Stephen King: Hack or Artist?

[chopstick]

[ QUOTE ]
I've read every book SK has done.

[/ QUOTE ]

I like his writing, except for the hard-core horror stuff.

My favorites of his were The Bachman Books, Different Seasons, The Stand, and Eyes Of The Dragon. I read Rita Hayworth & The Body before seeing either of the movies, those are probably all time favorites. I also really loved The Long Walk.

Would you mind giving us your top 5 or top 10 non-hardcore-horror pieces that he has written, in order of preference?

[BarronVangorToth]

[ QUOTE ]

Would you mind giving us your top 5 or top 10 non-hardcore-horror pieces that he has written, in order of preference?

[/ QUOTE ]


A slight problem you're going to have with Stephen King is that, in general, his older stuff is better than his newer (blame author burnout, his accident, stopping drugs, whatever). However, his older stuff I imagine is what you'd more classify as "hardcore horror" than the newer.

You might be best-served with his short (and not-so-short) story collections -- if a story gets to be outside your liking, it's easy enough to flip to the next tale without chucking the book.

In this spirit, off the top of my head, I'd recommend: Four Past Midnight, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and Everything's Eventual.

Stand is his best book in my opinion, but since you've already read that, why not check out Green Mile -- there's a "book club" going for it as well in this very forum.

Hearts in Atlantis is one of my other favorites of his that would fall into the kind you want. A warning: I oftentimes hear bad things about this book ... but I really liked it. It isn't as universally loved as Stand, though.

[Myrtle]

Short-version response......

He's an artist.

However, as with all artist's, the quality of work varies throughout their portfolio.

[Borodog]

I read most of King's early stuff (e.g. The Shining, Carrie, Cujo, Firestarter, Christine, The Stand, It, etc), but have read little by him recently except The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (good) and Dreamcatcher (eh, and made into a Godawful movie to boot; did NOT translate well). Specifically I haven't read a lot of stuff that people think are classics by now, Misery, Dark Tower, etc.

I'm not sure why I stopped reading King. It was not because of the quality of the writing, which I think was always above average and occasionally inspired. I think it was more a case of not needing that much darkness in my escapism (which is what paperback novels have always been for me) for a long time.

I firmly believe that the people who believe King is a "hack" do so because he is so prolific. I mean, the guy cranks out massive novels like he's grilling cheese sandwiches. He is a sick-assed vat-grown writing machine, and some people just seem to believe you cannot possibly write that much, that fast, and be any good. Others simply deride the genre he usually sticks to, much as literary snobs dismiss science fiction, although some of the greatest works of 20th century fiction have been "only" science fiction.

[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]

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

[/ QUOTE ]

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

[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.

[Triumph36]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

The last post is the truest one. I've read a lot of Stephen King's books when I was in high school - the man is absolutely brilliant with coming up with little details and small stories within his works. I think it's possible that people still read Stephen King in 100 years, but so much of his work have little nuances of the times in which they take place. He's not like Charles Dickens. His works don't have much character depth or symbolism, nor do they say very much about the human condition. But his earlier books are damn fine reads. Dark Tower IV is about where I gave up on Stephen King forever - but I think I'm the only person who liked the Tommyknockers, too.

[benfranklin]

At the risk of making a huge generalization, pretty much everything we consider to be classical literature today was written by the storytellers of their day for the masses.

Dickens, Twain, Dostoevsky, etc., wrote for newspapers. Shakespeare wrote plays at a time when the theater was the only entertainment for the common man. Epic poems from Homer onward were written for public performance.

King is also a storyteller. Whether he will stand the test of time remains to be seen, but I would bet money that his work will be analysed within an inch of its life by the next generation of graduate students, if they haven't started already.

And I'd also bet that people will be reading King long after the names and works of most winners of academic book awards have faded into oblivion (or into Bolivia).

[JaBlue]

I've only read King's On Writing but it seems like he is an incredible fiction writer. I don't see why the academic elite should trash him because he writes to tell stories and doesn't infuse them with great new ideas or amazingly good prose or anything... he does churn out a LOT of material though and some of its bound to be bad I guess.

-thoughts from someone who has never read a novel by SK