Stephen King - what am I missing?

This is the first 'adult' book he has tried (he's not a massively strong reader and not very mature for his age). I think it came as a bit of a surprise! He can always try it again when he's a bit older.

I read lots of horror as a teen but preferred Richard Laymon and Dean Koontz!

Yes same here. And not just the misogyny but the awful things that happen to children in his books.
I read a lot of his books at the time when everything he wrote was being turned into a film. "It" has given me a lifelong fear of clowns. Stand by me has some wonderful descriptions of childhood friendships. But the standard dropped off the more he produced, so I stopped reading them. Then years later I read a couple of newer ones. Mr Mercedes was one and I can't remember the name of the other, but it felt like I was seeing them clear-eyed for the first time.
Without the decent writing of the early books, there was nothing to disguise or temper the misogyny and twisted cruelty in his stories. I didn't finish the last one, and I won't be buying any more.
His non fiction "on writing" was great, but I feel differently about that too now 🙁

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Tell that to Paul Sheldon!

I read a few many years ago. Now I realise SK is a misogynist. Stephen King subjects his female protagonists to an excessive amount of abuse. This abuse often is central to the story, while in male-centred stories, it is not.

Same goes for Stieg Larsson (Girl dragon tattoo books). They both disgust me and I'd never buy a book or watch a film based on a book of theirs.

I prefer his fantasy based novels (The Talisman, Insomnia, Rose Madder, the Gunslinger series (although it gets iffy towards the end and not really resolved to my liking)). And I like the crossovers that you get between novels, with Randall Flagg appearing in both the Gunslinger series and The Stand. The tommyknockers freaks me out, but is so good. I’m petrified of IT.

What I can’t get on board with is the more torture elements, which I find in the short stories (I’ve never read Misery). They are not books I want to read again, so they go on my ‘disappointing read’ pile, even if I can see the cleverness in the writing.

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Read the nuance in other posts! No one is denying that, but equally, no one can deny King's influence on the genre.

You don't have to understand it!

I think he's a great storyteller, and I'm happy to go into the unnecessary details along the way. But it's not compulsory to like him, and we all ike different things, so I think if you've read a few, then it's fine to say no, as you've given him more of a chance.

I think that King is really good at what he does, but I do get the impression that he wants to be regarded as a greater writer than he actually is, and is pained by being pigeon-holed as a genre writer. He is an extremely skillful wordsmith, and there is nothing wrong with that. He should be proud.

I realised his limitations most clearly when I read Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter novels. They occupy the same sort of space - character-driven horror - but they are soooo much better, much more genuinely literary and every bit as exciting.

Harris also manages to write women, and to evoke feminist concerns way more effectively than King. To his credit King has, over the years, tried to be a much better writer of women than his genre typically manages, and he has got better at it as he aged. But sometimes he has failed spectacularly, and he has never entered the task as amazingly as Harris did.

I've never understood the hype either. There are much better writers out there.

The stand is amazing.

You’re not missing anything.

The thing about Stephen King I hadn’t appreciated until relatively recently was the sheer volume of his output. It’s prodigious. He never stops writing, and publishers are always there, gagging to print anything he produces, even though an awful lot of it is absolute bilge - poorly constructed, nonsensical, unedited bilge. And some of it is just horrible. I stopped reading him altogether after a (completely unnecessary) detailed description of a child rape was worked into some cartoonish bollocks about an alien in a library. I mean, I know he was an addict and out of his mind for years, but seriously, WTAF?

His list of greatest hits is really impressive, but I thought all of them were better as films than books (and I rarely think that), but I wonder if it’s largely down to the fact that screenwriters polish and improve the stories and tighten up the narratives.

I really like his short story collections. You get a good, well crafted story without all the unnecessary detail.
I've read, and really enjoyed a lot of his novels - The girl who loved Tom Gordon, Duma Key and The Stand are some of my favourites, but it's the short stories I go back to again and again.
Cujo was a novel that had a good storyline but I skipped pages and pages of the stuff about the dad's marketing job and a cereal (?) launch that failed.

I don't think you are missing anything, OP. He's just not for you. My guess is that you perhaps prefer the kind of horror story that instantly sets up an eerie atmosphere and moves to its conclusion fast, like Edgar Allen Poe.

The striking thing about Poe's stories is that they are very short and they typically aren't really about anything other than the sense of dread that they generate. Isn't there one story in which the central character is looking at a small mark on the window and misinterprets it as something large and faraway outside of the house (in the manner of Father Dougal in the caravan in the Father Ted sitcom). There is literally nothing in that story other than ungrounded fear.

King on the other hand typically writes character-based fiction. His central characters are all facing quite complex situations that could be the basis of a story in their own right, without any horror bolt-on. And then he adds in the huge infrastructure of supernatural stuff as a kind of enormous echo chamber, enlarging and enacting the character drama. That gives him scope to write large doorstep novels instead of the little horror vignettes of writers like Poe.

What I like about King is that he is incredibly competent. You know that you can settle in to a story that will be well-rounded and structured, with sentences that are pleasurable to read.

What I don't like about King is that he writes himself so predictably into each of his lead characters. Lots of his characters are writers. And lots of them enact his apparently rather troubled relationship with readers and critics of his novels. In at least one story he manages to have a moan about critics who don't like his books enough because they are snooty about genre fiction. And of course he famously moans (in Misery) about people who like his stories too much . As a reader, I feel he is setting out a very fine line for me to tread: Admire me as the Great Author for my literary writing, but don't guzzle up my stories with too much freakish enthusiasm because that makes me feel like I am a freak, too, for having produced such weirdness.

Have read a lot of his books. Some are better than others. A couple of my favourites are ‘The Green Mile’ and ‘ Hearts in Atlantis’.
Big fan of The Running Man and Thinner. Both written under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. The Running Man (albeit extreme) written in 1982 was way ahead of its time in the respect of exploring the concept of reality tv.

11:22:63 is unlike all his others and very good. I'm a huge horror fan but don't like his horror.

That's a shame. It's a great book!

He is strange like that, but you point out about 80s culture, and his obsession with naturalistic thoughts 'earthy' and just don't bother about the weird descriptions. But he may still struggle which is fair.

Fully support the rights of the reader not to choose to continue though!

We watched The Long Walk - DS2 really enjoyed it so I got him the book from the library. He read for about one minute and said 'there's a description of the main character's Mum's boobs for no reason at all' He's 13 and found it a bit odd. He didn't persevere with it!

Haha I loved those as well.

He's a very authentic writer, so his dialogue can be brutal and he definitely writes too much sometimes. The drugs influence can be seen in some of his work 🤣.

My favourites are his work as Richard Bachman- the running man (not like the Arnie film!) the Shining and Misery.

On writing, his non fiction is one of the best books I've read, but I'm really into language.

They might not be for you - that's fine- Pratchett and Tolkien aren't for me, which sends some people into a tailspin!

I also really enjoyed The Stand, I first read it when I was late teenager and reread it a few months ago. It’s long but I enjoyed it, I listened to it on Audible and that made it better.

I agree with you that he likes to go into a lot of detail about things, so if you prefer books with a fast-moving plot then he may not be for you. I found It an absolute slog but I really enjoyed The Stand which is even longer - I was really immersed in the characters and didn't mind how long it took to reach the end game.

I think my blueprint for horror was shaped by my teen love of point horror and rl stein so without a broody football player or a cheerleader who wears sweaters but is possibly a vampire I find it a bit dull.

100% this. It’s ok not to like things! It’s ok to like things!

Try Fairytale or The Talisman.