Stephen King: Trash, or Literature?

[mal4mac]

Define minor college. The University of Vermont is ranked 82 out of 1600.

Given the population counts in the UK that would make it about equivalent to 21 - I would count that as "pretty high"... but it's not Harvard. Then again, I would expect a College that high to have a few world class experts, and your Stephen King critic *might* be one of them. As harold Bloom , unreservedly a world class expert, has included him in a collection of essay edited by him then that's a point in his favour - or did he do it just to show the weakness of his case?

Do the top class academics/critics reference his paper in a positive fashion? Do his ideas (in detail!) make sense? It would probably take several PhDs and many conferences to sort this one out.

One thing I don't like is Stephen King's control of the marketplace - I've read several "little heard of" writers recently who are just as easy to read as Stephen King, and have much better qualities, in general, IMHO. So certainly read *one* Stephen King novel, but then why not move onto someone else.. they may need the money... King doesn't....

Needful Things has a very profound plot. It is the story of evil that is by itself impotent, but with the help of generally good yet weak and stupid accomplices can achieve its evil goals. Sounds familiar?...

All too familiar. It's a cliche of most documentaries on "the Nazis" and other nasties. Does he do anything new with this idea? Stevenson took this idea and showed us the evil Hyde spurred on by the weak and emotionally stupid Dr Jekyll, who was (shock, horror!) himself. Now that's original...

[Ragnar Freund]

gone.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I'm surprised you guys take college ranking seriously in the first place, as, from what I've seen/heard, such ranking are a complete joke that depends on how much money a college can invest in their ranking number.

Mutatis-Mutandi,

Whether your sentiment has been echoed or not is of no concern to me. As I stated in a previous comment, appeals to majority and expert opinion are poor substitutes for substantive arguments. I am much more interested in why you think The Shining was a good novel than in whether others agree with you.

I don't remember, really. I read it years ago and recall liking it.

The Shining is juvenile trash because it tries to scare the reader using the cheapest, simplest tricks in stock. That living cadaver thing in the bathtub – what did that have to do with the story? Boo – big bad ugly thing is coming at you! Other than that, nothing.

First, because you state opinion as fact doesn't make it so.

The living cadaver was a part of the hotel--it was one of the ghosts, because, ya know, it was a ghost story. You can point to any one thing in a story and either say it had nothing to do with anything, or interpret it as having an impact. The cadaver was another demonstration of how the hotel was *haunted*, another demonstration of the evil that had infected it, etc. If I'm not mistaken, the dead woman was even given a back story, no? Also, it was another part showing how the hotel was after the kid, being threatened by his power, craving his power and what-not.

And, even if it's meaning was solely to give a scare to the reader . . . so? What was the point of the wave of blood coming out of the elevator in Kubrick's film adaptation? Many authors of many books have done this, inserted certain parts of a book for no other purpose to elicit an emotional response. Now, one may consider this a poor technique, but when you have the likes of Poe, Hawthorne, and Lovecraft doing it on more than one occasion, I don't see a problem with it. If a story is completely filled with these instances, than it's a problem--and maybe The Shining is, it's been a while since I've read it, like I said--but I don't even consider the cadaver scene to be one of those parts in the first place.

Also, the development of the main character’s descent into madness was childish and unconvincing - oh, that thing in that place is just driving me mad! And what about that hand that taps the wife character on the shoulder and then disappears? Another cheap trick that any child could have conjured, a Demon Ex Machina, if you will.

I recall his decent into madness as being quite evocative. Obsession with something, whether that thing be relevant or irrelevant, is a cornerstone of mental illness, OCD in particular.

Have you ever suffered from mental illness? I have. I had a bout of depression some years back, and it's quite easy to become depressed with a facet of life, whether it's what people think of you, personal health, or if something's wrong with the car. That King takes that idea and takes it to another level is pretty compelling, for me, at least.

I don't remember the wife-being-tapped-on-the-shoulder scene.

