Um, Mal, if you care to have a look at the bottom of this page, you will find the 'Stephen King Trash or Literature' thread. Many opposing views there.
This discussion isn't why I started this thread.
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Um, Mal, if you care to have a look at the bottom of this page, you will find the 'Stephen King Trash or Literature' thread. Many opposing views there.
This discussion isn't why I started this thread.
What's enjoyable about bad writing? There are many literary novels that are easily enjoyed, that have King's "Everyman appeal" - anything by Dickens. Tolstoy's shorter novels. R.L. Stevenson's adventures. H.G. Wells' science fiction, Philip Roth, ...Quote:
Originally Posted by Abookinthebath
It seems that King is of little interest, which makes it very amazing the length to which you go about.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
How would you guys compare this to King's other books? I like him a lot. My favorites are The Shining and It. I've attempted The Stand several times, but have yet to complete it. :brickwall
Not sure why people aren't supposed to talk about Stephen King on a literary forum. How is he not literature again? Just because he isn't high art doesn't mean that he isn't an author of literature. I find the elitism on this board sometimes frankly quite ridiculous. If you guys like this a lot, I might add it to my list of books to read. I liked the movie.
I'm currently reading the King James Bible, so it might be a while before I have time to read something else.
We should determine discussion criteria based on the commentary of a whopping three critics? Why should critical acclaim even be a factor? It seems quite shortsighted to leave out any book not endorsed by a certain group of people. Not to mention incredibly close-minded, shortsighted, and pompous.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Oh, and that you based your argument there solely on what Wikipedia provided is quite humorous.
According to the loose definition, any "written work", is literature, so the phone book and Stephen King's novels are indeed literature, by this loose definition.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vladimir777
If by "high art" you mean "written works considered of superior or lasting artistic merit" then that is, indeed, the tighter definition of "literature". Why is it elitist to want to discuss superior and lasting works of artistic merit? Why would you want to read works that are inferior and ephemeral?
I might not want to read certain superior and lasting works because they are "difficult", but I can admit they are superior and lasting and bow to those who make the effort to overcome the difficulties. So good luck with the King James Bible.
I've read some works of Stephen King and don't find his works to be superior, and think they have little chance of lasting. This feeling is backed up by several serious critics, and the opposite position is not backed up by any critic I respect.
His success is based, I feel, on being an "easy read", having some facility in story telling, and being at joining point of several trends in popular culture - teenage angst, horror... - but this is no reason to call his work literature in the stronger sense.
So are you looking forward to threads for "The Trainspotters Manual" and "Phone Book Appreciation Society"?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
There has to be some criteria for distinguishing great literature from trash, and from any old writing. It has been my experience that great critics are good pointers to great literature, to books that *I* want to read and that are of lasting value.
LOL! I remember when someone asked me to describe a critical part of my job, and told me I was wrong because of a Wiki entry!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
Yes, the phone book is literature. You know, because listing as boring it may be, is textual form present in several works such as biblie - where they list laws or genealogies to Homer, that lists the greek fleet.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
I find funny that you do not notice that 'Literature - Written works, esp. those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit: "a great work of literature".' are bad definitions, because to consider Stephen King a work of literature of inferior or ephemeral artistic merit, or a small work of literature, I have to first consider it literature. It is only dismissed as literature after we demand it to have qualities of literary work. It is like me dissmissing Pele as football player because he was a bad basketball player. IOW: You are commiting the mistake of demanding from Stephen King literary vallue, so you must expect to find literary traits to show or in this case, fail to show, those traits. Thus, a work of literary traits is literature.
Well, It is elistist. Sorry, but it is true. Snobbery is a fine art, mastered by those who ellect and demmand the finest qualities.Quote:
If by "high art" you mean "written works considered of superior or lasting artistic merit" then that is, indeed, the tighter definition of "literature". Why is it elitist to want to discuss superior and lasting works of artistic merit? Why would you want to read works that are inferior and ephemeral?
There is someting completely different from discussing X, Y, Z works and denying the definition as literature. I for example, do not go to discuss all classics in the world. Not all of them appeal to me. Something Stephen King appeals to me, specially considering he was part of my teen years, so I can feel like talking about it. This does not imply I consider Stephen King superior or a work of lasting merit. This imply those are my personal choices, as much as talking about classical authors that many wont talk about.
And really, a definition is something universal, not based on opinions. Moby Dick didnt became literature after the critics discovered the qualities of the work, it was already literature. Critics are not owners of vocabulary, so really, their opinion means square rat *** about the definition.
