Why does Veeky Forums hate Stephen King? Or at the very least not think highly of him?

Why does Veeky Forums hate Stephen King? Or at the very least not think highly of him?

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Too accessible. Standard Veeky Forums elitism.

Granted he has written some really shitty novels, but he's also written a few gems. It comes with the territory of having such a high output. There's also probably an anti-commercialist bent to the hate. I don't think too highly of him and I don't think I'm ever going to read him again.

Noticed a lot of self-insert wank. But then again what part of writing isn't ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

What did you last read of his?

Quoting The Recognitions:
He's written fifty of them. If he had anything to say you'd think he would have said it by now.

This.

There is something about popularity that supposedly and inexplicably cheapens a work's value for the worldly and well read scholar of Veeky Forums.

So I would assume most people on Veeky Forums only really like his older works, so what are some of your favourites?

Anti-pretensions are just as bad as pretensions because you're making a show of how you're not a snob like the big bad elitists. It's all posturing faggotry.

Is there a single King novel that doesn't have an incredibly unsatisfying and disappointing ending? I can't think of a single one.

Might as well not read anything then in an attempt not to reveal any pretentious motives, one way or the other.

Yet, perhaps you may attain the most absolute form of pretentiousness if you refrain from literature entirely.

There is no escape.

>literally writes books about haunted typewriters and cars that come to life

It's like Goosebumps for adults.

I'm not talking about what you read. I'm talking about how you talk about it.

Ends are only satisfying if you asked for them. That's why they're "ends."

Because he's full on overkill with how much shit he puts out. Oh a book about a wolf in a cupboard, how interesting. Another about a group of people being trapped on a train station when it magically ends up 20km underground. Or a man that can teleport living in a supermarket.

It's unimaginative bollocks, and yet he's hyped as the greatest horror writer of our time.

He has a fetish for writing and doesn't know when to stop.

The best thing is he's also an oversensitive hypocrite. Professional criticism of him is often met with hostility, and yet he thinks he can criticise others without issue. He suggests new writers all need to be putting out a book a month and doing 1k of writing a day, and yet most of his early works were written over the course of several months. And he wanted to destroy the life of that drunk driver that hit him, despite also being an alcoholic/drug-user that lashed out at those around him.

In short, he's a cock.

Carrie

Because he's legitimately a shit writer.

most writers are a bit like that tho
an awful lot of them are special snowflake-type characters

theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2007/aug/21/theonlyamazingthingabouts

The Running Man.

I dislike him as a person. As a writer of popcorn fiction he is good for what he is. Just don't expect to read a Great American Novel worthy of mental masturbation (academic discussion) when you read his books. He's said he is the "literary equivalent of a big mac" for Christ's sake you jackasses.

>people like your books
>see your books in a book-store
>sign some of them
>what a vain prick
dat jealousy


mind you i don't like king at all. not a single book of his i've read with pleasure, and i only ever got through one.

>popularity that supposedly and inexplicably cheapens a work's value for the worldly and well read scholar of Veeky Forums

Breh, how new are you? Veeky Forums loves most of the Western Canon and is one of the least contrarian boards on Veeky Forums.

It's because his work is commercial, not because it's popular.

>Pratchett
>Martin
>BEE
>Gaiman

you forgot palahniuk and douglas adams, reddit

Stephen King is the greatest American writer of the 20th century and will be viewed as a Charles Dickens-like figure by future generations.

As for the endings to his stories - the Coen brothers get their dicks sucked for their unconventional film endings, and King's endings are very much in the same vein. But The Stand, The Shining, The Long Walk, Shawshank Redemption etc. have great endings. Oh, and Pet Sematary. And Tommyknockers.

I think when people bitch and moan about the endings in his books, what they're really doing is expressing their extreme dislike of the child gang bang in IT.

>the Coen brothers get their dicks sucked for their unconventional film endings, and King's endings are very much in the same vein

Explain in more detail, please.

I am not on the Veeky Forums bandwagon of hate but I avoid him because he is not very deep.

Look, it's like this... he takes some shallow concepts and he attempts, sometimes with great success, to make them frightening. By that I mean look at Cujo or Misery or something. He makes a dog/obsessed fan scary. But... in the objective light its just a dog/crazy person. Salems Lot was just a vampire story.

This makes a good point to be honest.

I am a massive Lovecraftian so when I consider that King is aiming for horror and I compare him with Lovecraft... it is pitiful. Incomparable.

Langoliers was on point though. Even the shitty TV movie is entertaining to me.

