Is he an amazing storyteller or a pulp writer? Opinions seem to be incredibly far split on him as an author

Is he an amazing storyteller or a pulp writer? Opinions seem to be incredibly far split on him as an author.

Which books of his have you read and how did you like them?

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His short stories are pretty good. IT was good character development, and a pretty harrowing tale. Misery was nice and claustrophobic. Haven't read anything else by him at length though. Tbh the people who shit on him have probably never read him. Is he literary? No. Is he a good story teller? Hell yes.

I've read about 12 or so of his books. After a while you start to recognize his tropes and to predict the plot 100 pages early.
It's been many years but I remember that I most enjoyed his non-horror work. Eyes of the dragon was pretty good and The Long Walk was outright brilliant. In contrast though, I hated Dark Tower even though I think I read the first 3 books.

I think he is a fantastic writer and story teller, it's just that for the most part I don't like the stories he writes. I wish he would move away from horror. 11.22.63 was one of my favorite books of the last couple of years. I really enjoy his writing style but horror just isn't my genre.

I find his prose to be terrible to better horror writers and the guy has been writing the same fucking book over and over again.

He sometimes makes good use of character's psyche and can be brutally honest about his train of thought. Other than that he's pretty worthless, can't plot for shit, every novel of his is 4 times longer than it needs to be and he's probably the biggest jew in the industry.

His OCD Lovecraftian story is the best I've read from him.

>Is he an amazing storyteller or a pulp writer?
Can't it be both?

utter shit. read the shining at one of the most receptive times of my life, and it was trash. Crichton writes better literature.

I have only read one book that I thought I could one day write something as good as or better than, and it was by Stephen King. He is unequivocally a bad writer, though he seems to be a nice, likeable guy and I wish him the best.

He's decent entertainment. I've liked everything of his except Tommyknockers, the last three Dark Tower books, and Dreamcatcher. His OOC stuff (Eyes of the Dragon, the first few Bachman books) are better than a lot of his more characteristic works.

>implying Death Eatsers isnt kino

>one day

Even for "fun entertainment" I just can't get into King. I can forgive the sloppy prose, but what I can't forgive is that he'll write about his characters drinking and reminiscing about the 50s for 300 pages before something spooky finally happens. You can call it character building, but he repeats his characters so much in his stories that once you know a few you know them all.

Christine was the only book that I honestly considered throwing into the thrash

You haven't read Desperation.

How is King's newer material? I have a couple of his books laying around like Lisey's Story, Under the Dome and the JFK time travel novel but I wasn't a fan of his newer stuff in the early 00s.

Apparently the JFK one is very good but I had the painful and unfortunate experience of reading Doctor Sleep and I still have PTSD

I distinctly remember reading about him throwing the idea around in 07 and it sounded pretty good but I didn't think he'd manage to pull off time travel well but I'll give it a read.

As for the OP I would say King is pretty smart, he just knows how to market himself to the lowest common denominator possible.

Here's my take on him. Think about Don Draper from Mad Men. He's creative and he knows how to put it to use. However, the vehicle of his creativity isn't what's considered inaccessible, cerebral, etc. He writes for consumption. He is very good at doing that specifically. But what merit can be found in his inner literary sense? I'm not sure.

SEWER ORGY

What's up with his mouth anyway? Where's the upper lip thing?

All I can ever think of when people want to have a serious long discussion desu

I liked the stand op also eyes of the dragon

He's a good storyteller imo.

But I wouldn't say he's a very good writer.

He just doesn't give a shit, he writes what he wants to write.
And what he wants to write is this really horrific, shocking shit, but also sometimes deep stuff or even simply amusing things that other writers don't bother writing about.

I can respect that.
In fact, watch his interviews and I think you'll find it hard to dislike the man.

(have read Dark Tower and his work as Richard Bachman)

He fucking sucks. The only worthwhile books he wrote were while he was coked out of his mind, and even then they aren't that good. The Shining was a shit book that became kino due to the work of a much more intelligent person with his initials making a movie out of it. IT was a million pages too long when the story could have been wrapped up in like 700 and nothing would have been lost. I have no idea why people think he's a good writer, other than that he appeals to brainlets for some reason.