Virginia Woolf said about the same about Robert Louis Stevenson. Thank god we had Henry James to allow us to call him in the stronger sense. Yet, in a more snobeberry level, as much Stevenson is a perfect story teller, we can be even more snob and rule him out. He didnt got on Cervantes level, so we call him what, Literature with a * ?Quote:
I've read some works of Stephen King and don't find his works to be superior, and think they have little chance of lasting. This feeling is backed up by several serious critics, and the opposite position is not backed up by any critic I respect.
l, on being an "easy read", having some facility in story telling, and being at joining point of several trends in popular culture - teenage angst, horror... - but this is no reason to call his work literature in the stronger sense.
As if the Encyclopedia is not as ridiculous right?Quote:
So are you looking forward to threads for "The Trainspotters Manual" and "Phone Book Appreciation Society"?
Here, again: there has to be some criteria for distinguishing great literature from trash literature.Quote:
There has to be some criteria for distinguishing great literature from trash, and from any old writing. It has been my experience that great critics are good pointers to great literature, to books that *I* want to read and that are of lasting value.
Indeed. And the first step on a critery, that can be fairly applied to both, is to accept both are literature. Otherwise, you would be avoiding the very critery.
The Shining and The Stand are my favorites, but I liked pretty much everything until The Tommyknockers, except It (actually well-written, but once the nature of the antagonist was revealed, that was it) and Cujo. Tommyknockers was another decent story with a bad ending (also Needful Things which reused the ending of another novel), but then the bad novels started flying thick--Dark Half , Gerald's Game, Insomnia (neat idea here, but early on the old people started shooting energy beams from their hands like Ultraman, and that was it for me). He did recover a bit with Rose Madder and the Desperation/Regulators twofer, but I think at this point the heavy alcohol and drug abuse had taken enough of a toll on his brain that he was no longer capable of the depth he used to have. I haven't read anything from Bag of Bones on, so I'd be curious if he's recovered any of his plotting skill since going on the wagon and recovering from that horrific roadside accident.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vladimir777
I would be interested in reading the Stephen King James Bible. He could at least make the boring bits less boring.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vladimir777
Anything is literature. Literature is an interpretation, not a particular form or meaning. A phone book could be literature depending on how it is interpreted.
Yes, it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Whether or not I'm looking forward to such threads is irrelevant (despite your straw-man argument).Quote:
So are you looking forward to threads for "The Trainspotters Manual" and "Phone Book Appreciation Society"?
There has to be some criteria for distinguishing great literature from trash, and from any old writing. It has been my experience that great critics are good pointers to great literature, to books that *I* want to read and that are of lasting value.
There "has" to be some criteria? Since when? How can a universal criteria agreed upon by everyone even be determined? Plus, why would something that is determined "trash" not be literature?
In any case, I've read books that are critically acclaimed that I've not been impressed with.
There are quite a few professors that take King's work seriously such as Tony Magistrale. He even edited a collection of essays that you can find here, which includes work from lots of different professors. Assuming all the essays are positive then we can assume at least 14 professors in academia take King's work seriously. My guess is there are plenty more.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Last time I checked, King's also been publishing his stories these days in the literary elite, The New Yorker. On the wiki page you quoted, it notes he won an O Henry award for a short story. You talk about Joshi's dislike, but fail to mention John Clute's positive assessment (one of the major genre critics of the century); he is a major and well-known genre critic. Not to mention King won the National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. You can find quite a few college level syllabi with King either headlining or include in the course. That doesn't sound to me like someone who isn't being taken seriously.
In these discussions, people will always invoke an imaginary nonexistent literati who unsurprisingly agree with their viewpoint. "Oh, no critics have anything positive to say about Harry Potter. No serious critic likes Stephen King."Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
In reality, there is no such thing as a homogenous group of critics who all like the same books and all dislike the same books. There are plenty of critics teaching at universities today with published scholarly books on Stephen King and his work. Hell, there are plenty of dissertations on King's novels.
Of course, even to dismiss the qualities of Stephen King (he is not thaaaat bad), we must take him seriously.
The list in the Illiad is not just a list of people in your town, it is a list of Greek heroes. For a Greek person of that time just hearing the names would have had a great emotional impact - the choice of that particular list is what makes it a work of artistic creation and a work of literature.Quote:
Originally Posted by JCamilo
But, I must admit, I found the list in the Iliad list almost as tedious as the phone book because I did not know who most of those Greeks were! (Also that list was only one section - there is wonderful story telling in there. There aren't many wonderful stories in the phone book.
