stephen king c/d?

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

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