Stephen King: Hack or Artist?

[diebitter]

I am reading 'The Green Mile' as part of the book club here, and enjoying the writing a lot, and that has got me thinking on Stepen King and his works.

I really like Stephen King...some of his work I love, some I can read and forget. Some I've even stopped halfway through cos I found it self-indulgent ('The Tommyknockers' if you're wondering). However, King is to me the planet's greatest living storyteller at this point. Okay, I've not read every book out (who has?), and I therefore make this call with some degree of ignorance, but I still stand by it. I'm not saying he's a literary genius, or even a great artist, I'm saying the man really, really knows and understands how to tell stories, and how to bring his characters, backstories and main story to life in a way that most writers can only dream of.

Of course, he doesn't do this for every story. Some of his works are mundane (I'd class Carrie as pretty much straight pulp fiction, for example), some are a bit silly (it is blasphemous to many I think, but I find the Dark Tower series a little silly, but just about holds up with the sheer drive and vividness of the writing), but some are masterful.


In my own head, the average Stephen King book is about 90% craftsman, 10% artistry. King is a good crasftman in his writing, and makes his writing clean and straight. No tortuous sentences, not particularly flowery, he says what he has to and gets on with it. He also knows how to put an emotional kick into his works by dropping in the equivalent of an emotional 'nails running down a board' when he wants to. (example: in Pet Semetary, he gives a wonderful little passage about a father playing with his little boy - called 'Gage' - where they fly a kite on a windy day, and it sounds wonderful...but King ends the whole passage with the line something like 'He didn't know Gage would be dead inside 6 weeks.')

Okay, some might consider that cheap, but boy is it a kick in the head.

Like I say, the 'average' book is 90% craft/10% art, and sometimes the balance is more like 100% craft and little art (eg Desperation) - this doesn't make the book bad, it just makes it less emotionally engaging and fulfilling. Even the 90/10 split can produce some great books (eg The Stand, Salem's
Lot, The Dead Zone), but when the balance starts edging towards 80/20, then you get some lovely writing and story telling. Examples of this would be It, or the first 3 stories of 'Different Seasons' (which are Shawkshank Redemption, Apt Pupil and The Body (made into the movie 'Stand by Me'). The Green Mile edges close to that level too. In these books, he transcends craftsmanship and places you in worlds you believe he must have been part of, so authentic are his words and backstory elements - sometimes it is like reading 1/3 Steinbeck, 1/3 Hemmingway and 1/3 Eliot rolled into one an dragged into the modern day - it's that good (IMO). He becomes absolutely convincing in putting you into the story and making you understand where the characters are and are going.

Even his non-fiction works (Danse Macabre, On Writing) hold up darn well and fit the above pattern (90/10), and are thoroughly recommended.


If you've never tried Stephen King cos you're under the impression he's a hack, I urge you to try some sometime.


Recommended tries:

The Green Mile
Different Seasons
It


So, what do you all think?

[dcasper70]

He's not going to win any high class literary awards, but he knows how to get the maximum out of his style. He can weave a good tale and take you way out of your comfort zone, and he does so without writing above the average reader. He appeals to the masses, maybe that's why critics pan him, success.

Some of his work is transparent (Cell, Tommyknockers, Langoliers), by that I mean I knew where the story was going way too early on. Perhaps due to having read so much of his stuff.

Others, just throw you for a loop. Where and how does this sicko come up with these things.


3 favorites.
The Long Walk - A contest of walking. Losers die.
Raft - C'mon, we've all wondered what might be in the pond.
Gerald's Game - 200+ pages of a woman handcuffed to a bed in a remote cabin while hubby lies dead on the floor.

This dude is twisted!

[hyde]

I think he is the greatest hack of all time. and I mean that in a complimentary way.

and he is more. He could lead you down a path that you knew where is was going and still put in enough twists to shake you up.
When he first began I couldn't wait for his next book to cocme out. He was the only author I would spend the money for the hardcover. Couldn't wait for paperback.
and hhe lost me with Darktower, Which I kind of liked, but I just preferred his early stuff with fears available in everyday life. I haven't read alot lately. I should give him another chance.

[dcasper70]

Same happened to me. Got through 3 Dark Towers and just lost interest. I blame Blain the Train...

