stephen king c/d?

Don't take this the wrong way, but do you remember the sixties or the seventies in America? People were pretty free with the racist and homophobic comments, to a degree that would probably shock someone who came of age in the 90s or later. As I mentioned earlier, the fact that it jumps out at you isn't because King is exaggerating this aspect of his characters... it's that many other writers cut that unpleasant stuff out. It's how he writes about people.

Also seconding the recommendation that you read "It," as it directly addresses issues of racism, homophobia, and antisemitism... they're kind of key elements of the plot, and as I noted upthread, there really isn't any way to read it where King isn't explicitly condemning such behavior. It's a great King novel! The pre-teen gangbang at the end is extremely problematic, but you can't have everything.

Anyone else think SK is going through a late-career spike in quality?

I've certainly gotten that vibe from ILE, which spurred me to read The Cell last year, and that was fucking great. Probably do Under the Dome next or the most recent shorts collection.

Josh, you need to read It, srsly. One, to remind yourself why SK is worth caring about; two, it's just kind of hard to discuss his overall creative personality without knowing that book.

ha xpost

xpost Honestly, I think publishing "On Writing" did his reputation a world of good. I know several writers who love that book, who also gained a newfound respect for King after reading it.

Also, coincidence or not, both "Dome" and "11/22/63" were based on discarded or unpublished works from the '70s. And, of course, marked a return to full-time writing after the accident. Older, wiser, etc.

I've never called King racist or any of those things. I also totally get where he's coming from, though I was born in the '70s and rarely came across the n-word or anti-Semitic stuff (though homophobia was more rampant, and just because I didn't encounter the other stuff doesn't mean it wasn't there). I have, however, come across the "racism is truth, and to leave racism out would be dishonest" argument, but I don't quite buy that. Most writers get buy without it; King has no exclusive claim on the truth. There are countless ways to depict someone as racist short of flat-out having them the n-word. Which is another chalk mark in the "lazy" column. Show don't tell.

But I will take you all up on the suggestion and read "It," eventually. I don't really like King's prose, though I do tend to like his stories, so I'll try to get around to it after I knock off a few other things in my belated book queue.

For most writers, I'd agree that "racism is truth, and to leave racism out would be dishonest" is a weak defense, but King's thing is showing the whole catalog of human flaws. His characters do all kinds of repulsive things, especially the "bad" ones. In that context, I think it would be kind of odd if he left out the racism.

That's one thing I did like about "11/22/63." As far as the catalog of human flaws goes, it opens up his world significantly more than the majority of his narratively claustrophobic tales.

Yeah--and maybe more to the point, a lack of pruning on both the part of the author and editor. He does tend to, you know, belabor stuff.

I started a long post that got eated by my computer, but this is pretty much sums up my take on king's (over?) reliance on racist characters. the farther he got from his big-4 success the more he was in need of a strong handed editor, but what publishing house is going to sic a tough editor on their cash cow? it's a theory I've held for a while in absence of anything but circumstantial evidence, but I just read an interview with one of his "editors" who seemed more concerned with how to sell stephen king books than with actually improving his prose.

calling him flat out racist seems offbase, as he couches his ethnic slurs in terms of bad guy signifier, or at least the verisimilitude of bumpkins. there's a schoolboy rush in using these verboten words, but there's also a schoolboy rush in scaring people in the first place, horror by nature being a transgressive genre. king decided early on that racists make the world a scary, dangerous place (as do child molesters and raging drunks), and it's part of what makes his writing successful - the side detours and accent marks that create a suffocating universe of evil. someone challenging him on this impulse throughout his career could've routed it in a different direction but hey, the formula works and the cash registers keep ringing so...

Any sane editor would have ruined Dreamcatcher. Therefore, editing is bad.

I just had a thought -- you ever have that experience where you have to be in the company of someone you don't like, or suspect to be not a very good person and eventually they just slip in some casual racism like dropping the n-word or saying something super homophobic like calling someone the f-word and your just like "uggghhh this is terrible. What should I do? Should I fucking speak up? This person is my boss/sister's husband/etc... I don't want to start anything but this is super fucking awkward now."

Maybe King does it to make reader's uncomfortable in that way, pricking you in many different ways beyond gore/regular/suspense. IDK though, sometimes it does just seem like lazy shorthand for "this is a bad person!"

In the case of The Shining though, to cite a specific example, I think one of the major themes of the books is what you might call "aspirations of WASP-hood" and IMO it is very cynical but canny to make Jack, who most wants to fit into genteel upper-class white society, an abusive bigot. The alcoholism thing isn't so much to paint him as bad as it is a plot device to get him to let the ghosts of the Hotel posses him/poison his mind -- but even if hadn't been turned into a psycho he's still pretty much a scumbag and the moral is -- that's who wants to be and who is a rich WASP: scumbags.

* beyond gore/regular suspense was what I meant... not like gore/regular/suspense/hi-test/diesel.

/maximum overdrive

From a writing blog, quoted from "On Writing":

"If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway. Let a bigot talk like a bigot and a racist talk like a racist whether your friends and readers like it or not."

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