Stephen King - worth a go?

[Twit 2]

I haven't read either novel since I was a teenager. Why are you comparing him to Julian Barnes, though? Utterly different writers. No one, least of all King, thinks he's writing literary fiction.

[kalowski]

I haven't read either novel since I was a teenager. Why are you comparing him to Julian Barnes, though? Utterly different writers. No one, least of all King, thinks he's writing literary fiction.

Well, I compared him to Barnes because the very next book I picked up after The Stand was A Sense of an Ending, so comparing was quite natural. King might not be writing literary fiction, but he is writing fiction and therefore a comparison is fair.

[pigamus]

I read them both last year. Utterly awful. And hideously overlong. Both suffered from that classic Stephen King issue: all the characters are the same, a pop song or early sixties advert popping into their mind at every opportunity.
When I was a teen I enjoyed Night Shift, Misery and Different Seasons, and I do remember being excited by Pet Semetary but I was a teen, and I'm not any more. After reading The Stand I read some Julian Barnes and it struck me how poor King was in comparison.

File in "overrated".

Oh Harold, Franny's going to be so impressed when she reads this!

[Twit 2]

Well, I compared him to Barnes because the very next book I picked up after The Stand was A Sense of an Ending, so comparing was quite natural. King might not be writing literary fiction, but he is writing fiction and therefore a comparison is fair.

You are surely taking the piss.

"I listened to the new Dua Lipa single and then I listened to Bach's Art of Fugue. Let me tell you, Lipa really can't write triple fugues, in fact her use of counterpoint in general is severely lacking. It was the next thing I listened to so a comparison is natural. I mean, they're both writing music..."

[Small Man Big Horse]

It's funny all the people in the thread who obsessively read him in their early teens. There's some truly  nasty and dark shit in his books. Might explain a lot...

I see where you're coming from, but I blame Doomlord for making me the freak of nature that I am to this day.

[kalowski]

You are surely taking the piss.

"I listened to the new Dua Lipa single and then I listened to Bach's Art of Fugue. Let me tell you, Lipa really can't write triple fugues, in fact her use of counterpoint in general is severely lacking. It was the next thing I listened to so a comparison is natural. I mean, they're both writing music..."

Wow. Nice analogy, because in many ways it works. Dua Lipa is ephemeral stuff for kids, and so is Stephen King. The difference is, I think, Dua Lipa knows this, and writes simple pop songs. King thinks he has gravitas and therefore writes 900+ pages. It's as if Dua Lipa released a 30 minute track.

[NJ Uncut]

Oh Harold, Franny's going to be so impressed when she reads this!

Dunno why she wouldn't shag Harold anyway

They're the same character. Just be like boning yourself

[Keebleman]

From what I gather, it's middling and let down by ineffectual villains.

Just finished Doctor Sleep, and I thought the villains were the best thing in the book.  What was interesting was that despite their practice of torturing children to death, King actually makes their inter-relationships warm and affecting.  They feel real love and loyalty for one another.  It doesn't actually make you root for them, but there is a certain empathetic pang when one of them cops it and their comrades grieve.

Also interesting is how the goodies and baddies don't just fear each other, they hate each other, with an intensity that it quite unsettling, especially when it comes from the goodies.

The book as whole though isn't much.  It takes a long time to get going and the psychic gift known as the shining turns out to have a bewildering plethora of features and applications, each new one appearing when King needs it for the plot.  There is quite a bit of tension towards the end when the big showdown is looming but once you realise that, whatever difficulty the heroes find themselves in, King will just unveil a new power of the shining that fits the situation perfectly, it all gets a little flat.

[ZoyzaSorris]

I read them both last year. Utterly awful. And hideously overlong. Both suffered from that classic Stephen King issue: all the characters are the same, a pop song or early sixties advert popping into their mind at every opportunity.
When I was a teen I enjoyed Night Shift, Misery and Different Seasons, and I do remember being excited by Pet Semetary but I was a teen, and I'm not any more. After reading The Stand I read some Julian Barnes and it struck me how poor King was in comparison.

File in "overrated".

Maybe I'm just in the throes of some kind of slow early-onset dementia, hence why I'm starting to like stuff a lot more basic and juvenile than in my pretentious youth of days gone. Thanks for bringing that to my attention :(

[H-O-W-L]

Read through IT for the first time in over a decade recently and I think it's shocking how it careens from fantastic to unreadable within the same few pages.

I think the climactic fight with IT, both in the fifties and in the eighties, is fucking fantastic in written format though. Unfilmable, but fuck, the film versions really don't do it justice. I fucking love that bit.

