Why do snobby people say Stephen King is lowly literature?
I can't say I have a really shit taste, but I enjoy most of his stuff, though I didn't read his mainstream books such as Shining or It, I enjoy his short novels more, like the ones in Skeleton Crew, and movie adaptations, they are usually decent.
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I have only read like 2 or 3 things he has written and that was some time ago. I don't think I have ever claimed him to be a lowly writer though. Horror movies don't interest me much less horror or suspense fiction. If anything I think he should be praised for his work ethic.
>work ethic
i think you mean cocaine usage
Cocaine is expensive, if you can even find the pure stuff anymore, no wonder he was a writing machine for so long.
He's rich so you have to assume he's going to know where to get decent coke in bulk. Decent coke if you have connections is 200 for a ball, although most shit is severely stepped on. But you got to understand, crack fricked up the coke game. Why sell coke when you can turn and 8ball into a quarter and literally turn 200 into 700 instead of 350. Obviously if your fricking with Mexican gang members or super connected rich people you'll come across some fire.
He's a solid enough writer, and has some really good books, but it's annoying when people act like he's the sole face of horror. Anywhere I go, when I mention I like horror, people ask me what my favorite Stephen King book is or have I read ____ by him.
There's a lot of great horror writers, him included, but he's just overrated.
He's usually people's first horror author so snobs like to dunk on his work to distinguish themselves. It's a gatekeeper thing.
His early work is good. These days he just shits them out.
He has said before that he never plans the books out, he just starts writing. This leads to a lot of stupid endings. I appreciate a good work ethic, but at a certain point you’re just writing to create content, not because you have anything you actually want to say.
There's nothing wrong with it, really. In his position, would you stop writing when it made you rich? His Bachman experiment already proved people will buy anything with his name slapped on it, so there's no risk to him.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. Just saying the quality has definitely dropped. He knows that people will buy anything he puts out, so he doesn’t try as hard.
>His Bachman experiment already proved people will
His Bachman experiment? Proved that readers out there, were reading the unknown Bachman's stuff, and comparing it to King. He did what any artist rarely can... he was a hit all over again, with his writing under an unknown name. Proof he was talented.
He was talented in the sense of genre fic but I certainly wouldn’t consider him a preeminent man of letters. He had a formula, was prolific, and was extremely accessible. At a certain point in his career his name sold for him. If he was talented at one thing it’s was creating a small town America with horror lurking underneath vibe. As a writer he is almost a glorified screenwriter as many adaptations of his have been made that are better than his books
They are fine for being genre fic and if you like that it is fine. They are not IQfy literature and as the self appointed guardian of the canon on this board I will redirect you to Reddit where there are several subs to discuss him to your hearts content. Please realize something. King and genre fic you can discuss all over the internet. IQfy is one of the few places to discuss canon writers and even here we barely have that with all the other bulllshit and shitflinging political nonsense.
Who decides what's valuable and what's not? Isn't that the purpose of discussing literature?
If it were up to tards like you, Haunting of Hill House and The October Country wouldn't be considered literature because of their horror leanings.
Anything which I Jon Kolner, arbitrarily decide to be IQfyworthy is thus litworthy. It is not hard.
Stand by me has a place in my heart as a film which I enjoyed at a young age but that is an “entrance” to art and there is much better out there. King can stay on Reddit where he belongs.
King is a writer? Check.
King published book(s)? Check.
there ya go. It's fair game on IQfy.
I mean, you *do* understand, that with whatever you consider "good lit", there is therefore by definition certainly going to exist "bad lit". For a modern writer? I find King pretty cool.
I read a "pair" books by him.
The Regulators... then Desperation.
Really got to know the bad guy over two books.
> there ya go. It's fair game on IQfy.
I mean, you *do* understand, that with whatever you consider "good lit", there is therefore by definition certainly going to exist "bad lit". For a modern writer? I find King pretty cool.
Lit implies literature which is good. Let’s break this down Plato style. If literature/ education is good then there can be no bad literature because literature is inherently good so therefore Stephen King is not literature because he is bad. Literature == any book
IQfy has always tended towards the literary. There are a ton of places you can talk about King on the internet, not so many where you can talk about Sterne or Gaddis. Let’s keep this place for the literary. It’s bad enough with the /misc/posting, incelposting, and being a blue /b/. No need to cripple it more
He's ok. I have not loved anything I've read of his. It has a lot of cool story elements but it'd be way better as a 300-400 pager instead of 1,000. The sketches of various horror movie tropes were just meh and didn't feel scary or intriguing, while the stuff about the history of the town and the It creature were cool.
People get up their own ass with shit. I appreciate higher end literature. The Brothers Karamazov is probably my favorite novel, but it's not my favorite to read. That is probably War and Peace, which I've reread more because it's a smooth easy read. I have a thing for epic poetry but I don't always want to read something heavy like Milton or Chaucer. I listened to the Hunger Games books back when I had a job I could listen to books during and it was fun. Or I can get into Star Wars books, Game of Thrones, Red Rising, etc. Fun shit. Sometimes you don't need literary sci-fi like Hyperion, or hard sci-fi like Alistair Reynolds. Sometimes shit like Warhammer 40k or Red Rising (40k with Greeks and Vikings lol) hits the spot.
My mom is better read than anyone I know. Goes to the library like every week. Hundreds of titles in Audible. Actually finished Ulysses, always been in book clubs, has read the whole Story of Civilization twice, which is wild, almost every classic I can think of. But she also reads more paperback fluff than anyone I know; lots of mysteries, sometimes sci-fi and fantasy, but mostly lit that just isn't super high brow.
Okay, thank you for reciting to me your autobiography. I will file it alongside the other bull shit which people constantly barrage me with despite me having never inquired to hear it.
Nothing is wrong with liking King or genre fic in general, but there isn’t much to post about. Maybe you liked a character, maybe a plot twist was cool. Keep genre fic in generals or just go to Reddit or goodreads
>but there isn’t much to post about. Maybe you liked a character, maybe a plot twist was cool.
This is a good way of putting it. There is nothing to really reflect on or to debate so I don't see why it is a big deal that you need someone to read or discuss that with you anyways.
I refuse to read his work because he's a nasty little junkie and he looks weird.
Probably because he says the same thing himself. He's compared his own writing to eating Burger King - fine every once in a while but not something you should be constantly indulging in.
I used to read him a lot when younger.
I don;t find him a childish writer. He *does* write with an easy to read style, that makes it easier to read his long books. While I am fully *capable* of reading tight, impressive sentence structure... thats not to say I love it. King has a way with it.
I really loved him when I was in High School. Read a bunch of his shorts and novels. My favorite was Rose Madder, the one that starts out a down-to-earth drama about a runaway housewife pursued by her abusive cop husband then turns into a bizzare Greek myth inspired surrealist thing when she steps into a painting to escape him. IIRC he said in an interview or something that it's his least favorite of his own books so that incongruance might explain my later feelings.
I recently read one of his shorts stories and it was not good. There were some neat descriptions of intense gore and the monster was pretty neat, but I didn't give a rat's ass about any of the characters and parts of the prose just felt dumb.
He's definitely not terrible but let's face it, if it weren't for Kubrick elevating his stuff he'd be permanent midlist.
I think that his setups and the background stories of all the side characters in his books are really good— everything before the supernatural stuff kicks in. The stuff in Salem’s Lot before the vampire, everything before Mother Abigail has her dreams in The Stand, all of the Dead Zone because the psychic stuff is understated and sometimes vague. I wish he would write straight realism without all the horror / dark fantasy shtick. He could be like a Richard Ford with more mass appeal.
King admits in interviews early on that he's no prose model or master (and it shows on the page). He just spins a good yarn enough for Kubrick to tease out its potential in another medium.
King is a good product of the media industry. very strong brand loved by all women. you know it's really good quality when women endorse it.
Also he hates trumpf.