stephen king c/d?

Maybe that emphasizes King's inability to match his aspirations, then, since I've never gleaned some larger "truth" from his books, as entertaining and creative as many of them are. There are no specific lessons to be learned from his racists, who are typically bad guys already, racism or not. It's just ... there. That's why I've considered much of it gratuitous. But that could also be a facet of lack of editing, self or otherwise. Worth observing that just as conspicuous as the inclusion of so many racial epitets is the fact that for all his flawed heroes, I don't think King has ever written a hero whose flaws included racism, homophobia, et al. He does save the virulent stuff for bad guys exclusively, iirc, though something I read a bit ago implied several of the characters in "The Stand," good guys as well as bad guys, drop the N-word. Can't attest to the context, though.

I liked Viceroy's take on "The Shining."

for some reason the Nook store had 11/22/63 for like 3.99 last week, so i decided to take the plunge. i was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Under the Dome, so i'm hoping to not be bored to tears.

Likely you'll want to skim the lengthy descriptions of small-town Texas high school plays, and a bit of romantic melodrama, perhaps some of the eavesdropping into the domestic life of Lee Harvey Oswald, but aside from a few of these bits padded out in the middle, it moves at a pretty good pace.

Thanks Josh! I didn't want to be all "shaww, yeah, he's like totally a nazi or something bro" but having read his non-fiction On Writing and Danse Macabre I know he is actually a very introspective and thoughtful person about the craft of writing so I come from the position that he's "doing something" with his use of racial/sexual/ethnic epithets and who uses them.
xxp

Having read a lot of his stuff though I have to concede that sometimes it seems that it is the case he's just trying to shock you or, what seems more to be the case is he's already written 400 pages and is introducing another bad guy or something and is like "fuck, I don't want to write another 5 pages showing the reader why this guy is terrible I'll just have him curse Jews or something." He can be very guilty of telling when he should be showing. Also he's writing for a general audience so perhaps he thinks anything deeper than morality-play-level racial politics would lose him readers. (That doesn't mean I'd agree that he thinks his readers are dumb, but I mean when pretty much all of his works are accessible and understandable to a 7th grader, he's not exactly going for Proust-level literature).

That said, his non-fiction seems to be geared to a more intellectual and savvy audience. He should do more of that.

xpost yeah just skim the meat of the story, who cares about all that

u_u

Ha, the meat of the story. The boring meat.

But that's what most of Stephen King IS. It's the time he spends in one place or with one character to set them firmly in your mind. If you skim all that you may as well go read someone else entirely. Dude writes LONG books.

Most irritating/funny thing about 11/22/63 for me was how damn adamant SK was about showing his lead couple's healthy sex life. Typical SK--one scene would have sufficed; he gave us 5 or 6.

VG otm, I've discovered that through re-reading a lot of the stuff I read in high school. What I'd previously thought of as boring exposition actually ended up being the pieces that really breathed life into the most memorable characters.

I don't mean to come off as a total fangirl -- he definitely can be longwinded and he'll belabor all the live long day. But, stuff like the repeated sex scenes with the main couple, yeah it's a bit much but it also makes the moments when one or both of them is in peril (ie with the ex husband or the ending)...all that boring repetitive stuff makes those high-danger moments that much more engaging and there's more at stake, because he's dragged you around in the sappy stuff.

imo

I guess. But in a story about a man who travels back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, it almost by definition gets bogged down when he has to wait three or so years for the date to arrive, much of which is spent on a, yes, sappy small town romance that only here and there seemed believable (to me) and certainly could have conveyed the same meanings/emotions in a fraction of the word count.

Part of the problem I suppose was that I never bought the protagonist as a plausible 35 year old. What 35 year old would get off on going back to the late '50s and early '60s? That's not his nostalgia, it's King's, which rang all the more untrue when Jake was so into those classic cars and oldies on the radio. That's a failure of developing the character at the start as a sort of man out of time. Every time his age is mentioned it blew my mind, because I kept reading him like he was in his mid-'40s.

Between all the familiar stuff borrowed from "Final Destination" and "Back to the Future II" (harmless, and fine in this context), there was one butterfly effect/paradox exchange in the whole tome that I found hilarious. When Al early on introduces Jake to time travel, Jake asks (per every hoary sci-fi cliche from the "Twilight Zone" down): "What if I go back in time and kill my own grandfather?" Al looks at him funny and asks "Why the fuck would you do that?"

