On Stephen King's Writing

[JonFromMaplewood]

When it comes to reading Stephen King's output, I sometimes feel like Lucy Ricardo in the candy factory.  New junk food comes down the line but I am still stuffing my face with the last junk food.  Truth be told, I gave up on King years ago, around the time of Bag of Bones.  The quality of the material seemed to be waning, no longer justifying the huge time commitment.

Given the discussion of "Uncle Stevie" (that phrase evokes a wince even in the typing of it) on the Best Show recently, I thought I might help those who want to sample his writing before considering a deep dive.  Again, I cannot speak for anything after the mid-nineties.

For my money, Pet Sematary (sic) was his scariest and possibly best full-length novel.  According to King, this is the only book that actually scared him.  He claims to have put it away for an extended period of time after successfully wigging himself out.  I am not sure how he did it but he seemed to tap into every primal fear under the sun, both for children (the woods at night, the loss of a pet, the undead) and parents (the death of one's child...is there any other?).  King manages to take all of those fears and work them into a story that feels very real and moves along at a solid pace.  But by all means do not see the movie. It is a spectacular disaster that drags Fred Gwynne's good name down with it.

As far as short stories go, Night Shift is a solid starting point. It spawned countless crappy movies ("Lawnmower Man," "Maximum Overdrive," "Children of the Corn" to name just a few) but is itself a lot of fun.  King is notorious for sticking to one-note: A place in Maine called Castle Rock, a character with the ability to "shine" in some form or another, and a "magical black person" thrown in for good measure.  But what impressed me most about Night Shift was King's versatility of subject matter and tone.  Some of the stories are scary but kind of hilarious ("The Mangler") and others are just plain creepy ("Graveyard Shift"). One story will be about dry-cleaning machines gone mad while the next will be about the anguish of giving up smoking.  If you don't like one of the stories, chances are you'll enjoy the next.

You also can't go wrong with most of his very early books: The Shining, The Dead Zone, and Salem's Lot are all solid reads.  By the way, the last in that list was turned into one of the best TV movies ever. I'll be god damned if David Soul and James Mason don't mix like Cutty Sark and soda.  Anyway, I watched it again recently and it still managed to scare the crap out of me. 

Cujo is notable for its simplicity and ability to scare without any use of supernatural elements. But I gotta say, it is a grim ride. There is no "scary fun" to be had here. Also, because of its simplicity, King has to use side stories as filler and they are not very gripping.

Now about The Stand... (to be continued)

[JonFromMaplewood]

In 1959, social psychology researchers from Stanford and the U.S. Army conducted a study on fraternity hazing.* The conclusions were fascinating: The more discomfort one goes through to reach a goal, the more enamored one is with the institution that caused the discomfort (similar to, but not the same as, Stockholm Syndrome).  That is what I think leads so many people to love The Stand.  You trudge through 800+ pages (or more than a thousand if you are reading the later version), and it becomes very hard to bad-mouth it because you put so much effort into completing it.  The Stand was my favorite book in the world for over a decade until I had enough distance to really look at it objectively.

There is no denying that the first half is riveting and terrifying and goes off like a brick of firecrackers.  The images it conjures may be even scarier today than they were in the 70's given the constant outbreaks of avian flu, swine flu, SARS, etc.  But after the first 400 pages?  Yeesh. The brick of firecrackers turns quickly into a plain old brick.  The disease, aka Captain Trips, is probably the most enthralling character in the book, so when it leaves in the second act, we are left with a replacement bad guy ("The Walking Dude") who is a lame hybrid of Asmodeus and maybe Ted Nugent?  And then there are the "heroes". Christ. A redneck, a teenage girl, a completely non-descript rock star who writes non-descript lyrics, and an old lady always handing out "sage advice." Why does anyone want to spend time with these people? 

And worst of all, the ending of The Stand does not work. I do not want to spoil it for those who are going to read it, but to those who have already taken the death march through it, ask yourself this question: When the heroes finally take their "stand" against evil, does it have any impact?  What ends up happening would have happened anyway regardless of the heroes' actions.

Ok, I'm done. Thanks for reading. Sorry to prattle on so. Consider this my "Under the Dome" post.


*http://faculty.uncfsu.edu/tvancantfort/Syllabi/Gresearch/Readings/A_Aronson.pdf

[wood and iron]

This was great. I read a lot of his stuff but fell away. There are a few post-90's books that are decent enough entertainment. A suggestion is From a Buick 8.

Also, for those with creative impulses, I suggest On Writing. He really lays bare what makes stories work in a highly entertaining way.

[buffcoat]

"a lame hybrid of Asmodeus and maybe Ted Nugent"

Now that is something.

It's interesting that the TV Miniseries of The Stand suffers from the exact same flaw as you've described in the book.  It's remarkably gripping for night one and part of night two, and then it devolves into the worst thing imaginable.  Jamey Sheridan's Randall Flagg is not as cool-looking as Ted Nugent, even.  And what was with the jean jacket?

I would have to rate the last half of The Stand miniseries as among the most disappointing television programs I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of stuff.  I tend to give creators a good amount of leeway, but it was appalling.  The the magical black person angle was particularly irritating.

