stephen king c/d?

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.

I'm just saying: has Stephen King ever explicitly denied owning a Klan robe? Things that make you go hmmm.

I dig the Gabbnebian air of "Stephen King's unenlightened New England upbringing" tho.
Fucker grew up in the backwoods, there's got to be something off...

Things that make you go "Ayup..."

stephen king did kristallnacht

Pretty sure all of his novels are loose autobiographies.

Like that time he turned into a car who murdered all those people and fell in love with a teenage boy.

When he first met Tabitha, she was carrying a copy of Soul On Ice Mein Kampf.

I am rehashing the same stuff, I guess, because the response 95% of the time has been some sarcastic, yup, Stephen King is a Nazi shit, which is some silly literal minded misreading of what I'm talking about. Regardless, I'm sure his New England upbringing has something to do with it if this is how Stephen King thinks New England salt of the earth types talk and think.

Anyway, don't think he's a Nazi. Also, don't think this book was that good, so whatevs, Stephen King.

look at the shit Quentin Tarantino is getting for using the N word in "Django," and that movie is explicitly about race

he also has N words "scattered casually across a long career."

Yeah, but for some reason it's only become a big "national debate" thing with this movie. I have no idea why. His background is quite different from King's, though.

Things that make you go "Ayup..."

LOLOL

I was mostly just looking for insight from you guys, as many of you are fans. But I've since come across several Stephen King forums where this is a topic of discussion, with much talk of why the n-word seems to pop up at least once in almost every Stephen King novel. No one seems to think he is racist, nor do I. But it's still a topic of discussion.

Maybe he wants to make the point that the word pops up all the time in real life in that part of the world (I've never been there & have no idea if that's true).

I do agree that his This Is A Bad Guy signposts are too lazy and easy.

Spike Lee's been having a go at QT for his repeated use of the N word as far back as Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. Maybe it's because this movie is about race that it's gaining more traction, if only so white people can tell the black man he's wrong to complain about the white man saying n_____.

Ok, so in honesty, I think King regularly addresses racism and bigotry in his novels because it's an important topic to him. He grew up in humble circumstances in several locations, including Wisconsin and Indiana iirc. He was a teenager during the civil rights war. He's politically liberal, but he's seen too much to be a hippie and he wants to remind people of the things that they want to ignore.

I think there might be something to that, actually. Kind of his take on boomer nostalgia and righteousness. But does he ever actually address racism and bigotry in his books? Or does he just regularly feature characters who are casually racist? The latter might achieve the same goal, but is a lot more passive.

No, no. He addresses racism and bigotry all over his books!

Does he? I believe you if you say so. I've always just come across it through racist characters, who may be dismissed by the narrator but who rarely play a role in any sort of discussion.

Looks like "Bag of Bones" does addresses racism, to some extent. And I guess it is addressed in "It" (which I haven't read, either). I did come across this massive read on purported racism in "The Shining," though. It goes pretty far off the path, but it's intriguing:

http://goatttfish.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/part-ii-is-stephen-king-of-terror-king-guilty-of-white-paternalism-and-subliminal-racism-in-the-shining-110609/

I wouldn't personally opt to do so, but if I were writing a novel that included depictions of shitty people I've known from growing up in rural backwoods nowheresvilles, I'd feel that sprinkling the shitty people's dialogue with racist and homophobic epithets would be a valid choice and, in many ways, one that barely skimmed the surface of their shittiness.

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but my #1 SK book is IT, which spends large amounts of time addressing racism and homophobia from a few different levels.

Is there a short story about a cumeating hotel cleaner in nightmares and dreamscapes that's overtly about race? Years since i read it mind

I wouldn't personally opt to do so, but if I were writing a novel that included depictions of shitty people I've known from growing up in rural backwoods nowheresvilles,

Agree on both points. I get the numerous "whys" in King's case. What I don't really get is the "why so often," especially when it so often goes unexplored or is enlisted gratuitously. One example is within the screed I linked to just above. In "The Shining," we already know Jack is evil, or possessed, or otherwise deranged. What is gained by also having him unleash a racist tirade at the caretaker? In "Misery," we know Annie is insane, in a book with two white characters, but she still finds a way to drop the n-word. Or in "11/22/63," since it is fresh in the mind, toward the end (SPOILER) when he returns to an altered present, we already know society is collapsing, we already know thugs roam the street and radiation poisoning is rampant. One of the first things Jake sees is graffiti that reads "Get out of town, Pakis," or something like that, and someone mentions "hate rallies." So anyone with half a brain should get the point. But then he has to throw in further graffiti of a swastika and the words "JEW RAT." It's just overkill, or I guess laziness. It makes sense in the context of Dallas in the early '60s, which he even addresses in his afterword, saying if anything he was too kind to the city. But in barely pre-apocalypse small town Maine, you'd think Jew rats and Pakis wouldn't be foremost on the mind of street punks. But hey, it's his alternate world, I guess.

stop ruining the stephen king thread

Sorry! Stephen King rules!!!! He's written a lot of words.

i dont get why my comment about this was OTT but your fifty arent, tbh

One trend I noticed on all those other threads I came across was that if anyone brought this stuff up, the fanboys all immediately jumped to similar ad hominems. Many others busted out that favored chestnut "if black people can use the word, why can't Stephen King? That's racist!"

I appreciate the few here who have at least acknowledged that yes, the N-word pops up a bunch in his books, sometimes for no thematic reason. Which is all I really pointed out.

Nobody itt has even approached that level of discourse tbf

The closest it came to that was 'maybe white people use that.word all the time where stephen king comes from/is writing about, so why can't he use it'

Which i'm not sayin is without issues but is a radically different conversation

Back to my original post on the matter, it was just a confluence of things. I happened to be reading my first King book in two and a half decades, and when I recommended what I had read so far to my dad, he shrugged King off as anti-Semitic. Now, I know better enough than to trust anything he says. In fact, the opposite is often true. But it did make me hyper-aware of the racism (and other -isms) depicted in the book, and how it was depicted, and it jogged back memories that this stuff pops up a lot on his other books. Yet for one of the most popular, prominent, prolific writers of all time, I'd never encountered a discussion of the matter, or any controversy, or really any mention of it all, which often does attend other books/movies/music that use the N-word. Surprised me, is all.

I thought this was some interesting self-awareness I came across:

In a 1983 interview with Playboy, King admitted his difficulty in developing believable black characters. He described both Hallorann in The Shining and Mother Abigail in The Stand as "cardboard caricatures of superblack heroes, viewed through rose-tinted glasses of white liberal guilt" (Underwood and Miller 46).

So that affirms a hypothesis that he might indeed be overcompensating, but doing so innocently in service of a broader goal, which I can respect.

It's just overkill, or I guess laziness.

Yeah--and maybe more to the point, a lack of pruning on both the part of the author and editor. He does tend to, you know, belabor stuff.

Anyone else think SK is going through a late-career spike in quality? Things looked pretty bleak there in the Rose Madder, Regulators, Dreamcatcher era. But Under the Dome and 11/22/63 are a ton of fun and the first novella in Full Dark No Stars is one of the best things he's ever written.