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Post by cromagnonman on Jan 30, 2019 11:43:46 GMT
Ok, so I was bored. And when I'm bored I tend to fritter away my time playing Sporcle literature quizzes. Yeah yeah, I know, radical huh! Anyway, one of the quizzes was to name the novels of Stephen King in ten minutes or thereabouts. Well I didn't do very well but then I hadn't reckoned on there being nearly sixty of the things. Sixty? That is some output for forty five years worth of effort, especially when you pause to consider the bug crushing dimensions of the things (one for you there H).
Now the titles of most of the books listed post 1990 meant absolutely nothing to me, so I made a point of checking them out in Forbidden Planet which was a depressing enough experience in its own right. Row upon row of doorstopper volumes in godawful trade format with atrocious photoshop images on the front and £10 price tags on the back. Ye Gods, Allen Lane must be turning in his grave. The whole point of a paperback was to make books attractive, economical and transportable not the reverse. Anyway, there they all were, these novels I'd never heard of with titles like CELL and DUMA KEY and what have you.
There is no denying that King's legacy is assured, but my question to the floor is this, does it rest totally on the iconic tomes he contributed between the mid 70s and the mid 80s? Or is he still producing groundbreaking stuff? Has success made him complacent, lazily regurgitating earlier themes and ideas knowing his profile guarantees the success of what he now writes regardless of its quality?
As Lloyd Grossman used to say: "Its over to you".
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jan 30, 2019 11:55:34 GMT
Ok, so I was bored. And when I'm bored I tend to fritter away my time playing Sporcle literature quizzes. Yeah yeah, I know, radical huh! Anyway, one of the quizzes was to name the novels of Stephen King in ten minutes or thereabouts. Well I didn't do very well but then I hadn't reckoned on there being nearly sixty of the things. Sixty? That is some output for forty five years worth of effort, especially when you pause to consider the bug crushing dimensions of the things (one for you there H). Now the titles of most of the books listed post 1990 meant absolutely nothing to me, so I made a point of checking them out in Forbidden Planet which was a depressing enough experience in its own right. Row upon row of doorstopper volumes in godawful trade format with atrocious photoshop images on the front and £10 price tags on the back. Ye Gods, Allen Lane must be turning in his grave. The whole point of a paperback was to make books attractive, economical and transportable not the reverse. Anyway, there they all were, these novels I'd never heard of with titles like CELL and DUMA KEY and what have you. There is no denying that King's legacy is assured, but my question to the floor is this, does it rest totally on the iconic tomes he contributed between the mid 70s and the mid 80s? Or is he still producing groundbreaking stuff? Has success made him complacent, lazily regurgitating earlier themes and ideas knowing his profile guarantees the success of what he now writes regardless of its quality? As Lloyd Grossman used to say: "Its over to you". I've only ever read some of his short stories. The earliest are best as he made an effort. Later ones are so bad that if someone else had written them they wouldn't have been published.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 30, 2019 16:25:08 GMT
Richard, I'm not a Stephen King fan, so I can't really respond. A sometime "friend with benefits" of mine is a major King fan who has been published in various websites and actual print volumes (you know, once upon a time we called them "books") about the great master. I'm always respectful when this young gent mentions his idol because, well, it would hardly do to be otherwise.
I had no idea SK had published on that scale. I will cut King a huge amount of slack, however, because he has been vocal in his disgust and contempt for the mad Emperor of our daft little Kingdom over here. King is also a fan of both Boris Karloff's Thriller series and the original 1960s Dark Shadows which was a really magical thing (the Burton-Depp fiasco was horrific in quite a different sense of the word)--he gets points for good taste there.
Bug-crushing tomes are handy to have around the home in case one needs to prop open a door or, er, crush a bug. I'm a soft hearted veggie so I genuinely try to convey innocuous insects safely outdoors.
cheers, Steve
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Post by helrunar on Jan 30, 2019 16:26:40 GMT
If Oscar Wilde were still with us, he might have made this quip. "There are two ways of not liking the genre of supernatural horror fiction. One is not to like it. The other is to like the productions of Stephen King."
Of course, everyone's mileage may well vary.
cheers, H.