In some ways, that made the whole 900 pages worthwhile.

Is that Nook special on '63 still in effect?

Well fine but the idea that a 35 year old is locked into liking cars and music from his own era is just as laughable. It's fine if you didn't like the book that much, but now you're just making things up that annoyed you

This 37 year old would go back to the 50's in a hot minute and be right at home with the music and cars. It's not a stretch.

This 29 year old would be pretty into 50s music and cars. Nothing to do with nostalgia, they were awesome cars and doo-wop is also awesome.

I'm totally not going to read that 900 book about time-travel Kennedy assassination prevention though. I bet it doesn't even bring up stuff like George H.W. Bush being on the grassy knoll or LHO being a Manchurian Candidate prgrammed by the CIA.

yeah sadly devoid of the good conspiracies I'm afraid, lol

Dang, now I'm thinking about "1922," the novella I mentioned from Full Dark, No Stars. Again, I thought it was one of the best pieces of writing SK has ever produced--but I don't recall hearing much enthusiasm about it from others. Am I alone here?

I still haven't read FDNS, I need to.

Yeah i don't have FDNS in my holdings either.

FDNS is terrific. All four of those stories are real page turners, and definitely had the feel of King in his prime. That last one, which was clearly inspired by the BTK killer? Could not stop reading.

I have always liked his novellas and short stories better than his long form work, and FDNS is no exception. 1922 was great, but I liked all of the novellas in that collection.

xpost Actually, if you read the afterword, King does construct a conspiracy describing his 2% or whatever suspicion that Oswald wasn't acting alone. But I skimmed it. ;) King's alternate reality does end (briefly) with Hillary Clinton as president, though.

This 38 year old loves doo wop and the stuff that 37 year old listens to in the past. Prolly wouldn't move to Texas and mack on a schoolteacher while I waited to save Kennedy, though. So many other cool places to be!

Another invented thing to make fun of "11/22/63" for (though it also had something I liked): Jake recognizes Vic Morrow in "Combat!" as the guy who is killed 20 years later during the making of "Twilight Zone: The Movie," which seemed to me a little too esoteric for this guy to know/recognize. However! In his segment Vic Morrow plays a racist time traveler sent back to (among other places) Vietnam, which ties into many themes of the book and this thread, which King would call a harmonic convergence.

Hey, serious (spoiler again!) question re: the book: the guys with the cards in the hats? King never explains who they are and what they do, really, and what they tell Jake isn't terribly illuminating or even necessary. So what purpose do they serve in the book? (Which I didn't dislike, just mostly found about 200-300 words too long).

Read 11/22/63 a long time ago (well before it came out) so I can't remember any guys with cards in their hats. I do remember the dystopic ending felt rushed and shoddily conceived next to the long, loving details given to everything in the 60s.

The significance to me seemed to be the colors of the card, and that that character was the only other character that was seemingly aware of the timetravel portal thingy -- the 'different guys' was the same guy at different spots on the timeline, marked by the changing color of the tag in his hatband. Though I think the Green guy was maybe a different version of him? The one who was like the guardian or whatever. But he was just kind of a signpost guy to reinforce the dangers of timetravel to Al.
The colors acted like radiation signifiers I think? - green safe/yellow mild/orange bad/black chernobyl

Yeah, I guess that's why I found him/them unnecessary. (And it is a them, I believe). When Jake went back to dystopian future 2011, he would have immediately seen how badly he screwed things up and gone back to "reset" everything. So really I think the man existed strictly as a convenience to explain why Jake couldn't just go back over and over again. But it never says who out him there or why, if his job was to protect the portal, why he did such a shitty job explaining its dangers. Not that any of that matters, or the source of the portal for that matter, either. But since none of it matters, the man's presence jumps out at me as a distraction, another lazy contrivance. Had he not been in the story at all it likely would have (or could have) played out the exact same way.

Another question I had was why he needed to stay in 1958 one last time, write out his (this?) story, and then bury it to be maybe discovered in the future. Why couldn't he have just travelled back to his present like the card man wanted and scribbled out his story when he got home? I actually read the end a couple of times and can't figure it out.

