Stephen King

Was wondering if anybody here was a fan of his novels or if anybody has a favorite novel that King has written.
I love most of his books, but I must admit that I cannot stand and have never finished some of the others.

The Good:
The Stand (Unabridged)
Salem's Lot
Bag of Bones
Green Mile
Shawshank Redemption Novella
The Body Novella
Misery
Desperation
The Shining
The Eyes of the Dragon
The Dark Half
Storm of the Century
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
The Bachman Books

The Bad:
Carrie
It
The Tommyknockers
Gerald's Game
Hearts in Atlantis

Of course, I've not read all of his books, but some are just mixed bags. For instance Gerald's Game is boring, its about a woman tied to a bed for the whole thing except for flashbacks, and it bored me to no end, and the start of first 'part' of Hearts in Atlantis is very good, but the next part just gets odder and more disjointed from the good stuff that came before.
Anybody else here ever read any of these or have an opinion?

In the summer of 1989, I was in a summer class in college where we studied planning and landscape architecture in Northern Europe (Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and a group of us after the class ended went on to spend a week in Paris, and a week in London.)

Wented to large vans for the group, as we drove from place to place on the trip. Only one person had thought to bring along something to read, so we all ended up sharing the book. The book we all passed around and read together was "The Tommyknockers," and I remember the story as having been better than the mini-series. (Admittedly, that's not saying much.)

The book I think I've enjoyed the most is "Needful Things." I really liked the premise of that book- a new shop opens up selling second hand items- the perfect item for every customer who ventures in. Only the proprietor of the store has an ulterior motive, and the tensions that erupt come close to destroying the little town.

Now that one was much better than the movie.

The book I think I've enjoyed the most is "Needful Things." I really liked the premise of that book- a new shop opens up selling second hand items- the perfect item for every customer who ventures in. Only the proprietor of the store has an ulterior motive, and the tensions that erupt come close to destroying the little town.

Now that one was much better than the movie.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one, it was pretty good, and the idea of the store was a pretty interesting concept.
And, if I may borrow a UK expression for a moment, you are right, the movie was total pants, as was the stand TV movie although that was slightly better then Needful Things.

I read all of King's back catalogue sometime back, and ended up deciding that he's an infuriatingly inconsistent writer. He's also too enamoured of BIG books. His leaner, early works are much more satisfying to me personally.

Sid Seadevil wrote:I read all of King's back catalogue sometime back, and ended up deciding that he's an infuriatingly inconsistent writer. He's also too enamoured of BIG books. His leaner, early works are much more satisfying to me personally.

Now there I have to agree with you, Sid. And I would add, in addition to 'infuriatingly inconsistent," "ponderously over-worded." As a general rule, I don't go seeking out Steven King novels for reading, but I have found his short stories to be worth the read. And they tend to translate well when made into movies- "Stand By Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption," for example.

Patrick wrote:Now there I have to agree with you, Sid. And I would add, in addition to 'infuriatingly inconsistent," "ponderously over-worded." As a general rule, I don't go seeking out Steven King novels for reading, but I have found his short stories to be worth the read. And they tend to translate well when made into movies- "Stand By Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption," for example.

Exactly - and you make an important point about his habit of being ponderously over-worded. I think it's got a lot to do with his almost pathological work ethic. I mean, a man who writes 6.00am to 5.00pm every day, 365 days a year! That's bound to lead to excesses in wordage. Not to mention that his reputation is now so immense that he's basically editor-proof. He needs an edition who's not afraid to say "No. Cut this, trim that".

When you compare the novels to the short stories, it's almost as if they're written by different people.

Sid Seadevil wrote:Exactly - and you make an important point about his habit of being ponderously over-worded. I think it's got a lot to do with his almost pathological work ethic. I mean, a man who writes 6.00am to 5.00pm every day, 365 days a year! That's bound to lead to excesses in wordage. Not to mention that his reputation is now so immense that he's basically editor-proof. He needs an edition who's not afraid to say "No. Cut this, trim that".

When you compare the novels to the short stories, it's almost as if they're written by different people.

