Why Stephen King Can't Write (according to some guy)

I think I read once that he admitted years after that book's publication that he wrote it essentially for the money, and to throw his hat into the ring of the so-called 'Canon Wars' of the 1980s and '90s.

Yeah, I agree. He seems to have known basically nothing about Japanese literature too or much about Indian literature. I suppose no one can be master of all literature when it's an almost endless field, but if he was taking the project more seriously I imagine he would have consulted other experts, for their fields of expertise. Mind, it would also mean his book would turn from one controversial volume to about 20 odd controversial volumes, most of which wouldn't have exactly helped his bank balance much since he would have had to call himself editor.

 

I only skimmed the 11-books-sold guy's article and totally disagree. I've only ever read one of King's books, because I was bored on vacation and it was on a shelf in the hotel, and I thought it was okay. But to discredit somebody whose work people love based on a couple paragraphs taken out of context seems silly to me. Like you're forcing yourself to hate on some famous guy because you think it's unfair that he's a successful writer and you're not. Which isn't to say the article's author isn't talented, but the motive stinks of a petty kind of resentment along those lines.

 

I think it should be treated as a fallacy that because something is popular means it is also good. I'll be uncontroversial, no one will be willing to stand up and defend Twilight as quality literature, even it's fans don't say that. I don't think I'd make any enemies if I said Twilight is crap. However, sometimes the crowd is right. Is the crowd right about King? Eh! My opinion on King is complicated, but mostly he is a talented, if not very technical or literary, writer. If you enjoy him then I can see why, I do - can - and have myself, but he is nothing to scream about or anything.

 

I honestly couldn't read the entire article...it's just one big contradiction to itself.
King does not ignore language and the bearing it has on his story. A rank of doors I think that's perfect. How I read it, it evokes a feeling of militaristic order. Perfect image in my head. Being able to execute an image with such finesse is definitely a skill any writer should harness.
The author of this article should have done a bit more in depth analysis of this passage before making a complete idiot of himself, in my eyes. I haven't read the book, but any writer can see the careful choice of words used to achieve King's goal of storytelling.

 

King is good at what he does, entertaining an audience that likes him. Should we rubbish his work because he's an entertainer first and foremost? I admire anyone who can write a bestseller, yes even Stephanie Meyer. Her books aren't my cup of tea but they are someone else's and the money has spoken.

 

Well, yes, if you look at it money-wise, Stephanie Meyer is a fantastic author. But is she a fantastic author in the way she weaves her plot and characters together in a coherent fashion, make her settings and people memorable and well-rounded? Yeah...no. :[ You can entertain the mass all you want, but if the stuff you're entertaining them with is not well-put together, then not many are going to respect you. It's the difference between a stand up comedian who uses fart and burp jokes versus, say, Ellen DeGeneres. The fart/burp stand up comedian will entertain people, but those who want a more classy taste of stand up comedy will probably pick Ellen any day.

 

Money is just as valid indicator of success as anything else. In my opinion whoever did the book jackets for the Twilight series should get a marketing prize. They were genius, even if the words that came after them failed to provide the same delight. The red apple in youthful hands....what an enchanting image. It probably sold more of her books than anything else. I appreciate success in all it's forms and try my best to understand why one thing appeals and another does not.

Ellen Degeneres? Well she's not my kind of comedian, but she's successful so clearly she appeals to some.

 

I know people who would honestly throw a drink in your face if you use this argument, because to them it's like saying McDonalds is better than the finest French restaurant. Money is in no way an indicator of writing quality, merely a suggestion of it perhaps. Marketing is a great skill, and this is something most successful trash has as a talent.

The example I always give is that no one aside from people like me has heard of the novel When it was Dark by Guy Thorne, and yet it was a major, international best seller around the time of the WW1. No one I know who has read that novel (both of them) has literally anything kind to say about it.

 

I agree, at no point did I say money was an indicator of writing quality. I said it was an indicator of success, it's shows how many people are wanting to read it. Now anyone can bag a bestselling title for lack of artistic merit all they like. But what they can't dispute is the fact those particular stories (even with their lack of talent) are more appealing to the average book buyer than others. And really at the end of the day, how many people write a publishable work so that no-one will read it?

If success is measured in how often a work is read, then book sales is an indicator of that. If the success you care about is literary merit then Pulitzer or Booker prize would be a better indicator.

