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The Bitch About Steven King Thread You know you want to

#1 User is offline   Rhubarb Icon

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Posted 07 June 2005 - 10:48 PM

After reading of the mutually painful experiences of rock dash and floppydisk, I figured it was about time for one of these. The man irritates me beyond comprehension, and I'd imagine others feel the same. Plus there are too many homage threads in this section.

I find he's like junk food. His books sell well, and I tend to indulge now and then because they're so damn appealing in an unhealthy sort of way, but afterwards I'm left with a feeling of over-indulgence, dissatisfaction, and indigestion. If T.H. White and Italo Calvino are five-course meals full of subtle flavours and the finest ingredients, served in modest portions by a master chef, then King is a giant bucket of KFC pieces with a box of fries and a tub of chocolate ice-cream.

The thing is, he has a decent imagination when it comes to ideas and so forth. It's his style I can't stand. He tends to shove in a lot of crude imagery like people wetting their pants or masturbating for no reason to instill 'gritty realism'. I'm no prude, but they're painfully obvious and kind of interrupt the flow a lot of the time. His characters are all so damn empty too. Occasionally he'll create one that I like, but for the most part I find them... I dunno... cute? Maybe it's just a suburban middle-class American attitude prevailant in all of them which pisses me off immensely, but whatever it is about them, it makes me hate them indescriminantly.

The thing I hate most about his books though is the 'crazy monsters' schtick. Any time a monster or villain speaks, it's screaming out nonsense words and random obscenities and raving like a complete fucking idiot. I think it's an attempt on his part to unsettle the reader, but to my mind it just really ruins any actual 'scary' factor that exists. The only monsters of his that actually creeped me out were the dude who stood in the dark corner in Gerald's Game and the zombie dog in Pet Semetary, neither of whom spoke a fucking word or exhibited any violence or WILD CRAZINESS at all. Oh, and the African woman whose name I don't remember in the book I forget about. Her son was drowned and she was raped. She was pretty damn scary, probably because she was so angry.

Also, the man's a jerk. I do agree with some stuff he says, that Shakespeare was just out to make a buck, and that you shouldn't exclusively read literature and ignore the 'lesser' novels (and vice versa). But christ. He really is convinced of his own genius. Every goddamn introduction he writes is about those evil critics who give him bad reviews because they are obviously PREJUDICED against books that have too many pages. God forbid the man should be made to edit something once in a while and despoil his mastery. I have actually kinda liked a couple of his books, but I think it was no coincidence that they were the shorter and much more heavily edited ones.

And Misery totally rips off Whatever Happened To Baby Jane.

Oh. And Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos are all women you stupid dipshit.
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#2 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 07 June 2005 - 11:34 PM

Oh how I yearn to be hated so well that people will mention me... Alas, not yet.

But as for King I find that a lot of his books aren't half bad. I liked The Green Mile and I liked the made for TV version of storm of the century and umm... that one he wrote that was scary. I think the main problem is that he's popular, and we all look at popularity as a suggestion of taintedness.

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#3 User is offline   Rhubarb Icon

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Posted 08 June 2005 - 12:37 AM

No, dude. That's his argument. If that were the case then I'd hate Pratchett and Rowling and I don't. Even though Rowling's a bit annoying.

He's an okay writer at times, but he can't half fuck up his own ideas.
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#4 User is offline   floppydisk Icon

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Posted 08 June 2005 - 01:09 PM

I really liked "IT". I mean, I really liked it. I thought it was scary as fuck, and interesting to read (except for the adult parts). But mostly I agree with Rhubarb, especially on the whole imagery thing.

Rose Red (TV series) and The Shining (movie) are both good, but show off his amazing inability to create interesting charactes.

But I think that his major fault is that in some of his books he just drags on and on and on. Christine would've been much better if he cut in in half, or even fourths, instead of going through every single minute detail of what every character does. And the Gunslinger books where good, until the fourth one. The whole time I was thinking, "Jesus, he could've made this about 200 pages with large font like the first one and it would've been good."

Ultimately, I think that he's an okay novelist, but he could do much better.
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#5 User is offline   Rhubarb Icon

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Posted 08 June 2005 - 02:21 PM

Yeah, the Gunslinger books I was torn over... they were quite cool in terms of imagery and ideas and stuff, kinda Gaimanesque in parts. I liked them for the most part, but the style bugged me, and never let me forget just who was writing it. Forth book was where I stopped reading.

Shining film was awesome naturally, assuming we're discussing Kubrick here. But King apparently hated it, because it wasn't 100% faithful to his genius, so he produced another film of the same book that goes for like two VHS tapes and I'm told is awful, haven't seen it myself. Shining book is alright. Some stuff in the hotel scared me. I like haunted mansion stories.

I really liked Shawshank Redemption, but again, the film is far superior to a story that's pretty good but not great.

