Re: Kurt Vonnegut has died
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Personally I think Cormac McCarthy is in a different league and head and shoulders above stephen king and Vonnegut. There is an argument for McCarthy being the best american writer ever. It would be impossible to make that argument for King or Vonnegut.
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I've never read any McCarthy, and this latest post-Apocalyptic one doesn't interest me. Any recommends? Didn't he write some ultra-violent book set in Mexico?
King in many ways resembles the Rolling Stones. Limited, but very well aware of those limitations, for the most part. They've both put out so much for so long (a good deal of it crap, esp. in the last 10-15 years), plus their names have so much baggage, it's hard to sometimes remember how really good they were & can be.
The last three Dark Tower books were muddled at best, and the 2nd is nearly unreadable. King himself has said the whole series needs a revision.But both the 1st and esp. the 4th books are fantastic, even as standalones.
If King were to release Different Seasons & the first four Bachman books today (which foresaw reality shows, planes into buildings, and eminent domain backlash, among other things), he'd be a strong Pulitzer/PEN/NBA contender.
Many of his early short stories ARE highly derivative, but some others rank among the very best of the genre; Poe, Lovecraft, Bloch, Matheson, Hemingway.
And he's written about the process of writing (both fictional & non-fictional), and men's relationships with their wives & children about as well as anyone I can think of.
He certainly will be read & discussed 100 years from now, although his more recent stuff is overrated, kinda like Steely Dan getting a Grammy for Two Against Nature instead of Aja.
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