/lit/ - Literature

because /lit/ is 90% protagonists who think that the thing they wrote off and on for 5 years is going to turn the bestseller list upside down

meanwhile King just keeps chugging and writing and like half of people who read books like two or three things he's written (I like Shining and Tommyknockers and King himself said Tommyknockers is a shit book)

I really liked The Gunslinger, the end of the Dark Tower series was trash besides maybe the last chapter of the last book where it loops back on itself. That was kind of interesting. I might reread The Gunslinger again this year.

Bloated short story exposition novels, nonexistent prosody.

>>23203750
I just bought the shining and am looking forward to reading it. King said he hated the film adaptation, but Stanley Kubrick did a great job in my opinion. It's one of my favorite movies
>>23203754
My father says the gunslinger series is an absolute must read.

>>23203755
I feel like his son Joe hill fits this description better. His stories are quite short and feel very novice by comparison, but they are still easy short reads

His books tend to end on anticlimaxes. The Stand and The Dark Tower in particular have terrible endings.

>>23203773
He rushed the last few books of Dark Tower after he got in a bad car accident and realized he might not ever finish them before he died and the story suffered for it. It's still good, and I crushed the entirety of it in like a month or two without stopping. The Gunslinger, the first book, is excellent and is really what drew me into the rest of the books and made me want to finish. Like I said I'll probably reread at least the first book this year, I've been meaning to for a while.

>>23203740
probably because he's not really that impressive and he is one of the most famous writes alive. he has good premises, but a lot of his stuff is just goofy, and his verse is meh.

>>23203788
I've never heard of the stand. Is it an overall good read?
>>23203793
Heard the film adaptation is shit, can you confirm?

>>23203788
I really disliked how the Crimson King was portrayed at the end of the Dark Tower. He spent 7 books building up this badass villain of villains and turned him into a clown.

>>23203800
>film adaptation is shit
Yea I never even bothered with it. The race swapping of Roland spits in the face of some of the main themes of the books, which is the racial tension between him and one of the other characters. It's one of those stories where swapping the race really harms it beyond just it being an attempt at subversion of the original work.

>>23203740
>Why does everyone in this general think he's a shit writer?
He's not shit, but he's significantly more formulaic than your typical fiction writer, and across 9001 books it all really begins smudging.

I've read about 60 of his books and can say that he has a wide range of quality amongs his repertoire. A small percentage are great, a small percentage are utter shit, and the majority is kind of mid. What sets him appart from the average writer though imo is his capacity to create realistic average joe characters that go through horrific and extraordinary events and compelingly describe how someone like that would react under such circumstances. It's kind of pop culture novel entertainment though, but i don't even think King would object to that description of novels. I don't think he really cares abput being a great novelist, he just enjoys writing books.

Pet Cemetery was so good it actually made me wairy of my own dog for about three days

>>23203740
I loved The Mist but I think his hateboner for old Baptist ladies got in the way of his realism.
>>23203750
>/lit/ is 90% protagonists who think that the thing they wrote off and on for 5 years is going to turn the bestseller list upside down
You realize that was him, once upon a time, don't you?

chuds haven't read the long walk

>>23203740
People say that Alan Wake is just a game where you play as Stephen King in one of his self-insert stories, but Alan Wake the character is well dressed, tough as nails and writes crime thrillers, not Oscar/pedo bait.

>>23203740
Under The Dome was hilariously batshit. Should have been marketed as a zany comedy.

>>23203740
King has the capacity to right really good books and, on rare occassion he does. Examples of some of his best would include The Shinning, Pet Cemetary, and Cujo.

Writing good books is not his focus, though. He prefers quantity to quality. Because of this, he takes shortcuts. He has very little in the way of real style, often resorting to stock phrases like "little did he know", "in the nick of time" ect. Whenever he does showcase style, it is schlocky.

(((((HE LIKES ALL CAPS AND LOTS OF PUNCTUATION!!!!))))))

Also, due to excessive drug use, many of his books are bloated and become nonsensical by the end. Think The Stand and It. Beyond that, all of his readable work is in the first half of his career.

most of /lit/ doesnt read and has never read anything written by King. They don't like him because he bad mouths trump and musk

>>23203740
king writes entertainment and ultimately i'm not all that interested in entertainment. but he's one of the most entertaining writers alive, and if i'm directing anyone to that kind of writing, i'm likely mentioning his name first

>>23204616
Most of lit are milquetoast liberals and politically noneuclidean marginals.