 

Define no-one, because there are plenty of writers out there who write for highly specialized readers, who most people will never even hear of. Like academics. How many self-published e-book writers too put their stuff out and no-one actually reads them?

 

I don't understand how that answers the question posed. The authors you note are not publishing so no one will read. They want readers their books read, even if the audience is small. Sales expectations are based on the size of their audience.

There are a lot of self-publishers who offer their first books free. They consider it successful based on the number of downloads. How is that different from number of sales, really? It's how many readers grabbed their book. So yes, sales is definitely an indication of success, because it's a measure of how many people wanted their book. And if people want the book, there's a reason. Whether someone else agrees with that reason is irrelevant.

 

Sometimes people use to word 'no-one' to refer to a small group, other times people use 'no one' to mean literally not one single person. That's why I said 'Define no-one', PensiveQuill and I basically agree it seems.

I was not talking, either, about sales being a mark of success. I said it was, in fact, a mark of success, here:

What I said in terms of sales is that it is not an indicator of quality:

 

Why would people buy in quantity if there were no quality involved? Books aren't like paper towels, where you buy cheap because you go through so much of it. There has to be something good about the book or so many people wouldn't buy the thing. Whether one agrees with the "good" doesn't matter, as that's subjective. The people who bought thought it was good. Someone else disagreeing doesn't make them wrong. It's like Fords and Chevys. Just because some people like one over the other doesn't mean the other is actually junk. So yes, sales is an indicator of quality, unless one is saying that all those buyers are idiots - which is pretty presumptuous.

 

There is enough evidence by now to point out to even the most casual observer of human behavior that people like the average, the unexceptional, the boring. We crave things that are familiar and safe. How many Saw films have been made despite the fact that they are increasingly nonsensical?

At the risk of sounding like the people I mentioned in my previous post (post 109) people like McDonald's, and yet to say that eating McDonald's food is just as well because it keeps the system chugging and might be temporarily satisfying, so really it's no better than fine French booking is an insult to fine French cooking. Alright, fine, I don't actually like McDonald's food, but the same is true of a restaurant I do like, like Pizza Hut. A pizza at Pizza Hut may be nice, but it's not something that has been exquisitely made by someone who really knows what they are doing. Why settle for the average? The average is boring when you can have the exceptional.

I make no secret of the fact I don't think it is all subjective, and down to personal opinion. To be honest, I think opinions can be wrong. If someone tries to tell me some master chief is just as good as I am at making a pasta meal, they are wrong. If someone tries to tell me Saw is as good a horror film as Jacob's Ladder they are wrong. There is an artistry and a depth and a knowledge required to make one and not the other.

I'm not as much of a snob as I might appear. I'm happy to defend a writer like Stephen King within reason. King himself admits he isn't the best writer in the world and I agree with him. I sometimes feel the need to defend him from the unanimous praise of his fans just as much as from people like the guy who wrote the article linked in the original post. Sure there are good points to King, there are good points to McDonalds, but just because I can point to some good things in King and likely could with McDonalds if I liked the food, doesn't mean they are some high quality produce.

 

At the risk of going in circles, you're still only stating your opinion. And one opinion of a creative work is just as valid as another, particularly when one looks at the fact that there is the technical aspect of writing AND the storytelling aspect. A book that does not have something of quality in either is not going to sell. Erego, sales figures are a valid indicator of some aspect of quality.

 

Well, when I read and judge a book I judge it on what I thought of the writing, story-telling, structure, impact, and complexity. I have a lot of things I judge it against, and I have been reading serious fiction pretty much my entire life. I do feel I am slightly more qualified to review a book than someone who doesn't read a lot, or someone who doesn't consider their opinion as heavily. This is why we have critics.

Taking it back to food: I'm more likely to take the word of a respected food critic than someone who doesn't eat a lot of high quality food, and I shouldn't be expected to do otherwise. I respected Rodger Ebert's opinions more than some hack writing for The Sun; yes they both had opinions, but Rodger's opinions were also based on experience, rather than the guy who wanted to be quoted on the DVD box covers. I respect Harold Bloom's opinions over amateur reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I'm sorry I just do.

Your insistence that sales indicate quality strikes me of the argument 'correlation implies causation' and of course this is a well-known fallacy. As I said, a lot of people enjoy consuming rubbish. I'm reminded of a rather acerbic friend of mine who responded to our insistence that at least teenagers enjoy the Harry Potter series with 'Do kids not also enjoy happy meals'? I think she was being a bit harsh, but I understand her point. The reason we teach children literature at school is to try to equip them with some basic tools for criticism. Otherwise, Harold Bloom's opinion is just as worthy as some 8 year old kid's, which is pure nonsense.

