stephen king c/d?

Also featured in the same notebook: a much less faithful It illustration, a poem entitled 'What Is Peace?', a comic adaptation of the first five minutes of UHF, several drawings of In Living Color sketches, and the lyrics to half of the songs on the Sir Mix-A-Lot album Swass.

oh man, if you have a "men on film" comic, plz share

I'm actually 99% sure that I do (I drew a lot of one-panel gags based on In Living Color and SNL and Kids In The Hall sketches, for some reason)! I just have no idea where it would be, unfortch.

But if I ever find it, I'll try to remember to post it in the 'stephen king c/d?' thread.

I just finished Night Shift; my favorites by a long shot were "Quitters Inc" and "The Last Rung of the Ladder". I am not surprised that a 6th grader would not find them interesting enough to draw.

Yeah, "Last Rung" and "Woman In The Room" resonated much more strongly this time 'round than they did when I was all "wtf this boring crap isn't horror" and hadn't had any first-hand experience with death & decline in the family. I also found "I Know What You Need" much creepier (like PUA taken to its logical and mildly supernatural extreme).

Starting to encounter the pointless ca. 1990 references in the uncut Stand (e.g. Freddy Krueger and Spuds MacKenzie). It's mildly irksome now that it was pointed out itt.

Well, then.

Stephen King is coming back to broadcast TV. CBS is giving the author’s Under the Dome a 13-episode series order.
Based on King’s bestselling novel, Under the Dome is the story of a small New England town that’s suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome. The town’s residents need to survive the deteriorating post-apocalyptic conditions while searching for answers to what this barrier is, where it came from, and how to make it go away.

“This is a great novel coming to the television screen with outstanding auspices and in-season production values to create a summer programming event,” said Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment. “We’re excited to transport audiences Under the Dome and into the extraordinary world that Stephen King has imagined.”

The series version was originally developed at Showtime. But in an unusual move, the ambitious project jumped from a cable network’s slate to the major broadcaster (more on that below). It’s also a rather unique title for CBS, since the network has been traditionally more wary about betting on serialized dramas than its rivals. But with AMC’s The Walking Dead and NBC’s Revolution, apocalyptic serialized dramas have been delivering large numbers lately.

Fans of the novel shouldn’t expect an exact retelling of the same story. Last we heard, writer Brian K. Vaughan’s (Lost) script for Dome was wisely using the novel’s setup as a launch pad for its own TV-format-friendly version of the story and might even lay the groundwork for a different outcome than the novel’s ending. Also, the CBS version is definitely a series, not a mini-series, with a season finale episode that will leave the story open for more seasons.

Dome‘s development is an example of synergy at work. The project was developed at Showtime, owned by CBS Corp., but the network’s president David Nevins decided it wasn’t really right for the cable channel. He recommended it to Tassler, who was looking for summer programming and loved the concept. Also, Dome is based on the novel published by Simon & Schuster, which is a CBS company too. The development swap is a reverse of what happened with The Tudors, which was shepherded at CBS before moving to Showtime.

Under the Dome will air this summer. CBS Television Studios will produce the series in association with Amblin Television. There’s no cast in place yet, but Neal Baer, Stephen King, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Stacey Snider will serve as executive producers along with Vaughan.

bryan k. vaughan! that makes a lot of sense, actually

well, cool! for now. I'll be interested to see how this develops.

My only off-the-bat concern is that, in the book, the eventual lack of air due to the dome was a real concern for the town and the characters. If they're making this more open-ended, it'll have to be addressed. I don't want it to be dumb like "Revolution" is.

i hope they write a better ending

http://friday87central.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/tommy_westphall.jpg

already 100% better

A+

http://i2.listal.com/image/2382413/500full.jpg

100 kowtows to phil D

“This is an existing human novel coming to the television screen with outstanding auspices and in-season production values to create a summer programming event, bleep blorp,” said Nina Tassler, Robot President of CBS Entertainment. “We are programmed to figuratively transport audiences 'Under the Dome' and into the illogical but potentially lucrative world that human author Stephen King has 'imagined' in a way that is similar to the way my kind approximates colloquial human language, bloop bloop.”

wait there's another dark tower novel now?

