stephen king c/d?

Foray

I have room in my heart for the Lovecrafts and the Kings (although, yes, I love Lovecraft's craft more).

I just find the flaws in his stuff usually outweigh the strengths, and I don't find his recurring obsessions/tropes interesting, so I find his stature/success odd

This is how I feel about Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, et al.

Nightmares & Dreamscapes has a story wrote originally for a Lovecraft tribute anthology!

I like his Creepshow performance too. It's like he's trying to transform into a Jack Davis drawing.

Even among horror authors of his generation, guys like Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, his buddy Peter Straub and a few others are generally considered better. But Campbell's short fiction is valued much higher than his novels, Etchison didn't write many novels.
But that whole era that prioritized the bloated novel is not aging well.

I think Revival was supposed to be kind of a Lovecraft thing too.

This is how I feel about Jonathan Franzen, Michael Chabon, et al.

don't get me started on these clowns

Based on what I've read, '1408' is King's most successful attempt at Lovecraft's brand of uncanny existential terror.

"Crouch End" was okay.

What's the story with the guy who sees a finger coming out of his bathroom sink drain?

Slightly different generation but Clive Barker's reputation has fared much much better (although some of his recent stuff hasn't been so well received).

I guess he started writing a little later, but isn't he actually older than King?

hm just 5 years apart

T.E.D. Klein is probably the horror writer of King's generation with the best rep, but he only put out 2 books

Was just thinking about Klein. Some imperfect elements in his work but the four stories in the Dark Gods collection are all to one degree or another perfect nightmare fuel. "Petey" in particular but "Nadelman's God" might be the best of the four.

Klein recently started getting back to work on a novel he started in the 80s.

Keyes- there's Reassuring Tales too, but it's supposed to be mostly lesser work, odds and ends.

Charles L Grant fits in there too but I haven't really liked anything I've read so far.

there's a funny podcast called King Me where two comedian dudes (one is a former clickhole guy) are going through every single movie adaptation and talking shit about them, it's v much from a haters pov & has renewed my interest in his oeuvre

that reminds me, someone told me about a King focused podcast called The Losers' Club where they talk about/analyze his books. haven't checked it out yet, waiting til i finish IT. reading this thread has been a bit treacherous in that regard

there's a funny podcast called King Me where two comedian dudes (one is a former clickhole guy) are going through every single movie adaptation and talking shit about them, it's v much from a haters pov & has renewed my interest in his oeuvre

― a Brazilian professional footballer (wins), Friday, 31 March 2017 19:06

Hope they decide to do something else. That's a lot of films.

lol They're 50 episodes in and up to 1999

Sorry for earlier coming in and shitting on king, i know it was boring, i was having an extraordinarily bad day, pls carry on

Gonna check out Long Walk, I've never seen it mentioned as one of the essentials before.

A quick tangential recommendation - Joe Hill's graphic novel series Locke & Key is really, really good - it's kind of "what if Stephen King did a high school TV show and it was much less bad than it sounds"

I keep watching this trailer and can't get excited at all.

Agreed. It is ... competent and golden-hued.

Good choice, Chuck. That's my go-to recommendation for non-fans. You can read it in a weekend or less and it's totally worth it.

lol They're 50 episodes in and up to 1999

I emailed them to demand that they go back and review michael jackson's ghosts (1996) as they'd missed it out

I liked all the Bachman Books but Long Walk is definitely the best and one that sticks with me the most.

Also I remember doing a book report / poster assignment for that in 7th grade and drew the halftrack and like a road littered with bodies which feels maybe like things 12 year olds could do in 1987 but not anymore?

I liked all the Bachman Books but Long Walk is definitely the best and one that sticks with me the most.

Also I remember doing a book report / poster assignment for that in 7th grade and drew the halftrack and like a road littered with bodies which feels maybe like things 12 year olds could do in 1987 but not anymore?

Here's something: son Owen King is a fab non-genre writer. I'm hoping he'll rein in dad on their collaboration.

In other news, avoid the third Mr Mercedes book. It goes supernatural. He couldn't stay straight for even a trilogy!

The short stories, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, Different Seasons, even Four Past Midnight were all really rich grounds for my teenage imagination to go crazy ... I think that was where I really became a deep fan & it was a real training ground for the crazy shit in his novels (plus the novels rarely stayed on the library shelf at school, which is why i had to settle for reading & rereading the short stories until a novel became available)

I remember picturing The Mist happening in my local supermarket

The Mist in 3D sound is second only to The Shining in my favorite King-associated media.

