Stephen King Fucking Sucks

^ IT was pretty fun too

the stand (the book) is worth a weekend of anyone's time. epic shit

one of these days imma get stuck into the dark tower sequence

I actually thought Thinner was hilarious

has anyone read 1408? i haven't but i thought the movie was pretty scary. i don't know why they changed the ending for the dvd, definietly not as good. i wonder how the book ends.

  Mcdergbit said:

has anyone read 1408? i haven't but i thought the movie was pretty scary. i don't know why they changed the ending for the dvd, definietly not as good. i wonder how the book ends.

Its a short story. Quite scary actually. I listened to it with a blood and smoke audio compilation and it came in two parts. First part I got through ok but couldnt put in the 2nd disc, I was too fucked up. Waited the next night to finish it. It helps when youre listening wiht the lights off though.

I read an article somewhere where the author basically contended that King's a decent author, but because he's had such huge commercial success his publishers are very reluctant to doubt him, edit him, or tell him to cut a few hundred superfluous pages out. This is borne out if you read something like Carrie, his first, and notice how lean and well-paced it is; and then compare it to anything he's written in the past ten years.

King'll always have a place in my heart as the first "adult" author I read, so. And 'On Writing' is actually a pretty decent book about the craft.

  Mcdergbit said:

has anyone read 1408? i haven't but i thought the movie was pretty scary. i don't know why they changed the ending for the dvd, definietly not as good. i wonder how the book ends.

1408(the film) was a piece of shit. The Shining-Lite. SOOOOO boring....I think there was one part where I almost jumped, and that was just the lights going out.

I viewed it as more of a psychological drama than proper horror...Plus John Cusack in a serious role? Whatever...

1408 was a spectacular short story - taps into that otherworldy terror that a lot of his best work has.

I think King is great - he's like any artist though, he's going to have missteps along the way, repeats, etc. It's friggin' HARD to write a full novel's worth of ideas, sentences, etc. and most "writers" can barely pull off one in their lifetime half as good as some of King's bad shit.

Just re-read the Regulators the other day, and it just solidified how amazing King is at creating characters that I actually care about. Also reading Lisey's story right now, which also has that effect.

ALL HAIL THE CRIMSON KING

I remember my ten-year-old self absolutely adoring King's short story collections. Nightmares and Dreamscapes spent more time in my bedroom than it did the local library. The story about the mysterious, huge, many-jointed finger that pokes up from a man's bathroom sink actually made me scared of my own bathroom!

  Iain C said:

The story about the mysterious, huge, many-jointed finger that pokes up from a man's bathroom sink actually made me scared of my own bathroom!

Oh, dude! I was just telling my girl about this story the other day. That shit scared the FUCK out of me - something that I could totally see in one of my nightmares or something.

  kaini said:

philip k dick is awesome, and wrote his best stuff in an amphetamine-fuelled three year not-having-any-idea-of-where-it-may-go-but-really-knowing binge of hacktasticness.

All the best King novels were fueled by drugs as well, from what I can tell.

He's apparently off the booze and drugs, and he adamantly claimed that was what enabled him to write all those classics. I read King when I was 10-14 years old, but outgrew it pretty quickly. He's not a bad writer (I say this based on anything written before 1990), but his books tend to be a bit formulaic.

  Iain C said:

I read an article somewhere where the author basically contended that King's a decent author, but because he's had such huge commercial success his publishers are very reluctant to doubt him, edit him, or tell him to cut a few hundred superfluous pages out. This is borne out if you read something like Carrie, his first, and notice how lean and well-paced it is; and then compare it to anything he's written in the past ten years.

I think this is true. I prefer the old, edited version of the Stand vs. the bloated "final cut" that is now ubiquitous.

I am so fucking sick of famous artists going back and putting back in all the extraneous shit some editor wisely left out. I just bought "The good, the bad and the ugly" the other day and was shocked to find it contained all these terrible new scenes that should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Aliens was better before they added back in those deleted scenes, too. Same with Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, etc etc. Leave my classics the fuck alone, people!

  Joyrex said:

He's apparently off the booze and drugs, and he adamantly claimed that was what enabled him to write all those classics. I read King when I was 10-14 years old, but outgrew it pretty quickly. He's not a bad writer (I say this based on anything written before 1990), but his books tend to be a bit formulaic.

Speaking of terrifying, your new avatar is disturbing the hell out of me. . . as if Ringo wasn't freaky enough.

Ive just started to read ''rage'' the one that he discontinued due to the school shootings.

but in my book aresenal i have these king books

geralds game

needful things

blaze

the regulators

pet cemetary

the shining

misery

and the bachman books (the 1987 edition with all 4 books)

Anyone watch last night's episode of Family Guy? Loved it.

yeah i was gonna say, was this thread made to coincide with the family guy episode?

either way, im a fan of king - him and tolkein got me into reading whilst a teenager. i read an awful lot of his stuff and more recently the bachman books too. the dark tower, the stand etc are just fucking great. i think anyone hating on him as a writer is either missing the point or being sadly uppity and pretentious. it's almost too easy to hate on king, but he does the sort of straight-up story telling that is very admirable. his characterisation is spot on and human... i feel like he often gives good honest insight into the average american psyche, which obviously i know very little about.

overrated by most, underrated by people who take literature too seriously?

Pod, you actually read Duma Key?  I knew it was terrible before I heard the title.

Well once I start I book, I need to finish it, so I was essentially stuck with it.

someone told me king would write entire novels on coke in one sitting and then forget about them. i have no way of verifying that, but it seems quite plausible to me.

  The Pod said:

Well once I start I book, I need to finish it, so I was essentially stuck with it.

You didn't pay for it, did you?

By the way, Just After Sunset wasn't that bad. I actually prefer the short collections.

No I get almost all my books from the library, sense I can use the internet to get a book from any library in Illinois sent to my local library in case the book I want isn't available here. It's a good deal.

There was an excerpt of Duma Key at the end of Blaze (Which sucked, it was King storytelling with a Bachman ending, and they don't blend well, I didn't even finish it.), so I never bothered with Duma Key.

His latest stuff has been pretty boring, but I think it's unfair to say he sucks in general.

I liked Stephen King when I was young, but when "It" came out when I was 13 I found it boring and couldn't finish it. A few months back I bought it again, to see if maybe I had misjudged it. It's probably the worst book I've ever read. There are good sequences here and there, but it's terribly padded and the ending is truly stunningly awful. I'm certain I have never read another book that goes off the rails so spectacularly in the final act.