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3Romeo posted:You're right about him knowing how to pick things. Some of his early stuff (Tommyknockers; Firestarter) has pop culture references in it, and while a lot of it is kind of esoteric, most of what he puts in has lasting value. I've mentioned before that reading his works in published order, even just the major ones, is a historical account of America's cultural change over the last few decades. Kind of amazing, really. Sometimes he really nails it. The first novel he wrote, The Long Walk, really does show how a lot of people want the country to be run. Probably fits better now than when he first wrote the drat thing. Nintendo Kid posted:The funny thing about pop culture references is that a lot of them end up not even aging badly, but simply being unrecognizable as references decades later. They don't even stand out from the text or anything. Yeah, this is kinda what I meant when I said you won't even notice the Game of Thrones stuff in 5-10 years. It's the kind of thing that some people will pick up on, but by and large, will have floated into background noise. He doesn't write period stuff like 11/22/63 often, where the references come up a lot.
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Sep 10, 2014 05:51
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Ugly In The Morning posted:
I'm hoping that Revival is a whole lot better than Mr. Mercedes and Doctor Sleep, I was disappointed by both. I'd hate to have three mediocre books in a row from him. I'm looking forward to it but my hopes not high. He needs a home run this time.
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Sep 10, 2014 07:22
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syscall girl posted:I guess the subject matter is appropriate to the network though. v0v It took me a second to remember what the gently caress story Big Driver was and then when I did I was like that is definitely the kind of story Lifetime loves.
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Sep 10, 2014 13:04
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juliuspringle posted:It took me a second to remember what the gently caress story Big Driver was and then when I did I was like that is definitely the kind of story Lifetime loves. I want to believe there's a clever, subversive director who told the Lifetime execs exactly what they needed to hear - "It's a story where a woman is a victim of abuse!" - to get a greenlight, but intends to hew closely to the book, including the reasonably gruesome revenge. I mean, how do you not see the first Lifetime adaption of a King short story?
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Sep 10, 2014 13:32
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Sometimes he really nails it. The first novel he wrote, The Long Walk, really does show how a lot of people want the country to be run. Probably fits better now than when he first wrote the drat thing. I've always seen The Long Walk as not just a political/satirical allegory but as an allegory of life, with the walk being the span of a life and the walkers representing different approaches to life (or parts of a single life, if you see the allegory representing one life rather than life in general). Garraty is the optimist, McVries the cynic, Olsen is the boastful man who is broken, Barkovitch the outcast/scapegoat, Colley (?) [E: I mean "Parker"] is the rebel, Harkness the intellectual, Stebbins is the prophet, etc. The characters play out the remainder of their lives compressed on the walk. They make friends, argue, support, fall in love, betray and grieve for each other the way they would have over the span of 60 years but instead compressed into the space of 2 days. I think it is definitely meant as a kind of spiritual/personal allegory as well as a political satire. But also it's an action story, a war story, a quest. I think The Long Walk is one of Kings' best novels because it is so open to interpretation, so narratively simple and emotionally moving. It is also has some of his best writing, pared down (Hemingway-esque) and vivid. Remember those visions of sleeping towns they pass through, lone watchers sitting on benches, the images of the walkers under starlight and so on? Yeah, that's really some beautiful imagery. E: If you think that is farfetched, consider how early this book was and that King was experimenting with genres at the time. All of the (early) Bachman books are very different in tone, subject and genre. Roadwork is pretty much a serious, straight literary novel with a violent climax. Seriously, think about (or re-read) The Long Walk with the idea of it being an allegory of life and let see if it doesn't roughly fit. Josef K. Sourdust fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Sep 10, 2014 |
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Sep 10, 2014 14:13
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Nintendo Kid posted:The funny thing about pop culture references is that a lot of them end up not even aging badly, but simply being unrecognizable as references decades later. They don't even stand out from the text or anything. The only reason I know that Jeopardy had a host before Alex Trebek is King's reference in the original Stand, and I only noticed it because I read the original stand first and revised edition later the same year and noticed the name change.
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Sep 10, 2014 20:22
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:I've always seen The Long Walk as not just a political/satirical allegory but as an allegory of life, with the walk being the span of a life and the walkers representing different approaches to life I think someone commented on this early in the thread and pointed out how the attitude towards death changes as the walk goes on (ie. their life goes by). The first death is a shock because it's so early on and the invincibility of youth is gone with the realisation that they are going to die, but by the end (when they're 'older') it becomes a part of the background.
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Sep 11, 2014 08:39
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:The long Walk I think it's a very good analysis and I'd never really thought about it.
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Sep 11, 2014 15:21
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BiggerBoat posted:I think it's a very good analysis and I'd never really thought about it.
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Sep 11, 2014 23:31
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Dammit, now I want to read The Long Walk again. I think this will be my 4th time.
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Sep 12, 2014 17:56
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What is the spoiler free (I just got it from the library yesterday but haven't started yet) consensus on Mr. Mercedes? On a scale of Gerald's Game to Insomnia how is it?
