Printable View
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.
------
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.