All the times in the past he was playing hide the poundcake or whatever I was convinced he was going to get her pregnant with his own parallel universe grandpa or something.

who out him there, that should read - the green card man does admit he is human, with a name and everything, which is even more confusing.

While I'm complaining - and this actually jumped out at me as I was reading, well before I had finished the book, as a contrivance that added nothing but confusion and word count: the narrative paradox of having a guy recount in lucid detail his serious brain damage and memory loss. It was disorienting, like breaking the 180 degree rule in film, and it really added nothing to the story save several pages of phony suspense.

What I'm really trying to say is, Steve - Sai - if you're reading this, and I think you probably are, you've had the best editors, and maybe a couple of bad ones, too. You've made your millions many times over. I think it's time to give me a shot reading a draft. You can use whatever words you want, I promise I won't say anything. Just give me a chance to trim the fat a little. Ok? Thanks.

Answering my own question: yes, the 1963 novel is still 3.99 on Nook. Buying it!

I think teh cardman is like a timecop from the future sent to make sure ppl dont kill kennedies

etc

$3.99 on Kindle too.

Def. worth that, and I mean that without sarcasm.

I may have just received an advance copy of a certain SK book coming out in June. Will report back.

!!

Sweet.

I'm still plugging away on my chronological King (re)readthrough. 2/3 of the way through Cujo presently. The Long Walk (always a favorite back in the day) might be the best thing I've read so far. So pure, so effective. I never got very far into Roadwork as a kid, but I'm glad I read it as an adult. It has a very 'small '70s film' vibe. Like something you'd see on a double bill with Five Easy Pieces.

Have finished the Hard Case Crime coming out in June. It's short and sweet and nostalgic, reads like a memoir, and is one of his gentlest books. It is probably the very definition of a minor work, but certainly not without charm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDS28r2qnAw

i thought that was enrico colantoni in the still but i guess it isn't

Under the Dome aka MRI footage of Michael Chiklis's brain

I know we've (I've) gone into this already, but I've never read "The Stand" and started reading it today, and already, just 45 or so out of, what, 1100 pages, I think three or four different characters have casually used the N-word. What the fuck, Stephen King? And I haven't even come close to gettung to the character for whom being a big racist is actually a character trait!

I'm reading the long version, I believe. It's interesting that King changed the setting from 1980 to 1990, and altered a few other things to suit the new timeline.

SK always used to have (still has?) lotsa irredeemable racists in his books to use as monster-fodder.

It's funny, that updated timeline: It was changed to 1985 for an early '80s printing, with very little else changed, so it was kinda funny to read Larry Underwood's mom make a disco-disparaging remark. (I see it was changed to an anti-rap comment in '90, nice touch.)

I didn't like Under The Dome but the mini-series is worse.

These racist characters aren't the bad guy sort, though, at least not all, not yet. Like Larry's mom, who drops an n bomb in her first scene. Is she evil? Just casually racist it seems, for no good reason.

Yeah I forgot about her, I guess King just figures "hm,older-generation working class New Yorker? Racist. Small-town Texans? Racist" I'm pretty sure this was discussed upthread - King being the kind of boomer leftie who sees racist everywhere y/n?

if you look upthread pretty much the same discussion happened when you read 11/22/63, Josh :)

not that it's not valid conversation, just needed to address the general deja-vu

in the Stand, is it related to 2/3 being written in the 70s and the rest in the late 80s?

I totally conceded we went over this before. When I said we went over this before. ;)

It's just so weird to me. I wish he were better, when needed, at depicting racism and writing about racism rather than just taking this shortcut.

For the record, I've read exactly one King book in the past 25+ years, the aforementioned. Reading "The Stand" is an impulsive move propelled by curiosity and a like of apocalypse fiction.

I dunno how they stack up casual-racism-wise but you should try his short story collections.

I personally think that's where he shines. His flaw with this novels, at least in my opinion is creating a whole set of characters/locations that are written vividly enough that you at least buy into them and their world... and then not knowing how to end anything ever.

That being said I have enjoyed a good portion of his novels

But Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, even Four Past Midnight --- pretty badass imo