Originally Posted by chaplin
Even although I don't think King is the best author in the world (though I like some of his novels very much), can't stand Brown and never red Clancy, I still dare to disagree. Who will decide who are great authors worth reading? For example, I don't think Austen or Dickens are better than King, though they are among "great" writers. Sorry Austen and Dicken's fans - but their novels never made me think, admire their writing style or encouraged me to think about philosophical concepts. Quite contrary - unlike King's novel (well, at least some of them) they are so boring it's lethal.
You might say that novels by Dickens and Austen have aesthetical values while King's don't. But please. What are those "aesthetical values" anyway? What do they evaluate, express? This is a question I recently asked several university professors. And after some thinking, they all came to surprisingly similar conclusion: that they express experience of beauty that reader has while reading. That's great answer, but the problem is: there is no definition of beauty. That means that different people can have different "experience of beauty" from different books.
And then there's another thing - it is often said that book should make you think. I agree with that, but... During my life, I met many people, who read only and exclusively classics Why? - because those are books that make you think (other people, critics, professors etc. said so, so it must be true). But when I asked them what they think about the book, I never got their opinion about it - it was exactly the same things one could find in cliffnotes and reviews etc. Yes, they actually read somewhere what should they think about the book. They read what are the aestetical values of the book. And still, they are proud with themselves for reading good, difficult and demanding books, - though they never actually thought about the books, nor had anything that might be called "experience of beauty" while reading it.
(I don't say that everyone who read classics does this, I just say I met surprisingly great number of such people).
I think the problem is that these people never read "low" literature. How can one know what is good if he doesn't know what is bad? How can one know the language is great if he never read books written poorly? How can one grow as a reader, or learn to think if you always rely on what other people say about the book? And what does "enjoying" in book mean anyway? If you enjoy it, you must like something about it, right? Pherhaps story, the way it's told, the way characters are described, language... Often it's "experience of beauty" my professors were talking about, but people just don't realise it. And if one sees beauty in King, there's nothing wrong with it. Even King or yes, even Dan Brown can make people think. And if it so, such reader can be actually on higher lever than the one who reads classics just because someone told him that what he's suppose to read and like.
And if a King's reader tries to pronounce what he liked about the book, to understand why he was enjoying it - and compares it with other books he reads, he can, gradually, by his own reading experience, become really experienced reader, and move to more demanding books. I know few people who now read most difficult authors with ease - and when you aske them about the book, its always fresh and original and full of ideas or facts that I haven't noticed, or that definitely can't be found in cliffnotes.
(Sorry for this being so long and sorry if it sound like I wanted to lecture you - that wasn't my intention.)
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Stephen King: Trash, or Literature?
