (also some children's books, but I'm not familiar with those). Almost all of the ones I tried reading, which was about 6 or 7 of them, featured a blonde cheerleader and / or babysitter getting raped, and / or murdered. It was very clearly his sexual fetish, and he also included a self-insert where a bunch of his teen girl characters talk about having interviewed him for their school paper, and how's he actually not a 'creepazoid' at all. And then they go stay in an isolated rural house to get raped and murdered.

I was a big fan as a teenager but reading the Richard Laymon books just removed my ability to suspend my disbelief with Stephen King and not see that some if not all of this stuff has to be his fetish too. It's just too consistent and repetitive in incredibly specific ways.

I didn't know the It gay bashing was almost 1:1 with a real life murder though; so inappropriate. I wonder if the the surviving boyfriend knows he's represented as some useless weak fat guy who stands there and cries, and the murderers as kids that just went the wrong way due to difficult childhoods. Maybe King should write a story where the real-life boyfriend / equivalent comes to get revenge and tries to murder him. With a van. While disguising himself with thick coke-bottle glasses and talcum powder in his hair.

Also, didn't he originally go off and gush about JKR and how brilliant HP is and how she's so brave to speak her mind (on twitter) and then she complimented him back, and that's when the pitchforks came out? And he deleted everything and now constantly beats the drum for the side of righteousness on twitter all day. I also think that, while it's true that a lot of people don't read and just pretend to read, I think the trans rights crowd literally don't fucking care about paedophilia or racism or homophobia, they just care about trans rights. They only pretend to care when it's useful for them to pretend to care.

 

[Major Filth]

One thing I think everyone here is missing out on is the essential nature of horror writing. Take the thing you dread the most, write how that thing's flaws make it actually terrifying, maybe add some supernatural elements, and then throw a fish out of water protag into that environment. The rest comes naturally.

King is obviously an educated man ("Now I really hate him.") who went to university and shit. He knows how fucking stupid and backwards rurals and even small-town folk are. So they are obviously going to be the villains in the story. Sometimes it's by choice like with all the incest-rape stuff above and sometimes it's just that C'thulhu made them do it. Or Satan. Or aliens. Doesn't really matter. It's believable to him because these backward hicks would do that shit. Or it's evil government people with room-temperature IQs trying to play god.

Anyway, our protagonist is almost always someone who demonstrably possesses superior intellect, training, raw cunning, or innate ability and can use those traits to defeat the hick zombies and even the entity controlling their minds. Yeah, sure - the protag may have something holding them back so they either don't see or can't react to the danger in the first 2/3s, but by the end, they've cleaned up their act enough to use their superior whatever to stop the danger.

Why does this work? Because of the formula. King never gives you time to relax or reflect. He's always in pure dialog-description-dialog-description-setpiece-repeat mode. After two or three repetitions, your little hamster mind is just as eager to get to that setpiece as he is to write it down. It's not screenwriting, but it's not far off either because there's very, very little in terms of exposition. "Show, don't tell" right?

And he needs your little hamster mind to keep turning those pages to see what the next setpiece is. Because if you don't, you come up with some of the criticisms in this thread. "Wait, why was there a flashback to some kid's dad greasing up his butthole with Crisco?" "Because that's what dumb redneck hicks do to their kids, okay? Keep turning those pages!" "Wait, why does he keep saying 'nigger'?" "Because that's how dumb redneck hicks act, okay? Keep turning those pages!"

He addresses you as Constant Reader because that's the only thing that matters to him. That you're just reading and reading and reading the millions of words that he's spewing out. There's his real mental disorder. He can't stop writing books because it's the best way he knows of to show off his stunning intellect to the world, and in a format that forbids anyone saying "Waaaaait a second. Go back and explain that, wouldya?" Narcissistic Personality Disorder given free rein.

This became apparent to me when he rushed out the end of The Dark Tower series so it would be done before he died for real this time all the while implying that Book 7 would be the end of his writing career. 23 novels in 18 years later...

 

[Sumptinsfuckey]

So Im like a year and half late to the party but has anyone mebtioned how bad "The Dome" was? Especially that ending? Talk about just saying "fuck it" when you've written yourself into a corner.

 

[Sumptinsfuckey]

The Jaunt isn't all that great. The gory ending is decidedly creepy, but it takes a while to get to that moment. The backstory of a scientist in a barn discovering the jaunt tech, and some wiseguy agreeing to be a test subject, are more like sketches for other stories.

Honestly "The Jaunt" was one of the ones that terrified me as a kid because I could see myself deliberately holding my breath just to see what woukd happen.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

@Alouatta Simia Belzebul I'm shocked anyone would go after Drew Barrymore, given that she's literally Hollywood royalty. You'd think that'd be enough to scare off the predators, plenty of other kid actors to molest without the risk of being blacklisted.

It's honestly hard to really judge a writer's sexual fetishes from their writing, even if there seems to be very common patterns. Especially with behaviors that are only ever acted out by villains, it is likely the author is just painting that behavior in a negative light through association and not to play with his personal kinks.

You'll note that the "good guys" in King's books (when there are any actually good people, anyway) typically aren't the ones shouting racist insults or raping their kids. The good guy is King's actual self-insert characters, especially the drunk authors, not the backwards hicks he fears due to being a very isolated leftist urbanite who thinks anyone with a Texan accent is illiterate and inbred. King's writing tells us far more about his insular world view than his fetishes.

