/lit/ - Literature

The Stand is easily one of my favorite books. And Stephen King was a great writer imo BEFORE he got hit by a bus and cleaned up his life.

Fucking artists putting thier lives together ALWAYS ruins their work. I'd rather have them fucked up and die young.

>>3322158

But 11/22/63 is one of his most praised and critically lauded books ever written.

>>3322158
>>3322189
SK fan here, the Stand is the greatest book of his (perhaps of anyone's), and while I really loved 11/22/63 it could never compare to the Stand. 11/22/63 had heart but the Stand had heart AND soul.

the stand was good up until the ending (see also: turtle from it, arthritis spider from needful things)

I have 11/22/63 but I've yet to read it. Is it that entertaining? What I loved about Kings early writing was his wry smartass voice. His later stuff just seems to me like failed imitation.

>>3322213

11/22/63 is pretty great and has a healthy dose of smartassery -- my quibbles are as follows

(a) the "poundcake" thing gets eye-rollingly repetitive
(b) the epilogue was sickly sweet and totally unnecessary
(c) dude is completely wrong about moxie, which damages his credibility with me irrevocably

>>3322213
Yeah it's lost the 'edginess' (for want of a better term), but it really got me because of the romance of the period and the emotions of the characters. Living in the 50s and early 60s in America is just so picturesque (at least in my mind's eye) and the female lead (Sadie) was just so beautiful sounding.

Though perhaps it had more of an impact upon me because I'd just left Oslo station on a train for Frankfurt airport to go back to Australia, leaving my girlfriend behind.

>>3322226
The 'sickly sweetness' made me attached to the characters and the location with my heart rather than just my head.

>>3322232

feel like i wouldj've felt connected to the characters even without the epilogue but to each his own i reckon

>>3322226
wait, does he think moxie is a bad ability? What a fucking retard. Salamence with moxie can hit harder than a fucking Solar Powered Charizard Fire Blast. Krokorock's only real saving grace is moxie. I had no idea SK was such a casual.

>>3322236
I want you.

>>3322133

The Stand was great. Does anyone else like The Tommyknockers? I'm reading Apt Pupil right now.

>>3322189

>11/22/63
By far his best that I've read- but, I haven't read the stand.

>>3322236

>>>/vp/
>>>/1997/

>>3322344
... I'm not on /vp/? But I thought this was Stephen King Suffers Smogon Strategy Saturdays! Dammit!

You're all wrong. Stephen King is shit. If you don't know why, you should read more.

>(BTW, why do you say that S. K. is a shit writer?)
There are three things I don't like Stephen King.
1. His prose is immature, which makes it hard to take his setpieces seriously. I remember that in the Stand some of the main characters get in a gunfight with some rednecks and when one of the rednecks gets shot in the face Stephen King observes that the injured redneck screams like Roger Rabbit.
2. Every novel of his that I've read has a weird awkward-sounding mantra. In The Talisman it was "Who plays the Jerry Bledsoe changes?"
And finally, a personal complaint 3. Stephen King uses a lot of baby boomer slang that I find distracting because I'm not a baby boomer. See the Talisman mantra above.

>>3322433
The only book by Stephen King I've liked is The Eyes of the Dragon, probably because in this novel Stephen King was trying not to write like Stephen King.

read the sequel. It's called The Sit.

>>3322433

He's also naive and can't end a book for shit. He clearly doesn't read much literature.

>>3322433
I wouldn't say he's complete shit. He's fairly hit and miss, as you'd expect from someone who writes that much, and even his good stuff is usually a little bland, but he's made some good stuff, The Shining and The Stand being examples. I think your points are perfectly valid, though.

>>3322433
Can agree with the second one, every novel it has that, but I can't agree that it detracts. I feel like it binds together seemingly unrelated plots and such.

I love SK, but you do notice a few things about him after reading a few of his books, and after a while they start to get on your nerves. Like the grating inner dialogue of his main characters, or his constant quoting of song lyrics, or the fact that 50% of his protagonists are writers. My advice is to never read two SK novels back to back, and to avoid the Dark Tower series at all cost.

>>3322496

Hear me, I beg. Don't talk down on the Dark Tower, say thankya.

>>3322457

The Stand is very bad. He fills it with snobbish pop-culture references that anyone can understand (and feel the masturbatory pleasure from doing so). The ending is just trite nonsense. It never has a clear message and is often sexual for no reason.

It bases itself on the bible, but seems confused half of the time.

>>3322505
Well yeah. SK was at the time. That was during his LSD kick if I'm not mistaken.

>>3322508
Forgot about that

>>3322502
I'll admit I liked the Dark Tower. I don't think I can say much for how 'good' it was.

>>3322505
If nothing else it was well-written, and its characters compelling. I don't think every book needs a philosophical message. And what are you trying to say about the pop-culture references? You reference the 'masturbatory' pleasure of getting a pop culture reference, but what non-masturbatory pleasure can one get from reading a book? Do you honestly expect everything to be crammed with insight? Do you ever leave your house?

>>3322524

People should work for their understanding. Otherwise it's just as good as a joke about pop-eye on the fucking X-Factor.

>>3322524
Dark Tower was a fun ride, that's all it was meant to be.
People need to stop worrying so much about how much philosophical weight a book holds, especially in regards to fiction.

Well that asshole from Under the Dome seriously rush limbahed my jimmies

>>3322530
>people should work for their understanding
God forbid the PLEBEIANS get a hold of these insights of ours. It'd be chaos!

>>3322530

Oh, come on. I have trouble believing anybody could be that pretentious.

>>3322543

>Wow, I know who da Vinci was! Kinda!
>Holy fuck I listened to Elvis once.
>'Preggers', haha, my mum said that to me.
>Ice-bullets sound legit. Isaac Newton - the dude with the apple right?

>>3322554

>3/10
>4/10
>6/10
>9/10 . 4/10

>>3322554

SUCH A NERD XD XD

>>3322554
Now you're just being cynical for the sake of being cynical.

>>3322565

No way. This is what people are like. Fuck, this is what I was like when I was a teenager reading this shit.

We don't work for anything any more - myself included. We're all entitled in our own vulgar Absolutism for the masses. Worth something. We count without effort.

>>3322579
So you're being cynical because you don't know what else to be? I think I'm ahead of you on that curve, I got out of that phase when I left high school.

>>3322592

We're competing now?