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Sep 13, 2014 05:30
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juliuspringle posted:On a scale of Gerald's Game to Insomnia how is it?  I can't actually tell which is the high point and which is your low point on your scale.(I haven't read Mr Mercedes, so I am just being a  Sorry.)
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Sep 13, 2014 08:11
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I just finished Joe Hill's NOS4A2, and it felt really King-y. Moreso than Heart Shaped Box and WAYYY more than Horns. (I kinda binged on Hill at the library last week)
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Sep 13, 2014 15:08
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Am I the only one who thinks that whenever Stephen King tries to write modern books everything seems like it's twenty years out of date? I'm 18pages into Mr. Mercedes and the cop is watching Jerry Springer (implied but never directly stated) and King seems to think every tattoo a woman has is called a tramp-stamp. I feel like this book is gonna end up being so bad it's ok instead of something that's actually good. You know, like a book you read because "at least it's something" while waiting for something good to come along.
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Sep 13, 2014 15:55
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juliuspringle posted:Am I the only one who thinks that whenever Stephen King tries to write modern books everything seems like it's twenty years out of date? I'm 18pages into Mr. Mercedes and the cop is watching Jerry Springer (implied but never directly stated) and King seems to think every tattoo a woman has is called a tramp-stamp. Yeah wait until you get to any part with a teenage kid.
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Sep 13, 2014 16:04
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withak posted:Yeah wait until you get to any part with a teenage kid. I'm already really close to saying gently caress this book. Part of me thinks I should have just reread Cell like I was originally going to. Stephen King needs to get hit by a van...full of drugs and alcohol.
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Sep 13, 2014 16:17
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juliuspringle posted:I'm already really close to saying gently caress this book. Part of me thinks I should have just reread Cell like I was originally going to. Stephen King needs to get hit by a van...full of drugs and alcohol. Y'all are making me glad I decided to pass on Mr. Mercedes and wait for Revival. Hope I played the odds right.
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Sep 13, 2014 18:38
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"juliuspringle" posted:Part of me thinks I should have just reread Cell like I was originally going to. That is also a bad decision.
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Sep 13, 2014 21:17
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Stephen King is coming to my bookstore in Austin, Texas! After fifteen years of reading him (not long compared to some of you, I'm sure), I'm finally going to meet the man and get a signed copy of Revival. I really want to bring along a copy of On Writing, too, but the event details specify that nothing else will be signed, so I guess it would be rude of me.
blue squares fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Sep 16, 2014 |
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Sep 16, 2014 02:48
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blue squares posted:Stephen King is coming to my bookstore in Austin, Texas! After fifteen years of reading him (not long compared to some of you, I'm sure), I'm finally going to meet the man and get a signed copy of Revival. I really want to bring along a copy of On Writing, too, but the event details specify that nothing else will be signed, so I guess it would be rude of me. He just may be narcissistic enough to sign On Writing out of all of his books, so it's a decent shot. Try to sneak it in.
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Sep 16, 2014 09:26
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216 pages into Mr. Mercedes, it's less terrible than it started. Though I do feel like Stephen King is incapable of writing nonstereotype black people. He almost did it in this one but then eventually they would start saying massah and poo poo like that. Like if they didn't speak like that for 5 paragraphs then goblins would come out of the ground and rape us all. Is there any site (or goon) that has a list of every Kingism in every book of his? I think it'd be interesting to see what pops up the most.
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Sep 16, 2014 11:36
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juliuspringle posted:Though I do feel like Stephen King is incapable of writing nonstereotype black people. You're just noticing that?
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Sep 17, 2014 12:20
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Stroth posted:You're just noticing that? Not really but before it seemed like they ONLY spoke "jive" (is that the word? I'm not Stephen King so I wouldn't know). In Mr. Mercedes the black guy would speak normal intelligent english for awhile and then like some sort of verbal tic out comes all that massah talk. The book got better eventually though in true SK fashion the ending was kind of disappointing.
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Sep 17, 2014 12:51
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juliuspringle posted:216 pages into Mr. Mercedes, it's less terrible than it started. Fixed this for you. Check out his gays.