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Post by cromagnonman on Jan 30, 2019 16:50:52 GMT
Richard, I'm not a Stephen King fan, so I can't really respond. A sometime "friend with benefits" of mine is a major King fan who has been published in various websites and actual print volumes (you know, once upon a time we called them "books") about the great master. I'm always respectful when this young gent mentions his idol because, well, it would hardly do to be otherwise. I had no SK had published on that scale. I will cut King a huge amount of slack, however, because he has been vocal in his disgust and contempt for the mad Emperor of our daft little Kingdom over here. King is also a fan of both Boris Karloff's Thriller series and the original 1960s Dark Shadows which was a really magical thing (the Burton-Depp fiasco was horrific in quite a different sense of the word)--he gets points for good taste there. Bug-crushing tomes are handy to have around the home in case one needs to prop open a door or, er, crush a bug. I'm a soft hearted veggie so I genuinely try to convey innocuous insects safely outdoors. cheers, Steve Regrettably I'm not qualified to debate the relative merits or otherwise of Dark Shadows the series and Dark Shadows the movie. But wasn't that the film where some cretinous nincompoop in the poster producing dept photoshopped 10lbs off of the incomporable Eva Green? Eva Green for crissake! What sort of arrested aesthetic sense is needed to look at her and conclude that things can be improved in the mainframe?
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Post by kooshmeister on Jan 30, 2019 17:37:21 GMT
Like his eternal rival Dean Koontz, King has always been either hit or miss with me. His best books are his shorter, or at least "normal length" ones, aside from The Stand and It, and even It feels like it really doesn't need to be as long as it is, and has always been a chore to slog through. I'll eagerly pick up The Stand, but avoid It like the plague. As for his recent stuff, I read the first paragraph of The Outsider where he has two black boys (I know they're black because King explicitly calls them "two black boys" in one of his annoying "pointless detail" habits where he only seems to mention a character's race when they're black, as though their "blackness" is their entire characterization) avoid some cops in an unmarked car (who the black kids of course refer to as "Five-O") and lost interest immediately, because the scene shifts abruptly one paragraph later to a transcript of a police interrogation. Huh? Why did he do this? Why not simply describe the cops exiting the car after the boys leave and go arrest whoever it is they came to arrest, and write the ensuing interrogating scene normally?
Looking the plot up on Wikipedia, as described, it sounds kind of interesting; in execution, well, you can tell I think King messed it up. He's become a lot like George Lucas; a man of good ideas but who bloats and bogs down his work with stupid crap because he's gotten too big for his britches and nobody tells him "no."
Oh, well; at least it doesn't take place in Maine, this time.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 30, 2019 17:58:07 GMT
To me, Eva Green is an incredibly talented actress, who should have won every conceivable award for her performance in Penny Dreadful. She was naked a lot in that and struck me as rail thin, so... shaving more pounds off? Really, Hollywood? Some people have no sense at all.
Also, Tim Burton should have been tried, convicted and sentenced to two years heavy labor in a ruthless Bev Hills style queen's hair salon for his CRIME of turning Eva into a HIDEOUS bleached blonde in Dark Shadows. Every moment she was onscreen, apart from the prologue segment where she was allowed to appear with her own natural coloring, was agony for this viewer. And that's not even going into the script, the direction, and the sheer horror of Depp's "performance," word used in the sense of an inept traveling circus bear struggling to do another flip on the trampoline.
All the best, Steve
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Post by andydecker on Jan 30, 2019 18:23:45 GMT
I used to be a major fan when he started, one of the few writers I bought in hardcover because I didn't want to wait for the paperback. Around the Millenium I lost interest; the only work of his I read after 2000 was On Writing, which was quite nice. I cant say when I lost interest, maybe after one lacklustre tv-mini series too many I was just bored, or the dull Dark Tower novels after No. 4. I have still four or five novels unread on the shelf, his "woman" novels of the mid-90s, Dolores Claiborne, Rose Madder etc, delivered by a book club back then. The plot didn't interest me at all.
He still is relevant. Even if I have problems understanding it. I have a truly hard time believing, that a novel like Mr.Mercedes deserves an Edgar, that this was the best crime novel of the year. But his work is still fodder for the tv and movie machine, even if it comes out dire crap like The Dark Tower. A lot of screenwriters must be green with envy when it comes to him.
But I can't help admire him. Name another writer who is still so successful after 45 years. (And who is Dean Koontz? If one guy faded from the spotlight ...) And I like his opinion about the administrationn from hell.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 30, 2019 18:37:11 GMT
To me, Eva Green is an incredibly talented actress, who should have won every conceivable award for her performance in Penny Dreadful. She was naked a lot in that and struck me as rail thin, so... shaving more pounds off? Really, Hollywood? Some people have no sense at all. Also, Tim Burton should have been tried, convicted and sentenced to two years heavy labor in a ruthless Bev Hills style queen's hair salon for his CRIME of turning Eva into a HIDEOUS bleached blonde in Dark Shadows. Every moment she was onscreen, apart from the prologue segment where she was allowed to appear with her own natural coloring, was agony for this viewer. And that's not even going into the script, the direction, and the sheer horror of Depp's "performance," word used in the sense of an inept traveling circus bear struggling to do another flip on the trampoline. All the best, Steve Everything you said! Eva Green even made the truly terrible Sin City 2 watchable. And for Penny Dreadful she deserved both an Emmy and a Gloden Globe.