>I avoid him because he is not very deep.
>this...
>But...
>massive Lovecraftian
>Lovecraft...
>pitiful

Because he's shit and he writes to make money. His style helped ruin the credibility of horror literature.

What are you trying to say?

Shiterature.

Hack author who thinks his political opinions are worth sharing at all.

He doesn't understand Veeky Forums had trolls.

The Dark Tower is good.
Some of his early works are fine too.

He's certainly the most prominent and prolific of our time, but it definitely seems quantity is what he favours rather than quality.

Very surprised Neil Gaiman and George RR Martin are on there. I guess I can't complain - those authors aren't my cup of tea but I don't hate their work either - but with the amount of people who dislike them here, I'm surprised they'd make it onto some infographic.

Obviously thats what I meant fag

he does better when his stories are shorter.

I'm currently reading 'IT' what do you mean by child gang bang? I'm confused

The Long Walk

Does he have any good short stories?

Just sounds like you only like existential threats. It's just a dog... Tell yourself that when it's tearing you apart. She's just an obsessed fan... Say that after she chops off your leg.

It's clearly at a point in the book you have yet to reach.

The nightmares and dreamscapes collection has some good ones. It also has some really bad ones too though. It's pretty hit and miss.

From what I can remember
>crouch end
>popsy
>the end of the whole mess
>the night flier
>dolan's cadillac
>suffer the little children
>they've got a hell of a band
Are all pretty good.

...

Derp face.

at least he is right about something

I remember liking Green Mile, but nothing else of his ever stayed with me

first and only one that came to mind for me as well

No, the reason why Stephen King isn't highly regarded on Veeky Forums is the fact that here we perish literature. Stephen King doesn't write literature, King writes stories. Some of them are good, some of them are horrible. But what they all have in common is the fact that they're not literature in any way shape or form.

Meaning the definition of literature which describes only books and stories which are extremely good.

Although lits version of literature is whatever they liked reading and everything else is garbage.

>Why does Veeky Forums hate Stephen King?
Classic contrarian belief you'll see on Veeky Forums, /v/, /tv/, etc.

He's wrote a few good things. Shawshank, Shining and Pet Cemetery all come to mind.

If you've ever read Mr Mercedes, you'd hate him too

Seeing the graphic I wonder if it's due to trolls, or due to something similar to Veeky Forums's Corvette v GTR.
Plenty of people like GTRs AND Corvettes, but the threads that talk about them are so full of shitposting they just give up discussing the cars..

Chricton is superior summer read. At least he's shamelessly pretentious in place of shamefully pretentious.

Look, you have literature, and you have pop authors. King is the later. When his references become outdated in few decades he's out. Time makes a selection and the good thing always come out on top, and the average gets forgotten. No matter how popular a work was at one point.

Do you maybe know the novel She? No? It's just one of the most sold books in English language.

Well, GTR is obviously superior. 4WD beats RWD. It's as simple as that.

>Trying to explain to me why King isnt good as if I'm the one that implied he was good.

King is a well known author with various stories and many movies made out of those stories. He's not going to be forgotten as quickly as "She" was.

That doesn't mean he's great. In fact he's not great. Perhaps these days if he actually tried to write something great he could but hes just trying to write about murdering someone somewhere.

Anyway, what is forgotten is up to the public, and quite frankly, there are a lot of "avid readers" who think Nabokov is a brand of cookies, and basically know about merely Steinbeck and Poe because of thier schooling.

Good literature isnt a test of time, nor popularity, nor fanciness of the book. Good literature is literally profound. Good literature also has nothing to do with how much you like a certain book. Books that are perfect literature can still be boring peices of shit. But they remain undoubtedly the greatest of books because beneath that is still amazing literary talent.

Did Alphonse follow me here?

Shawsank Redemption

Everything's Eventual is a good collection
Also Batman & Robin Have a Confrontation from the Bazaar of Bad Dreams
And
The Gingerbread Girl from Just After Sunset

1408 is really good, I think it was in Everything's Eventual

What an ugly mother fucker

And what a stupid politician mind "bouuuh the evil racist "

1K a day is nothing. He's absolutely correct about that. If you aren't getting roughly there then you're not even trying.

It's a bit like a professional athlete telling you that you need to be training for at least three hours a day if you are serious.

The stand didn't have a satisfying ending and you know it.

Forcing yourself to write a target, no matter how small it is, will only result in shit.

He looks exactly like a cunt lecturer that kicked me out of university for not attending his dull lectures (all of which he put online anyway), so you could say I'm biased.

