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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.
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!
____________________________________________
* 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.