I noticed that the same phenomenon of becoming editor-proof happened to JK Rowling in her last few contributions to the Harry Potter series. (I cut JK some slack, however, because she had a whole universe she had to neatly wrap up and deliver in seven books. The test will be with whatever her next project is, does she go overboard with wordage.)

Patrick wrote:I noticed that the same phenomenon of becoming editor-proof happened to JK Rowling in her last few contributions to the Harry Potter series. (I cut JK some slack, however, because she had a whole universe she had to neatly wrap up and deliver in seven books. The test will be with whatever her next project is, does she go overboard with wordage.)

Agreed - and I too will be interested to see where JO goes next. Having said that though her Tales of Beedle The Bard is totally charming. Oh, and wonderfully concise.

Patrick wrote:

Sid Seadevil wrote:I read all of King's back catalogue sometime back, and ended up deciding that he's an infuriatingly inconsistent writer. He's also too enamoured of BIG books. His leaner, early works are much more satisfying to me personally.

Now there I have to agree with you, Sid. And I would add, in addition to 'infuriatingly inconsistent," "ponderously over-worded." As a general rule, I don't go seeking out Steven King novels for reading, but I have found his short stories to be worth the read. And they tend to translate well when made into movies- "Stand By Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption," for example.

It's weird cos ponderously overwording things is something he has warned against in his how to write manuals. Perhaps he wants to keep the ponderously overworded market to himself...

stanmore wrote:It's weird cos ponderously overwording things is something he has warned against in his how to write manuals. Perhaps he wants to keep the ponderously overworded market to himself...

Either that or he's totally blind to the irony of handing of his out such advice.

Or that when you become 'editor-proof,' your own bad habits get overlooked by your lack of editor.

Patrick wrote:Or that when you become 'editor-proof,' your own bad habits get overlooked by your lack of editor.

Almost certainly the case.

I think his best work was early on - as others have pointed out, those ones are where his heroes tend to be blue-collar working class people struggling to get by (as he was at the time), and then they become better off (and much less interesting) as he does.

That said, I think Misery is his best work, and it's the one that stars a successful author...

It's not just length that's his problem, it's the fact that the editors clearly can't say to him 'go back and do it better' - there's a very interesting psychological thriller trying to get out of Gerald's Game, but it reads more like a first draft of it. Though it's not necessarily fair to blame the editors - it's more likely to be people further up the publishing company food chain demanding that they have their guaranteed million-seller (with the linked bonuses for them) ready for publication before Christmas.

King doesn't tell people to cut back on needless words, it's actually The Elements of Style that does that. King hates adverbs. Or adjectives. Or both.

On Writing is a book in response to the countless questions about how you get to be a writer. Not how to behave when you are absolutely coining it, but how to behave when you're starting out. As such, it's outstanding. The writers who start out with great pretentions to art and believe that no commissioning editor could turn down their fatuous potboiler because King writes thousand-pagers are the writers who live in the slushpile.

Word-count to yo' moma.

The apparent inconsistencies of style can be explained by looking at his life. Whichever school of critical thought that says "the author is dead" can be demolished by looking at the progress of his books and the stages of his life. For example -

pacey, tight short stories? Starving author writing in a laundry room.
Tense, gripping novels? Published, but still learning.
Off-kilter and a bit disturbing? Out of his brain on cocaine and booze.
Tentative, bit mushy? Withdrawl from drugs and booze, unsure if he can write.

And then he gets half killed by a nut in a van and decides that maybe actually finishing things is good, and starts to write pretty well again.

Sid Seadevil wrote:Exactly - and you make an important point about his habit of being ponderously over-worded.

Indeed. That's my biggest problem with him, why say in a few words what you could say in a few hundred. That having been said, I do like some of his books and his column in EW is usually pretty interesting.

I'm of two minds about the length of SK's books.
On one hand sometimes it works well (The Stand, Bag of Bones, Needful Things.), and other times it makes the whole idea of the story suffer badly (Tommyknockers, IT, Hearts in Atlantis).

Thing is I can agree that King certainly needs an editor that can kind of say every once in awhile that perhaps that book or idea is not working or should be developed more, but its the same beast that sometimes kills new Doctor Who. Stephen King sells, and that makes his productivity great for the book shops and his publishers. Unfortunately, that sometimes means that s*** gets through the pipeline instead of gold.