Stephen King phobia?

Not really a fan of him or horror in general, but there's one short sci-fi story he wrote called "The End of The Whole Mess" which I think is brilliant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_the_Whole_Mess *SPOILERS*

I think if you're not about 10 then it helps to read Stephen King if you've got a really bad cold and are stuck in bed and have got the attention span of a flea, even then he's kinda really annoying. I loved alot of them when I was young but went back to try and read The Shining - cos I never had - a while back and it took all my efforts not to throw it across the room. Good luck!

his ealier novels before the "mature style" were the most creative and contained some genuine good ideas. i'm thinking of a collection of short novels i read as a teenager, which included The Long Walk, The Running Man, and a few others...

I've read (as far as I can remember): It, The Shining, Dance Macabre, Pet Sematary, Desperation, The Regulators. I remember an American woman reacting with (justified) horror when she saw me at Disneyland with my family reading 'It' (which is over a thousand pages long) instead of taking in the joyful scenery. It wasn't a goth pose, I was genuinely absorbed.

He's a bit of a hack writer - cloying sentimentality, terrible endings, no real depth to characterisation etc. But he's good at the things a horror writer has to be good at - however badly written the books are (and they aren't THAT badly written, really, for pulp fiction) the story in every book kept me going. His characterisation can be surprisingly effective too. I suppose he would argue that his concern is with creating and exploiting the reader's emotions (horror being a genre that attacks at the level of emotion) which perhaps accounts for flaws in construction and so on that you wouldn't find in the work of a more cerebral writer. He writes well about childhood, too, I think - which again probably relates to the essentially juvenile (not necessarily an insult) nature of the genre.

Also, 'Dance Macabre' is a great non-fiction book about the horror genre. I've recently re-read bits of it and I remain impressed by it.

I would say if you read one book make it 'The Shining'. Even if you hate it, its interesting to see what Kubrick cut from the film.

I thought Carrie and Cujo were both quite good when I read them as a teenager, and he has some good short stories. Needful things is possibly the worst book I've ever read by anybody though.

Misery, The Shining, Carrie, Stand by Me all made great films. I only read one of his books I cant remember the title but remember it not leaving much of an impression and overall being pretty shit.

zhao said:

his ealier novels before the "mature style" were the most creative and contained some genuine good ideas. i'm thinking of a collection of short novels i read as a teenager, which included The Long Walk, The Running Man, and a few others...

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those are The Bachman Books, pulpy non-horror stuff he wrote under the name Richard Bachman... to me, that stuff still holds up... in the same vein is Night Shift; short stories originally published in porno mags in the 70's... still very enjoyable reading and puts King solidly in the american potboiler paperback tradition, in the best sense...

but, Mister Sloane is right, the most recent King thing i read, i think called The Cell or something (about a signal bvroadcast thru cell phones making people zombies) was really dumb and but i was sick in bed w/ the flu for a few days and it helped pass the time very well...

i still think the Stand is great...

petergunn said:

those are The Bachman Books,

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ah right! that's what it was called. i think actually one of the first english books i ever read, having picked it up at a yard sale for 25 cents at age 13 or something like that. with this cover

There will be no future printings of this book at Stephen's request due to the sensitive nature of the material found in Rage.

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Loved him when i was younger. He's written tons of crap, some of which you tried to read, but he really is quite good at times, much of his earlier stuff, the bachman ones (rage, long walk, roadwork), dead zone, cujo, misery. He can write beautifully about growing up, about small town america, he's really at his best when there is no horror involved. Parts of It are great as well. If you see the horror as some kind of metaphor it's a lovely novel, with the perhaps most ridiculous ending i have ever read. Also his book about writing is a classic in the genre.

Benny B said:

I thought Carrie and Cujo were both quite good when I read them as a teenager, and he has some good short stories. Needful things is possibly the worst book I've ever read by anybody though.

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I spent many a happy hour as a kid curled up on the floor of my room with a Stephen King & listening to Iron Maiden.

Needful Things utterly sucks. What a disappointment after The Dark Half. Needful Things read to me then as, say, the Stand reads to me now: wildly overblown for something so etiolated. The literary equivalent of those girls the police pulled out of that Austrian cellar.

But it paled in comparison to Michael Crichton's Lost World. That was the very definition of going through the motions. Just disgracefully lazy in every conceivable way. If I were his editor I'd have wiped my arse with the manuscript & sent it straight back.

& they still made a movie out of it