I'll freak out if this comes true any time soon

[vanillafluffy]

A very odd dream woke me up this morning: I was flipping channels on TV, and one of the local newsgirls was saying something about fan reaction to the death of Stephen King.

Which caused me to wake up going, WTF?!

I mean no harm to Steve whatsoever. Mind you, I've never met the guy, I know him purely through his books, but I've read enough of his non-fiction to have developed a liking for him. As a writer, I'm somewhat ambivalent: His output is fairly staggering, and I can't help but envy that---on the other hand, the literary merit of said output is hit-or-miss. Some of it is enthralling (I still remember many years ago cutting work for "restroom breaks" and reading chapters of The Stand in a stall), some of it, pointless. (IMO, Tales from a Buick 8 was a HUGE disappointment.)

Have I read everything he's ever written? Do I own it all? To both, no. I fell behind a few years ago as far as reading goes (Tales from a Buick 8 really set me off---I was expecting Christine and got The Tommyknockers.), and during the last book purge, expunged all but a handful of titles that I genuinely love. (Christine, The Stand, Different Seasons*, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Talisman, Needful Things all come to mind; there many be a few others on that shelf, but those are the cream.)

Also retained: On Writing and Danse Macabre, both non-fiction and fascinating. (Although I disagree about the road to Hell being paved with adverbs, but that's just me.)

I'm not sure what spawned that snipet of REM, but I hope it wasn't precognition!

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* Rita Hayward and the Shawshank Redemption is my favorite Stephen King work of all time, and I was SO glad that the movie did it justice. I think Frank Darabont TOTALLY deserved the Oscar for best adapted screenplay---Forrest Gump, my ass!---if you read the novela, you realize he had to create dialogue out of whole cloth and did an amazing job of it.

Comments

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

I think he's become well aware of the criticism that his writing is hit-or-miss. The last one of his I read had an note in the acknowledgments in which he thanked his editor and added (paraphrasing him here), "For those of you who think I don't have one, you should have seen all the pages she sent back marked up in red."

Needful Things and The Dead Zone are two that I've read over and over, and his book on writing is wonderful, as are Different Seasons and an early collection of short stories that I can't remember the title of. It's the one that features a couple of non-horror stories: "The Woman in the Room" and "The Last Rung of the Ladder," both of which are lovely, very sad family life stories.

I stopped buying his books years ago, though, because of the problem with them being wildly uneven (I think it was Gerald's Game that made me decide to stop spending the money) and now I get them from the library.

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

I *think* that anthology was Night Shift, but it's been a half-million years since I read it; I could be wrong. I *did* like Needful Things---my friend S has arthritis, and she and I talked about Polly and her amulet (and the fact that I can remember the charecter's name a decade or so after I last read it gives you an idea of the impression it made).

At some point, I might start reading SK again, but it just got to where it was too familiar. Even after he destroyed Castle Rock, it was all the same small town with overlapping relationships and subterranean secrets. Been there, done that, had the nightmares....

[candesgirl.livejournal.com]

I love him, am with you on some of his books not being as good as the others...Though I have to say that I liked Tommyknockers...But yeah, It is my favorite, first read it when I was around 11 and have revisited it many times since. A second fave for me is The Green Mile.

I am a huge fan of his EW articles, they and Diablo Cody's monthly articles on pop culture are the reason I keep reading.

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

I have nothing against The Tommyknockers specifically---I WANT one of those telepathic typewriters!---but Tales From a Buick 8 just seemed like such a retread. I remember when I first read The Tommyknockers---I worked 3rd shift at an answering service at the time, and sometimes I didn't get but a couple calls between 1 AM and 5---and it was weird and creepy and I still remember things like the writer's bitchy sister with the steel teeth (and it's been 20 years!). I was hoping for something that put a new spin on Christine, where maybe the car was a time machine or the passenger was from the past---but aliens in the trunk?! Lame!

I liked The Green Mile, too. Although I waited til they put all the sections together into one book. It was a novel idea, no pun intended, but I'm too much a fan of instant gratification. (Pun intended.)

[starhawk2005.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean! I own a lot of SK novels, but none of his stuff from the last 10 years or more excites me much. Even when I do buy his stuff these days, it's older novels....I think Thinner was the last book of his I purchased, come to think of it.

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

For me, I think you can tell my last one was Tales From a Buick 8, although before that...? Rose Madder, maybe? No, wait---The Green Mile was more recent. I never got into his Gunfighter series, because he did the first one and nothing else came out for eons, which pissed me off. *shrug* I wanted to read The Black House, because I adored The Talisman and couldn't get into it.

[starhawk2005.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I tried reading the Gunfighter series, but the latest book that came out didn't wow me.

And now that you mention it, my Hubby did buy The Black House and try to read it....and was thoroughly unimpressed. Which has not improved my likelihood of buying any more recent King works...

[socialhermit.livejournal.com]

I did the same with my SK books a few years ago that you did with yours -- a massive purge, keeping only the titles that I really love. For me, that includes The Shining, Salem's Lot, Night Shift, FireStarter, Danse Macabre, On Writing, The Dead Zone and Different Seasons.

Oh, and Shawshank was partially filmed at the Mansfield Reformatory here in Ohio. My sister and Caelie and I are going to take a tour of the prison next month. :-)

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

I'd say what fun, but I'm just not sure that's the right word for it....

[socialhermit.livejournal.com]

Heh! Interesting and fascinating in a morbid, creepy way would probably sum it up!