Compare that nonsense with the evil thing (I forget the character name) in Needful Things. It is seemingly a nice old gentleman who sells stuff. Slowly, his evil character develops by showing itself as a master of deceit, rancor, and strife. It is a subtle, puppet-master character. He delegates violence; he doesn’t exercise it. He acts like a real-life devil.

Consider the scene in which the woman (again, I don’t recall any names) goes down on her knees to give him fellatio in exchange for something she wants and needs (arthritis panacea, if I remember correctly). As she unbuttons his zipper, he looks down at her with contempt and repugnance and then he pushes her away. He’s had his fun; he sucked her pain, humiliation, and weakness, and he is satisfied. A psychological fellatio took the place of an actual one. This is powerful yet subtle writing.

In addition, Needful Things doesn’t have the standard good-versus-evil dichotomy. The people of the town are at once the thing’s victims and its accomplices. As such, they pose a problem to the reader.

I've never read Needful Things, but none of the seems neither more nor less compelling than anything in The Shining.

[Drkshadow03]

Given the population counts in the UK that would make it about equivalent to 21 - I would count that as "pretty high"... but it's not Harvard. Then again, I would expect a College that high to have a few world class experts, and your Stephen King critic *might* be one of them. As harold Bloom , unreservedly a world class expert, has included him in a collection of essay edited by him then that's a point in his favour - or did he do it just to show the weakness of his case?

Do the top class academics/critics reference his paper in a positive fashion? Do his ideas (in detail!) make sense? It would probably take several PhDs and many conferences to sort this one out.

One thing I don't like is Stephen King's control of the marketplace - I've read several "little heard of" writers recently who are just as easy to read as Stephen King, and have much better qualities, in general, IMHO. So certainly read *one* Stephen King novel, but then why not move onto someone else.. they may need the money... King doesn't....

No, it's not an ivy league, but should we only care what professors at Ivy League colleges have to say? Besides Harold Bloom, how many works by these other Yale English Professors have you actually read. The irony is that Harold Bloom isn't so much a world-class critic, but rather he is a popular and prolific critic much like Stephen King is a popular and prolific author. It's not clear how much of this has to do with his being a good critic and how much of it has to do with him pumping out hundreds of work on hundreds of authors (which is mostly just him collecting other professor's essays, and adding an introduction) and his tendency to write for popular mass media more than the typical professor (like in the Wall Street Journal).

Number of citations are good criteria, but tricky business because English is such a rarefied field. Magistrale studies horror films, Stephen King, and Poe. So people studying those topics in particular are the ones who are going to be citing his work, not every and all English professor.

[Ragnar Freund]

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[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Oh, come on! Shall we preface every sentence with “in my opinion”? Everything I say here is my opinion, and unlike other people here I don’t use words like fact or reality to refer to my opinions.

Yes, I think you should preface your statement with qualifiers. I do, and it's not that hard. How am I supposed to know a statement is your opinion when you state it as fact? Am I supposed to be able to read your mind? Plenty of people on here make statements like that and mean them as fact. So, you can be facetious all you want, but it isn't my fault for interpreting your statement in exactly the way it should have, as written, been interpreted.

Thanks for taking all my points into account, though. I'm afraid I don't have time to go through Poe and Hawthorne's works and pinpoint all instances of "cheap scare tactics," but if I should read them in the future, I'll be sure to take note of them and present them later.

[Ragnar Freund]

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[Mutatis-Mutandis]

You're not being dragged into anything. You never had to respond to my accusation--many don't. Plus, it's your statement that started this foolish discussion.

Here's the problem with saying I'll "have to figure it out" on whether or not you're stating opinion or fact--I don't know you, at all, so how I'm I supposed to figure it out, hmm? Is there some magical method I'm not aware of?

Again, stating something as fact doesn't make it so, even when stating that statements of fact aren't statements of fact in a factual manner. "The Shining is a piece of juvenile trash” is you stating opinion as fact.

As to Poe, if it isn't gratuitous . . . so? Does that mean he wasn't using it to evoke and emotional response? Anyways, I can't "prove" anything (you do seem partial to those pesky absolutes), as it's a matter of interpretation; the terror he generates for that particular critic is never gratuitous, but for others it is. So, even if I did give an example, you would just interpret it differently, in your mind "proving" me wrong, surely.

