Is Stephen King good or not?

[PennLady]

Here's an article at Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/2012/07/06/my_stephen_king_problem_salpart/

The author is Dwight Allen; I'm not sure if he writes for the LA Review of Books (that's kind of a tag on the article) or is in publishing or both. Anyway, the article is about his lifelong resistance to Stephen King and what happened when he finally read him.

I have to agree with one of the commenters -- I find King an engrossing storyteller, if not a great "writer." Same with Robert Ludlum. I also admit I haven't read a lot of the other authors he's mentioned; guess I prefer "genre" stuff. I'm willing to read other stuff, but well, time is limited.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm still resisting. Not out of malice toward King. There just are so many other books in genres I enjoy to read.

 

[DeeZire]

If the measure of a great writer is a memorable story, King would qualify - perhaps because he is prolific enough to come up with a memorable story now and then.

 

[scorallover]

I loved his collection of short stories that I read many years ago, but I never got into his full books for some reason.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Kings best books are his early efforts: CARRIE, SALEMS LOT, THE SHINING, CHRISTINE, FIRESTARTER, MISERY, and IT would be a classic with some serious editing. He gets worse as time passes, though.

A few of his short stories are excellent: DOLANS CADILLAC, CHILDREN OF THE CORN, and THE LANGOLIERS.

 

[cfuhrer]

I could never get into his works. However, I found "On Writing" to be quite enjoyable.

 

[PennLady]

I've read a lot of King. Not all, but quite a bit. Although oddly perhaps, my first King book was actually "Thinner," under the Richard Bachmann name. That kind of got me past how "scary" it might be, and I read many others. I've forgotten some, even -- I read "'Salem's Lot," I think, but can't remember much about it.

For the article itself, I don't think there's any book by King this guy would admit to liking. And he doesn't have to, that's fine, King certainly isn't for everyone. Still, I've read a lot of authors in many genres and enjoy King as much as any other. I don't think liking someone like Gabriel Garcia Marquez precludes one from liking King.

This reminds me of the situation with me and my beta reader. He's a former semi-pro musician who played in some punk bands, and he has no use for and does not like popular music. He prefers jazz and a couple of other genres and has sent me various examples and albums. I enjoy those as much as I enjoy my Train, Def Leppard and Marillion or the Motown groups or whatever else I listen to.

 

[Trinique_Fire]

Shitty article.

 

[mynameisben]

It is a question for the poets and philosophers to decide. What is the nature of Good? What is the nature of Great? Meanwhile, millions of readers who work hard for their money keep buying King's books.

Neither poet nor philosopher, I know that my opinion on the matter will never mean anything to anybody (with the possible exception of King himself, who collected the royalties from each of his books that I've bought). Be that as it may, count me as one who calls Mr. King a Great.

 

[ketrell]

I have always liked King.

I have been in the same boat with other authors and then realized - its stupid to deny a potentially great story just because you might not like it. You have only so many years to enjoy a good book and there are so many to choose from. That's what the library's for.

 

[lance gt]

I think it comes down to, you either like him, or you don't. If you do, there's lots of great stories to read and if you don't, nothing will appeal to you. I agree he lost it after a while and just put out trash, just to make money.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I don't like him but I have reasons for not liking him. Allen nails it;

The hero of 11/22/63 is a high school English teacher named Jake Epping. (When it comes to writing, Jake, one of King’s regular-Joe white knights, prefers a supposedly heartfelt but clumsily written story by a janitor getting a GED degree — the story makes Jake cry and he gives it an A-plus — to the “boring” and “pursey-mouthed” essays by his honors students. King doesn’t show us a sample of the latter, but when he does finally get around to sharing a substantial piece of the janitor’s story, you can’t help but wonder about Jake’s (and King’s) judgment. King’s real purpose here seems to be to suggest that people like him write with a lot of feeling, while so-called literary people don’t, and that it is the “what,” rather than the “how,” that matters in writing.