It was also ruined by the fact that I watched it with three of my best friends, one of whom could not stop shouting "Dusty Rhodes" every time the then-chubby Peter van Norden came on the screen (I prefer to remember him as Officer Vinny Schtulman, but that's a personal choice).

I have never read a word of Stephen King.  That's less a matter of pride than knowing that I'll either hate it or want to read enough of him to make a dent in his catalog, which at the rate I'm reading now would take the rest of my life.  Kitchen Confidential and this volume of Nabokov's short stories aren't going to finish themselves.

[Hugman 3.0]

I just followed Tom's advice from a couple weeks ago and read On Writing.  It was as advertised. Thanks, Tom!

[Keith Whitener]

I started reading On Writing but couldn't get through it. I would have liked to known how he got into drugs, btw.

[B_Buster]

"Head Down," the New Yorker article Stephen King wrote about his son's Little League team, is the best (and only) thing I've ever read by him.

[Sarah]

I have read a ridiculous number of  Stephen King books.  Even when I think they're dumb or lousy, they somehow entertain me.  But I, too, prefer the early books, before he became so successful that no one bothered to take a red pencil to his work.  In fact, one of his later efforts, The Green Mile, is stronger precisely because the conceit of the serialized format required him to rein himself in.

He drives me crazy, really.  He's very good at certain things, but so damn lazy and self-indulgent in other respects.  As I said in the chat last night, my mother is reading the JFK book right now, and, as she put it, if only he were a little smarter, he could be a decent writer.  Even if he were smarter, though, I think his massive success would have ruined him.  That and the horrible accident he was in some years ago, which seemed to embitter him to such an extent that he lost some of the fun he used to bring to his writing.

[Smelodies]

Don't forget Skeleton Crew.

[crumbum]

When I was about twelve I wolfed down six or eight of his books in the space of a year or so, then never really went back. I've thought about revisiting his stuff for a while but maybe because I associate it so strongly with childhood, it seems a little embarrassing to pick his books up again even though I know they're not meant for kids.

Anyhow I do recall, even as a preteen, noticing a certain laziness, or maybe more of a first-draft quality, in his craftsmanship. From what I've heard, in the early to mid eighties he was finishing many hundreds of pages a month (he probably hasn't slowed down all that much). It seems to have resulted in a lot of repeated phrases and tropes of which he was unaware. In 'It', for example, he mentions people straining so hard that 'the cords in [his/her] neck stood out' or something like that, and he uses the exact same expression at least a half dozen times.

[Rick in Salt Lake]

For my money, Pet Sematary (sic) was his scariest and possibly best full-length novel.

I cannot speak to the novel as I'm not a fan of King's. But I will say that the movie (which I believe King also wrote) was hysterical... That little boy at the end saying "now I want to play with yooouuu" was one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen in a "horror" movie...

[Boogdish]

I had never read one of his books, but I listened to the audio book of "On Writing" when I was on tour Dec/Jan of 06/07.  In 07 I wrote and recorded 3 albums, and I think King's advice about work ethic maybe had something to do with it.  Later, I tried reading "The Gunslinger" and it made me really question all the advice I had absorbed. 

[Sashamak]

I read the Gunslinger in high school and I remember really liking the first chunk of that book. It ended with this really cool gunfight that was written really well and moved really quickly, but then the rest of the book was just so boring and a pain to get through.

[Ike]

I think he was the first novelist I really 'got', starting around 3rd grade or so.  LOTS OF STUFF I SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN READING THAT YOUNG. 

I was with him until Delores Claiborne, and then I bailed--couldn't handle anything after that, for some reason.  I read that one the year I started college, so there you go. 

In order: 

1.  Firestarter

2.  Dead Zone

3.  Misery (a breathtaking read)

4.  Different Seasons

5.  Carrie



IT, The Stand, Tommyknockers, and The Shining are bonkers. 

I see that he's releasing a sequel to the Shining.  !!!

I think King runs, for some, in phases.  I think a lot of people go through a Bukowski phase as well--like a stage of development for some.  Particularly for kids of the 80's (King, not Bukowski), King seems to strike a chord. 

[dragonchiptune]

When I was about twelve I wolfed down six or eight of his books in the space of a year or so, then never really went back. I've thought about revisiting his stuff for a while but maybe because I associate it so strongly with childhood, it seems a little embarrassing to pick his books up again even though I know they're not meant for kids.

Anyhow I do recall, even as a preteen, noticing a certain laziness, or maybe more of a first-draft quality, in his craftsmanship. From what I've heard, in the early to mid eighties he was finishing many hundreds of pages a month (he probably hasn't slowed down all that much). It seems to have resulted in a lot of repeated phrases and tropes of which he was unaware. In 'It', for example, he mentions people straining so hard that 'the cords in [his/her] neck stood out' or something like that, and he uses the exact same expression at least a half dozen times.

In my childhood I searched for many of them to read. It may have just been the accomplishment I was reading something that felt above children's books. I feel that similar way that I'd already done with the books in my childhood, I can't revisit them.