Why read Marlowe when you can just read Shakespeare?Quote:
Originally Posted by LeNoirFaineant
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Why read Marlowe when you can just read Shakespeare?Quote:
Originally Posted by LeNoirFaineant
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by LeNoirFaineant
I couldn't agree more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Calidore
I love the Dark Tower series. It's a rich, complex tapestry of characters and their development. His female characters are more relatable and well written than any sex & the city type clucking hens. His stories are imaginative. Sometimes the imagined scenarios involve the lowest forms of life, but the most interesting literary characters are usually very flawed. His grammar is excellent. His voice is just fun. If a reader can't connect with a King book, I don't know how they can connect with any lit.
Whoa, take 'er easy there, Pilgrim.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
Lovecraft's corpse just sneezed.
But seriously, which book by King am I missing that is so earthshakingly good?
I really tried to get into his stuff a bit, but the only one that I found more than average was "Jerusalem's Lot",
and that was such a blatant ripoff that I am frankly surprised he got it published without reprimands.
That's a rather low point of comparison. How do his female characters compare to those of Austen, George Eliot, or Iris Murdoch?Quote:
Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin
Well any toddler is imaginative, and sometimes I'm wondering if King is channelling his toddler self too much. Imagine a living car! (Wow!) "Grammar is excellent" should be a given for anything that gets published (unless it's experimental...) You can write awfully bad stuff with excellent grammar, so this really isn't a good point in defence of King.Quote:
Originally Posted by Varenne Rodin
Many people who dislike King connect with Dickens, Shakespeare, etc, etc... So although you can't imagine it, they certainly *do* connect with "some" lit.
My reply to both LeNoir and mal4mac would be the same: If you've tried King and he doesn't work for you, fine. It's a matter of taste, which is wired in all of us. What I don't understand is the need for some to pronounce what they don't like as beneath them, rather than simply not their cup of tea.
I still think there's an unreasonable bias. Toddlers are imaginative, they obviously lack well developed story telling abilities. I was comparing King to more modern literature popular amongst females in my country, because I wanted to make the distinction that King's female characters are often intelligent or just more multi-layered than female characters found in "trash" lit. I'm sorry if that was somehow unclear.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Stephen King's characters compare very well to Austen's. Both Austen and King wrote/write the female perspective as being equally important to that of any male character, only Austen often took it to a greater extreme and made women superior. She was writing something bold in her time of living. Lots of people called it trash. Pride and Prejudice was shelved for ten years before being given any credit.
I'll amend what I said about being able to connect with King. I can understand a reader from somewhere other than America not being able to relate to him and his many references to our culture, though his books have had quite an impact on current Asian and French lit. Stephen King is no more a trash writer than Terrence Malick is a trash film maker for having made movies about the darker side of the human condition. You can say you don't like King, I have to wonder how much King you have actually read, but I still don't see how it can be deemed "not literature". If you haven't found a King character or story you can relate to, you haven't read enough King. I'm not a fan of "Eyes of the Dragon," for example, but it's completely different from all of his other stories. I thought "It" was the most like a cheesy pop culture Wes Craven horror flick. Aside from those, the stories vary so greatly, it's hard for me to wrap my head around someone lumping them all together and slapping them with a stamp of negativity. One could say that "The Dark Tower," "Insomnia," "The Talisman," and "Black House" all have similar themes, but that's because they're all continuing and branching off of the same intricate story. Without having read all of them, I don't see how a reader can proclaim authority on the matter.
King gave us The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, The Dead Zone. I think it's sad when he's dismissed by literary snobbery.
Again, don't misunderstand me, please:
I don't think contemporary literature can be measured fully by the, well, contemporaries.
For comparison, just check the nobel prize winners of the first half of the century,
and consider if you had read just ONE of them by your own motivation, outside of school or other research. ;)
I am just asking, which book of his should I read to get an idea what is good about him?
"The Shining"? "The Shawshank Redemption"? "The Green Mile"?
Because an author who cranks out one or two books a year surely has higher and lower points in his writing - so, my impression doesn't necessarily have to be reliable.
So, recommend me a book of his, please. :)
I will never understand the Stephen King controversy, in which he is either a modern Dickens or a literary scourge. The only thing more ridiculous than Harold Bloom railing against Stephen King is Harold Bloom railing against J. K. Rowling. I fully expect Harold Bloom to soon write a book entitled "Why Batman Comics Aren't Literature."