When he does have the "good guys" do something nasty and weird - the sudden unconscious-rapey scene in The Raft for instance - it's almost always a younger character letting their dick do the thinking; that probably is some weird kink of his, or what he imagined doing as a youth but never had the opportunity. It's similar to the "rape" in Revenge of the Nerds, pure fantasy thinking you get from middle-aged writers imaging what they'd do if they had had a chance to screw the prom queen back in high school. Not really a fetish, but definitely a real power fantasy of theirs.

Of course, very often sexual kinks only show up in a story because they're popular and sell books. In Game of Thrones, GRRM used incest as a legit plot device to start off a civil war in a way that would fit with his pseudo-historical setting. But ever since the show got popular, you suddenly see incest/stepcest getting shoehorned into all sorts of stories it has no business being in, not because the author is exploring their kinks but because it sells books to bored middle-aged soccer moms who all fantasize about living out fucked up porn fantasies. If you want to make money in the business, you write what people are buying.

Honestly "The Jaunt" was one of the ones that terrified me as a kid because I could see myself deliberately holding my breath just to see what woukd happen.

Fuck the Jaunt, shit ruined me as a teen. Fucking gave me existential dread for the first time. Which I've never gotten from Lovecraft, so King can probably pat himself on the back for that.

 

[Alouatta Simia Belzebul]

I have no idea how to ping someone, sorry. Family name aside, if the parents don't care it can be almost impossible to do anything to look after a kid - and barrymore's mother was the one taking her to studio 54 as a pre-teen to get drunk & high with all the adults there. She would encourage her to act flirty & say explicit and vulgar things because she apparently thought it was funny. I think she's said she regrets it now but only really after Drew Barrymore's been very open after how much it fucked her up - it doesn't sound like she has the genuine capacity to care about her daughter, but it also makes you wonder if she went through similar things herself and is therefore blase about it. Gwyneth Paltrow is also hollywood royalty and Weinstein still made an attempt on her.

I'm not from the US, so I won't have the same perspective, but seeing as the average american writer doesn't seem to include rural people at all - I thought he was considered pretty sympathetic, as he's from there and sets all his books in Maine, so both the good guys and the bad guys are from there.

The good guys do tend to seek out education, yes, but surely that's more a critique of willful ignorance & saying you can be intelligent despite lack of career opportunities / investment infrastructure. Isn't there normally at least one smart older guy who's not formally educated but a mentor to the hero, e.g. Judd Nelson or the hero himself, Alan Pangborn?

Plus as far as I remember he often has good guy cops, which is not something he's changed even now - Mr Mercedes is the only one of his I've read since I was a teen, and it has the retired detective character, and also despite being set in the 2008 recession era I think, the black teen still does the 50s slave roleplay stuff. He really does seem to love that.

I can understand what you're saying about the creepy behaviour largely being attributed to the villains, but equally to attribute it to the heroes would be a bit too mask off if you did feel that way. I feel more or less the same way about GRRM, although I've read much less of his stuff - one occurrence of incest, like Cersei & Jamie, okay, but he's also got the incest between Viserys & Daenerys and also the child rape that turns consensual situation between Daenerys and Khal Drogo in that first book. The TV show definitely added more, but GRRM definitely has a preference for that stuff all the same.

Unrelated: King seems to be doing promo / positive reviews for how great the Flash is on twitter. The director is the same one for IT 1 & 2 so he probably called in a favour - but there's no way he doesn't know about the Ezra situation and decided it's irrelevant to him liking (or pretending to like) the film.

Ezra has been having mental health issues? in Hawaii and assaulting people, but also was engaged in a 'relationship' with a native girl starting when she was 12 and he was 23. He was also physically abusive to her, and may have run a sort of cult situation with her and other young / underage women on his property. Not sure if they're still together.

 

[skykiii]

Of course, very often sexual kinks only show up in a story because they're popular and sell books. In Game of Thrones, GRRM used incest as a legit plot device to start off a civil war in a way that would fit with his pseudo-historical setting. But ever since the show got popular, you suddenly see incest/stepcest getting shoehorned into all sorts of stories it has no business being in, not because the author is exploring their kinks but because it sells books to bored middle-aged soccer moms who all fantasize about living out fucked up porn fantasies. If you want to make money in the business, you write what people are buying.

As much as I would love to believe GRRM's kinks are just a marketing stunt, I have reason to believe he does have a rape fetish, as I've read some of his work outside of Game of Thrones.

Particularly telling to me was a short story written in the 80s called Starlady, which is basically... a woman (who is described as basically the most beautiful bestest woman ever) lands on a planet that is basically Mos Eisley if it was an entire planet, gets raped, falls in with some bar owner/maybe pimp who she befriends even though he doesn't really protect her and tells her that getting raped is just what happens around here... basically every every two pages is "she got raped, then talked to her friend/owner".... then at the end it shits out a happy ending where she manages to kill the local crime lord and take his place in an obvious "let's just wrap this up" way.

To me it was intensely clear that this was just GRRM's own fantasy being put on page. Weirdly this story won awards and was included in one of those "best Sci-Fi of the year" paperbacks (which is how I read it).

.....................

As for King.... erm, haven't thought about him recently except I wound up watching the classic Nostalgia Critic review of The Langoliers. The comments on the video claim that the creatures in the book are more disturbing and surreal than the.... CGI meatballs with teeth you see in in the movie.

But I must know if that line "its like the sound rice krispies make when you add the milk" is in the book.