Stephen King: Hack or Artist?

[FoneBone]

I, like a lot of folks here, grew up reading King. I still hold his short fiction, the Bachman Books especially, in high regard. I'm also certainly more a fan of his early work than his later.

As I've grown up, I've maintained an interest in genre film and literature, with horror being my favorite. What is interesting about King that a lot of folks don't realize is that within criticism circles, specifically horror criticism, he's very highly regarded.

To be completely honest, I've not read any of his critical work, but as mentioned above, I've heard great things about "On Writing," and many other horror critics that I have read often mention him in their acknowledgements or introductions.

I guess my point is, in the Hack v. Artist department, his understanding of the way writing and genre writing in particular function at their deepest levels would argue in favor of artist. Obviously, I'm in awe of his production, but I would say that over the last decade he's really wavered between just trying to make a buck and putting out worthwhile, literary works.

[geormiet]

Does anyone else love the 2nd story in hearts in atlantis? The one about the kid who goes to college and his entire dorm room floor gets addicted to hearts.

As a degenerate cardplayer myself that one story really struck home for me.

[Ryan Beal]

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My big knock on him is that he really seems to have trouble with endings. I actually enjoyed Tommyknockers pretty well, but the ending was just fuggin terrible. The Stand is great, but it ends in such ridiculouslness that it almost ruins it for me. I haven't read the Dark Tower series but it seems that it suffers from the same problem. To be fair I can imagine it's hard to write an amazing story and have an equally amazing payoff at the end without screwing something up.

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He's pretty good, but I always got the feeling that he never knew how to end most of his stories too. Maybe I just haven't read enough of his books. Can anyone name a King book with a great ending that I may have missed?

[tagtastic]

I've read alot of King, and I've enjoyed most of it. However there are a few books that are huge standouts, and a few others that are very uninteresting as well.

I read The Stand once about 5 years ago. I still think about it to this day, mostly the feelings he conveyed. At his best, King has a way of making the reader feel actual visceral feelings more than any other writer I've encountered. That's what keeps me coming back, despite his misses.