King's work varies from the heroically awful ("The Lawnmower Man" from Night Shift in which a guy shows up to mow the lawn and then, after having stripped naked, starts to eat the grass--no really) to the fairly decent (the half of On Writing that wasn't actually "on writing" constitutes a mildly pleasurable memoir). I think King is an obviously competent storyteller. However, his novels and his acceptance speech for the National Book Award lead me to believe he fails to understand the whole "art" part of literature. Kafka's "Metamorphosis" is more than just a page turner with believable characters.
Of course, it must be said that Stephen King approaches Harold Bloom's idiocy when he deigns to inform the public about the horrors of Stephenie Meyer. Really, Steve? Perhaps he's now working on his masterpiece of literary criticism "Why Danielle Steel Sucks." Never mind, I think he already wrote it.
I used to think that King is utter trash, but recently i bought a collection of (arguably his best) short stories, and much to my surprise i rather liked a couple of them, and parts of others. The one about the two children that played a game with the wooden ladder in the barn was particularly interesting since i did not think King grasped symbolism that profoundly. I also liked "Grey matter", although it has to be a homage to Arthur Machen's excellent "White Powder", the two stories resembling each other considerably. Finally i liked the twist in "the man who loved flowers" although it was predictable; i liked the aroma of that story.
Some others i read i did not like.
The Dark Tower series. Start with the Gunslinger, I guess. It's like Tolkien, but if you think Tolkien is non-literature too, read the Talisman.Quote:
Originally Posted by LeNoirFaineant
I've read books from Nobel prize winners that my teacher never asked me to. In fact, I know a still living Nobel laureat who rather likes King. I've read hundreds of classics that my teachers also never asked me to read. I don't live in the past alone though. I appreciate art that is happening now. The fact that it's happening now gives no cause to scorn it.
If contemporary literature can't be measured by contemporaries, why are you measuring Stephen King as lacking?
Possibly he's just not interested in being an "artist" of that sort. His main priority is to tell good stories well and to entertain the reader who likes the kind of stuff he likes. As he put it:Quote:
Originally Posted by stuntpickle
“I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”
On the flip side, I think Sturgeon's Law applies to Literary Artists just as much as anyone else.
I would agree that what masquerades as literary art today is mostly trash. Thanks to MFA programs, we have an abundance of middle class morons with absolutely nothing to say, who, nevertheless, feel compelled to write mediocre tomes devoid of sentiment and beauty. So we get scores of AM Homeses writing "daring" stories about suburbanites smoking crack. No thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Calidore
How does King compare to the aforementioned variety of writing? I suspect he compares well. But I also suspect that history will sort out all the AM Homeses. It generally takes generations for us to figure out what really constitutes the art of our age. We're so immersed in the madness of our time that we can't make out the one sane person scribbling in the corner. I find it likely that the great artists of our age are now writing in obscurity, simply because time has not yet equipped us with the proper understanding. We're just too good at buying our own bull****.
I share King's love for Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which critics tend to ignore for precisely the same reason the public loves it: both groups wrongly believe it is simply some ghost story. What Jackson was writing about was alienation and how all people are essentially awful; what haunts Hill House, after all, is the group of persons inhabiting it. Jackson is now deservedly enjoying a critical reevaluation. I suspect over time we will learn to love her better. But it is never popular to stand up and announce that everyone else is crazy. Imagine the fortunes of a presidential candidate suggesting in a debate that what ails America is Americans. I suspect we'd all hang him.
My point is that King is not the same variety of writer as Shirley Jackson. I think he is incapable of the sustained artistry of Jackson's Hill House. The reason he won't be recalled as some literary sage isn't because he has written outlandish stories about vampires and killer clowns, but because he has written thoroughly conventional stories.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a simple storyteller, but if the conversation is chiefly concerned with whether one is MORE than a storyteller, then the answer must be, as it is in the case of King, "no."
I think it's hard to say whether King is capable of Jackson's level of artistry, because he's never shown an interest in writing that way. That may be because he doesn't think he can do it or it may be because he doesn't care.Quote:
Originally Posted by stuntpickle
I can't really argue about King's stories being conventional, as he doesn't load them with allusions and hidden profundity and whatnot, but I would disagree that conventional=simple. King's depth goes a different way, in his fleshing out of his characters and their relationships with each other and their locations. He takes more trouble than most to give the reader a realistic three-dimensional world of realistic three-dimensional people, and that's not simple.
There is a certain comfort when I open up a King novel. I admit, they are perfect for when I just want to relax and go for a ride. Some people say it's a fault, but I think King's work being "easy" to read is its greatest strength. You don't have to think a lot, you get what's going on, etc. It still always comes off to me as good writing, though. Where King really excels, and I think this balances out his often lame endings/climaxes, is his character creation. I have rarely become as attached to characters as I do in King's books. He has a way of writing that really makes them seem real, and in no small part to his great ability to write dialogue.