Also;

King has a tendency to explain what has been implied or shown, and the tediousness of much of his narrative (certain “action” scenes aside) seems to be partly the result of his thinking that every single moment of his hero’s day (trips to the bathroom, trips to the fridge, trips out the apartment door, comments made to a bus driver, comments made to a cat) are necessary or even interesting.

Yup. I have a writing buddy who does that, which is why she's now a buddy and no longer a writing buddy.

It's a shame that Allen spent so much of his article talking about himself in an article about someone else, though. That's not going to make me a fan either.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

Before I address Lance,

Stephen King is one of the most influential writers in my life. As far as style, dark story arcs, and realistic characters. I don't love King because he is dark, or because his books are scary. I love him because his characters are so REAL. He doesn't shy away from flaws and inner thoughts that would make most people cringe to admit them. There is not a single character (other than maybe the stock 'bully' who ALWAYS dresses like he's from the fifties) that I don't know so well that they breathe inside the pages.

I think it comes down to, you either like him, or you don't. If you do, there's lots of great stories to read and if you don't, nothing will appeal to you. I agree he lost it after a while and just put out trash, just to make money.

I disagree.

Most people I meet who've read a King book or two always seem to have an argument as to why THIS stuff is good, and THAT stuff is crap.

Like the veritable legion of people who love his nonfiction 'On Writing' but have never attempted to read another thing.

Or the people that babble that only his early stuff is good.

The ones that bother me are the ones that only like the shining. There aren't many, but they exist.

I'm an all-in sort of fan. There are still a few of them that I admit I don't like as much as others. (And I've never been able to finish 'From a Buick 8') But other than Buick 8, There isn't a single story of his that I've found that I don't like. I still need to read a lot of his short stories, cycle of the werewolf, dead zone, and a few others. But other than that I've read and loved almost his entire collection.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I could never get into his works. However, I found "On Writing" to be quite enjoyable.

SK is interviewed a lot. Insome of his interviews he speaks of the early struggle and poverty, and then the fame and money and drugs/booze. He says that when he finally got sober he was clueless about how he wrote his most popular books, and its his great regret. He has no idea how to get the magic back.

 

[Tzara]

Here's an article at Salon.com: http://www.salon.com/2012/07/06/my_stephen_king_problem_salpart/

The author is Dwight Allen; I'm not sure if he writes for the LA Review of Books (that's kind of a tag on the article) or is in publishing or both. Anyway, the article is about his lifelong resistance to Stephen King and what happened when he finally read him.

Among other things, he's been a staff writer for The New Yorker, a sports columnist, college teacher, and novelist. Here's his bio from his web site.

I found the article embarrassingly snobbish, though I have never been able to finish a book by King and agree with White that King's writing is almost painfully dull. Friends whose discernment and talent I admire like his books, so I chalk up our difference of opinion on King to individual taste.

Not everyone finds Infinite Jest a "sentence by sentence. . . revelation about life" either.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Says the guy with the Rossetti quote in his sig

Is it snobbish of me to say that I didn't find it very snobbish? Sure, he's talking about a different set of standards than the majority of people have, but then-- everyone thinks that their set of standards are better than the other ones.

 

[Tyro999]

I've never read any Stephen King, his genre doesn't appeal to me; and I've never read a review/synopsis/whatever of any of his works that caused me to change my mind. [Never seen any of the movies based on his books, either.]

I guess I was to old and had been too long grown out of my doom and gloom youth when SK hit the scene.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Yes, Stephen King is--unequivocably--good. You can't sell as many million books as he has and have a career as long as he has by being bad.

The same is true for the JK Rowlings, the Dan Browns, the Stephanie Meyers, *gasp* even the EL Jameses, and just about every other famous writer X in all of the "famous writer X is crap" comments.

Writing is subjective. It may not be "good" by what certain groups of people regard as good, but at the end of the day if the writer wrote something, readers bought it and they liked it enough for lots of them to buy the next thing the writer wrote, that writer is--unequivocably--good. Bad writers are ones no one wants to read.

