Stephen King- Page 2

[tazber]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 12:13pm

Borstal, you should definitely read Cell. It's bloody, apocalyptic, and surprising. Even after all his novels King can still throw a curve ball that you don't see coming.

It's the closest he's come to a "horror" novel in years.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 12:22pm

I'll look into it!

A superb, old-school King-like book that I read recently and loved was Bret Easton Ellis' LUNAR PARK. Chekkitout!

[jasonf]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 12:24pm

I read Gerald's Game a while ago, but remember being pretty disturbed by it (but if I remember right, the ending was kind of lame).

For me, his most disturbing stories were Apt Pupil and The Langoliers. The first totally freaked me out -- I couldn't sleep for a week after reading it (though the movie SUCKED) and I STILL get flashes of the second every time I almost nod off on a plane!

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 12:33pm

Salem's Lot scared me the most...Danny Glick at the window kept me awake all night.

Beautifully realized in the original film version!

Like The Mist, The Langoliers was extraordinary story-telling. Too bad the television movie reduced it to silly special effects. Rarely do King works ever land well on film. While Dreamcatcher was not a favorite King novel or film of mine, I do remember it being one of the most faithful big-screen adaptations. Kubrick's The Shining was a great film, but removed everything I loved about the novel. I wold love to see Guillermo del Toro take on Rose Madder.

[tazber]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 12:37pm

Loved Rose Madder.

[clever name]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 1:03pm

~~A superb, old-school King-like book that I read recently and loved was Bret Easton Ellis' LUNAR PARK. Chekkitout!~~

posessed Furbies is DEFINATELY King-like!

[phantom8019]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 1:13pm

So The Tommyknockers is seen by some as his worst? Didn't know that. I read that when I was 14. It was my first Stephen King book ever. And I loved it. I haven't read it since, but I remember it changed my world. I kept thinking, "Gee this book is sooooo bad (ie, adult). I can't believe it's in the school library!!!"
I can't remember what my second Stephen King was... I want to say Salem's Lot.
I loved The Tommyknockers so much that I even wrote a parody of it, called The Bobbybangers.

[tazber]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 1:41pm

The Mist is also one of my favorite movies, and the best Stephen King adaptation ever on film.

[StageManager2]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 1:53pm

Meanwhile, I have a soft spot for SLEEPWALKERS.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 2:08pm

I think Rose Madder would make a fascinating film...think of the art direction!

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 2:38pm

The Mist is also one of my favorite movies, and the best Stephen King adaptation ever on film.

I would agree, but the new ending ruined it for me. The irony was nowhere to be found in the original story and it was too reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead for me.

I think Rose Madder would make a fascinating film...think of the art direction!

Yes! The harrowing final act has such potential for some disturbingly beautiful imagery. It is in King's fantasy sequences that most films trip themselves up by forcing a rather cartoonish approach to his vision resulting in an unsatisfactory, even comical, visual. Del Toro successfully balanced realistic drama with fantasy and the supernatural to present to us brilliant storytelling in The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth. I just think he's the right director for the project. But he's up to his armpits in Hobbits at the moment.

[bschneid76]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 7:22pm

Mister Matt-- I totally agree with what you said about Gerald's Game. I tried to read it and never made it through. I found it so difficult to concentrate and follow the story. I got very bored and angry while reading it. So I ended after 100 pages. It was an interesting premise but terrible hard to read.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 4/22/09 at 7:59pm

I wish he would hurry and do another mini series

[Weez]

Posted: 4/23/09 at 1:46pm

I love Stephen King. Different Seasons has long been one of my top three books. I was once ill in bed for a couple of days, so read IT three times in a row. I read Insomnia in a single car journey up to Scotland. I've lost count of how many times I've read Needful Things and Rose Madder. There's a diseased little part of my brain that wishes Castle Rock were real so I could move there. 8D

I haven't really read anything recently, apart from the Dark Tower series. I got about halfway through the last book, then had to move house, and the books haven't come out of storage yet. It's been nearly a year now, so I might just start them all again. XD

I heartily recommend his son, Joe Hill. To me, Heart-Shaped Box was like Stephen King cheated on his wife with Neil Gaiman, and that was the result. (Seriously, Tabby, get a maternity test.) Excellent book, and should I ever have money again, I simply must buy his book of short stories as well.

Updated On: 4/23/09 at 01:46 PM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/23/09 at 4:20pm

Any fans of Danse Macabre, the book of essays on horror?

[Roscoe]

Posted: 4/23/09 at 4:49pm

I liked DANSE MACABRE a good deal. I like King's taste in horror literature, but his taste in films is really awful.

[Lavieboheme3090]

Posted: 5/4/09 at 8:37pm

Has anyone read Desperation? Is it any good?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/4/09 at 10:19pm

'Even after all his novels King can still throw a curve ball that you don't see coming."