I later read Everything's Eventual which I thought was standard for his shorts, some great, some meh. Then read Cell in January which, while a good story, was kinda anticlimactic in a 'I know what he's planning' kinda way.

Here's a list of stuff I haven't read. Anyone want to recommend one? I'm really surprised that I've read everything else...
Rage
Dolores Claiborne
Black House
Dreamcatcher
From a Buick 8
Bag of Bones
Rose Madder
Desperation
The Regulators
The Colorado Kid

[MrMon]

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.

[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.

[diebitter]

[ 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 ]

I do tend to think of them as equivalents from different times/ages, but was drawn up on this very recently in reading the introduction of The Green Mile part 1 by King himself. He mentions Dickens here, mainly because the first run of the Green Mile was done in serial form, just as many of Dickens' works were. He actually says himself here that while he notes people compare him to Dickens, he thinks the modern day Dickens's are more likely Salman Rushdie, or John Irving. I can see Irving - sort of - but as I've not made it through a single chapter of Rushdie despite trying a few times, I couldn't comment of how Rushdie fits in.


I Mdo think they compare in that they are both very good storytellers, and create works that are pretty darn good pageturners - you just have to keep reading and reading for some of their works.


(aside: I've started 'The Satanic Verses' a few times but really don't think much of it - could someone suggest which book is Rushdie's best? I'd like to give him another go.)

[diebitter]

[ QUOTE ]
Same happened to me. Got through 3 Dark Towers and just lost interest. I blame Blain the Train...

I later read Everything's Eventual which I thought was standard for his shorts, some great, some meh. Then read Cell in January which, while a good story, was kinda anticlimactic in a 'I know what he's planning' kinda way.

Here's a list of stuff I haven't read. Anyone want to recommend one? I'm really surprised that I've read everything else...
Rage
Dolores Claiborne
Black House
Dreamcatcher
From a Buick 8
Bag of Bones
Rose Madder
Desperation
The Regulators
The Colorado Kid

[/ QUOTE ]

Ive read 4 of these, and in order of best, I'd say:

Rage
Bag of Bones
Rose Madder
Desperation


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.


Dreamcatcher I gave up after 100 pages - I just felt it was filler. I personally think the last really great book he wrote was The Green Mile, but there are some okay ones since then - such as Insomnia + Hearts in Atlantis

[MrMon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ 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 ]

I do tend to think of them as equivalents from different times/ages, but was drawn up on this very recently in reading the introduction of The Green Mile part 1 by King himself. He mentions Dickens here, mainly because the first run of the Green Mile was done in serial form, just as many of Dickens' works were. He actually says himself here that while he notes people compare him to Dickens, he thinks the modern day Dickens's are more likely Salman Rushdie, or John Irving. I can see Irving - sort of - but as I've not made it through a single chapter of Rushdie despite trying a few times, I couldn't comment of how Rushdie fits in.


I Mdo think they compare in that they are both very good storytellers, and create works that are pretty darn good pageturners - you just have to keep reading and reading for some of their works.


(aside: I've started 'The Satanic Verses' a few times but really don't think much of it - could someone suggest which book is Rushdie's best? I'd like to give him another go.)

[/ QUOTE ]

You bring up what I've heard about both of them. I think King will still be read in 100 years, much like Dickens is now. Another parallel is that many regarded Dickens as a hack in his day, now he's a revered writer of his age.

I think King suffers from what many superstar artists of this day suffer from, lack of an editor. Someone who can tell them, "Yes, you are Stephen King, but this just sucks, go back and do it better." (J.K. Rowling also suffers from this.)

I've only read the early King, I too got burned out, and I've read both version of The Stand a few times. I've finally concluded that the first, edited version is better. There are a few interesting new things in the unabridged version, but if I had read that version first, I would have thought a lot less of it. The unabridged version is only interesting because of the first edited version, and we want more. Turns out, we had our fill, and more only overstuffs us. I wonder how many of his later works would improve with a tough copy editor or a more disciplined writer. Orson Scott Card has been known to go back to earlier stories and rework them, perhaps King needs to do the same.

I future years, when some Ph.D. candidate is writing their dissertation on King, they're going to go through all his work and sort it into two piles, Brilliant and Needed More Work.