But, to be frank, I never thought any of his work was that great. Even as a teen I got to a point where I couldn’t figure out why his books were so popular, and I thought, “You know what, I don't like these books. Why am I reading this?" From Carrie to It to Pet Sematary to Thinner, I thought King’s books were boring, wordy, unscary, and forgettable.
But that's not my beef with him. There are plenty of awful writers out there, and I just don’t bother reading them. But with King it’s different.
You see, he wasn’t all the rage when he first started writing. Throughout the early parts of his career, King was dogged by critics who called him out for his genre-specific, “popular” literary stylings, even as he was selling millions of books annually.
In the early 80s, The Toronto Globe called his novel Carrie "a clumsy experiment." The Los Angeles Times called Cujo "Paws" instead of "Jaws," saying, ‘[the book] doesn't work." In 1983, the same year that Christine and Pet Sematary were published, an essay in the Times suggested it was a slog for reviewers to read King's work, saying they would rather just have a beer with him than read his books. In 1986, the Times said, "Where did Stephen King, the most experienced crown prince of darkness, go wrong with It? Almost everywhere."
In 2003, King won the National Book Foundation’s award for distinguished contribution, and Boston.com writer and Yale professor Harold Bloom let the world know that giving King the award was wrong. He said it was “another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life.”
A recent article in The Huffington Post said King can’t write. The author, Michael Conniff, an instructor and writer himself, said Stephen King’s broad-stroke descriptions are actually hurting his work.
In an article in Salon, Dwight Allen from the LA Review of Books asked why is Stephen King so beloved? Allen dissected a bunch of his books and came to the conclusion that King is overrated as a writer and as a storyteller. He argued that sales do not translate to excellent writing, and questioned some publications that wrote glowing reviews of King's body of work.
So why is he so popular?
I think King’s saving grace was Hollywood. His books, though poorly written, were edgy, and edgy is always what catches the attention of Hollywood. Once movie makers started turning his books into feature films the Stephen King bandwagon really took off. Remember those two-night Stephen King television "events"—It, The Langoliers, Storm of the Century? When those mini series became trendy people assumed some literary masterpiece had landed on earth and they started they eating his books by the trough full.
And then King's popularity began to overshadow his shortcomings as a writer.
When King published the seventh volume of his Dark Tower series, The Washington Post gave it a gushing review, saying it was “a humane, visionary epic and a true magnum opus.” The New York Times listed his JFK assassination novel 11/22/63 one of "The 10 Best Books" of the year.
Ultimately, I don’t think the quality of King’s work stands up. In fact, I think it’s downright awful. For a guy who has taught English for much of his career, who had given lectures and written books about the importance of story, he spends a good deal of time drowning his stories in words.
But what do I know? King has sold over 350 million books so he is obviously doing something right. Readers have voted with their wallets, and they have crowned King… king. I’m glad that a fellow author has found success, I just wish it could be for the quality of his work and not because he won a popularity contest.
What do you think? Is Stephen King overrated?
While I wouldn't call him awful, he's certainly overrated in that he didn't bring anything really new to the horror genre; he's just touring the old tropes of the genre and giving them a contemporary slant. Also his books are way too long, which wouldn't be too much of a problem had he not thus convinced readers (and editors) that a "good" book is necessarily one that looks like a phone directory. Finally, his stories are messes. He's on record saying that he loathes tight plotting and favors instead "letting characters decide" - meaning, he doesn't know where he's going and this shows. He's much better in the short story/novella format, but we know that readers don't like it, so...
ReplyDeleteYou know it's interesting that you bring Stephen King up as a writer. I was never drawn to him like all my friends were. I was more of a Peter Straub fan. "Ghost Story" scared the crap out of me. I read it in our haunted summer house and when I was reading late at night, my best friend Dave, climbed up my roof and stood outside my open window and screamed "Boo." I jumped 12 feet in the air off my bed. "Shadowland," the one about the magicians was equally as good. I think you are right though, when Hollywood came calling, people began to pay attention to King I do find it interesting I like most of his movies. I liked the Dead Zone with Walken and then he made a series out of it, with Anthony Michael Hall and I was kind of rivetted to the series. I thought it was good, for a while, plus a college acting buddy of mine named Chris Bruno played the Sheriff, so that was added incentive for me to watch. Then you have the Green Mile, Shawshank Redmption and The Shining. All decent movies with decent stories. Getting back to the Dead Zone series, I followed it through about 3 and a half seasons, before it started to fall off the wagon a little and I got the feeling that King had lost his way and didn't know what he wanted to do with it after that.
ReplyDeleteI've tried a number of times, but I've never been able to finish a Stephen King book. His writing is frustrating, careless, and just plain boring. Without Hollywood, he would be "The Nowhere Man."
ReplyDeleteyou forgot to mention kings books have won multiple awards sounds like youre a jealous cry baby there are just as many literary professors who say hes a great writer writing is telling a story idiot nobody reads books to see perfect grannar and punctuation those kind of writers like you are writing useless blogs at 4am not novels the fact you listed christine as as bad book a ny times best seller that has won multiple literary awards screams jealousy almost every great horror story the past 40 years were written by king or by people who admit he influenced them peter straubs basic ghost stories im sure are great for a limited mind but stories like the green mile a story you purposely didnt mention cause it was hailed a masterpiece by writing critics and won an oscar is light years beyond a anything peter straub wrote or even lovecraft so keep writing 8th grade blogs and telling yourself youre a better wtiter than king who created pennywise and mr arlow im sure people laugh
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Deleteyeah every writer whose writing blogs or working part time at a gas station is better than king lmao funny i never see any sucessful fellow authors saying hes a bad writer canyou name one? i only see broke guys on minimum eage writing blogs like tbis idiot here were is your novel at let me guess you arent good enough to write a novel so what on earth makes you qualified to judge one?
ReplyDeleteso you have no novels we can read cause you were not a good enough writer to write novels yet you are some kind of expert on novels? sounds like a jealous little man
ReplyDeleteI've read multiple Stephen King books trying to find out why people rave about him. Needless to say, I failed miserably. The only good book he's written, in my opinion, is Eyes of the Dragon.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely overrated
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