I'll defend Barker any day - maybe my favourite 'pop' author. But King is a great writer; he seems to fall between two stools, in that no one cares about a genre writer repeating themselves, or a literary writer repeating themselves (they're just exploring their preoccupations), but he gets a lot of criticism on that front. But I haven't read any King since I was a teenager, maybe 20 yrs ago, so who knows. I have a copy of his time travel one which I have t read. But teenage does used to read and enjoy Herbert and Koontz, so...

Teenage dowd, that is

I was a teenage Dowd when I read him as well, and shoplifting them from WHSmiths back then was like taking candy from a baby! Sometimes I think a Kubrick adaptation of Pet Sematary would have been one of the most terrifying horror movies ever made.

James Herbert is generally assessed much better than Koontz. But even Richard Laymon, Guy N Smith and Shaun Hutson has more apologists than Koontz.

I guess Garth Marenghi types are just more fun than whatever it is that Koontz does.

The Mist movie is terrific but I sort of blame it for accidentally creating the Walking Dead TV show's miseryguts horror aesthetic, in the same way that Alan Moore accidentally created "grim'n'gritty". (Though perhaps that's unfair and Snyder's shitty Dawn remake is more to blame.)

I'd say that Darabont's involvement in both makes the association more than accidental.

I think darabont is pretty awful but I love the mist. The radio play is also fun if you like people narrating their own deaths in far too much detail

I used to love Koontz & Straub, they were less fun though? More serious in tone somehow idk

Barker I came into later in my 20's but I love him too. Great & Secret Show <3

I just started the first episode of that King Me podcast and then immediately deleted it. Why would you bother doing a king podcast, even a movie one, if you've never read his writing or hate the small amount you have read? Fuck these guys.

Hating things is the new liking things, get with the times.

There was a standup comedian who based his show around straight to video Disney sequels and it sounded really great. Wish I knew who it was and could find recordings.

Are angry mocking reviews as a schtick still so popular?

lol I did say it was from a haters pov

idk why do anything? They've said they started it up for the sole purpose of talking about silver bullet, a film they love. I think a lot of these comedy types who do bad film review shows tend to have pretty terrible opinions about films, it's always more about vibing to the personalities/jokes (I generally don't).

xp that was tom tuck - I saw it and it was surprisingly good

It does seem like a huge waste of time if you're really not into the stuff, unless they really like a lot of the films.

Thanks so much for identifying it as Thom Tuck, didn't think anyone would know it! Seems like it's a consistent gimmick, with straight to video shows on Steven Seagal, Bollywood, Olsen Twins and Faith films.

I think what interests me as well is that most of us itt would agree that the majority of those films are bad (sometimes in a weird and compelling way) but we like the books BUT (imo) pretty much everything that makes the films bad comes directly from the books - the cartoonish characters, corny dialogue &c. This becomes especially apparent the more hands-on King involvement there is. It seems like for those of us on whom it works part of the magic is idk a suspension of taste? that works on the page but rarely onscreen

xp it is absolutely a waste of time, that's part of the joke of these things; I haven't heard it but there's a podcast where the hosts watch & discuss the SAME bad film once a week for a year

I guess it has to be bad in a really interesting or entertaining way, which I think is a real rarity.

Kelly Link says she was a big fan of bad books and would read them out at parties with other writers.
Robin Ince's Bad Book Club sounds pretty interesting. But bad books sound like way more commitment.

I grew up on military bases, so you can imagine what the library was like. I'd go down in the morning, check a book out, then return it the next morning getting something else out. This was a couple of summers for me.

The films of kings books are usually 50-75% good - which is better than most stuff I watch. barker, similarly, has a terrible history with films. Obviously the worst thing it for an author to try to write them themselves, as king has attempted to do. Has anyone read a script aldous Huxley wrote for Hollywood? Ape and essence I remember. Awful. It's just such a different thing.

The first hellraiser works, and I have a soft spot for Nightbreed because I dug it as a kid (the spectrum game was neat, though seldom loading, and the Amiga version is the stuff of legends as far as terrible games go). Are there any Stephen king games?