I do think this is a bad, or at least ambiguous, definition; but it's what we are stuck with! (I copied it direct from Goggle define.)Quote:
Originally Posted by JCamilo
Stephen King's work is literature in the broad sense, that includes the phone book. In the narrow sense, according to several critics, it is inferior literature, or not literature at all.
You make a good point about considering King to be inferior literature, rather than not literature at all. I will concede that.
Not all "classics" appeal to me. The basic readability and "teenage angst" themes of King somewhat appealed to me in my youth, and I got through some of his novels. I haven't got through the Bible, Ulysses, or Proust. I think he's a bit like junk food - goes down easy, but it's not really very nutritous or tasty - and likely to be bad for you in excess. And I could have been reading Stevenson, Dickens, more Wells,...
We need to be able to, at least, create categories of great literature and not-great literature. Stevenson makes it into the "great" camp not just because he's the perfect story teller, but because he writes superbly well, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and has some very important things to say about the human condition - Dr Jekyll has received iconic stature in our culture, second only to the greatest figures (Hamlet, Don Quixote...)
I think King is in the not-great camp, along with the phone book, though in a different category - the phone book is at least useful!
As they are publishing essays on him then they take him seriously, but why do you assume they are all positive?Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
You *can't* assume that, for instance, Harold Bloom & Tony Magistrale appear under the same cover here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Y-vdjwEACAAJ
The National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters cannot be taken seriously as an award for literary merit. You don't even need to be a writer! Oprah Winfrey has won it, and the introduction explicitly says this was for her Book Club, not for anything she has written..., for being a good book seller. Does that mean Amazon or Waterstones can win it?
"A few college level syllabi" will include anything in this dumbed down age.
You can always find some critics say positive things about anything, even (especially?) in third rate colleges.
You *can* find some great critics who dismiss books that almost all other critics say are masterpieces.
But you can find many authors that almost all serious critics admire.
Stephen King isn't one of them.
It's so convenient to pick out one little section of a person's rebuttal to choose to refute, isn't it?
One small section? I thought I engaged fairly well with the main arguments being made. Why not engage with the arguments? It's usually a sign that someone is losing an argument when they attack the method of arguing...
~
R e m i n d e r
Please do not personalise your arguments.
Posts containing inflammatory or off-topics comments will be further without further notice.
~
Probally the same impact that some people feel reading babies names books, or the list of people in their 4th grade class, or watever: reckognition and memory.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
The thing is: listing is a form of organization of text (just like many others) with specific function that a writer can use to try to cause impact. You cann't dismiss the form based on effect, for as you even agreed, the effect is not a norm.
Not much storytelling in Confucious either. Or in Emily Dickinson poem. The listing obeys probally the same idea of a phone book, information: here, those are the cities that attacked troy. If you belong to any of them, see how they were represented and by which "family".Quote:
But, I must admit, I found the list in the Iliad list almost as tedious as the phone book because I did not know who most of those Greeks were! (Also that list was only one section - there is wonderful story telling in there. There aren't many wonderful stories in the phone book.
Plus, The Illiad whole organization is "artificial", when Homer was singing, the sections are probally split...
Goggle is not god, so I am not stuck with him. For example, try to use Evolution or Theory on goggle and apply it on a debate about biology or science in the middle of religious creationists. It will be truly "Useful" to use goggle as basis.Quote:
I do think this is a bad, or at least ambiguous, definition; but it's what we are stuck with! (I copied it direct from Goggle define.)
A good definition resists to testing, circunstances and can be understood by all. Goggle just select popular definitions, not the best definitions.
Critics that say he is bad literature, are saying he is literature. Even because many people define literature by fiction literature, much narrow than the definition as written text. But that goes to drain: Critics consideration (specially literary critics, which obviously only have status as analysts of literature in first place, not cousine) cannt be used as basis. It is not solid. Herman Melville started to write literature after his death? Until them, critics are slamming him. So did Emily Dickinson? All would be necessary is to find one critic saying something good about King (it is not as hard, he obviously know how to write the pulp-fiction/horror, he clearly continues a lineage of authors, he certainlly provoke emotions on people) to have a new definition? Everyday, a new dictionary! Imagine then when you get a bad work from a great author. Even Shakespeare, despite doing exactly the same technique intentions, etc, you will say some of his plays are not literature and some are?Quote:
Stephen King's work is literature in the broad sense, that includes the phone book. In the narrow sense, according to several critics, it is inferior literature, or not literature at all.