>I have no idea why people think he's a good writer, other than that he appeals to brainlets for some reason.

What is it about King’s writing that appeals to so many people? Clearly, King’s readers — many of whom seem to get hooked on him when they are adolescents — don’t care that the sentences he writes or the scenes he constructs are dull. There must be something in the narrative arc, or in the nature of King’s characters, that these readers can’t resist. My sense is that King appeals to the aggrieved adolescent, or the aggrieved nerdy adolescent, or the aggrieved nerdy adult, who believes that people can be divided into bad and good (the latter would, of course, include the aggrieved adolescent or adult), a reader who would rather not consider the proposition that we are all, each of us, nice good people awash in problems and entirely capable of evil. King coddles his readers, all nice, good, ordinary, likeable people (just like the heroes of his books), though this doesn’t completely explain why these readers are so tolerant of the bloat in these novels, why they will let King go on for a couple hundred pages about some matter that has no vital connection to the subject of the book.

You've not read a fucking thing by King if you actually believe this is how he views good and evil.

The longer his books go on, the shitter they tend to become

but I think he's great at telling spooky stories, sure they're not great literature but I don't think he has ever claimed that they are

This is what happens in 11/22/63, which I finally gave in to, after much hand-wringing about the time lost to the books piled on my night table. After all, the novel had received the highest praise from some of the more influential literary organs in America. Wasn’t it possible that the literary press had gotten it right this time?

It was possible, but they got it wrong.

The hero of 11/22/63 is a high school English teacher named Jake Epping. (When it comes to writing, Jake, one of King’s regular-Joe white knights, prefers a supposedly heartfelt but clumsily written story by a janitor getting a GED degree — the story makes Jake cry and he gives it an A-plus — to the “boring” and “pursey-mouthed” essays by his honors students. King doesn’t show us a sample of the latter, but when he does finally get around to sharing a substantial piece of the janitor’s story, you can’t help but wonder about Jake’s (and King’s) judgment. King’s real purpose here seems to be to suggest that people like him write with a lot of feeling, while so-called literary people don’t, and that it is the “what,” rather than the “how,” that matters in writing. Jake, who seems to have no serious flaws other than to have once been married to an alcoholic (later described as a “sweet” person underneath it all), is persuaded by the proprietor of a diner to walk through the diner’s pantry into the past — the diner owner, Al, who is dying of cancer, has, for whatever reason, access to a time-travel tunnel. Al wants Jake to correct the past, and specifically to intervene in the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. Jake, humbly demurring, says, “Al. . . man . . . I’m just a little guy.”

The only real problem with him is that he wrote a handful of good narratives, story arcs, and character developments in the 70's and has just been rebranding them for 40 years. The only thing he's written that really stands on it's own is the Dark Tower.

In my opinion, he's kind of like Bob Dylan--he's written some of the best work other people have adapted, but his own performance is, on average, mediocre.

I haven't read that one, so I can't argue, but you've definitely misinterpreted King's views (perhaps because you wanted to?) if you think that's how King thinks about evil.

For one, all his Dark Tower characters are extremely flawed. King is obsessed with how evil can creep into the heart of even the most normal person.

Here are King's actual views on the problem of evil:
youtube.com/watch?v=v_PBqSPNTfg&t=48m

also one of his favorite books is Lord of the Flies
youtube.com/watch?v=l8TkQvdJVbc&t=32m50s
And that's basically about how evil is literally in all of us. Which is the opposite of what you said.

>le IT meme

Quality thread

>The Long Walk was outright brilliant
Neck yourself

>His OCD Lovecraftian story is the best I've read from him.
N?
That was shit famm.

>The Shining was trash
We got some worthless opinions tonight, folks.

Sure you can, pal.

it was trash.

>Desperation
Nigger I love that book. Tak me him en tow, bitch.

Probably fetal alcohol syndrome.

You're cute when you're angry

Fuck you, hipster.

That user is right. The Shining is trash and Kubrick was entirely justified in ripping apart that piece of shit for the far superior film.