>>23204622
>newfaggot viewpoint
i take it you're part of the post2015 influx

don't "(you)" me, cancer.

>>23203800
>I've never heard of the stand. Is it an overall good read?
The Stand is an apocalyptic epic about The United States with a large cast of characters and a good vs evil premise.

A superflu plague wipes out 99% of humanity. The novel details the collapse of society, which is pretty good though I think King's fetish for government corruption and cruelty maybe gets a little carried away. Once most everyone's dead, survivors adventure their way across the country, driven by dreams of a kindly old woman and an evil, dark man. Survivors coalesce on either side of the Rocky Mountains (good guy HQ in Boulder, bad guy HQ in Vegas). Next part dwells on how each side gets busy rebuilding society while worried about the other side. Finally there's a quest where Frodo and Samwise go to Vegas. Climaxes with Gollum rolling up with a literal nuke that God uses to destroy the whole city. Denouement is long and boring.

The good parts are all the details and backstories and personalities of all the characters and places. There's a great variety of characters, from a selfish former rock star to a pessimistic Martin-like professor. The villain is entertaining, and the post-apocalyptic adventuring is pretty well done. The book does a good job of conveying what it might be like to survive a plague (without zombie bullshit to contend with around every corner, just potentially crazy or dangerous people).

There's no great philosophical content. There's plenty to think about wrt rebuilding society, the scenarios presented are interesting but despite the "good" vs "evil" theme, the ideals embodied by the "good" and the "evil" sides are fairly pedestrian. But it's enough for a good story imho.

>>23204299
>What sets him appart from the average writer though imo is his capacity to create realistic average joe characters that go through horrific and extraordinary events and compellingly describe how someone like that would react under such circumstances.
Definitely evident in The Stand.

>>23203740
King’s dialog after the mid 90s doesn’t even remotely resemble the way people actually talk
He writes a 1100 page epic once a decade that are typically 1000 pages of 10/10 before crashing and becoming a 5/10 in the last 100 pages
He goes on weird tangents and lets his stories get out of hand, and if you read any of his nonfiction where he talks about his writing process he literally blames this on the fact that he “just lets the story flow out and see where it goes” basically dodging responsibility for why his books sometimes suck
I like him overall

>>23203740
He's more of a shit person than a shit writer.

I think he's talented (up to a point), and doesn't give a shit.
That's what most of his work reads like. Like he had a vague idea, and just shat it out.

>>23203740
He's got a couple of very good premises and some solid stories, imo. A lot of times, tho, his stories suffer from weird endings or just straight up bizarre decisions halfway. Rose Madder is a good example of this or Finders Keepers.

Solid books I would recommend from him:
>The Dead Zone
>Pet Sematary
>11/22/63
>Revival

>>23204760
Yeah, he is stuck in the 80s or even 70s in some ways. Old hack syndrome.

>>23203740
>Be specific
From a Buick 8, The Girl who loved Tom Gordon, The Institute, Later... to name a few

>>23204760
I don't think he writes his own books anymore. He just gives old recycled ideas to his editors and they produce one book a year published by his name. Selling mediocre books a good business.
And I'm kind of disappoint because I read more than 40 of his books during high school.

>>23205145
That's pretty cynical. He writes because he HAS to write, it's part of him. But I agree he's gone downhill over the years.

>>23204801
This, desu.

>>23204945
Lots of ideas, I'll admit.

>>23203740
He writes ridiculously long books for what are generally gimmicky high-concept ideas. A lot of his stories use samey cliches over and over and are written knowing they're just a springboard for movie/TV adaptations. He acts like a smug fag outside of his work.

>>23204299
Which ones would you say are his best?

>>23203788
didn't he admit that he sucks at writing endings or something along the words?

>>23205877
He’s so terminally online it wouldn’t shock me if people trolling him for his shit endings finally got him to just say “haha yeah I can’t write endings lol”
pic related

>Why does everyone in this general think he's a shit writer?

Because this is 4chan. King has published over 50 novels, which have had many successful adaptions by some of the greatest directors in the history of Hollywood. He is the best known Horror writer since Edgar Allen Poe, and he is filthy rich and regarded as the master of Horror.

If anyone on this site has traditionally published a single novel, it likely has never sold more than 100,000 copies and will never be adapted.

Do I think King's quality of writing is on the level of Moby Dick or Ulysses? No, but that's not what he's going for. He knows what he's making and who his audience is. He actually gets shit written and published, which makes him superior to 99% of the people on this site.