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/lit/ - Literature

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1130193 No.1130193 [Reply] [Original]

How does /lit/ feel about Stephen King?

>> No.1130197

I fell for the hype and read a shitton of his books when I was in high school, but then I realised I just didn't care. He may know a thing or two about writing novels, but I'm just

>> No.1130195

He's the King! of trolls

>> No.1130201

>>1130195
Durr this joke sure isn't old as shit

>> No.1130207

>>1130197
>but I'm just

.....?

>> No.1130213

>"It was a nice day...........................AND THEN EVIL CAME!"
>— The Collected Work of Stephen King, ultra-condensed version

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StephenKing

>> No.1130215

A smart man who has written a lot of great books. He's not that great of a prose stylist, but his characterization is top-notch. He'll always be one of my favorite authors.

>> No.1130218

He's probably the most talented writer of his generation, up there with Foer, Wallace, and Brown. Most haters are just turned off by his popularity.

>> No.1130221 [DELETED] 

His book On Writing is a suggestion for one of my fall semester classes.

should I get it /tv/?

>> No.1130228

>>1130221
I like it

>> No.1130227 [DELETED] 

>>1130221

sorry I meant /lit/

I'm also asking /tv/ about his movies

>> No.1130232

responsible for joe hill

ugh

>> No.1130234

>>1130221
That's actually the only Steven King book I've ever read. I'd recommend it.

>> No.1130235

OP here, I meant to ask if /lit/ likes his work On Writing

it's suggested by one of my professors.

>> No.1130242

>>1130228
>>1130234

I got two that says On Writing is ok

is it worth my money?

Also any of his fiction decent? I haven't read anything by him since early high school and I don't trust my teenageijudgment.

>> No.1130245

list all of the books about writing available

now list all of the books about writing from an author who has profited more than stephen king

>> No.1130250

You know that Family Guy episode where Stephen King pitched an idea about a killer desk lamp to his agent, who subsequently bought the idea?

Yeah, that.

>> No.1130257

>>1130250
uh...sorry...I don't watch Family Guy but yes, I've heard King is a bit batshit.

>> No.1130258

>>1130242
On Writing is good. Danse Macabre is great (it strays away from the writing aspect and does an in-depth discussion on horror in the media and how it effects us).

>> No.1130262

>>1130258
*affect, sorry.

>> No.1130276
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1130276

What The Dark Tower series? any good?

a kid in my class keep going on about how great it is.

>> No.1130287

i loved him when i was younger now i still think he is a competent story teller who writes good page turners.

I still love it where he does (shit) like this

where the bit in brackets is thoughts or something

>> No.1130286

>>1130276
has one of the best first lines in all of literature. steadily goes downhill from there

>> No.1130296

>>1130276

it's pretty good but some stuff is so silly e.g. when he introduces himself as a character

>> No.1130298

neat stories
but his execution isn't pretentious enough, therefore he sucks

>> No.1130306

He's a good writer. Some of his stuff's kinda batshit, and some of it's kinda normale very day bad shit. But there's a good core of effective stories with his name on them.

>> No.1130311

>>1130286
exactly this, the last book is retarded with made up elvish bullshit, the first book starts out really good

>> No.1130315

>>1130276
The Dark Tower series is good until they fight with snitches and other dumb shit >_>

>> No.1130317

>>1130311

The first three books at least are exceptional.

From there... it ranged from 'eh, I'm okay with this' to 'what the fuck is going on. what the fuck am I reading?'

>> No.1130323

He's got quite an imagination, but for some reason he tends to fall apart during the denouement.

On Writing was probably the best book I've ever read on the topic of actually writing though.

>> No.1130325
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1130325

>>1130218

FYI, whenever you drop the "popularity" bomb you reveal your inability to participate in an intelligent discussion about these kinds of things. DUH popular writers (or whatever the artform under discussion) will get slammed more than obscure writers because, um duh? they come in conversation more. I hate on WAY more obscure writers than popular writers, but every time I try to express something negative about someone who happens to be popular, some retard like you will decide that you're not smart enough to hold up your end of the conversation, and so with a bit of clever misdirection will dismiss the entire discussion by disqualifying anything I may have to say as inherently dishonest, because I'm only hating the popular.

You are the one who comes off as an asshole, and as afraid to discuss for real. Personally, I love a lot of authors who happen to be popular, and I hate a lot of authors you, friend, have never heard of.

You don't want to hear WHY I don't like Stephen King? Fine, turn tail and back out of the room respectfully son, don't just display your ignorance and fear by dismissing any negative opinion as necessarily biased due to popularity. It makes YOU the poseur, because YOU are the one who is bringing a predisposed opinion to the discussion without the willingness to discuss and examine.

pic related

>> No.1130327

I'm not a writer, but I really enjoyed reading On Writing anyway.