Could do without the sex bit.

[Mister Six]

the psychic gift known as the shining turns out to have a bewildering plethora of features and applications, each new one appearing when King needs it for the plot.  There is quite a bit of tension towards the end when the big showdown is looming but once you realise that, whatever difficulty the heroes find themselves in, King will just unveil a new power of the shining that fits the situation perfectly, it all gets a little flat.

That kind of narrative convenience annoyed me immensely when I reread IT last year (or the year before - ahead of the "Part One" film coming out). Why doesn't It just eat the main characters? Oh, because of the magic number five protecting them for some ill-defined reason. Why do they just happen to know what to do to get out a particularly tricky situation despite being children facing the unknown? Oh, because of predestination or some shit.

Very bloody lazy, but I can imagine the editor not wanting to nag coke-up King into adding yet more pages to the manuscript to work it all out.

[Kryton]

I wish The Mist had been a longer book. That scene in the pharmacy with the weird spiders and the cocooned shop workers was terrifying.

[Kryton]

I read them both last year. Utterly awful. And hideously overlong. Both suffered from that classic Stephen King issue: all the characters are the same, a pop song or early sixties advert popping into their mind at every opportunity.

I dunno Trash Can man was great to read about, Lloyd's story was cool, the 'Kid' was arguably ridiculous, I found the characters weird and wonderful, especially the antagonists. I don't think it was ever meant to be high-brow reading, just a cool story about good and evil. The Stand certainly inspired a lot of horror.

[NJ Uncut]

I wish The Mist had been a longer book. That scene in the pharmacy with the weird spiders and the cocooned shop workers was terrifying.

Oh yeah, I liked the Mist. And the adaptation (the fillum) had a better ending but it's a terrific short piece.

Actually thought the Langoliers was very decent, the TV shite probably ruined it for most people.

Storm of the Century works in both mediums (well, it's a screenplay)

[bgmnts]

Bronson Pinchot is awesome in the Langoliers

[Gregory Torso]

Much as I like Stephen King, and a lot of that is a sort of comforting nostalgic kind of like, memories of burning through It, The Stand and Misery, and the short story collections which are great, when I was kid, because hey, no age restrictions on buying a book where a space leper tries to suck a kids dick right off, or a man says "you cunt" at a long long scarey finger thats coming out the plug hole to get him. But, Steve mate, the mate, he cannot write teenagers. Every teenager in a Stephen King book, even if it's set in contemporary 2019 times, they all listen to Eddie Cochran and have "ducks asses" and wear leather jackets and have names like Snake Eyes and Daddy-o. Also every male protagonist over fifty has long hair, a leather jacket, a motorbike and is called Stephen Kong and he's a struggling writer who's had sex with lots of babes and done coke til his nose plummeted off his sad face and got wedged in typewriter mouth.

Oh and another thing
(the ghoasts, the ghoasts)
that can fuck off, and what annoyed me and ruined the mysteries of some of his stories is the idea that the Dark Tower novels/universe connect everything together, that all the bizarre creepy stuff is just another dimension leaking through or something.  It means that "IT" isn't some weird unknowable cosmic ancient creature, it's just some spider from the crimson king's porn dungeon. The Shining is just about Randall Flagg's time share place where everyone gets their dick sucked and its all ghosts. I have to admit I don't really know whatever the fuck is gwan on in those fighting fantasy wizard books, I haven't read them. The beams, serve the beams, SHUT UP, don't explain everything as being like it is in the Talisman (great book though by the way), you step s'ways into a magical universe where someone opens up a chicken korma and you can smell it a hundred miles away and there's evil trees that can whip your punk ass. Leave the mystery.

He's great.

"longer than you think, dad, longer than you think!" used to enjoy shouting that at my dad.

[Mister Six]

Just got done with his latest, The Institute, and it's a cracker. Wee lad's parents are shot dead in their beds and he's spirited away to a sinister complex in the wilds of (yep) Maine where he and other kids with telepathic or telekinetic abilities are brutally experimented on by unknown forces. It's a simple tale considering the length of the bloody thing, but after a massive prelude that follows a cop who doesn't reappear until halfway through the tome (fair enough - there would have been a lot of momentum-killing backstory to crowbar in) it doesn't let up. Very claustrophobic, highly compelling, and actually managed to stick the landing, more or less, with only minimal silliness. It does do the thing Gregory mentioned of having the young boy be far too clever and eloquent for his age, but that's a plot point  Good stuff. Recommended.

[Kryton]

"longer than you think, dad, longer than you think!" used to enjoy shouting that at my dad.

Is that from The Jaunt?

I forgot to mention that one earlier. One of the ones that really lingered with me for a few days after reading.

[kalowski]

Is that from The Jaunt?

I forgot to mention that one earlier. One of the ones that really lingered with me for a few days after reading.

That rings a bell. Is that in Night Shift? (Or Graveyard Shift, whatever it was called)

I occasionally remember "They taste just like chocolate fingers!" - but again this highlights another King "technique". A strange, slightly opaque exclamation at the end of a story.

[oy vey]

^
That's "lady fingers" , from Survivor Type I mentioned above. The Jaunt is Skeleton Crew.

[Artie Fufkin]

Much as I like Stephen King, and a lot of that is a sort of comforting nostalgic kind of like, memories of burning through It, The Stand and Misery, and the short story collections which are great, when I was kid, because hey, no age restrictions on buying a book where a space leper tries to suck a kids dick right off, or a man says "you cunt" at a long long scarey finger thats coming out the plug hole to get him. But, Steve mate, the mate, he cannot write teenagers. Every teenager in a Stephen King book, even if it's set in contemporary 2019 times, they all listen to Eddie Cochran and have "ducks asses" and wear leather jackets and have names like Snake Eyes and Daddy-o. Also every male protagonist over fifty has long hair, a leather jacket, a motorbike and is called Stephen Kong and he's a struggling writer who's had sex with lots of babes and done coke til his nose plummeted off his sad face and got wedged in typewriter mouth.

Oh and another thing
(the ghoasts, the ghoasts)
that can fuck off, and what annoyed me and ruined the mysteries of some of his stories is the idea that the Dark Tower novels/universe connect everything together, that all the bizarre creepy stuff is just another dimension leaking through or something.  It means that "IT" isn't some weird unknowable cosmic ancient creature, it's just some spider from the crimson king's porn dungeon. The Shining is just about Randall Flagg's time share place where everyone gets their dick sucked and its all ghosts. I have to admit I don't really know whatever the fuck is gwan on in those fighting fantasy wizard books, I haven't read them. The beams, serve the beams, SHUT UP, don't explain everything as being like it is in the Talisman (great book though by the way), you step s'ways into a magical universe where someone opens up a chicken korma and you can smell it a hundred miles away and there's evil trees that can whip your punk ass. Leave the mystery.

He's great.

"longer than you think, dad, longer than you think!" used to enjoy shouting that at my dad.

What an exceptional post! Thanks! Genuine LOLZ.

[grassbath]

I think he's very talented and a Force for Good. The short stories are generally better - they necessarily curtail his tendency to bang on and lose control of the idea. Too many of his novels end up like Needful Things or Under the Dome - brilliant, intricate, loving world-building with a cast of very interesting characters, which wrap up in a very confused and hasty climax. Even The Stand, to be honest, really runs out of steam towards the end - I remember being struck by how the prose itself gets more and more stripped-down and lacking in detail.

I read the entire Dark Tower series for some reason. It went properly off-piste towards the end. When it turned out that the Wolves of the Calla were all Doctor Dooms chucking Harry Potter flying balls, I cried, tore pages out of my copy, and sent a petulant, slightly threatening message to his personal account on Goodreads.

[Artie Fufkin]

Just started Doctor Sleep (99p kindle version on Amazon). Reading King, for me, is just like putting on a comfy old pair of slippers.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm going really slowly through the first volume of the Dark Tower - which the younger me would have knocked off in an afternoon - but Artie Fufkin's post above is how I feel about him too.

[easytarget]

On Writing is great. Even if you're not a massive fan of Stephen King (I like him fine - and his Twitter feed is a delight) or horror or, even, writing, it's a smashing book about creativity. Anyone who's interested how art gets done should give it a spin.

I picked up Mr Mercedes a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, I haven't got to grips with his well regarded stuff yet.

[holyzombiejesus]

Anything people would recommend that's from the last 20 or so years, not part of a series and is scary?

[Magnum Valentino]

Yeah, Later, from last year. Don't want to spoil it as it's a pulp novel published under the Hard Case Crime line so the gimmick is kind of integral to it, but I found it memorably unsettling. Quick read, too, I did it in an afternoon.

[Artie Fufkin]

Just finished the audiobook of Billy Summers. It was not at all scary (deliberately), had just the slightest of nods to another of King's books -

Spoiler alert

The Shining

[close]

I enjoyed it. Verbose, of course, but great escapist pulp.

[PlanktonSideburns]

Good spoonerism also

[Artie Fufkin]

Good spoonerism also

Lolz!