I don't think there's anything wrong with being just a storyteller. Just sitting down and reading a story, sans allusions and deep metaphors and difficult prose and more allusions, is quite an enjoyable experience.
I don't know why people refer him as a horror writer. I think most (those I've read) of his novels are mystery, thriller, and fantasy. Sure some of his book has some "horror" in it, but I find them more irrelevant to the story itself.
I like King's stuff, it's always a joy to imagine and live in the fantasy of his stories, and to get very close to the characters, so close you love the good ones, and really hate the bad people :)
My fav ones are The Stand, The Shining, Talisman, Dark Tower series and Needful Things.
But damn. Apparently I'm not a "true" literature friend, because I like King...too bad :rolleyes:
Absolutely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
Now now, don't beat yourself up!!:biggrin5: But I'm sure you'll be able to live with yourself.....Quote:
Originally Posted by tinybore
literature or trash.. does the one really exclude the other? I'm not sure
Oath, bro. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by inbetween
For the purpose of this poll, I think it does, or is meant to.Quote:
Originally Posted by inbetween
Lit.
But hey, El Sancho is a plot junkie.
About to be giving "Insomnia" a shot sometime soon.
"Cell" was one of the better novels I've read from King (despite being kinda minor for me), and I still have yet to give "It" and "Lisey's Story" another shot after having to put them down.
School. -_-
Insomnia was one of my favorites. Has heavy connections to his Dark Tower series, but good even if you can't connect the two.
Also, I just learned he's releasing a new, stand-alone novel set in the Dark Tower universe.
I love Stephen King, his stuff is great, albeit I'd say if all all you read is Stephen King you might be missing the big picture. (although you are probably enjoying yourself immensely.)
I'm of the opinion that it is out of line to say that what Stephen King does isn't literature, just because you do not enjoy it.
Doesn't being good enough to get continually publish go some distance to calling it literature or am I missing the point on what constitutes literature?
In physics you look to great physicists to say who the other great physicists are. Just because Isaac Asimov (at one time) was a best selling, popular physics author doesn't make him a great physicist - in fact, he isn't a physicist at all!
So, surely, it is the expert academics who get to say what is great literature. Who else would you have doing it - Xlktl from literature forum, or a vote from McDonald's customers? Stephen King has only won one prize that is sometimes mistaken for a worthwhile literary award:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/15/bo...phen-king.html
But, overall, he is not at all admired by the literary establishment, so how can he be said to write literature? You might argue that, as King is a modern author, the jury is still out - but the sounds from the jury room don't sound too good for the accused. He might be walking that green mile pretty soon...
Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
When you say literary establishment who do you mean? Critics, Academics? Sorry to break it to you but look at the winners of the Nobel Prize - half of the names most literary students don't know - Academics are a good source for further understandinmnet of canonical texts but on predicting what is great and trash contemporary art? Their odds are 50-50 - I mean if you think King has a bad rap, wait till you see what was the academic consensus in regards to Impressionism, or Symbolism - Heck Fitzgerald spent most of his life knows as the equivalent of a one time best-selling trashy writer for kids.
I say all this without ever having read a word of King. Maybe I will like him, maybe I would think he is trash, but I am not foolish enough to think my opinion will be the same as that of my children.
gone.
I was not trying to "scientificate" the humanities. I did not suggest that literature professors should make falsifiable predictions that withstand experimental tests. You are arguing with a straw man, not with me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar Freund
The only literary critics worth considering *are* great authors - at least of literary criticism. They may also be great authors in other respects.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar Freund
Trust can stop the infinite feedback - you may trust the academic consensus that Dickens is a great author and King is not - and then have a much enhanced reading life by reading more Dickens and less King (that was my experience... which is why I tend to trust the gatekeepers of literature... they usually know what they are talking about.)
The Nobel prize is only one signifier of literary greatness, you need many more, before something like a consensus is reached. And there is consenus over many authors - those usually to be found in the "classics" section of the book store.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander III
Reading anything that hasn't been around at least a century, i.e. something that hasn't had much of a chance to reach a critical consensus, should be looked at as a sacrifice you make to the gods of literature, a sacrifice performed to keep literature 'alive' - but it's a sacrifice because you are chancing a trashy experience (reading Stephen King, say) when you could be having a great one (reading Walter Scott, say)
At least read widely in modern authors - King has enough money...
gone.
You're making stuff up again.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
Stephen King has won and been nominated for lots of awards.