[Scheherazade]

~

W a r n i n g

Please do not personalise your comments.

Yadayadayada...

They will be removed... You will get infraction points... Thread will be closed.

~

[Ragnar Freund]

gone.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yes there is, and I thought I explained it already. The statement “The Shining is a piece of juvenile trash” is, by its nature, a statement of opinion and not of fact. Since it is intrinsically a statement of opinion, you need not know me to figure it out.

That explains nothing.

What’s the "magical" method? If the statement can, theoretically at least, be shown to be true or false, then it’s a statement of fact. The statement “Poe wrote Hamlet” can be shown to be false, therefore it is a statement of fact. The statement “ice cream tastes better than cake” cannot be shown to be true or false, therefore it is a statement of opinion. Are we clear now?

Clearer, but not crystal.

Yes, that’s exactly what it means. Read the quote again – the whole thing.

That's what the quote means, but that doesn't make it true, as it is the statement made by one person. I wasn't questioning the quote, I was questioning what it stated. Frankly, if you don't think Poe was trying to evoke an emotional response with his writing (practically the whole of it could be used as an example), then you're missing the point of his writing.

I extended a genuine invitation to you to bring to the table instances in which Poe and Hawthorne were using “cheap scare tactics”, in your words. I thought it would make for an interesting discussion, as opposed to the nonsensical arguments about university rankings that polluted this thread. You failed to bring one, although you claim there are many. I read The Shining thirteen years ago, and was able to point two such instances from memory. Since there’s some sort of an “infraction points” threat for personal arguments, I’ll stop here.

I don't think there's any reason to stop . . . I'm pretty sure Scher was just giving us a reminder, as these things seem to have a tendency to escalate. I can be civil, and I extend the invitation to you, also.

First, I put "cheap scare tactics" in quotes for a reason--to denote a certain flippancy in the statement.

I didn't want to point out any of these instances because, having not read any Poe or Hawthorne lately, I can't really elucidate on them since I don't have the specifics in mind. Three of Poe's stories come to mind, though (and I'll stick to Poe, here)--"The Black Cat," "The Fall of House Usher," and "The Masque of the Red Death." Each story seems to me to have the main goal of, well, "scaring" isn't exactly the correct word for each of these cases, but making the reader feel a sense of abject uneasiness, especially in the case of "The Black Cat." He's going for the emotional response when we get the gruesome scene of the the narrator killing the cat, the corpses in "The House of Usher," and the revealing in "The Masque." Now, I freely admit all are deeper and done with more nuance that what King does, but their main goal is the same--to "scare" the reader.

[Ragnar Freund]

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[LeNoirFaineant]

If the discussion has not degenerated into some butthurt fanboy debate,
I would, in all politeness, ask those who claim Mr King's books are worth our time:

Why?

What exactly do Mr King's novels have that an educated reader cannot find in any other horror novel?

None of his works that I have read was particularly original or deep.

- Not that this would be an issue for me; some books are campy, and there's great delight in it.
(I casually salute my favorite fantasy writer of all time, Angus Wells. )

But what exactly is that book of Mr King that is apparently such a revelation?

Because, frankly, if I look at just the movies, too, none of them managed to best John Carpenter's style either.

So, educate me!

[Drkshadow03]

I would, in all politeness, ask those who claim Mr King's books are worth our time:

Why?

What exactly do Mr King's novels have that an educated reader cannot find in any other horror novel?

None of his works that I have read was particularly original or deep.

Why read Marlowe when you can just read Shakespeare?

[Calidore]

What exactly do Mr King's novels have that an educated reader cannot find in any other horror novel?

Personally, I like King's "voice." Even when the material's not good, I'm entertained by his writing style. I also like the fact that he'll spend a hundred pages filling in the background of a character who died just to show what that death meant to the people around her (I think that happened in It). Basically, he's got enough going on in the background that his locations and side characters, as well as the main characters, seem real.