The Late, Great Stephen King
When I was 13 I was given Carrie for Christmas, and just devoured it. Announcing that I was now a fan, my family was relieved to know that they had something to buy me for Christmas and birthdays since I'd outgrown toys. I remained a rabid King fan until my junior year in college, when after three years of studying truly great literature I found King's books to be increasingly boring. It wasn't that his writing powers were declining; it was that after reading, say, The Brothers Karomazov a book like Christine just didn't measure up. This doesn't make me special, just different from other folks.
From 1987 to the publication of the first Dark Tower book I would only read King's short stories, which remain very good pieces of horror genre writing. The Dark Tower series became my guilty pleasure, and the ending of Wizard and Glass honestly had me in tears. But the last four books were so awful that I came to understand that King would continue to crank 'em out until the day he drops dead. And that's because he's not a writer anymore, he's Stephen King Incorporated, and like all good corporations he has to keep a steady flow of product moving into the marketplace to maintain brand integrity and ensure profits.
I would posit that Stephen King is an exemplar, the first prominent example we have of bad movies and TV ruining someone who could have been a truly great writer of important books. There are flashes of tarnished brilliance throughout King's ouevre: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Body, The Last Rung on the Ladder from the Night Shift collection, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, and Wizard and Glass. These stories and books give insights into what kind of writer King could have been, and so reading them is bittersweet. That such a prodigous talent was blunted and ill-used is ironically evident in the splendid grandiosity of many of his best genre books. Who can deny that The Shining and The Stand, not to mention 'Salems Lot, are among the best books of horror ever written? But that's the tragedy. They're only among the best horror books ever written. I'm sure that satisfies King (not to mention his accountant), but it offers no satisfaction for our culture at large.
The accident that nearly took King's life changed him. He has become arrogant, petty, even nasty in his dealings with the public, the critical establishment and other writers. He routinely writes vicious criticism of books by authors far better than he, and his outrageous comments upon receiving a lifetime achievement prize from the same committee that selects the winner of The National Book Award were telling. As to the public, I heard him on NPR's "City Arts and Lectures" series giving a talk in San Francisco that fairly dripped with arrogance and entitlement. And critics? His one comment, regarding suggestions that he cut his bloated tomes down to a manageable size, was "Cut this." Long gone is the playfulness and inherent decency that he once exhuded both on the page and in person.
But the question is why? His wounds have healed, and although he must sometimes walk with a cane he is not crippled. So why has he not put the accident behind him? I think I know the answer, though I cannot explicitly state it for legal reasons. Let me just say that it was VERY suspicious that the man who ran over King suffered a fatal heart attack some time later, and on King's birthday (something he alluded to on "City Arts and Lectures" in a creepily giggling manner). It is no secret that King was visibly enraged in the courtroom when that man received a light sentence. And the man's family said that there was no history of heart disease on either side of their family, and that he was as hail as a horse. They were clearly suspicious. So am I. You may draw your own conclusions.
From 1987 to the publication of the first Dark Tower book I would only read King's short stories, which remain very good pieces of horror genre writing. The Dark Tower series became my guilty pleasure, and the ending of Wizard and Glass honestly had me in tears. But the last four books were so awful that I came to understand that King would continue to crank 'em out until the day he drops dead. And that's because he's not a writer anymore, he's Stephen King Incorporated, and like all good corporations he has to keep a steady flow of product moving into the marketplace to maintain brand integrity and ensure profits.
I would posit that Stephen King is an exemplar, the first prominent example we have of bad movies and TV ruining someone who could have been a truly great writer of important books. There are flashes of tarnished brilliance throughout King's ouevre: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Body, The Last Rung on the Ladder from the Night Shift collection, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, and Wizard and Glass. These stories and books give insights into what kind of writer King could have been, and so reading them is bittersweet. That such a prodigous talent was blunted and ill-used is ironically evident in the splendid grandiosity of many of his best genre books. Who can deny that The Shining and The Stand, not to mention 'Salems Lot, are among the best books of horror ever written? But that's the tragedy. They're only among the best horror books ever written. I'm sure that satisfies King (not to mention his accountant), but it offers no satisfaction for our culture at large.
The accident that nearly took King's life changed him. He has become arrogant, petty, even nasty in his dealings with the public, the critical establishment and other writers. He routinely writes vicious criticism of books by authors far better than he, and his outrageous comments upon receiving a lifetime achievement prize from the same committee that selects the winner of The National Book Award were telling. As to the public, I heard him on NPR's "City Arts and Lectures" series giving a talk in San Francisco that fairly dripped with arrogance and entitlement. And critics? His one comment, regarding suggestions that he cut his bloated tomes down to a manageable size, was "Cut this." Long gone is the playfulness and inherent decency that he once exhuded both on the page and in person.
But the question is why? His wounds have healed, and although he must sometimes walk with a cane he is not crippled. So why has he not put the accident behind him? I think I know the answer, though I cannot explicitly state it for legal reasons. Let me just say that it was VERY suspicious that the man who ran over King suffered a fatal heart attack some time later, and on King's birthday (something he alluded to on "City Arts and Lectures" in a creepily giggling manner). It is no secret that King was visibly enraged in the courtroom when that man received a light sentence. And the man's family said that there was no history of heart disease on either side of their family, and that he was as hail as a horse. They were clearly suspicious. So am I. You may draw your own conclusions.
posted by Unknown | 12:07 PM
2 Comments:
Thank you so much for verifying what I have long suspected. And thanks are also in order for rightly highlighting what is so painfully obvious: his writing is long past its peak.
I would have to agree that it is suspicious, however, there is no proof that Stephen had him killed. Men drop dead for no reason. No hx of heart disease, but then they drop dead of a heart attack, when it's your time, it's time.
Also, I wonder if he suffered a traumatic brain injury. TBI's can change a person's personality forever, especially if they were hit in the frontal lobe which can affect their personality to a great degree. Just a thought.
Ruthiegirl24
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