And basically only Bloom seems to dislike King. Hardly a jury of critics.
~
W a r n i n g
Please do not personalise your arguments.
Such posts will lead to thread closure as well as earning those involved infraction points.
~
Excellent quote by Twain and I also agree with Drkshadow03.
Bloom is a Professor of Literature at one the world's leading universities, and one of the world's most admired critics. Even so, he's only one of many who should be taken into consideration - along with many critics who are also considered to be great fiction writers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ragnar Freund
Bloom has written fiction, but the book didn't do too well! Who knows, it could be considered a great novel a hundred years from now.
Bloom might best be compared to a physicist like Oppenheimer - someone heavily involved with physics, doing 'reasonable' creative work, but better at teaching, at having a broad overview of the field, at being a great gatekeeper. If you argue Oppenhimer's work on black holes was seminal, then Dennis Sciama is perhaps a better example...
Asimov had a great deal to do with pointing out great physics and physicists to me in my youth, but as a student of physics I would also have looked to people like Feynman, Oppenheimer, and Einstein as having the most to say about who the great physicists are. Surely in any field you have to look to the experts, the real experts, as to what is best in that field. Who else is there?
Of course you have to think for yourself! But shouldn't you, mostly, be guided by experts?
Bloom does write for mass appeal, but do did Feynman. They are both cases of leading experts extending their reach to help 'the mass' appreciate their subjects. Some hiring and promotion decisions in some universities are certainly influenced by political and ideological considerations, and by connections.
The consensus I describe reflects a consensus between leading writers, critics, journalists, and academics extending beyond the highly political landscape of modern academia. That's why I say - nothing can be determined for a hundred year at least.
The political landscape, trendy journalism, trendy award givers: all of these conspire to raise authors to an acclaim they do not deserve. Journalists praise their writer friends, academics praise the guy they went to school with... You need time... a lot of it... to get away from all that garbage.
That's a good quote from Twain, but it's more an argument for a 'proper' consensus, rather than against looking at consensus as always wrong. There is a consensus that Twain is a great writer - that looks like a proper consensus...
These are not *literary* awards. They are mostly genre award. Others are very specific and reflect some kind of mass appeal which take insufficient account of absolute literary value:Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
"The Alex Awards are given to 10 adult books that are appealing to young adults." Should great literature be determined by what appeals to the average teenager?
"Canadian Booksellers Association Awards" - booksellers like authors who make them loadsa money.
To just start the race for being considered as literature, surely King needs be winning things like the Booker, Orange, Pulitzer, and Nobel prizes.
This could be interesting this Friday, to those who can get BBC2 at 11pm GMT:
"In this Book Review Show, Kirsty Wark is joined by Germaine Greer, John Carey and Susan Hitch to discuss the latest novel from Umberto Eco, a previously unpublished work by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Stephen King's latest sci-fi blockbuster. Kirsty also travels to New York to meet author Joan Didion."
That looks like a good jury of critics, and some serious competition for King! John Carey is generally highly supportive of literature that has mass appeal. So if any serious critic is likely to admire King, then it's him - note, though, he doesn't include King in his excellent book, "Pure Pleasure -a Guide to the 20th Century's Most Enjoyable Books".
gone.
Genres awards are a type of literary award. Particularly good one is the World Fantasy, for which King has had novels and short stories nominated multiple times, but has only won twice, plus a lifetime achievement award. But even so, he had a short story that won the O Henry award, which mostly certainly is NOT a genre award.Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
He also won the National Book Foundation Award, which is NOT a genre award, and is given for literary merit, in addition to service.
He has won two major national awards and countless major genre awards. He now has multiple positive essays and dissertations written about his works by professors and graduating students from Ph. D. programs. He frequently publishes in mainstream literary magazines like The New Yorker. He was even invited to be an editor of the prestigious Best American Short Stories Anthology series.
Ultimately, though, this is all silly criteria. The amount of awards an author has won and some short British book review show with a couple of critics won't decide anything. The real deciding factors will be whether some professors continue to teach King's work, whether his work continues to be included on school reading lists, and if he continues to be read after he's dead by the public.
I don't know if professors teaching his oeuvre will be the criteria in this case. I think he's definitely important to any survey of the horror genre, but then so is H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, or M.R. James and how often are they taught in higher education? When I look back on his stuff I definitely see some merit, especially in his early work. But after the seventies his creative output seems to have fallen off. I'd hold out more hope for The Shining, Salem's Lot, and The Stand becoming canonized than for some of his later more recent work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Drkshadow03
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc7ZaZz4CoU
True enough. I've always said his earlier work is his better work.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror