stephen king c/d?

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

but that isnt anything like the discussion here.

so..i guess i read these posts at least eh

Eh tbh I'm on the point of stopping reading him, he's a bit like a YA writer who doesn't hold up later and I have Diana Wynne Jones to read

xp to wins

he cant close a long story to save his life but he p much always sets a great tone and opening

kings writing feels like good 80s movies

who, darragh?

and there are parts of the bible that are well-written imo (Revelations, Solomon, Isiah, Gospel of Mark)

my wording was deliberate!

King sometimes writes bad sentences or bad ideas or bad plots or bad twists or bad novels. But he also writes loads of good ones, and enough novels with a whole bunch of good and bad sentences that keep you up for hours, turning pages faster and faster, that even if everything else was bad, he would still qualify as a very good writer

dammit x-post

caveat that I haven't read a King novel in over 25 years

but the nostalgic rush that hit when the ersatz '80s Kingness of Hill's NOS4R2 got into gear was wildly thrilling

Sic, do you read many novels that aren't graphic novels?

I think king's sentences are usually good -- standard post-Hemingway terseness that gets the key points across. There's a section in On Writing where he shows a first draft of a chapter along with his editing notes -- it starts out solid, and all of the editing decisions are good.

The irony is that no matter where you stand on King's writing, On Writing is one of the best books about writing ever written.

Haha everyone itt being asked to submit receipts proving they have read books

I need to reread on writing! It’s hard to square some of the advice given in that book with the “he thought wildly” ish that clogs up his books

[full paragraph of unbearable italicised patter], it seemed to say. [3 more]

King is a perfectly good sentence writer. Try picking up almost any successful newsstand novel for comparison - Harlan Coben or Paula Hawkins, say. He has faults but that's not one of them.

* when he's not using italics

King name drops Coben in the Outsider

Sic, do you read many novels that aren't graphic novels?

nah not really, too busy arguing on ILX

Fair enough

I read Fountainhead quite a long time ago but I don't remember the prose being a problem. I wouldn't recommend it but I have kind of a soft spot for it.

(James - I definitely read far far more literary fiction in comics than in prose; probably only do one "serious" novel a year, but will typically do three Westlakes, two Starks, a Leonard, a Pelecanos, an Aaronovitch, a Compton Mackenzie, maybe two Fletches & one Flynn, two VNAs & one MA, and a couple of Wodehouses in a summer.)

I was kind of hoping you'd be more specific.

Almost done w/ outsider
I enjoy King while engaged but I always ultimately feel that I kind of wasted my time

King name drops Coben in the Outsider

Anyway at the fair yesterday I bought a book of king interviews for a pound. Also read his and joe hill’s story “in the tall grass” and liked it a lot! Much better than the only other hill I’ve read, his novel the fireman

He's still not as bad as Ian Rankin

Michael Connolly at least has the politeness to namedrop LA jazz randos no one has heard of

Heh I'm currently reading the new Bosch and was really impressed when Michael Connelly namedropped Horace Tapscott in the opening chapter

“in the tall grass” was total rancid balls

Castle rock looks kinda intriguing, it’s not gonna be available in the uk tho. I did watch the first series of mr mercedes, it’s not a marked improvement on the book (so, it’s all over the place in terms of quality) but gleeson is great as ever. I really hate the character of holly in those books but if ever a character were made to be in a David Kelley joint

Stuggling to get into 11/22/63 - worth persevering?

― Chuck_Tatum, Friday, 12 July 2013 09:39 (five years ago)

BOO this guy. What a wonderful, intense book. So glad I finally made it through.

I kind of want to dive into another giant one straight away - Talisman, IT or Duma Key, which is best?

I'd go for It of those three, though if you've read (& liked) Ghost Story and Shadowland, Talisman gives you the back and forth of King & Straub.

Talisman is currently 99p for the Kindle version in the UK.

Black House followed that up about 20 years later

Duma Key is dumb fun but IT is probably a good recommend if you've never done it.

I would recommend Talisman 100% with the caveat that you should try to dive into the Dark Tower pretty soon after as it is a good way to grease the wheels towards that series and get you in the mindset.

Yeah, IT.

Reread Talisman in the last year or so and it was ok but not as good as I remember from reading it as a kid.

Also: been working through the Castle Rock show which has been pretty decent but fuck me, what an absolutely fantastic piece of television episode 7 was.

I recently read The Outsider and liked it a lot. He doesn't really stick the ending - there's a very "really? That's it?" quality to the climax - but everything before that is really good.

Swap out the title and that's my loose review of almost every King book ever.

I mean, that's his thing. That's what he does. Or doesn't do, rather.

Yeah, 11/22/63 had by the far the most satisfying, *right* ending to any King novel I've read - perhaps it's the exception to the rule. Was impressed by how little conspiracy stuff was in the book, too, and how that wasn't a disappointment.

I looked at the length of IT and was like, shit, I need something shorter. I see CUJO's been getting reappraised lately so I'll probably try that.

Cujo, yes. Recommended. Also, as always, The Long Walk if you haven't already.

I find the thing about king’s endings is really overstated, I find most of them satisfying enough tbh. The outsider has a particularly bad and boring end run tho

has it maybe gotten worse over the years? I remember a lot of the early books having perfectly fine endings

They almost all end with either “the entire town is destroyed” or “some handwavey magic happens” or both, which winds a lot of people up - it’s pretty clear he doesn’t care much about how things get resolved. I can get with that.

I guess I wouldn't say it's an always thing but it happens often enough and is glaring enough in its 'let's say...Moe'-ness when it happens that it tends to stick in my brain.

But as you say, I don't get particularly wound up about it as long as the journey is sound.

I think there’s a disconnect between the type of writer he is (a yarn-spinner) and the way he writes (ultra-prolific, never uses outlines, works on instinct) - so people think that because he’s so much about ~storytelling~ that he should care a lot about the conventions of plotting, but I really don’t think he does. It’s not just the endings, the deus ex machina stuff happens all the way through. He just wants to move from one wacky, pungent idea to the next. Sometimes it is really fucking silly (one novel ends with someone randomly doing shadow puppets to defeat the villain because reasons) which makes a lot of people feel like they’ve wasted their time with the previous 8000 pages, but it’s way down the list of king’s faults for me personally and I often like the way his endings feel tonally which is what matters to me, I mean it’s all silly shit when you get down to it. I fucking love the ending of it, and the “is that it?” bathos just adds to it for me

That said I just slogged through the last two dark tower books and that’s essentially a king ending stretched out over two whole books and it is painful.

god the last 3 dark tower books are dreadful... i get seriously worked up thinking about how bad they are, especially considering how much potential the first few books had. wish he had finished the series when he was in his prime

His new one (out later this year) sounds like a mash up of Firestarter and It

talisman for me, chuck

whats kings best, did we ever just straight-up ask

think wizard and glass maybe

Long Walk. I'll evoke it as many times as is necessary. Long Walk.

I'll have to give it some thought but Long Walk is not far wrong, definitely WAY up there.