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/lit/ - Literature

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22308292 No.22308292 [Reply] [Original]

Is Stephen King a good writer?

>> No.22308295

>>22308292
No.

>> No.22308302

>>22308292
shlock meister

>> No.22308306

>>22308292
he’s a good writer the way my ass is a good shitter.

>> No.22308353

He's competent.

>> No.22308369

>>22308292
He can be pretty good. Here's how one of his stories starts:
>FedShip ASN/29 fell out of the sky and crashed. After a while two men slipped from its cloven skull like brains. They walked a little way and then stood, helmets beneath their arms, and looked at where they had finished up. It was a beach in no need of an ocean—it was its own ocean, a sculpted sea of sand, a black-and-white-snapshot sea frozen forever in troughs and crests and more troughs and crests. Dunes. Shallow ones, steep ones, smooth ones, corrugated ones. Knife-crested dunes, plane-crested dunes, irregularly crested dunes that resembled dunes piled on dunes—dune-dominoes. Dunes. But no ocean. The valleys which were the troughs between these dunes snaked in mazy black rat-runs. If one looked at those twisting lines long enough, they might seem to spell words—black words hovering over the white dunes. “Fuck,” Shapiro said. “Bend over,” Rand said. Shapiro started to spit, then thought better of it. Looking at all that sand made him think better of it. This was not the time to go wasting moisture, perhaps. Half-buried in the sand, ASN/29 didn’t look like a dying bird anymore; it looked like a gourd that had broken open and disclosed rot inside. There had been a fire. The starboard fuel-pods had all exploded. “Too bad about Grimes,” Shapiro said. “Yeah.” Rand’s eyes were still roaming the sand sea, out to the limiting line of the horizon and then coming back again. It was too bad about Grimes. Grimes was dead. Grimes was now nothing but large chunks and small chunks in the aft storage compartment. Shapiro had looked in and thought: It looks like God decided to eat Grimes, found out he didn’t taste good, and sicked him up again.

>> No.22308388

Personally, I think he’s got a very firm grasp of the fundamentals: he builds good scenes, there is tension and pacing, the characters are round and dynamic, the dialogue reveals character and pushes the narrative forward. He also does try to expand his style with books like The Green Mile and The Body.

His problem is that by writing several books a year, they’re all very similar. I think half his books feature a man and boy team. They have very predictable endings too because he’s formulaic, and in many ways, the endings are just not good in general—they’re a little cringy. Also, there’s not much depth to them. They’re almost too easy to consume. I would call his books “junk food literature.”

If you’re looking to just enjoy a thriller without having to look beyond every word and character, then he’s a good writer, but he’s not in the same category as Gaddis, McCarthy, Pynchon, Faulkner.

>> No.22308602

He's above average and that's ok.
Think of all the unpublished shit you don't get to see, now add that in, add in all the self published shlock and it's okay to be average or above average. He's aged well though, very weird face.

>> No.22308727

i read the stand recently and was struck by how little happened in those 1000+ pages. trashcan man was the only character that really interested me aside from maybe lloyd near the end when he finally realizes what a shithole his life is because flagg improved his intellect but knows he can't do anything to change it because he's given his soul away.

he's a better short story writer. his cheap drive-in ideas don't have enough juice to last for a whole novel.

>> No.22308885

>>22308369
This prose is surprisingly good for King. Not used to this.

>> No.22308957

I remember really enjoying The Talisman and Black House, but those were with Peter Straub or something?

>> No.22309057
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22309057

>>22308353
This. Sometimes he ascends. But mostly competent. Free of cringe__?__[/spoiler] I know he's a meme but idk if I ever actually winced—okay actually Desperation was fucking cringe throughout. That's the only time, but it's a whole book of cringe. Oh and End of Watch was total cringe trash. But Finders Keepers is one of my favorites of his (the preceding book in the trilogy). OH and that other book with Holly + the short story with her in If It Bleeds. Though the description of the shapeshifter in that story was kind of cool. But that was half a sentence and not worth the read. Idk King is mostly slop but it's in proper English so it's not all bad, better people are reading than watching Netflix or going outside (where I am).

>> No.22309459

>>22308292
No, all of his incredible success is just random dumb luck

>> No.22309533

>>22308292
100x better than any /lit/ browsing faggot

>> No.22309649

>>22308292

He's no F. Gardner, but he's alright for modern novelists.

>> No.22309684

>>22308727
My favorite part of that book is after the nuke goes off when that guy and the oh my laws moon guy have to make it back to Denver and the moon downie laments how dumb he is. Very human and touching moment.
Also the imagery of Harold mowing the lawn crying right after everything fell apart is great. He also had the shittiest death in the book.

>> No.22309690

>>22308292
Misery and Gerald's Game are both legitimately good books

>> No.22309711
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22309711

Guy can write a good story. His problem most of the time is his premises are complete shit.
>what if laundry machine but evil
>what if greaser but evil (3-4 times?)
>what if corporation evil
>what if dog but evil
>what if clown but evil
>what if car evil (does this like 4 fucking times)
>what if young man evil
>what if fan evil
>what if walking evil
>what if game show evil
>what if hick children evil
>what if disease bigly
you can go on with this forever
guy can write a character, theme, a scene, good prose, a book on how to write. If you have two of those things you can be a good writer. He has all of them.
What he doesn't have is the ability to write great endings (I can't think of any of his books that end GREAT)
and can't think of good premises

>> No.22310233

>>22309711
Add to this the fact that he has an extremely unimpressive understanding of spirituality and the supernatural and the fact that hes a Classic-Era sexual deviant that doesnt know how normal people have/or think of sex and masturbation.

>> No.22310279

>>22308292
He writes YA shit for actual adults. Take that as you will.

>> No.22310387

>>22308292
He has managed to write stories that are accessible and engaging to a large number of people, and a large volume of them.

I've only read The Shining and there was way way too much description going on of visual things.
Like, I can see how he's managed to sell so many movies because movie producer types are going to read his shit and just instantly have a vision for what his books should look like as movies, while the stories themselves are pretty simple and easy to understand with reasonably clearly motivated characters and what not.

>> No.22310868

No.

>> No.22311234

>>22308292
Not great but he has some good ideas and he has good work ethic, together these things combine to a good writer in the sense of the writer as a profession and a sort of craftsman. His work ethic is almost too good in that he'll crank out a 700 page novel, send it to his publisher and they'll say:
>Jesus christ, he just sent us one of these two months ago.
>Dude I ain't reading all that shit. Just print it. It's Stephen King, it'll sell anyway.