I remember enjoying The Green Mile and I also remember enjoying The Shining but I was like 13-14 when I read them so if I read them now I might hate them idk. One thing I do know is that I tried two of his other books at other points sin my life but just couldn't get into them: I started reading Duma Key because it was based largely on the town that I live in (Sarasota Florida) but after getting like 100 pages in I gave up because it was incredibly dull. Later I tried reading Dreamcatcher but could barely get through that either, though Dreamcatcher began with slightly more interesting characters.

Not that guy, and don't personally have an opinion either way, but I'd like to point out the Stand.

This is perhaps Kings quintessential statement on base morality and he literally divides people into two nexuses of good and evil in it. Yes, there are some flawed characters, or good traits on the evil side, but for the most part all characters are on the far end of either side of the spectrum

>incredibly dull
Come on muchacho, Duma Key wasn't that bad.

Oy is the greatest character ever written.

To me his writing is like cardboard with no texture. I find no soul or spirit in the actual writing, his characters are cliche but likeable and his stories are amusing, I just wish his actual writing wasn't so by the numbers and stale. I get the sense that he cares more about getting his stories out to people than the actual art and love of the medium.

Only 5% of his shit is good. The rest is meh

Dead Zone is his only good book.

So Veeky Forums is reddit now?

fun fact: Dead Zone is the only novel of his that was plotted out in advance. King usually just has a small idea (lol spooky clown) and just makes up the rest of the story as he writes.

Did not know.
I read many of his books when I was young. But this book was something different, I remember rereading it again and again.

Is it pretty much YA he writes? Because I remember reading a lot of his stuff when I was 16-20 or so and enjoying it, but I got dr sleep for my birthday and I couldnt even be bothered to finish it. It just felt... not so good.

Dr Sleep is especially terrible, that DBZ mind battle at the end is pathetic. I did laugh out loud when the spooky Scooby Doo villains finally catch up to the protagonists and one of the good guys literally just shoots one and the others scatter

Duma Key - dragged out, not that horrifying, didn't really like it.

11/22/63 - loved it, couldn't put it down

Dr Sleep (seq. to the shining) - in hind-site I wonder if I read it with rose colored glasses on because of the shining

short stories - hit or miss, some are awesome, some suck. Really enjoyed full dark no stars

I also think King has a tendency to over describe things to the most minute detail, oh and his politics suck.

I liked it a lot

>12 year old girl gets messy sewer gangbang
MASTERFUL ART

What still makes me mildly interested in King is the fact that he's an absolute normie. Perhaps normies do think wicked thoughts between sports and beer. On the other hand he just describes banality of human evil between Springsteen concerts. Go troops!

I mean he was always a resentful SanFran resident living in the boonies with white males.

he is like the inverted version of dfw, where dfw threw away enjoyable prose for clever topics and king threw away all smart ideas and made just some fun reads. so maybe a pulp reader, but his essays arent completely stupid

approximately in order read as a tween-teenager: IT, The Stand, Eye of the Dragon, The Langoliers, The Running Man, Christine, Cujo, Carrie, The Gunslinger, Firestarter, The Tommyknockers, The Talisman, Insomnia, The Regulators, Desperation, maybe some story about a guy with a steel hull boat unless that was another author

I probably forgot one or two. King is great at cozy yarn spinning. His endings are almost uniformly bad. I should probably revisit his stuff to get a sense of flow and just seat of the pants writing. It's not pulp, but it's not literature. As I recall he doesn't really use a lot of layers of meaning. It's just words in a row that tell a simple but captivating story. Pulps are actual garbage. Romance novels, etc. Not counting golden age shit like The Shadow, which are good. King's books are different in that they have a universal appeal, and are not written for a niche audience like caveman novels or bodice rippers.

>Opinions seem to be incredibly far split on him as an author
Seems like you don't know where to go for authoritative opinions tbph. I dont think anyone credible rates him as a literary great, though I'm open to being proved wrong.

Bloom's just mad that he couldn't write something like Cujo if his life depended on it, while King is writing it without remembering he did so.

Isn't there a part in IT where the 11 years old boys run a train on a girl in the sewer? That's pretty tasteless.