Stephen King - what am I missing?

[chocolateaddictions]

As a teen I read quite a few and hated them all.

I’ve seen lots of the films - It, Carrie, Pet Cemetary, Misery, the Shining but could never get into the books. I never really enjoyed the films either but it was the sort of thing you watched at teen sleepovers.

I found them incredibly dull and almost impossible to get through. Carrie for example had pages and pages about telekinesis or something when I just wanted it to get on with the plot.

If you’re a fan, honestly what is the appeal? What am I missing? If you’re not, do you feel the same way as I do?

I think some are better than others. I am not a big fan of the movies you mentioned (except Misery which was great).
I read a couple of books - can’t remember which now so I probably didn’t like them that much.
But have you seen Life of Chuck, currently on Netflix? Just beautiful.

And I just started reading ‘Later’ tonight, by chance. I was hooked straight away by the narration.

You aren’t missing anything. He’s just not your cup of tea.

I love King but I can't get into the "Holly" series at all. I found some of the books after his accident a liitle off but then he got his vibe back for a while. If he's not your thing why persevere?

I've been reading Stephen king since I was a teenager. Love the really early stuff. The life of chuck I found surprisingly moving...... He's still got it ❤️

I've only read Misery and The Shining. In The Shining I did enjoy the way he explored the main character's inner battle with addiction and trauma but I would've preferred it without the supernatural elements as it just doesn't do it for me. I prefer to think of it that Jack went mad with self hatred because he was a failure and abusive drunk like his father rather than that he got possessed by a haunted hotel.

Loved Misery although I did skip through the extract from 'Misery' and the newspaper clipping because I got the point after the first few and impatienty wanted to get on with the story.

Next in line is Dolores Claiborne so I'll see how I get on with that before deciding how far I want to go through all 60+ of his novels!

I really liked " Billy Summers", which is a crime story rather than horror. I liked Mr Mercedes trilogy as well. The TV adaptation was great but the opening scenes were some of the most memorably horrific I have ever seen, so be warned. As a side note the actors ( especially Brendan Gleeson) were excellent.
Try some of his short stories maybe? I can recommend Different Seasons, Nightmares and dreamscapes and You like it darker.

Some writers, for whatever reason, just aren't my cup of tea, SK being one of them. I've made my peace with it and moved on, plenty more to choose from!

Try Fairytale or The Talisman.

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

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.

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 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.

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!

Haha I loved those as well.

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The stand is amazing.

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

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 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.