The King of Fiction

October 7, 2009 in Blogging, Books, Language, Writing by faltarego | 1 comment

Stephen King doesn't need my accolades. He's doing quite well for himself. But I thought, since I've been in a rather retro frame of mind the last while, that I'd talk a bit about some of the stuff that King has come out with over the years.

I'm not a King expert. I haven't read everything he's written. Not by half. But what I have read, I've liked.

A lot.

There are those who like to dismiss Stephen King. I don't know why that is. Maybe it's his genre. Maybe it's the fact that he's sold a bazillion copies of every book he's ever come out with. Or maybe it's because he's not "literary" (whatever the hell that means). But there are definitely King-detractors out there.

Personally, I like his stuff. And I'm not even that much of a horror fan. I find King's books to be intelligent, funny, scary, and generally pretty damn honest. I think it's the honesty that attracts me to his writing more than just about anything else. He says what he thinks, and he doesn't couch it in glossiness. He just writes.

Yeah. That's it. Brother just writes. He has a wicked sense of humor and a real knack for throwing words together in memorable ways. He knows how to write a sentence, and he knows how to weave a tale. And he doesn't pull any punches while he's doing it. He just does it.

I think my favorite of his standalone books has to be The Talisman (cowritten with Peter Straub). This is the tale of a young boy's travel across an alternate United States in order to save his mother. Actually, as I recall, he keeps slipping back and forth between the real U.S. and the alternate one. It's pretty creepy, and downright scary in parts, but I love it because it's mostly a fantasy story. I'm a big fan of alternate universes, and that was a big part of this story.

I also recently read The Stand. The revised, expanded edition. Yeah, the big-ass one. It's frickin' huge. I couldn't put it down. I'll confess that I enjoyed the aftermath of the influenza epidemic a bit more than the huge battle between good and evil towards the end, but it was an amazing book, and I would have read more if there'd been more to read.

I also have a copy (well, two, actually, one hardcover and one trade paperback) of King's On Writing. Being a writer myself, I wanted to find out what the Grand Master had to say on the topic. Part biography and part writing resource, the book is at times hilarious and at times thoughtful. And it pretty much typifies King's non-fiction writing style.

I almost feel a bit guilty saying this, but sometimes I enjoy King's non-fiction even more than his fiction. The forewords and afterwords he's written in his novels are true gems, and he's even more honest and straightforward in them than he is in the novels themselves. Likewise for any columns of his I've encountered in magazines.

It's just plain and simple, folks: The guy knows how to write. Nothing more, nothing less. For a man to produce the output he has over the years, and with such consistency and quality, it's almost miraculous. I'll stop short of invoking the celestial here, but it does speak not only of great talent, but of a tremendous work ethic.

The guy doesn't stop. He said he was going to retire after he finished the Dark Tower series, but that didn't happen. I didn't honestly think it would. The books just kept on coming.

Speaking of the Dark Tower series, I have to confess that I haven't finished it yet. I've read the first three books and part of the fourth, but I got a bit derailed during the flashbacks of the fourth book and wandered off into other realms. Now that he's finished the series, however, I fully intend to go back, start it over, and read the whole damn thing.

But first, I'm going to read more of his earlier works (cue retro music). I've seen a lot of mention of the fact that the Dark Tower series makes references to many of his other novels, and I'd like to be familiar with those characters before I venture back into the world of the Gunslinger. So, when I get through with a bunch of other books I have on my shelf, I'm going back to Stephen King.

So, to return to my original point, the man does not need me up here on my blog defending him or singing his praises. He's the most popular author in the world, for God's sake; a few critical voices aren't going to diminish him. But, as a writer, and a defender of language in general, I just wanted to put my two cents in and say how much I enjoy his works and the candor and honesty he injects into them.

So keep writin', Mister King. Keep writin'.

Mind the gap.

(Here's a clip of Stephen King talking about the teaching of creative writing, and about the genesis of Carrie.)

Tags: , , , , ,

  1. Tricia’s avatar

    Tricia on October 15, 2009 at 5:48 am

    Great post. Stephen King is my idol. I’m a bit behind on his books, though. I get the hardback version of each new book (usually as a Christmas present) and up until about three years ago I would read the latest edition very soon after Christmas, but I still have ‘Lisey’s Story’ and ‘Duma Key’ waiting to be read, though I read last year’s anthology before the New Year was in. Like you, I have volumes 4-7 of ‘The Dark Tower’ still to read. Like you, I stalled halfway through ‘Wizard and Glass’ (wonder if we stopped at the same point…) and yes, I intend to start again from book 1. They’re all sitting in my bookcase, mocking me.

    I never think of him as a Horror writer, even though most of what he’s written contains horror in some form. There are a few which have few or no supernatural elements at all, (Misery and Gerald’s Game have none and Dolores Claiborne has just a tiny amount), and and could be described simply as psychological thrillers. He just writes great human stories, which have a few scary or oogy parts. I love the way he gets you right inside the heads of his characters, and makes you really care about them.

    I loved the Talisman – I read his other collaboration with Peter Straub – Black House – and it wasn’t nearly as captivating. The Stand, of course, is excellent. Other favourites of mine are ‘The Eyes of the Dragon’, which is like a good old-fashioned fairytale (and re-introduces Randall Flagg, the villain of ‘The Stand’, but in an earlier incarnation) The new novel, ‘Under The Dome’, is rumoured to be just as big (or bigger) and sprawling as ‘The Stand’ though maybe not so moral in tone. Looking forward to that, but I have to catch up and read the last two novels first.

    I have a book called ‘Bare Bones’ which is a series of interviews with Stephen King, taken from various magazine articles, and that’s a really interesting read if you can hold of a copy. It includes his feelings about Stanley Kubrick’s version of ‘The Shining’. I don’t think it’s any secret that he was disappointed in it (that’s why he later did his own mini-series and insisted on writing the screenplay) but his observations on that, and on Kubrick himself, are entertaining.

    Oh, I could go on and on about Stephen King :)