>> No.1130335

>>1130325

Yeah, man, that's cool. People who pride themselves on knowing and enjoying more obscure things don't commonly hate on things for being popular at all. That's just because OH WAIT you're being kinda dumb.

I do agree with you to a point, in that if somebody doesn't like a popular writer it isn't necessarily 100 percent first reason because it's popular. But it is still a relatively common thing to do. And saying that anybody who will pull the popularity card is obviously mentally inferior is just the same kind of dismissive generalization.

>> No.1130337
File: 21 KB, 300x369, joehill_narrowweb__300x369,0.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1130337

I prefer his son, Joe Hill's work.

He gets my vote for his shout out to Trent Rez and My Chem and da gang!

>> No.1130341

>>1130335

If you're the one who wrote this--"Most haters are just turned off by his popularity"--you completely disqualified yourself from participating in this discussion by attempting to preemptively dismiss the input of anyone who had anything negative to say about King. My pointing that out is no where near the same kind of preemptive dismissal.

>> No.1130342

>>1130337
damn you. he's going to get insanely popular, i just know. king senior will probably die soonish, so joe's the obvious choice for people seeking more of the same type of writing.

>> No.1130348
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1130348

>>1130325
why is it you don't like stephen king?

>> No.1130359
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1130359

>>1130348

Because he's so fukkin popular

>> No.1130362

>>1130341

I am actually not that guy. I'm just a bystander, astounded by your assholery.

See, two situations.

Genleman number one says, "I don't like Stephen King."
Gentleman number two says, "Your opinion is invalidated because you dislike popular things."
Gentleman number three says, "Your opinion is invalidated because people who call people on disliking popular things are idiots."

Let's see class, how many dismissive generalizations are in these statements? The correct answer is two. Numbers two and three are effectively saying the same thing due to different stimuli. If one of the two statements is more valid to you, then it is because you agree with it more personally.

In short, fuck off back to France, cheese eater.

>> No.1130381

>>1130362
Everyone in this thread is a butthurt faggot.

>> No.1130396

>>1130348

Serious answer? I read him all through highschool, through most of college, and mostly kept up with him through my early 30s or so; I would get the urge for that kind of thing about once a year, about his publishing schedule, so I read most of his stuff as he wrote it. But more and more it leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. The more I thought about it, the more I saw that his view of the world is diseased; that the urge I had to read him was, somehow, indulgently self destructive; it was the base urge to kind of relieve myself of human responsibility and spend some reptile-brain time just hating people. His view of the universe indulges that lowest of human urges. So many of his books--the worst of them, say Gerald's Game and Pet Sematary--it's clear that he's just created these characters in his own little imaginary world for the sole purpose of torturing them, of imagining the most sadistic fantasies he can dredge up from the worst, darkest corner of whatever illness he's wallowing in, and simply luxuriate in the torture. As a god in this universe he's created, to stretch the metaphor, he hates people. A lot. In almost all of his stories, before he sics the universe on someone to gleefully torture them, he has them commit some small transgression, so that they "deserve" their fate. In this way he seduces us, the reader, into allowing ourselves to join in the torture, to excuse it, and indulge that hatefulness in us.

The more I read him as I grew older, the more toxic and depressing I found his stories to be. Couple that with how truly bad a writer of fiction he is, and howbout a nice steaming pile of no thanks.

See? Popularity doesn't even enter into it.

>> No.1130404

>>1130396
lol you fell in love with characters. go read fanfiction.net, you faggot

>> No.1130405

>>1130193

To answer your question OP, no, I really don't like King, but maybe you will. You should read a couple book and see. :)

>> No.1130406

>>1130396
Do you feel this way about everything in the horror genre? Because they wouldn't really be good horror books if the protagonist was just a happy guy living a happy life happily all the time forever.
Aside from that, Gerald's Game was still a pretty awful, fucked up book.

>> No.1130416

>>1130396
I guess I got lucky, by the time I started getting into his stuff he'd gotten past his awful phase (gerald's game and the like)

I started with It and went through his old stuff and like his newer stuff.

I agree with you about Pet Semetary, the second half of that book just made me fucking sad, but generally King's work has happy endings. Bad stuff happens, but it kind of has to for there to be conflict and such.

>> No.1130422

I like Stephen King.

that's all really. nobody really expects anything ambitious from him. but i like his books. they're enjoyable

>> No.1130435

>>1130218
This is your best post in a while, great job

>> No.1130712

bump?

>> No.1130733

I like Stephen King.

He isn't a necessarily a good writer, but he's at least keeping people entertained, which is kind of the whole point of writing really. I haven't read anything by him in ages, but I read a good bit of King's stuff as a kid. I remember being scared shitless in my dark room, trying to fall asleep without anything coming out of the closet and killing me.