Well, you do not need to return to King, but it is insane to consider that all your reading is classical reading. You obviously do not have the capacity to judge or know the quality of works before as you may have now, so it was a path you have to walk. I see people who love Murakami, and I frankly, have yet to see something that would set him apart of Stephen King - in fact, his Kafka at the shore seemed like a Stephen King story...Quote:
You make a good point about considering King to be inferior literature, rather than not literature at all. I will concede that.
Not all "classics" appeal to me. The basic readability and "teenage angst" themes of King somewhat appealed to me in my youth, and I got through some of his novels. I haven't got through the Bible, Ulysses, or Proust. I think he's a bit like junk food - goes down easy, but it's not really very nutritous or tasty - and likely to be bad for you in excess. And I could have been reading Stevenson, Dickens, more Wells,...
And it is not Stevenson or Wells, but guys like Haggard, Conan Doyle, Lovecraft, Poe, Chesterton all suffer attack from some critics that put they waaaaaaay down on the shelves, because they could be reading Flaubert, Woolf or Faulkner... Sure, you can be reading anything, but I cannt be defining anything based on my reading story.
We need to be able to, at least, create categories of great literature and not-great literature. Stevenson makes it into the "great" camp not just because he's the perfect story teller, but because he writes superbly well, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and has some very important things to say about the human condition - Dr Jekyll has received iconic stature in our culture, second only to the greatest figures (Hamlet, Don Quixote...)
All art us useless, so...Quote:
I think King is in the not-great camp, along with the phone book, though in a different category - the phone book is at least useful!
He is the commercial type and his creativity was not wielded in an inventive bowel and he is the bus-stand type we read while waiting for something, a kind of time-passer. He got the National Book Awards along with a life time achievement award which he did not deserve at all. That is why Harold Bloom rightly said:
The decision to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis.
gone.
Stephen King is definitely NOT trash. Of course he's not classic or something, but I like the ideas of his books, and I enjoy films made after his novels very much. He's got his talent and I really like what this man creates, I think his life phylosophy is pretty much like mine.
_____________
ipad developer
Really? I always thought The Shining was one of his better novels, and I'm pretty sure I've seen this sentiment echoed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar Freund
I made the assumption about the collection of essays from one of the Editorial reviews (magazine/journal) on Amazon, which read:Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
It sounds to me like the collection will mostly be positive criticism that analyzes the themes, structures, and lineage of King's work, especially since the first sentence informs me that Magistrale is a proponent of King's literary worth and this is his third book on the topic, even though I knew that already.Quote:
“With three respected studies of Stephen King already published, Tony Magistrale has become the strongest voice among those who argue the respectability of King's fiction. In this volume he has selected the best essays from the vast body of recent King scholarship to support his contention that King is not only one of America's most popular writers, but he is also one of its best. The essays argue collectively that King's works are deeply influenced by the mainstream traditions of 19th- and 20th-century American and European fiction and are a commentary illustrative of the major political and social tensions shaping contemporary American life. They argue further, with limited success, that King's works rely on a rich literary tradition that includes such respected genres as the gothic and classical Greek tragedy. Remarkably effective in this argument are G. Weller's "The Masks of the Godden," E. Casebeer's "The Three Genres of The Stand," and R. Curran's "Complex, Archetype, and Primal Fear."” - Choice
The National Book Award Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters is for "a person who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work." So you can win it for either of those two reasons. Oprah won it for the former, while Stephen King won it for the latter. Given the many prestigious names on the list: Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, John Updike, Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller, Philip Roth sounds like they're awarding for literary merit to me. You might not agree with the choices, but that doesn't change what the award is for. Why do you think Harold Bloom and company got in such a huff and puff about him winning? Because they did take the award seriously. After all, you don't see them freaking out over all of King's other major genre awards.
Most serious critics admire the same exact authors because most of those authors are dead, old, and well-established. It's uncontroversial to claim Shakespeare or Dickens is a great writer. So it's not surprising we find most serious critics admire them.
But when you start looking at contemporary texts, you quickly notice there isn't that same strong agreement. Oh, there is certainly some. I suspect if you polled most academics today some names will continually pop up like Roth, Pychon, etc. But even then, you'll find a much higher ratio of professors and literati who think Roth or Pychon is overrated crap than you would for names like Shakespeare.
As for King, he's an important author in the horror genre. I think he's an author whose work (maybe not all of it, but some of it) will continually appeal to people who are interested in horror in particular. The poorness of his writing is greatly exaggerated usually by people who haven't ever really read much in the way of actual bad writing. I was particularly impressed by his first novel, Carrie, which was succinctly written (it's not long and bloated like his later novels; it's a lean, raw, powerful monster), fits in the same vein as Stoker's Dracula by taking an epistolary approach, but is experimental and modern in that it does so through newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and such. But I've never seen a novel that really understands the psyche of social dynamics of modern bullying, which is an epidemic these days.