It might be easy to pick faults with King on certain stylistic and technical aspects (and even easier with some of the other writers I mentioned), but he is so much stronger at everything else it doesn't matter. I think it's fair to say "I don't like King's writing", but saying "King is not a good writer" is patently absurd given the evidence of the length of his career and the considerable sums of money he has made from writing.

 

[beatrice_dreams]

A few of his short stories are excellent: DOLANS CADILLAC, CHILDREN OF THE CORN, and THE LANGOLIERS.

I really enjoyed the Langoliers - one of the few that was more suspense than "I buried her in the corn!" horror.

I really like his writing, I just wish he'd write in a different genre!

But never...never watch 'The Langoliers' the film. Terrible...just....unspeakably awful.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I'm with Tyro. Besides, I frighten easily and when alarmed tend to shoot back. This makes me very unpopular in movie theaters, bookstores, libraries and my neighborhood so to keep peace in the community, I don't read Stephen King.

 

[PennLady]

Rebuttal article, also on Salon.com. Haven't read it yet but am working through.

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/06/stephen_king_you_can_be_popular_and_good/

 

[Stella_Omega]

Yes, Stephen King is--unequivocably--good. You can't sell as many million books as he has and have a career as long as he has by being bad.

The same is true for the JK Rowlings, the Dan Browns, the Stephanie Meyers, *gasp* even the EL Jameses, and just about every other famous writer X in all of the "famous writer X is crap" comments.

Writing is subjective. It may not be "good" by what certain groups of people regard as good, but at the end of the day if the writer wrote something, readers bought it and they liked it enough for lots of them to buy the next thing the writer wrote, that writer is--unequivocably--good. Bad writers are ones no one wants to read.

It might be easy to pick faults with King on certain stylistic and technical aspects (and even easier with some of the other writers I mentioned), but he is so much stronger at everything else it doesn't matter. I think it's fair to say "I don't like King's writing", but saying "King is not a good writer" is patently absurd given the evidence of the length of his career and the considerable sums of money he has made from writing.

Haha yes!

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I really enjoyed the Langoliers - one of the few that was more suspense than "I buried her in the corn!" horror.

I really like his writing, I just wish he'd write in a different genre!

But never...never watch 'The Langoliers' the film. Terrible...just....unspeakably awful.

I write and publish horror, and tend to be super critical of horror writers. Horror is an artform...like...sonata-allegro form of Mozart, or the fugue form of Bach, or haiku form in poetry. So I expect to see the architecture of the horror story, and assess how well the form works.

King is aware of what his writing needs to do, and what the measure of success is. He talks about it all the time in his interviews and lectures. That is, your tale is supposed to expose, and drag, your most cherished ideals outta their closets into the light of day. The tale is supposed to seriously disturb your comfort level with whats important to you. In EAST OF EDEN Cal takes brother Aaron to a Monterey whore house, and introduces Aaron to their mother, the madam.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Horror drags your cherished ideals out of the closet?

 

[Tzara]

Says the guy with the Rossetti quote in his sig

Poets (or wannabe poets) are snobbish by definition, given the microscopic size of our readership.

Is it snobbish of me to say that I didn't find it very snobbish? Sure, he's talking about a different set of standards than the majority of people have, but then-- everyone thinks that their set of standards are better than the other ones.

I think what I found unpleasant about his article is the implied superiority in his talking about literary fiction:

After you’ve read Roberto Bolaño and Denis Johnson and David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon, as my son has, why would you return to Stephen King? King may be an adequate enough escape from life, if that’s all you require from a book of fiction, but his work (or what I’ve read of it) is a far cry from literature. . .​

Yes, we all tend to think our standards are best, but the tone I pick up from Allen's article is sneeringly dismissive of those who think of King as an author of literary merit. This is despite the fact that I have read and enjoyed most of the authors he cites as literary exemplars and that he himself admits to a taste for genre fiction (the later novels of Robert B. Parker are hardly stellar fiction by any standard).

If I had to choose, say, between King's or Pynchon's work being of lasting literary merit, I would agree with him (frankly, I'm not very confident of either author's literary longevity). I think I just don't like the way he's stated his case.