Stephen King: Hack or Artist?

[TiK]

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Rage is definitely worth reading (you can't buy this any more because of the content relating to Columbine etc, so if you have a copy, keep ahold of it), the other 3 are take or leave it, but not a waste of time if you got some spare time.

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Is that the one with the lock?? I don't want to be any more descriptive due to spoilage...

[diebitter]

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Rage is definitely worth reading (you can't buy this any more because of the content relating to Columbine etc, so if you have a copy, keep ahold of it), the other 3 are take or leave it, but not a waste of time if you got some spare time.

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Is that the one with the lock?? I don't want to be any more descriptive due to spoilage...

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I don't remember a lock. It's been a long time since I read it. It's the one where the kid takes his class hostage.

[econophile]

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Let's risk blasphemy. How does King compare to Charles Dickens? Both in their own time and speculate on 100 years after their deaths.

I am not an expert on either, but they have interesting parallels. Perhaps someone more knowledgable of both could entertain us.

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curious how much of both authors you have read

[offTopic]

Hack and artist. I've kinda fallen off the bandwagon lately, as I was disappointed in how he chose to finish up The Dark Tower series. The last non-Dark Tower books I read were On Writing (which I thought was very good) and Everything's Eventual (which was eh compared to the other short story collections).

I still have fond memories of staying up waaaaay too late reading Salem's Lot, The Stand, and It, and for that I will always be grateful. Also, the circumstances around the death of the guy that hit him left a little to be desired. I would have hoped that some otherworldly menace would have appeared in his trailer and caused him to dissolve, starting at the feet or something.

[WDC]

I never could get into the Dark Tower stuff after multiple attempts but I like his other stuff for vacation and beach reads.

[Aloysius]

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He's not going to win any high class literary awards, but he knows how to get the maximum out of his style.

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DB - in 2003, the National Book Awards' bestowed on King their lifetime achievement award, an annual occurrence. Previous winners include Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. It's a very prestigious award in literary circles as I understand it.

Distinguised literary critic and self-appointed protector of the literary canon, Harold Bloom (he was also my professor and senior thesis adviser, I respect him alot as a thinker and literary critic) had this to say in the NYTimes:

"He is a man who writes what used to be called penny dreadfuls - That they could believe that there is any literary value there or any aesthetic accomplishment or signs of an inventive human intelligence is simply a testimony to their own idiocy."

Bloom was not alone in his criticism of King as an award recipient. But the attacks struck me as pompous and reflexive.

Orson Scott Card, IMO, smartly summed up the attacks:

"Let me assure you that King's work most definitely is literature, because it was written to be published and is read with admiration. What [Richard] Snyder [former CEO of Simon & Schuster, who described King's work as non-literature] really means is that it is not the literature preferred by the academic-literary elite."

So what's the net of this?

The one legitimate gripe an academician could have with King's work is his prose style - he's not that great a writer. But there are many writers with the ivory tower's imprimatur that are terrible (Dickens, cited above, is a great example). Dickens' stories survive because of incredible inventive plot and structure - and I would bet that in the early 20th century, there were literature professors up in arms about Dickens' being ranked among the "great" writers in the canon.

I think that's how King will be remembered - as a master storyteller. And I have no doubt he will be discussed / studied in college courses going-forward.

-Al

[offTopic]

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Let's risk blasphemy. How does King compare to Charles Dickens? Both in their own time and speculate on 100 years after their deaths.

I am not an expert on either, but they have interesting parallels. Perhaps someone more knowledgable of both could entertain us.

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I prefer to think of them at the same time.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known." And with that, the guillotine blade descended, separating Carton's head from his body amidst a shower of blood... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[MrMon]

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[ QUOTE ]
Let's risk blasphemy. How does King compare to Charles Dickens? Both in their own time and speculate on 100 years after their deaths.

I am not an expert on either, but they have interesting parallels. Perhaps someone more knowledgable of both could entertain us.

[/ QUOTE ]

curious how much of both authors you have read

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Not enough to amount to much. To be honest, I gave up on most fiction a long time ago and look at Dickens and King as pop culture figures of parallel eras. On a personal level, I find King and Dickens the authors and their place in history more interesting than the works themselves. But that's just me.

[DrewDevil]

Dickens bores me to tears, so I guess I like King's better.

I think his storytelling has gotten very, very good over the years. Hearts in Atlantis is a recent work of his that I thought was very good.

And his "On Writing" book is exceptional.

He's a great writer... maybe no Capote or Updike, but definitely not a hack.

[Dominic]

great writer, but he's become so big no one edits him anymore, so his works in the past 15 years have all been bloated, over-written books with sparks of brilliance.

If his publisher had any balls, they'd insist on King using a great editor again.