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Sep 17, 2014 13:54
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3Romeo posted:Like any writer, he constantly goes back over the same themes, looking at them in different ways, so it isn't unexpected that there's patterns and repetitions. Sometimes they work (1922 in Full Dark is a thematic and tonal retread of Nona from Skeleton Crew, but fresh enough to add some new insight) and sometimes they're laughably bad (Dreamcatcher is a terrible rehash of It). He's mellowed out a little in his later stuff--there aren't any recent novels that end as brutally as Pet Sematary, for example--and there's been more suspense than outright horror, but word is the next book is a return to old form. Guess we'll see. I've never seen Dreamcatcher as an It rehash. It feels more like King watched the episodes of the X-Files where Mulder and Scully are trapped in a logging cabin/Alaska with aliens and thought "this really just needs a lot of literal poo poo, some Conrad, and a dash of Koontz to be fantastic!" To be fair you might think that was a good idea after being hit by a van too. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 04:14
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Jazerus posted:I've never seen Dreamcatcher as an It rehash. It feels more like King watched the episodes of the X-Files where Mulder and Scully are trapped in a logging cabin/Alaska with aliens and thought "this really just needs a lot of literal poo poo, some Conrad, and a dash of Koontz to be fantastic!" There's an X-Files vibe, sure. King actually has one of his characters say exactly that. He isn't too subtle when it comes to his influences,* and I think that's why he also drops the "Pennywise lives" thing in Dreamcatcher. He knows he's going over old ground--the Power of Friendship and how it helps us Do the Right Thing and Fight Evil. (Pete even has a power similar to Eddie Kasprack's.) I mean, there are a lot of plot differences, don't get me wrong. The characters don't have the strange success that the Losers had, half the group dies before the book's half over, and Owen is a sort of anti-Henry Bowers, starting off bad and coming to important self-realizations instead of starting off a bully and becoming a murderer. But the same framework, it's there underneath. *the crazy colonel's name is Kurtz, for Christ's sake. Asbury fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 06:42
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On the topic of stereotypical black characters... It has been a while since I've read It....but I don't think the Hanlons were particularly badly written. Even as an adult, I don't remember Mike doing any lame jive bullshit.
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Sep 18, 2014 14:39
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ganthony posted:On the topic of stereotypical black characters... Oddly enough, all the lame jive bullshit I can think of comes from Pennywise whenever he's taunting adult Mike.
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Sep 18, 2014 15:56
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And wasn't Dreamcatcher written when he was in hospital on meds? Still...no excuse. That's in my "charity store" box if I ever come across my copy.
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Sep 18, 2014 21:46
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:And wasn't Dreamcatcher written when he was in hospital on meds? Still...no excuse. That's in my "charity store" box if I ever come across my copy. Yeah. It's his first post-accident book. One of the main characters gets hit by a car and another one works through suicidal impulses. In Danse Macabre King says that he goes for terror if he can, then horror, and when all else fails he goes for the gross-out. Dreamcatcher was written during probably the most physically and mentally weak point of his life, and it's probably his grossest (that is, weakest) book. But that said, it helped him get through an exceptionally rough patch--sorta like a real-life analog of Paul Sheldon and Misery's Return. It isn't a good book, but it is an interesting one in regards to its author. It's raw. Asbury fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 01:27
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I think I've read most of this thread, over the year, and enjoyed it greatly, thank you. I'm half-way through Mr Mercedes, and I'm enjoying it - it's not vintage King (of course - he's not vintage King any more), but there's enough there to keep me going. But I think I've spotted a simple, silly error in it. Anyone else? (Spoilering bits here, but it's nothing major.) It's to do with King's damned habit of foreshadowing. Into the middle section, Poison Bait. Chapter 6 ends with Hodges leaving his house and "He leaves his house with no premonition that he won't be back." Then same part of the book, Chapter 22 begins with "Hodges grabs lunch at a nearby deli ... and goes home" Have I missed something? Is there another way to read that first bit? Because King's foreshadowing bothers the poo poo out of me, and if he's doing it and then changing his mind, I am going to get pissed at him.
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Sep 19, 2014 16:41
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He had no such premonition because he indeed went back!
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Sep 19, 2014 21:45
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Hey everyone, truck on over to LitReactor and check this out: Every Stephen King novel in 140 characters or less
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Sep 19, 2014 22:37
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Zamboni_Rodeo posted:Hey everyone, truck on over to LitReactor and check this out: Every Stephen King novel in 140 characters or less I like this guy who thinks The Talisman and Insomnia were some of the good'uns. Also quote:Desperation(1996)
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Sep 19, 2014 23:01
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Apparently a new Dark Tower book came out in 2012 and I had no idea. Is it any good? I liked books 1-4 but thought everything after sucked poo poo. Sorry if this was discussed; I only looked back a few pages.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:06
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origami posted:Apparently a new Dark Tower book came out in 2012 and I had no idea. Is it any good? I liked books 1-4 but thought everything after sucked poo poo. Sorry if this was discussed; I only looked back a few pages. It's Roland telling a story within a story to the Tet during a storm. It's nice world and lore building, but it's not really a part of the main storyline. It takes place between WaG and WotC, if that matters to you. I liked it, but it's very much just fluff.
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Sep 20, 2014 06:34
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Zamboni_Rodeo posted:Hey everyone, truck on over to LitReactor and check this out: Every Stephen King novel in 140 characters or less The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987) Clint Eastwood rescues Jesse Pinkman.
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Sep 20, 2014 12:42
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The next one was better. Dark Tower III The Waste Lands (1991) Clint Eastwood and Jesse Pinkman adopt a raccoon. Although Rage being Breakfast Club with guns was good too.
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Sep 20, 2014 17:28
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For those who are interested in King himself as a person should check out the next episode of Finding Your Roots on PBS (scheduled for 9/23 - check your local listings for times). He will learn about some of his ancestors.
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Sep 21, 2014 00:19
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The Dean Koontz ones in there are  right?
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Sep 21, 2014 00:22
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