Stephen King Bashes Stephanie Meyer

I started to read it. I tried, honestly. I just couldn't bring myself to continue because I hated the author's writing style and couldn't believe that this book had gone through an editor. Look at this little paragraph from the beginning, for instance:
"It was beautiful, of course; I couldn't deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves.
It was too green - an alien planet."
The rest of the book is written just as lazily as this. This is why I couldn't read it.

 

LMAO. Wow, she really is a comedy writer. I suddenly understand why those books are selling so well.

 

Oh, come on Cog...give it a try. Read just one exerpt from The Host:
http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/pdf/thehost_chapter4.pdf
Please, please, please, please? *batting eyelashes prettily*

 

Question: When he started; didn't Stephen King's own fan base consist of teenagers and young adults? I knew my sisters to be fanatical about Salem's Lot and The Stand afterall.

 

Laurelin: That was great. Thanks for explaining.

For those who haven't read the book and have no clue:
This exerpt is six pages into the book and are the thoughts of a teenage girl who has just been forced to moved from the deserts of Pheonix Arizona to the 'green' and rainy Forks Washington. She hates it there and she's very cynical.
Considering that it is written from first person perspective, any narrative has to sound like the thoughts of a teenager and therefore it would be unrealistic for it to flow like the genius of Steinbeck taking up three pages to boringly describe a turtle crossing the road in the Grapes of Wrath.

 

Best three pages ever!

 

LOL, I'll have to give it a reread...I was 16 and gave up shortly after that part (I think the turtle was strike one, there were a few other parts that my young mind could not appreciate...I just skimmed the rest of the book enough to get a book report out of it.)

 

I think people say The Grapes of Wrath is boring (don't you think the title is a pun on bad wine? ) is that there is a lot of symbolism in that novel that many people will find boring if they look at it from just one angle. That turtle might well be a metaphor for triumphing over adversary.

 

Maybe when a person's ego reaches Jovian Class status, they get a card in the mail made of dark matter which entitles them to throw hateful remarks at others in their field of work? Maybe? I'm sure King has gotten his by now.

 

Jovian class? Does that mean an ego the size of Jupiter? Or perhaps the size of Jupiter's orbit around the sun?

 

I agree with Cogito on this one. Most people state opinions as fact, but we know better than to think of them as such. I don't think I should have to throw an IMO into every other sentence. In an interview though, it may be a bit of a faux pas... Generally it's more polite to throw in an "I think", or "IMO". But it shouldn't be required for a thinking audience...

King's comments were boorish and arrogant, yes, but I'm still glad he says what he thinks. Someone's got to stir the pot. It started this discussion, and who knows how many others. A few people might think: "now, why would he say that?" and take a closer look at the books they love. Perhaps it is too much to hope, but I like to think that out of 10,000 viewers there may be one or two who will be inspired to be more critical.

Obviously anything I say here is opinion as well. I hope that doesn't have to be stated, but here it is anyway as a preemptive measure.

Re: Mcarpenter. I have read all four books, though I had to take some breaks. I enjoyed the fourth one, slightly. At the very least, there were a few chapters where I forgot I was working (I read popular books to understand why they're successful). She is slowly getting better. A slightly more mature tone, and the hint of an actual story seemed to help, as well as better writing. As someone else mentioned, it felt very 'lazy' to me for the most part, as if she just didn't care. Most girls I know are sharp and quick of wit, not dreamy, scatter-brained and rambling.

Rei: I hope there are no hard feelings. The fault was mine, perhaps, for not being as clear as I could have been. We both went off on a trigger, I think. Please accept my apologies if anything I wrote seemed harsh or offensive.

 

Even if that was her intention (which I entirely doubt), it's hardly quality writing. Meyer's style is so bad it makes me LOL. I read Meyers first novel for the same reason I read V. C. Andrew's 'Flowers in The Attic'...beacuse the style was so flawed and amateurish, I found myself laughing out loud. LOL! Comedy writing at its best! At least Andrews doesn't use teenage sentimental drivel to secure a fanbase though.

The problem I have is King BELIEVES what he is saying is fact. It's an arrogance he has always had. I despise Meyer's writing, but I don't feel the need to preach it to a world where teenagers are barely reading to begin with!

I still don't think it's necessary. Readers don't need a sloppy novelist telling them what's hot and what's not on the shelves.

 

Well, I wrote a book report on 'It' in grade 5... Can't say my teacher was thrilled about the choice, but it was a darn good report! Kids and teens enjoy good books too. Just 'cause kids read SK doesn't make it crap on par with Twilight. Though I don't think for a second that's what you're saying... He did write some lighter stuff which I didn't care for as much, even as a young kid. Books like Carrie, for example. Still, it wasn't bad, for YA reading.

King opened up a whole new world for me as a kid. I was sick of YA authors insulting my intelligence. I know that's not how it was, but that is how I felt at the time. So I picked up SK's It, and got essentially the opposite of what I had grown accustomed to from YA. So I think that, yes, most of his fans were kids. Many were probably kids like me, who needed an author to shock them out of apathy. If it weren't for SK and Robert Jordan (less Jordan) I may have lost my passion for reading back then. RJ's Wheel of Time got me through grades 3 and 4, but SK turned me into a hopeless addict.