Good times.

>> No.1130740

Stephen King is a writer who has had moments of greatness and possibly genius. A few of his books are genuinely Great Books. 'It,' 'The Stand...' But he seems, now, to be dumbly repeating what has become the Stephen King formula: Assembling a large cast of every-day-joes-and-janes, and trapping them together in some inescapable hell and then writing 900+ pages about it. It's been old for a long, long time. Whatever he once had to say, he seems to have said it. If he's not going to write anything new, he ought to just retire with what's left of his dignity.

>> No.1131490

>>1130306
>>1130422
>>1130733
What these guys said.
Also, I feel just about the same way about Chuck Palahniuk.

Oh, and aspie detected at >>1130404. If you DON'T care about characters, you're either reading the wrong authors, or literature is just not for you.

>> No.1131494

i really like Stephen King, i enjoy his friends around the campfire writing style and i enjoy reading his work.

he knows he's not going to be an amazing writer and he accepts that, but he brings out fun reads with some decent stories, i particularly like his short stories.

So yeah, i like King, i haven't read the dark tower series yet though, just some of his novels and short story collections.

>> No.1131499

love him
most of his stuff is good, some is lame, and he is a bit stale sometimes
but
dark tower series is genius
seriously amazing

>> No.1131503

how can you guy's think king isn't an amazing writer...there's a huge failure in reasoning here

>> No.1131521

>>1130381
Agreed. This is why I'm going back to /adv/ right away.

>> No.1131526

>>1131521
And actually, it's pathetic when /adv/ is worthier of my time than this board.

You should all be ashamed...

>> No.1131653

>>1131503

I hope you are still alive by the time you grow out of this. I read The Stand twice in high school. Brilliant. Then, after 15 years of reading other writers, other books, other styles, I re-read it again at about 30.

I can honestly say, with a supreme effort to avoid exaggeration, that that later re-read of The Stand is one of the worst experiences of my life as a reader. Not only was it somehow clear to me now how abysmally horrible a writer King really was, but I had to add to that the fact that at one point in my life I considered him to be a very GOOD writer. The Stand is a denser deposit of pure suck than can be found anywhere in the entire universe. What a horrible, horrible, terrible, horribly written piece of projectile stool.

>> No.1131655

Some of his work is guilty pleasure tier (i.e. The Stand, Under the Dome), but it's not on the caliber of literature I usually read.

>> No.1131659

>>1131503

Keep reading other writers. Some day you will look back at your admiration of King's writing and you will blush with shame.

>> No.1131661

>>1131659
Honestly, some of King's writing border's on intolerable...

>> No.1131664

Night Surf has some great stories in it. Last Rung on the Ladder and Sometimes They Come Back and that one about the smoke quitting agency were my favorites.

Of his novels I've only read the first two dark tower books and a bit of The Stand before I lost it.

Of what I've read, I really like his stuff. Most people in this thread who dislike him seem to do so because they've been reading him for large amounts of their adult lives and I can understand being tired of him after re reading his books twice.

>> No.1132629

old work = awesome
new work = eh....

>> No.1134316

I love Stephen King, though his endings are always "meh" to deus es terrible

>> No.1134322

>>1130235

On Writing is the best thing that ever happened to my writing ability. Even if you don't like Stephen King's novels, is advice is gold.

>> No.1134338

>>1131490
>Oh, and aspie detected at >>1130404. If you DON'T care about characters, you're either reading the wrong authors, or literature is just not for you.

lmno u dumb

>> No.1134344
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1134344

>>1131661
>border's
>'s

>> No.1134469

>>1134344

Psst. Not a mistake, viral marketing for the book store.

>> No.1134488

Stephen King is a niggerhating prick, and he stinks.

>> No.1134493

>>1134488
>nigger-hating prick who stinks
...so, what you're saying is, he's the physical embodiment of 4chan?

>> No.1134497

http://www.nautilus-solar.net/SandyGunfox/books/K/King,%20Stephen/King,%20Stephen%20-%20On%2
0Writing.jpg

Also this. Change the .jpg to .rar or open it win winrar like you all know how to do

>> No.1134663

King is excellent, I don't really give a fuck about who hates him. Yeah, though, he's commercial as all fuck and hates to use plots. He may not be a writer's writer for the simple reason that he does everything so seamlessly and slick. His approach to the situation is the modern equivalent of Poe's total effect, it's a piece of advice that will create a slew of shit writers who will try to copy him but fail because they simply don't have his talent.

>> No.1134666

I respect him. I don't like his work, mostly because he writes in a genre I have no real interest in (horror). I read "Under the Dome", though, just because, and found it to be a decent enough thriller, though the man's characterization lacks any degree of subtlety. Meh.

"On Writing," however, is brilliant.

>> No.1134675

Stephen King hates black people??