Practicing writing for a set amount of time is much more useful than setting a word goal. One is focused on the process of improvement, the other is the outcome, a number of words independent of quality.

>Books that are perfect literature can still be boring peices of shit.

Do you think so?

Only if you have no idea what you're doing and there was absolutely no forethought that went into what you're writing. If you have a fairly detailed outline written up, it's possible to write specific amounts and get what you want out of them. Though of course that's not what King does or advocates, so he's retarded.
Practice writing is a tedious and pointless endeavor. Practice by writing what you actually want to write. Then practice some more by revising it if it's shit.

Didn't mean writing just to practice, but you will get better practice by focusing on time spent instead of words written.

Practicing writing for a set amount of time simply swaps one outcome with another: instead of my outcome being "write a number of words" it is "write for a specific amount of time." These are both outcome-directed methods. There's no difference whatsoever. The focus is still on the outcome in both situations.

The difference lies in how you choose to approach the method. If you self-aware and aware of your work or what you're putting on the page -- or trying to put on the page -- then no approach is going to help you.

Mindlessly writing, whether you write for a set amount of time or for a specific number of words in a day, is going to be useless. You have to be self-aware and self-directed.

Saying "I'm going to write for two hours" or "I'm going to write 2,000 words today" aren't means of improvement. They're goal-setting tools designed to help writers do their work. They neither promote or focus on improvement, their entire use is to encourage the writer to write. Improvement has nothing to do with the goals you set, but how you approach the actual act of writing, reading, and editing.

I would say you're putting the cart before the horse, but that's not really apt here. It's more like you're confusing the tires for the engine.

The more you write the better you get at writing, usually.

Go kys

What are his best books?

What are his gems? I've only read It, and "It" was complete horseshit

He writes for entertainment. He doesn't really have a "higher purpose" in literature like people who are trying to change the medium.

This is perfectly ok. Reading for entertainment is not a sin.

I liked Cujo's ending.

RIP AND TEAR

Not that guy, but if it needs that kind of confirmation from outside of the text, it's bad literature. The text itself should be able to make the reader feel why those things are scary, to cnvince them of the danger. You're pretty much going "oh you'll see, you'll see", and it sounds like a bunch of empty promises.

I've never once heard a decent explanation for why he thought the child gang bang was okay.

That's not his detriment, I'm sorry you believe that. Entertainment and literature are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd say that literature even depends on entertainment value more than "higher purpose". Stephen King's characters are mostly boring, his prose is at times pretentious in the actual sense of the word, numerous nods to the lamest aspects of pop culture (like hard rock and ACDC), to name a few. He's not the worst writer in the world, and he does have good ideas for plots, but they're executed in the most awkward ways.

Shining
'Salem's Lot
It

There's a lot of great moments in The Stand but fucking hell that ending

The Gunslinger.

Fuck the rest of the series.

finished the 4th book recently Wizard and Glass. Can i have all that wasted time back?

If he doesn't think severe injury or death are permanent threats I don't know what to tell him. Cujo is clearly going to start attacking people, if that's not that scary to the reader, fine. The Misery lady isn't dangerous at first but since you're reading a King novel you should know what to expect.

He's just not a real master, he's like the Steven Spielberg of literature.

So I never read anything by him, because he always seemed to be a hack.

Willing to give it a try, whats some essential Stephen King?

Are you incapable of reading or something?

would say 1,4 and 7 are the best.
So, no!

No, are you? Please explain yourself fully if you want to talk.

I'm talking about execution, not content. Excusing something because of it being scary because it would be dangerous in real life, while disregarding hom it is presented, is promoting shock value.

Stephen King is the Stephen King of literature.

Shure he's got a lot of stuff out there and its all well done. but its all the same thing over and over. but I'm not one to mock another artist's curse . hang in there steve you'll have a new idea soon buddy.

Not him but lovecraft is trash.

I'm not understanding. What wasn't scary about these things? It's fine if you personally aren't scared, but there is nothing objectively wrong.

It's not a matter of what you or me find scary, your argument simply isn't valid.

Spielberg is a great director

> and its all well done

It really isn't.

Not really. A horror book that isn't scary to some people isn't a failure, because people have different tastes. 50 shades won't be sexy if the reader hates BDSM, but that doesn't mean it wasn't intended to be erotic.

I hate him because he shitted up his magnum opus which I loved until the fifth book. I liked the fact that his insane version of the world held continuity, the first that I had encountered like that. his new stuff sucks balls.