 

I just find it a bit idiotic him bashing her like that when (as another poster pointed out) Meyer tried to write with the mindset of a young woman. This can be seen as an attempt to, regardless it was a consious effort or not, establish some form of fan base; and Stephen King did the same thing with Carrie all those many years ago by writing about unpopularity and puberty. Now he bashes her for doing - pretty much - the same thing.

 

Haha, I remember reading Firestarter during free reading time in 6th grade. My teacher looked shocked & concerned when she saw what I was reading. And The Stand is one of my all-time favorite books. I read that one twice during 6th & 7th grade, during the time my father was reading The Green Mile and Salem's Lot and other SK books.

I read a lot (probably about 100 books a year), and I read Twilight as well when I was in 8th grade and loved it. I recognize the many flaws w/it now, but I still have to say that the plot was terrific and how she re-imagined the vampire really was brilliant in terms of a YA story full of romance and fantasy. There are a lot of phrases through the book that were clever too, in my opinion. This is a guilty-pleasure book for some people, including intelligent teen girls who are well-read.

 

Excuse me? First he said that she couldn't write worth a darn. Then he said that her storytelling was compelling in its ability to reach young girls. That's a compliment right there, not a criticism.

Writing bad, story idea not bad. It's more praise than I would have given.

 

The plot is....disgusting. As for her take on the vampire, I found it very juvenile. She basically abused the concept of the vampire so she could indulge her own childish grasp of female sexuality. It's pretty much an insult to some of the novelists of the romantic era, such as Bram Stoker and John William Polidori, who used the myth of the vampire to achieve so much more than Meyer did.

 

That's what he said directly. I've read that article twice and both times I felt that when he stated any positives it was a little forced. I got the impression that what he was really saying (which is what people often forget about when reading a bit of text) was a little more than just his 'Good story - poor writing' thing.

Both times I read it I got the impression he was actually mocking her for purposefully targeting a sexually immature audience.

 

Either one works well for me.

 

I read it the exact same way. Very condescending. But the reality is she was actually just writing a story for herself rather than thinking target audience.

 

So we're reading between the lines now? Hmm... I'm not sure if I should even respond to that. The trouble with reading between the lines is that what you read there will inevitably be influenced by preconceptions. Your opinion of King. Your opinion of Meyer. Your feelings on whether the criticism was appropriate or not.

When arguing a point based on an article, I think it's best just to take it at face value, and not to give it a meaning which may not be there.

When I compliment Meyer - yes, there are good points in her writing, the very things that king pointed out - I admit that it probably sounds a little forced. Also known as grudging. I wince, even as I say it has good points.

Kudos to King for not leaving it at "she can't write worth a darn" as I might have done.

 

That is fair enough, I just happen to (respectfully) disagree.

 

Well, heck. The problem with that article is that we don't know what the question was:

"What started with an innocent question on the recent juggernaut success of fellow mainstream writers Meyer and J.K. Rowling quickly devolved into a full-scale denouncement of the former's skills."

He was obviously asked his opinion about something, and apparently that something was "fellow writers". What was the question? Was it "What do you think about blockbuster YA novelists like Rowling and Meyer?" If that was the question then he gave his opinion. *shrug*. Wouldn't be much of an interview if he just said "no comment" about anything he didn't have something positive to say something about. On the other hand, if the question was general: "What do you think about today's blockbuster YA novelists?", then perhaps he was a bit harsh, but again, they were asking an opinion. A third possibility is the question was something like "How do you think today's popular writers compare to you" and he got all critical of Meyers at that point, because it's a pet peeve or something.

There's no way to tell how much of a jerk he was being without knowing the question in context, and there's no way to tell the context based on the content of that article.

I've read King. I've read Meyers. But I guess I read so many books - I read about 5 a week - that I often suspend critical judgement - tell me an engaging story, take me away.

I noted that he also criticized James Patterson. I think Patterson tells good stories. However, a 350-500 page book consisting of chapters that are all (ALL!) one to two pages long drives me absolutely bonkers. Every time my husband snags one of those from the library, I have to make a real effort to start it. Good stories, rough reading. lol.

Cady

 

This is the exact attitude that makes me so defensive. "It's not bad for a YA book." Lowering your expectations because the target audience is young. I think this is exactly why we get such poorly written books as Twilight in that demographic. Youth and childrens books should not be of lower quality. Being aware of the young reader's needs is not the same as lower quality, as I've said before. The good ones are of the same quality as adult books, and sometimes better because they never try to be more complex than they should (as I've seen some adult books do), and are not loaded with obvious alegory, big ideas, metephores etc, and use more concise language. They are also a lot more fun and pay more attention to real story-telling.

As wrong as Stephen King was in how he voiced the opinion, he was right. It was *insert rude word here* for a YA book, or a book of any kind because the lanuage and structure of events was clumsy, and the dialogue was very forced (though I am more picky about dialogue than most I know).

 

I'm not reading through 8 and 1/2 pages of comments, but I'll say this: I dislike the twilight series. I don't think a book that encourages girls to run away and sleep with a boy and expect him not to take advantage over her shouldn't deserve as much fame as it did. That's the kind of thing that gets us boys in trouble.

I dislike them. I won't say hate, it's such a strong word.