That's because a) he cheats and b) he doesn't give a s--t about his characters. However, I see in this thread that people I respect feel otherwise about him.

Has anybody ever figured out what his process is? Obviously he doesn't actually WRITE all those long-winded novels. Who does? Is it like RL Stine?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/4/09 at 10:59pm

Why do you say he doesn't? Who else would?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/4/09 at 11:14pm

There aren't enough minutes in the day. Does he dictate the stories and other people type them up and then other people structure them and then editors edit them?

I used to know a few early fans who knew other early fans and in their mind there was one novel, I can't remember which, that they all decided had to have been written by Tabitha King. After that deliniation, they felt there was a definite change in "his" writing and that the only way he could have been so prolific was if other people were writing for him, or writing big chunks of his work.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/5/09 at 12:02am

Probably Misery or Dolores Claiborne or Rose Madder...

Whenever King writes a novel with a female protagonist, someone comes along to say he couldn't have written it. I've even heard people say that Tabitha wrote Carrie.

Truth is: he's better at horror and terror and world-building than he is at female psychology, except when that female character is experiencing (or inflicting) horror or terror.

But I don't really think anyone could have written one of his more "feminine" novels, like Lisey's Story, and simultaneously made it so King-like.

I consider those "fans" like the Shakespearean "scholars" who say the Earl of Southampton must have written the plays and the sonnets, because a "peasant" could never have had that much imagination.

Sometimes people do.

His next novel, Under the Dome, is over 1200 pages long. Undoubtedly someone will say he couldn't possibly have written all those words himself...

Updated On: 5/5/09 at 12:02 AM

[Weez]

Posted: 5/5/09 at 8:30am

I've noticed that a lot of genre fiction writers tend to get their wives on board. David Gemmell (although that was through necessity rather than choice), David Eddings (Leigh was on board from the get-go but didn't get official credit for quite a while), Terry Pratchett (word has it that Lynn is responsible for the Tiffany Aching books), and so on. Or sometimes, they breed their successors, a la Anne McCaffrey and Todd. XD

That said, the man's been writing for over 40 years. Is it really so unlikely that a man who has been writing for longer than many of us have been alive would have turned out quite a number of books by now? They don't necessarily all get drafted, written, published, drafted, written, published in strict linear order either. Anyone who's ever done any sort of creative writing on any level knows that every writer has a stash of half-started/unfinished stories lying around, just waiting to be completed.

Hell, look how quickly Stephenie Meyer (this is a size comparison, not a quality issue :P) has been churning out her books. Apparently, Twilight "came to her" in 2003. So she wrote that, then three sequels of increasing volume, and she got significantly far through a fourth, and she's written a stand-alone. The Twilight tetralogy alone is over 2,000 pages of sparkly vampire nonsense, and that's not including the pages of NOTHING from New Moon.

Alexander McCall Smith seems to have a steady stream of new books; one's scarcely gone into paperback when the next comes out. Meg Cabot is a self-confessed workaholic. Darren Shan and Robert Muchamore are similarly ubiquitous.

Not every author is a Harper Lee, or a Dan Brown, or a Christopher Paolini. Some are just genuinely prolific. I don't see why that's so difficult to believe.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/5/09 at 11:57am

PJ, even though you're talking about the denialists, I just shudder at the notion of King and Shakespeare in the same sentence.

And I don't doubt that there are people in all the arts who are amazingly prolific.

I just think of the sheer volume of pages the man has published and I find it doubtful that he actually does more than dictate the stories to somebody.

Just look at the complete list. Even taking out reissues and special editions and all that, you have to factor in where the rest of his life fits in, ie, all those Red Sox games, as you try to imagine how he could possibly do it. ESPECIALLY after the intervention when he went clean and sober!

Look at the list and think about the epic lengths of so many of the books.
The complete output of the Stephen King brand

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/5/09 at 1:18pm

As far as novels are concerned, since his first novel was published in 1974, he has averaged slightly over one novel per year. He is known for working on more than one project at a time. I'd like to think that for as long as he's been successful at writing, he's just simply that dedicated and prolific, but being unfamiliar with the process of working with editors and publication, I simply have no idea. If he did employ ghost writers, I'm guessing it was somewhere in the late-80s. Even critics were noticing a perceptible difference in his works between It and Needful Things.

[uncageg]

Posted: 5/5/09 at 1:39pm

I too was a big fan of his in the 70's and 80's. The last book I read of his was "Needful Things". My ex and I had a lake house in Maine just outside of Bangor and one year I stood in front of his house waiting for him to come back from walking his dogs and got to meet and talk to him. I wasn't stalking him! A lot of people back then would park on his street and wait to see him and take pictures of his house. The gates to the walkway up to his door and iron fence around the yard were really cool. He was very nice about it. A cool guy.