stephen king c/d?

Just read Joyland, the first King novel I've read since I was probably 14 of 15. It's fun; a good little supernatural murder mystery that doesn't overstay its welcome (my frustration with King way back when was largely due to his tendency towards pointlessly epic length) and mostly plays by the rules of the add-up-the-clues type of thriller. Like many recent books and films, though, I have to wonder if its period setting is strictly functional: if this were to take place in the present day, much of the mystery and suspense could have easily been curbed by access to Google and texting.

The Outsider sounds quite promising

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.

My suggestion for a newbie would be to rip out like the last quarter of any given King book before reading. And then just imagine an ending.

thats p solid advice

for the dark tower, sub "ripping out" for "not buying"

real talk now: stephen king is butt

don't @ me

Get out.

My (negative) epiphany came with The Stand. I went back to it not long ago thinking I would give it a shot, knowing nothing about the author's extended version. Which at the time was the only one you could buy. Still is? Anyway, it restored some 400 (or something) pages his editor originally cut, and when I learned that I thought, wow, the last thing that book needed was to be longer. For that matter, if you can cut 400 pages from a book and no one really noticed ... wow.

In other words, yeah, cut out a quarter of each book and make up what's missing. Create your own suspense!

I dig the extended version but I skimmed right through the Trashcan Man and Mother Abigail origin chapters (which, iirc, are really long and get in the way of the story). But it's pretty damn consistent for a book that size. And the ending sucks in the short version, too.

Dear King fans, please name me one (1) good King ending. I cannot think of one (1).

The Mist?

Yeah, I immediately started thinking of some as soon as I posted that. The Mist, Dead Zone, Cujo, The Long Walk. All fine. Earlier stuff, mostly, I guess.

Carrie has a good ending. Salem's Lot has a great nihilistic ending.

After reading Needful Things, an adolescent me basically said to his adolescent self: look, you generally enjoy this guy's writing, but if you're going to continue enjoying it, you need to just learn to accept that he's the King of flubbing the landing. Vibe on the ride and don't worry about the destination so much.

yeah me too

Okay, so he was maybe good with endings before he transformed into a book factory.

Salem's Lot and The Shining had pretty good endings, yeah? The Raft and Grandma (?) were good short story endings (the latter's movie, "Mercy", is decent, also, starring Carl from TWD). But yeah - TS: The Stand's hand of God vs. the rainbow bolt in Needful Things. Still, I associate not sticking the landing with Koontz more than King.

Pet Sematary's ending is pretty much perfect.

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut(?), too, for an ending.

FTR, I'm just talking about his novels here. His short stories are more generally cooked through.

The Stand's awesomeness is not diminished by it's terrible ending, unlike some other King books.

Salem's lot has a terrific happy/everything is fucked ending.

The ending of the movie version of The Mist is the king of "woah they really went there/comedy sad trombone" endings

It truly is the 'Scott Tenorman Must Die' of horror film endings.

It's a great ending and King prefers it to his own! (which I guess is maybe not the greatest endorsement really)

the talisman and black house cmon guys

It's a great ending and King prefers it to his own! (which I guess is maybe not the greatest endorsement really)

Truly the worst taste in movies made from his own material of any author I know.

Except re the mist

Tbh if I were to make a list of king’s faults that actually bother me the endings would be right at the bottom

Or at least right at the end.

I like that he has about a dozen books where the ending is basically “the whole town is destroyed”

TS: "the whole town is destroyed" vs. "they somehow sensed what they had to do, as if some force was directing them"

the mob mentality is evil except for that one mob.

Which, if any, of the major King works are significantly different from their film adaptations? There are a number of them (Carrie, The Dead Zone) that I’ve never bothered reading because I assume that having seen the films, there’s really not much left for me to discover in the books, but are there any where I’m really missing out by not having read them?

There are significant differences between the Kubrick version of The Shining and the novel.

the movies are usually just missing a bunch of ugly bullshit. Kind of like the difference between Jaws the book and Jaws the movie.

The #1 answer to this question is always and forever going to be The Lawnmower Man.

Off the top of my head: Carrie is very similar to the book. The Dead Zone is fairly similar but I really like the slower, more methodical pace of the book. Cujo is pretty close but the book has a bleaker ending and the movie suffers from the absence of the dog's perspective (one of the book's strongest elements imo). The Mist, again pretty similar except the movie gets the bleaker ending this time 'round.

Silver Bullet (screenplay by King) is actually a fleshed-out version of the more elliptical Cycle of the Werewolf.

that's true of a lot of the short stories, a surprising number of which have been turned into movies.

Carrie is far streamlined from the newspaper article/Readers Digest excerpt novel.

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.