We need experts, and expert opinion. Yes, experts make mistakes, and experts do not know everything, but experts are far less likely to be wrong than someone who doesn't know that subject.

Am I saying that some opinions are worth more than others? Yeah, I guess I am.

 

[Double post]

 

Never read a Stephen King book and I don't have any plans to. I know there is nothing - or very little - that I personally would get out of it. But not everyone wants to get something out of a novel other than enjoyment, and the guy's sold millions, so fair play to him.

Ebert lost all credibility in my eyes when he slated Jim Jamusch's Dead Man. It's a masterpiece. Watch it you haven't yet. If you like Jacob's Ladder you'll like Dead Man too.

 

Haha, well, I didn't always agree with Ebert, but I always respected him. Same with Harold Bloom actually. Bloom could even get me angry on occasion.

But good to know, I'll be checking Dead Man out.

 

I'm going to look at this in a slightly different way. Continuing the food analogy, more people buy McDonald's over fine French cuisine because McDonald's is cheaper. As far as literature is concerned, some books are "intellectually cheaper" than others. They don't require very much thinking, but they're easy to access and devour because they're basically catering to the least common denominator.

 

If we were talking about science or other areas where hard facts are involved in forming those opinions, then I would agree with you. But we are not talking about hard facts - we are talking about aesthetics and interests and creativity. And then - yes, an 8-year-old knows what he likes just as well as some paid critic, so his opinion is just as valid. Why should anyone care what an expert says unless that expert has the same interests and enjoyments as they do?

I have read all kinds of books over the past 50+ years, and I continue to read all kinds of books. And I've figured out what kinds of books I don't enjoy, and what authors to steer away from. I don't need some guy in New York telling me that.

 

Is it even controversial to suggest that, in terms of pure writing, Stephen King is nowhere near the top? Some writers are more focused on story, some are more focused on the prose itself. King is clearly the former. Personally, I prefer the latter, but if you take one style and try to judge it by the standards of another, well, it's probably going to fall short, kind of like if you ordered a pizza and then started griping all like "Man, this is the worst chinese food I ever had."

That said, I still think he's a hack.

 

But we are dealing in facts, to some extent. There are objective standards we can hold pieces of writing to. Check out this first sentence of an Amanda Ros novel, Irene Iddesleigh.

What here is the opening for the reader to latch onto? That's what an opening sense does of course. How melodramatic do you need something to be before you are turned away utterly just after a sentence. Look at the rhythms too, there is nothing musically constant which could be enchanting to a reader if the writer wants to take his time. Also, what is with the overwriting here? It's so verbose for no good reason.

In short, which is better, that opening sentence or this opening sentence from David Copperfeild:

The same thing, essentially, is being said 'Interesting things happen in this novel, read on reader!'. The Dickens sentence is shorter, more concise, less verbose, and look at the rhythm of the sentence said out loud. The Dickens sentence flows better than the Iddesleigh sentence, it sounds good to the ear, and there isn't needless 'Ah, no!'s or 'fling it on the oases of futurity's; there is no waffle, it's just good clean prose. Also, I feel like I have something of the character's personality - in just that sentence you can see he might be somewhat shy or polite, handing someone else the credit of being 'the hero of my ... life'. He's also literate, and he seems (given the brevity of the sentence) somewhat clear-minded.

Both sentences have been judged for: clarity, brevity, character personality suggestion, and elegance. These things can be applied to every first sentence or first paragraph that I've ever came across. So I'll stick my neck out a bit and say every opening sentence/paragraph can be judged on these standards.

Therefore, yes, I'm perfectly happy to say that the Dickens sentence is much better than the Iddesleigh sentence without reserve. It might be someone's opinion that the first sentence is better than the second, but opinions can be and often are wrong - in some people's opinion the theory of evolution is a lie created by a conspiracy of the scientific community. In some people's opinion England is the best country on earth, both of these opinions I know are wrong. It was an opinion that said Africa was ripe for the seizing and colonizing - were the European powers right just because it was their opinion the 'white race' had the god-given right to 'civilize'? Of course not, opinions can be wrong. Just as is the opinion that the first, Iddeleigh sentence is more clear, suggestive of character personality, and more concise (so as to not tire the reader's patience) than the second, Dickens sentence.