Based in part on praise found in this thread, I've been reading 11/22/63. I mentioned it to my dad, because I had enjoyed what I'd read so far, but he sort of shrugged and dismissed Stephen King as an anti Semite. It seemed unlikely, so I didn't really think anything of it, but lo and behold, in the book I kept coming across characters who said racist or anti Semitic things. Never the protagonist, but plenty of other characters, usually just dropped in for local color, so to speak. I did some googling, and apparently this is a thing, lots of explicitly racist or anti Semitic characters in Stephen King's books. Not sure what to make of it, and I'm sure Stephen King's unenlightened New England upbringing may have something to do with it, but as someone who has never so much as written or said the N word once, it's odd that it crops up again and again in several of Kings novels. Anyone else notice this?

I know reading King in junior high expanded my knowledge of curses and slurs about a thousandfold. Pretty sure this sort of dialog is something he's well-known for. Bear in mind that most of his racist or bigoted characters are usually also stupid and evil.

I've noticed that too, josh. I think he thinks that's how salt of the earth types talk. Maybe the salt of his earth does, who knows. But it's bothered me.

Long time King-reading Jew here, more sensitive to anti-Semitism than most, have never for one second in the course of reading dozens of books entertained the thought that SK has a problem with Jews

the girl who hated kevin youkilis

Go read a few James Ellroy novels for comparison's sake.

yeah ellroy's racial politics are, as nabisco might have said, "very very interesting indeed"

otm

lol @ al re youklis :)

But racial politics, of the time or otherwise, is actually an aspect of a lot of Ellroy books, no? In King's books it's always just the creepy guy at the gas station or the dude at the bar who casually busts out with the anti Semitic slur or racist joke. Which is not unimaginable, but it happens a lot in his books. I don't think Stephen King is a racist or anti Semitic,but he is quite fond of capturing the vernacular of those who are, typically to serve no larger point.

Long time King-reading Jew here, more sensitive to anti-Semitism than most, have never for one second in the course of reading dozens of books entertained the thought that SK has a problem with Jews

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, January 20, 2013 10:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

In King's books it's always just the creepy guy at the gas station or the dude at the bar who casually busts out with the anti Semitic slur or racist joke. Which is not unimaginable, but it happens a lot in his books. I don't think Stephen King is a racist or anti Semitic,but he is quite fond of capturing the vernacular of those who are, typically to serve no larger point.

I think with respect to casual racism in previous eras, it isn't King that's adding it in, it's most other writers leaving it out.

I just read IT, the main non-supernatural antagonists were all belligerent racists/sexists/homophobes/anti-semites and encounters with them forced the protagonists together.

Then again of those protagonists the white men who were fat, stuttered, and wore glasses as kids - all ostensibly changeable qualities - were ultimately the most heroic ones.

goddamn him for vilifying racists and glorifying fat stutterers

Not sure what to make of it, and I'm sure Stephen King's unenlightened New England upbringing may have something to do with it, but as someone who has never so much as written or said the N word once, it's odd that it crops up again and again in several of Kings novels. Anyone else notice this?

Criticism of king's repeated use of racist/misogynist/anti-semite/homophobe characters should imo focus more on the fact that it's lazy, clumsy shorthand to let you know who the bad guys are without bothering his arse too much.

racists, misogynists, anti-semites and homophobes are the bad guys iirc

it's lazy, clumsy shorthand to let you know who the bad guys are

Sometimes he has them killing and maming and performing all kinds of fucked up evil supernatural shit too.

anyway I said I've sure noticed it and it's bothered me, but I love King and I don't think he's a racist, like I said I think he just envisions the 'salt of the earth' as a p racist bunch, he's probably right.

Congrats on predictability there folks.

thank u

OK, so just finished "11/23/63," my first Stephen King book in likely 25 years. It started out strong, but I felt a lot of it was padded-out potboiler material, and for all its research, often a little lazy. It could have easily shed a couple of hundred pages or so, which is probably true for a lot of Stephen King. Interesting to read in the afterward that he first tried to write it in 1972.

Back to racist/homophobic/anti-Semitic characters in King's books ... I don't know what to make of it, honestly, but I do find it strange that he returns to those shorthand slurs and epithets again and again, especially in characters who really don't need that sort of OTT shading for us to figure out they're shady. It's always weirdly gratuitous how often and consistently he shoehorns that stuff in (as well as frequent magic Negro tropes, come to think of it) and again, while have no reason to believe he is racist, I wonder if he gets a little vicarious thrill in from doing it. It just caught my eye, is all, and I notice I'm not to only one to question it.

