Stepehen King great write or trash?

I don't if his work is high art or not i just wish i could write like him, certainly his ideas have been the shell for two of the great films of the last twenty years "The Green Mile" and "The Shawshank Redemption". "It" would have been one of the great horror film f it wasn't for the cheesy tv production. "Dolores Clabourne" and "Misery" are underated film too!

I don't know if his work is high art or not i just wish i could write like him, certainly his ideas have been the shell for two of the great films of the last twenty years "The Green Mile" and "The Shawshank Redemption". "It" would have been one of the great horror films if it wasn't for the cheesy tv production. "Dolores Clabourne" and "Misery" are underated films too!

Stephen King bears a startling likeness to my Uncle Eric, though my Uncle Eric doesn't write books. He drives taxis. And complains about the council.

If you read his book "On Writing" you'll find that indeed his books are essentially unplanned. He starts with an idea and just runs with it. Sometimes the results are great, sometimes not so great. I've read a few of his books, most recently a collection of novellas (which would be considered full length novels for anyone else) that included Shawshank Redemption and Apt Pupil. Shawshank was ok, but nothing all that special. Apt Pupil was much better, even had an "Ian McEwan" feel to it at times. My favorite was Hearts in Atlantis...very long and actually three novellas strung together...still it really hit home for me because it was about my generation of Americans, the effect of the Viet Nam war, the social upheavals, etc. It might not mean much to someone else, but for me it was a wonderful book.

Is Stephen King a great writer or trash? Both, I reckon. d.beswetherick.

awful.. like sleeping pills in a text version. i read rose madder once, it was painful.. really, physically painfull... pages upom pages of useless description.

I've read a great deal of Stephen King books. Formulaic? Yes. Trash? Err... no, just predictable. He does what he does very well. I don't see the point of castigating him for not producing 'high' art when he's clearly never tried to.

I'll agree with that. He never claimed to be anything more than a guy who loves to write, MUST write, and is making a living doing it. He is rather realistic in his assessment of his own writing. It sells very well and translates into film/tv, but he has never described it as great literature. That's fine. It's more than I've been able to do so far, so I can't be critical of him.

If you read only one Stephen King story, read "The Last Rung on the Ladder". That breaks me up, that story. I identify with it because I had a younger sister too and she always did what I told her, and I got her into great danger on several occasions, one when I climbed uop a cliff with her on my back. "Last Rung on the Ladder" starts with a guy on a plane trip and he remembers an incident from his childhood when his sister got stuck at the top of a ladder in the haybarn after a rung broke and he pulled out some hay across the concrete for her and told her to jump, and she broke her leg. Then he found that she'd had her eyes shut and had jumped only because he told her to. "You didn't know? Didn't know what I was doing?" She shook her head. "And when I told you to let go...you just did it?" She nodded. Kitty, how could you do that?" She looked at me with those deep blue eyes. "I knew you must have been doing something to fix it," she said. "You're my big brother. I knew you'd take care of me." Later, she makes a mess of her life, and writes to the brother. "She asked me if I could come. But losing a week in law school is like losing a term in liberal arts." Years later she writes again. "Can you come Larry. It's been a while." I wrote back and told her I'd love to come, but I couldn't... Oh, I can't tell you the end of this story. I've got tears running down my face. d.bes

I love Stephen King books. The best thing about them is that he's not trying to be a great American author or anything, he's just writing 'the literary equivilent of cheeseburgers' as he calls them. You can tell he's not pretentious just by reading a few pages of anything he's done. Unlike some authors, who you can tell think they're great after reading a couple of sentances. To Liana - rose madder isn't as good as the others, like the Shawshank Redemption for one, don't let it put you off!

caz.. when younger i read several king novels... i'm not dissing him in any way, and if people like to read him, then more power to them - and him. id rather people read king than never read anything, put it that way... I just prefer steak to cheeseburgers... and its not because i aspire to pretention believe me - i will read anything thats lying around generally.. hence rose madder - it was in the house, it was a book of my ex's, i had nothing else to read - it was utter sh.ite. I seem to recall at one point, reading three or four pages of long drawn out detail of twigs snapping in a wood, or something similar.... it was soooo boring!!!!!!

Fair 'nuff, Liana! Good one about prefering steak to cheeseburgers, by the way : b Although I do like cheeseburgers better, they're easier to swallow.

Amazing how far you can push a metaphor, ain't it?

I dunno if I'm some kind of heretic, but I infinately prefer Peter Straub, Stephen King's mate. His short stories can be genuinely unsettling, while his novels do succumb to 'mini-series with special effects'itis. Come on, someone start a thread about good horror/ghostie stories!

I've only read one - Pet Cemetary/Sematary yonks ago - (I'm a coward when it comes to horror) and can't recall much about it except there's an evil cat that has the foulest palest green eyes. He must've used such pretty powerful imagery as I can still see this 'devil' cat and I think that's where his talent lies - he has a handle on creating dark imagery that haunts you. I'm also a fan of the film Stand by Me, which was on the box recently.

oh forgot - do you think Mr King and Chewbacca were separated at birth??

Oh yes and re horror stories and cats - Edgar Allan Poe's short story does a good job re dark haunting imagery.