Rose Red is actually a pretty decent book, as I recall. The original series, however, made me laugh my arse off. I watched the whole thing late one night a few months back and transcribed the more hilarious parts over MSN to a friend in the UK and made him laugh his arse off too. One of the worst shows ever. At least it was entertaining though, which is more than I can say for that more recent thing he did with the fucking talking anteater or whatever the hell.

I also wish to point out his apparent belief that black people, especially elderly black people, are inherently holy.
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#6 User is offline   Vampsmasher Icon

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Posted 08 June 2005 - 02:23 PM

Eating junk food is my constitutional right.
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#7 User is offline   floppydisk Icon

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Posted 08 June 2005 - 04:13 PM

Erm... okay.

QUOTE (Rhubarb @ Jun 8 2005, 02:21 PM)
Yeah, the Gunslinger books I was torn over... they were quite cool in terms of imagery and ideas and stuff, kinda Gaimanesque in parts. I liked them for the most part, but the style bugged me, and never let me forget just who was writing it. Forth book was where I stopped reading.

Shining film was awesome naturally, assuming we're discussing Kubrick here. But King apparently hated it, because it wasn't 100% faithful to his genius, so he produced another film of the same book that goes for like two VHS tapes and I'm told is awful, haven't seen it myself. Shining book is alright. Some stuff in the hotel scared me. I like haunted mansion stories.

That's exactly where I stopped in the Gunslinger series. I've heard that the next few are better.

And I'm definitely talking about the Kubrick one. I really like Kubrick as a director. I actually saw the one on TV. It was three two hour parts. That's six hours. It was pretty bad.
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#8 User is offline   rock_dash Icon

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Posted 14 June 2005 - 03:28 PM

Uh...blink.gif

I dunno where you got the idea that my reading Stephen King was painful, but I assure you that it wasn't. happy.gif;;

Maybe I'm just an SK gusher, but I just really think the man is a good writer. Out of the 11 books of his on my shelf (9 of which I've read so far). But since you bring up the character issue, I guess the characters in The Tommyknockers were a little...flat. But I still like the book. After I finish 1984, I'm gonna try Needful Things. I've seen the movie, but knowing what movies based on his books are like, I'm sure the book kicks it's ass.
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#9 User is offline   Rhubarb Icon

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Posted 14 June 2005 - 03:36 PM

You... liked Christine?
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#10 User is offline   rock_dash Icon

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Posted 14 June 2005 - 03:58 PM

QUOTE (Rhubarb @ Jun 14 2005, 12:36 PM)
You... liked Christine?


...are you gonna hurt me if I say I did? sad.gif
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#11 User is offline   floppydisk Icon

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Posted 14 June 2005 - 08:46 PM

Only a little. But we already know the answer to that. Can you please step outside with us for a moment?
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#12 User is offline   Rhubarb Icon

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Posted 15 June 2005 - 03:32 AM

It's for your own good. You'll thank us later.
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Posted 15 June 2005 - 11:15 AM

I friggin' LOVED The Stand. I enjoyed some of the Bachman books and The Tommyknockers was alright. I just couldn't get into The Gunslinger though.

I don't know. I think he's in a position where it's easy to criticize him. He's an easy target being that he's one of the most popular authors in the world.
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Posted 15 June 2005 - 11:23 AM

I also saw the TV version of the Shining, and it was horrible! It just seemed to drag on and on forever. What a waste. It'll never replace the fim Kubrick made.

but yea, the Bachman books are the only ones I can pretty much tolerate. tongue.gif

I haven't seen The Stand yet though.....
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#15 User is offline   Rhubarb Icon

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Posted 15 June 2005 - 12:55 PM

QUOTE
He's an easy target being that he's one of the most popular authors in the world.


I've noticed that all his supporters offer this as an argument. It's a method that isn't working for Bush, and it isn't working now. I don't go around arbitrarily attacking anyone who achieved fame. Why do none of you people ever give any reasons why he's actually any good, as opposed to saying my reasons for dislike are all in my head? tongue.gif

For the record, my main problem with him is that by all of his autobiographical stuff I've read, he's a self-righteous ass. I like some of his books okay. I don't think he's an abysmal writer. I just don't think he's that good. And I don't blame him for being popular. I don't think his books quite merit that much fame, but hey, I'm in the minority.

Thing is, I'm generally quite easygoing (believe it or not) about creative types, because it's a hard world for artists, and I wouldn't be slagging him off if he wasn't so damn arrogant about it, and so whinging and defensive about all criticism. Dude, 90% of the literate world adores your ass and you make more money than most of us will ever see in ten lifetimes, so quit whining when reviewers call you a hack. It's hard to respect a guy who specifically targets his critics in his introductions and sneers at them because they dared infer that his work needs some editing, and counterattacking all of their points, however trivial. T.H. White would never have pulled that crap. Get a sense of humour about yourself already, dude.
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