There's a lot, obviously, you can glean from an author from this kind of peripheral yet still conspicuous stuff. Reminds me of when I was reading Michael Chabon, and I noticed that "Mysteries of Pittsburgh," "Wonder Boys" and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" all featured a prominent character with fluid sexuality. I took a break from Chabon for several years, but just read "Telegraph Avenue" ... which features another character with fluid sexuality. This time, I thought, this can't be a coincidence, so I did some modest googling, and lo and behold, Chabon apparently went through a period of fluid sexuality himself, to the extent that Newsweek (I think?) once listed him as a prominent gay author, even though he does not consider himself gay, had wife and kids, etc. So the fact that King again and again, over the course of decades, features characters spouting racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or misogynist stuff just made me wonder, along similar lines, what's going on in the guy's head. Those words, slurs, jokes and stuff may indeed be simply lazy shorthand for salt of the earth stuff, sure, but surely King understands that the N-word and slurs along those lines are pretty conspicuous in any context, let alone scattered casually across a long career.

Chabon's characters with "fluid sexuality" are protagonists (or nearly so, the student in Wonder Boys) and at least in Mysteries of Pittsburgh it was pretty obviously a stand-in for Chabon himself.
Not sure how that translates to background characters and the villains in King's work being assholes and racists.

I'm not a King stan and after stalling out on Under The Dome I doubt I'll read another of his novels (want to get all the short story collections on my Kindle, tho), but you're making a big stretch here.

I'm not stretching at all, just making an observation that only occurred to me just now. Just find it odd, since as far as I know King has never addressed racism as a theme, just likes to populate his books with racists. Not making a comparison with Chabon, per se, just that when I looked into it his frequent use of not-quite-gay characters reflected his personal life, which I knew next to nothing about.

Back to racist/homophobic/anti-Semitic characters in King's books ... I don't know what to make of it, honestly, but I do find it strange that he returns to those shorthand slurs and epithets again and again, especially in characters who really don't need that sort of OTT shading for us to figure out they're shady.

The other wells he frequently returns to for characterization include alcoholism, domestic violence, drug addiction, infidelity, pederasty, rape, violence, murder, and pretty much every other kind of human failing. Do the slurs stand out particularly against that backdrop? I've only read half a dozen of his novels, but a book like "It" makes it hard for me to see how anybody could read King the writer as being on the fence about racism, homophobia, and antisemitism. He pretty clearly thinks they're evil.

I don't know if he delineates them as "evil" but definitely not good things, sure. But anyway, in this conversation, I would say that, yeah, the slurs stick out. I mean, look at the shit Quentin Tarantino is getting for using the N word in "Django," and that movie is explicitly about race. Stephen King uses it all the time - yes, in the mouths of evil characters, as it is used in "Django" - as well as equivalent slurs for gays, Jews and women, and race, let alone racists, has almost nothing to do with his stories. They just happen to feature people who are racists. But given that "the racist" is an archetype of sorts, as is "the pedophile," or "the rapist" or other characters he may create, it'd be more like if several of his books featured multiple pedophiles, or multiple rapists, or multiple alcoholics. Which, granted on the last, many do, but in that case there's a clear autobiographical analog.

Again, I have no reason to think he's racist, and I don't think he's on the fence, either - I think the aforementioned comment dismissing it as lazy characterization is OTT. It's just a relatively unusual, or at least conspicuous, thing to return to again and again.

Here's an example, since it's fresh. "11/22/63" features not one but two bookie characters whose religion and ethnicity is 100% irrelevant to the story. But both are revealed as Jews exclusively, afaict, so that other characters, whom we already know are no good, can deride their Jewishness. "Jews never forget a debt," etc. Totally gratuitous, as far as characterization goes. Doesn't make Stephen King anti-Semitic, but it does make me question why he goes out of his way to set up a character to say something that is when it has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

stephen king is actually a nazi

stephen king is mel gibson's pen name iirc

guys, you tabbed past the google search bar.

maybe stephen king really doesn't like anti-semites and racists, that is just as likely as whatever "oh hmmmm" speculation you're half-throwing out there

Josh, kicking the can around is one thing but you're just rephrasing the same observations everyone itt responded to already. It's worth noting, yes, but continued examination doesn't lead anywhere bcz, as others have pointed out, you can't really view it in isolation.