Is something like this:



As good as this:



Who the hell is moved by the first and not the second painting?

The opening sentence of a novel is very important as, as I pretty much said, it's the entryway into the novel. Now, I will admit it is not exactly fair to judge an entire novel on just a sentence, however every editor I know does it, and most readers do too. If it's not a sentence it's a paragraph, or a page. Not all sentences can be compared to others for a level of quality, and they must be judged as a part of a larger whole, or a 'textual' level. This is one 'level' of criticism. There are other levels of criticism: textual, conceptual and emotional.

All you have done is insist that personal opinions are the only thing that matters in art, but if that was the case then you would consider studying literature a useless endeavour? What is the point? Is it just to fill up English lessons and get people used to the act of writing so they can be fit for writing reports. Is studying literature at the highest academic level pointless? No, of course it isn't, because art has a purpose, to expose the contradictions, darkness, and joy in the human condition. Why do we remember and still read and love Shakespeare's sonnets while novels like When It was Dark by Guy Thorne drop away into obscurity. Shakespeare's sonnets still have things to teach us, and are good enough to still be pleasurable 400 years after his death. This is not just quality, this is greatness.

But art also has flaws, unless it is something utterly sublime like the Michelangelo painting above of man nearly touching the hand of God. You don't need to believe in God to find that painting breath-taking, or at least I don't need to. What are these flaws? That is what criticism defines. This is why we teach children literature, to teach them the basics, and why we continue to study literature at higher levels of education. It gives us a greater, deeper appreciation of literature.

Criticism is not born from snobbery or anger, it is born out of passion and respect for the art. So no, some 8 year old who does not know anything about literature, or criticism, or literary criticism (for the two forms of criticism are not the same thing) and doesn't even have a defined taste yet might have an opinion, but it is not an opinion as worthy of hearing as a professional, well-read critic. The 8 year old's opinion isn't as considered, as well-informed, as sophisticated, or as intelligently put together as the critic's.

If you like a novel, and only read for entertainment, then I guess someone else's opinion shouldn't really matter. But to me only reading for entertainment isn't fully respecting the art.


Call this my Ars Poetica de Lemex.

 

Well, again, going in circles. Your insistence that some people's opinions of art are wrong, that some people's opinions are unworthy of consideration - I cannot agree. Years spent studying literature - fine and dandy if that what one wants to do. I guess that allows some people to find "deep meaning" in stories where the author intended something else entirely. You may not consider this "snobbery", but then most people who engage in this kind of divisionary belief rarely do. It's just basically stating "I know better than you do" - even when you don't.

But since I'm not an expert, my opinion is meaningless, so I will once again bow out of this discussion, and hopefully will have the good sense to stay out this time.

 

You didn't seem to want to do anything more than insist that opinions (apparently rash and unconsidered) are more important than careful and in-part objective criticism. You haven't, either, gave a reason for thinking this other than "because it's my opinion". Well, fine, but if you are going to talk to someone with a different perspective just saying 'It's my opinion!' over and over again is in no way an argument. It's barely even a point of view.

Dismissing the study of literature as 'fine and dandy' is dismissing literature, saying that it isn't an art form, more mere diversion. I cannot sympathize with this point of view, nor can I really understand it. It is wrong, because if it wasn't an art form it would not be held at the core of the human experience which it clearly is. It is not snobbery at all to consider literature art, or that some opinions are more informed than others.

If you are going to be so sensitive about the mere use of critical thought, then, what can I say? Your argument seems very anti-expert, which is a worrying trend that I've noticed seems to be on the way out. If all you are interested in is reading for enjoyment then any voice outside of the Elysian fields where everyone is right and no one is wrong shouldn't wind you up.

 

One last time. I am not saying the study of literature is bad. What I am saying is that dismissing an opinion simply because the person having it is not paid for it or hasn't gone to college for it is ridiculous. I am saying that one can critique a work but, as we all should have learned through our own writing experience, when the critique moves beyond an objective analysis and goes into personal preferences - ie, saying some things are junk and others are great - then people should be free to ignore that opinion without being made to feel they are ignorant or misinformed in doing so. Opinions cannot be wrong unless they are based on faulty information. How can one have faulty information about a creative work? So some painter used the wrong brush, or some writer had a few info-dumps - did the person viewing that work enjoy it, for whatever reason? That's all that matters. If you don't like something, no problem. Just don't imply or state that others are somehow lesser for writing it/reading it/liking it. That's snobbery.