I went to see Gregory MacDonald, author of the Fletch series, give a talk at the local library and he says that Stephen King just showed up at his house one morning and starting drinking all the beer in the house. His wife has mentioned the drug problems. I'm not sure if he's exaggerating or not, but I think he definitely had problems with addiction.
Shawshank Redemption is a pretty good novella, probably the best part of Different Seasons. I thought the movie was great, but I thought the novella was just as good. I also might be alone in this, but I thought the book of The Shining was better than the Kubrick film.
You only say that because you heard someone else say it.
One that springs to mind, for me, is may be The Eyes of the Dragon, which IIRC he said he wrote so that his daughter could read something from him.
I think most of the stuff he wrote during the cocaine years is pretty good. After he got off drugs, it's really hit or miss. I didn't like Rose Madder, Insomnia, Duna Key, Lisey's Story, or the last few Dark Tower books, However, I think Revival and 11/22/63 are some of the best things he's ever written. He's not as good as he used to be, but I don't think his decline has been as severe as say, Dean Koontz.
Honestly the only time I feel it kinda lost the plot was in the sixth book, and it's so short that it's worth just powering through it anyway.
There were a couple moments along the way where I was like "man this is kinda lame", I forget where they were exactly but I remember feeling that at least once every book or so. Just certain decisions that were made where you're like "why did he write this in this specific really weird way"
Aw man, I've been getting into his books (mainly the early stuff) after I left King.
Under the Dome had an instance where it took a shot at Stephenie Meyer. It just felt like a cheap shot after what he said about Meyer as writer in 2009.
Remember, the alternative is that he's writing prepubescent gangbangs with a clear head.
Under the Dome was a perfect example of why I find his writing so infuriating. Even when he occasionally manages to get me invested, he builds to a fever pitch of tension with all these story threads leading to everything going completely to hell simultaneously and I'm just dying to find out where all this insanity is going... and then it limps unsatisfyingly across the finish line.
His absolute weakest skill is writing a good, compelling ending, for sure. The novels struggle with this much more than the short stories, but yeah, he absolutely blows at ending his stories in a way that doesn't come off as half-assed bullshit he came up with because the deadline was in 4 days and he ran out of time.
I don't know, at the end of the day I thought it was great. It would have been really gay if it had ended with some kind of Avengers like fight between good and evil.
The Regulators is a perfect example of a quarter assed ending. Well, quarter assed everything.
and not the "main character has a wet dream about raping a Jewish girl in a concentration camp" part?
That's one interpretation, but the way it was realized is the thing that disappointed me. You could absolutely write a good ending that is abrupt and due to the overconfidence of "evil", but not the way it was written.