I kind of liked Dark Shadows. I don't know if you could produce this as a straight story today. I am not very acquainted with the original, though, so I can understand the hate for this movie. But her as a blonde was a truly idiotic choice.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 30, 2019 20:01:56 GMT
And here's another vote for Eva, and for Penny Dreadful.
Typical Vault though - someone asks a straightforward question about something, and we rapidly end up discussing something else altogether. I've not really read that much SK - I know I've read Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Pet Sematary, and the Night Shift and Skeleton Crew collections, but I think that's pretty much it (apart from the odd story that's cropped up in an anthology). I seem to remember quite liking all of them at the time, but not so much that I went out of my way to read more. I also went through a longish period (most of my 20s, I think) when I avoided a lot of contemporary US writers because their cultural references so often meant nothing to me, and instead they just annoyed me. Is he "still relevant"? Probably, as long as new authors are being compared to him, or are citing him as an influence, or are looking to him as a model.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 30, 2019 20:31:37 GMT
Think the only one of his post-2000 novels I've read is Joyland, a throwback to those glorious early years when he got his story told in under 300 pages. I'll bet there are some terrific reads among the blockbusters, but am too shallow to tackle 700+pagers, and the excuse-for-cover-artwork certainly doesn't help matters. He's still relevant for sure. All art is. I hope he has a good many years left in him and keeps writing the books he wants to write until the end.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 30, 2019 23:12:35 GMT
And here's another vote for Eva, and for Penny Dreadful. Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Pet Sematary, and the Night Shift and Skeleton Crew collections, but I think that's pretty much it (apart from the odd story that's cropped up in an anthology). I seem to remember quite liking all of them at the time, but not so much that I went out of my way to read more.. It is funny how different it was hereabout. King wasn't exactly a success at first. Carrie and Salem's Lot were published in hardcover in Germany in 1977 and 1979, at two different publishers. These editions were not very successful at the time. I wonder if Shining wouldn't have been a Kubrick movie in 1980 it would have a found yet another publisher, three years after its original publishing date. I don't remember which I read first, I think it must have been Carrie which was sold at the bargain bin in some supermarket. In the same bin as some old Vampir Horror Paperbacks. I remember browsing through Salem's Lot, which one copy collected dust in the bookshop I worked back then. Hard to believe today as King still is a bestseller. But his eventual sales success paved the way for other publishers to try horror.
Shining I thought awesome at the time. (Still do, I re-read it last year and was not disappointed) I was starting to read books in their original English at the time and King was relatively easy. I first bought paperbacks, Christine was the first hardcover which I still own.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 31, 2019 1:17:31 GMT
I will cut King a huge amount of slack, however, because he has been vocal in his disgust and contempt for the mad Emperor of our daft little Kingdom over here. King is also a fan of both Boris Karloff's Thriller series and the original 1960s Dark Shadows which was a really magical thing (the Burton-Depp fiasco was horrific in quite a different sense of the word)--he gets points for good taste there. This is pretty much how I feel. I haven't read anything by him more recent than 1999's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, but I appreciate his evident love for the genre, his willingness to promote the work of other writers, and his blistering comments about certain public figures. I did watch the recent Castle Rock miniseries and found it entertaining enough.
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Post by mattofthespurs on Jan 31, 2019 8:31:04 GMT
I read my first SK book when I was ten and have read everything since. His latest, Elevation, is very short (132 pages iirc) and is a wonderful story. My Son, who is 14, has started reading King and he loves him. He's read Pet Semetary, Carrie, The Shining, Doctor Sleep, Christine and is halfway through It and has loved them all. I agree some of his novels, like the women books of the late 90's, were not to my taste but generally I enjoy pretty much everything he writes. Even enjoyed the book about The Boston Red Sox he wrote with Nan Stewart.
Oh, and Eva Green? Superb actress and beautiful with it. She was superb in Casino Royale too.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 31, 2019 9:31:55 GMT
And here's another vote for Eva, and for Penny Dreadful. Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Pet Sematary, and the Night Shift and Skeleton Crew collections, but I think that's pretty much it (apart from the odd story that's cropped up in an anthology). I seem to remember quite liking all of them at the time, but not so much that I went out of my way to read more.. It is funny how different it was hereabout. Maybe not that different Andy - I would have read those in the late 70s at the earliest. Early 90s for Pet Sematary, which I think I only read after the film. I think the first SK novel I read was probably either Salem's Lot or the The Shining, but it might possibly have been Carrie. I'm not even sure whether I might have seen the TV series or film adaptation before I read the book. God, it all seems so long ago now. The Salem's Lot TV series with David Soul was brilliant though. I was starting to read books in their original English at the time and King was relatively easy. That's quite a big compliment, when you think about it. I bet a lot of authors would like to be told that.
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