You don't have to like Stephen King. That wasn't the point of my post. The main point of my post is please stop pretending all critics agree Stephen King is awful when in fact I just demonstrated that there are critics in academia who like Stephen King's work.
Do you think most popular equates to best?
gone.
I wasn't trying to argue that all literature must be mostly story, I agree that Confucius and Dickinson are literature.Quote:
Originally Posted by JCamilo
Ok the listing in the Illiad certainly contained useful information somewhat like the phone book, but it shows more discrimination than the phone book (!).
You don't get Homer saying things like "Here is Pericles, he delivers milk. Here is Plato he drives mules, and so on for ten thousand people pursuing mundane tasks. This mundanity, and indescrimanation may be what makes the phone book bad literature (I'll concede your point abou calling it literature... but you have to admit it's bad!)
The phone book exists in another space besides literature of course - the space of "useful guides" - this might provide a useful two scale graph on which to place literary artifacts. For instance, a history book might score highly as literature and moderately as a useful guide.
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I'm just using Google as a common starting point, if you want to pull out the OED and argue that Google's definition disagress with that of the OED, then let's go there!
I'm sure the Google people want to select the best definitions - they are a bright bunch of geeks, i can't imagine them throwing up any old rubbish on purpose. Given their automated processes they may not always provide the best - contact them and tell them off if you don't like their definitions! I'm happy to work with their definition of literature ... It doesn't seem too bad for a two liner...
Most critics agree that it takes time (a hundred years?) before you can be 'reasonably sure' about the status of a work of literature. The critics slamming Herman Melville when he was alive might have had "personal issues", or were not yet equipped to appreciate him properly
If you find one critic from a minor college saying that a King novel is great literature does that make it great literature?
Read my last post carefully. I'm conceding your main point! You win! Everything, including the phone book, the beer mat, and the bus ticket are literature.Quote:
Originally Posted by JCamilo
How far can you go with this? I just drew a squiggle on a piece of paper that isn't a character (as far as I know...) Is that literature? Or a painting? Is it bad art - or primitive, or surreal?
I don't just read classical literature. I'm trying to read a lot of different new authors recently using a random method of picking a "rated" author of the library new shelf.
I read my first Murakami novel recently, Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and it was quite "different" to start with, so I was quite enjoying it. But I quickly got bored with it, and I now agree with you - not much to set him apart from Stephen King.
I read all these authors in my youth (except Chesterton) and only Stevenson and Wells left a warm glow that makes me seriously want to repeat the experience as an adult.Quote:
Originally Posted by JCamilo
Flaubert is in the class of at least Stevenson, maybe Dickens - I'd personally recommend reading him without reservation. Also, most of the critics love him -and he's been around for a 100 years.
Woolf and Faulkner I have strong reservations about, I struggled reading "To the Lighthouse" and "As I lay dying". Some first-rate University professors don't rate these modernists highly (e.g., John Carey) - and they are less than a hundred years old - still subject to being hyped by trendies. Maybe in twenty years they will be consigned to the dustbin? carey makes an atrgument for such works as *trulty* elitist - they were designed by the snobs to be unreadable by the newly literate working class.
This has the unfortunate aspect of making the average reader think that "literature is not for them" and that "King is for them". Better would be *some* great literature is not for them (too archaic/specialised- Bible Illiad,...) and some supposed great literature (Wolfe, Faulkner) either isn't great, or is great, but specialised to support the leanings of a snobbish elite (which IMHO puts them beyond the pale, great literature has to be *universal*, at least for the time in which it is written.)
Define minor college. The University of Vermont is ranked 82 out of 1600.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
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?Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
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....
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...Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar Freund
gone.
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.
I don't remember, really. I read it years ago and recall liking it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar Freund
First, because you state opinion as fact doesn't make it so.Quote:
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.
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.
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.Quote:
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.
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.
I've never read Needful Things, but none of the seems neither more nor less compelling than anything in The Shining.Quote:
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.
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).Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
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.
gone.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar Freund
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.
gone.
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.
~
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.
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gone.
That explains nothing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar Freund
Clearer, but not crystal.Quote:
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?
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.Quote:
Yes, that’s exactly what it means. Read the quote again – the whole thing.
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.Quote:
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.
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.
gone.
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? :seeya:
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!