stephen king c/d?

Xps if we’re talking short stories with great endings I can’t believe “the jaunt” hasn’t been mentioned

if you're bothered by stephen king endings, stick to the short stories.

Which writer would be singled out for being particularly *good* at endings? Endings are hard.

tolkien packed five into LOTR tbf

Which writer would be singled out for being particularly *good* at endings? Endings are hard.

Most books have pretty good endings, imo. Being notably bad at endings I'd argue is a relatively rare thing, given how important endings are to books. I remember taking a contemporary literature class in college 20 years ago, and we read something I just didn't like. Maybe "The Joy Luck Club?" (King connection!) Anyway, I didn't like it and said so in class, and someone that did like it asked me why I didn't. So I said I didn't think it was well written. And she said there's more to a book than the quality of the writing. And I said, yeah, that might be true, but being well written is pretty fucking intrinsic to the success of a book!

Endings, too.

most books don’t even have good beginnings and middles

Of two authors that Stephen King has blurbed:

Michael Connolly is pretty great at endings, even if they're basically the same every time (the detective solves the case but there's a bittersweet/failed resolution to the B-plot about their personal life).

Elmore Leonard too - he's the anti-Tolkien of "saying goodbye to the characters".

xpost Ha, that's definitely true! I guess I meant most "good" books. Like, if a book's good, it's relatively unusual to say it's good ... except for the ending.

And yeah, for genre guys, folks like Leonard and Connolly are masters. I wonder if King's problem is more of a problem with monsters/supernatural/horror writing in general? Once you've introduced something not real into the world, with its own rules and whatnot, I wonder if it's harder to wrap up your story in a satisfying manner.

I've clearly turned a personal response into a universal there. Which is to say I'm generally kind of disappointed by endings. But then I know a good one when I see one, so. Fuck knows.

Good post ending.

Thx.

Surely a great book somewhere ends with the words "Fuck knows."

Didn't Hemingway famously win a short story contest with his classic story "Fuck knows"?

For sale: baby shoes, fuck knows

Big fish or not? Fuck knows.

The Sun Also Rises. Or Maybe It Doesn't. Fuck Knows.

For Whom the Fuck Knows.

A Moveable Feat is essentially one long 'fuck knows, m8!'

lol jic

Surely a great book somewhere ends with the words "Fuck knows."

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, May 23, 2018 8:54 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Bruce Robinson's The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman comes close iirc

Also Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, iirc.

First half out Outsider is GREAT, then (wait for it) SK realizes he's painted himself into a corner yet again & has to get silly to get out of it.

Pet Sematery has a great ending and fantastic final line (“Darling.”)

but being well written is pretty fucking intrinsic to the success of a book!

This is demonstrably untrue

Example?

Anyone reading the Outsider? V much enjoying 100 pages in

I met Stephen King at a bar once. I told him, “You have given me so many nightmares.” He just walked away without saying anything.

Next day, I told my friend, who was there, “Stephen King is kind of a dick.” He said, “That wasn’t him and you really hurt that guy’s feelings.”

— Barlow Adams (@BarlowAdams) June 1, 2018

"but being well written is pretty fucking intrinsic to the success of a book!"

This is demonstrably untrue

― latebloomer, Thursday, May 24, 2018 9:12 AM (one week ago)
Example?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, May 24, 2018 9:19 AM (one week ago)

The Fountainhead. Atlas Shrugged. Twilight. Fifty Shades Of Grey. The first four Harry Potter books. Most of The Bible.

From The Inside. Hits And Memories. For The Term Of His Unnatural Life. Pulp Faction. No Tears For A Tough Guy. Hell Hath No Fury Like A Mate Shot In The Arse. Hooky The Cripple.

The outsider is ok, I groaned at a particular character/development when it arrived and started taking up room and (mild spoilers) pretty much everything in Texas is boring. Enjoyed it overall tho

xpost I meant artistically successful! Obviously all sorts of crap sells. Except the Bible, which is free.

artistically successful

ah cmon

thats not a thing

i mean

its a thing but its not a thing two ppl can discuss like it means anything

we have whole threads and boards about this

Think josh’s point isn’t that artistic success isn’t subjective but that one wouldn’t deem something artistically successful if one thought it was badly written

(& I think authors like king are the cases that really test this premise!)

this is straying into all that “low” and “high” culture snobbery that i fucking hate

and there are parts of the bible that are well-written imo (Revelations, Solomon, Isiah, Gospel of Mark)
but that’s for another thread

idk if it’s snobbery to think something is badly written

I think King can write well and what makes his work so frustrating sometimes is knowing he can do so much better.

oh, so now we're doing poptimism with fiction?

sure, maybe in the end, it is all subjective, but I still insist if a book is badly written it is not a good book.

is there anybody that thinks Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey as well written? Clearly there is some standard.

Their legions of fans might idk

you're not going to get any argument from me that a book can be badly written and still effective. but if all it takes for something to be good and successful is somebody liking it, then literally everything is good and successful.

Successful and effective are synonyms

This is a Stephen King thread

Load up your coke nails and take it elsewhere

Sic's list of awful books read by dumbasses (purely ime) suggests something, probably

Also darraghmac genuinely no disrespect but nothing about yr posts has ever suggested yr a big reader

King’s faults are pretty well established (in fact I kinda feel like sometimes we dwell on them too much itt as they should be kind of a given by now); it’s interesting tho cause if it’s generally agreed that he’s a clumsy, inelegant stylist on a sentence level and his characters are lazy and cartoonish and his plots haphazard, what is left that would make him a “good writer”? & it just comes down to that Alvarez thing “voice”, king’s is unique and compelling and annoying

I think that's fair.

ha thats a mannerly zing