Monday, April 6, 2009
Books The Living and the Dead
Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 12:06 PM
Today in humongously popular authors:
Apparently, Michael Crichton had a completed novel, titled Pirate Latitudes, just sitting on his computer. It's a pirate "adventure story set in Jamaica in the 17th century," and it will be released in November. I liked Crichton's period novels, maybe more than his techno-thrillers. All his research really paid off when he was writing about a specific time, as in The Great Train Robbery. Unfortunately, Crichton's publisher is going to hire someone to finish the techno-thriller that Crichton was working on at the time of his death. It was only one-third finished.
And then, Stephen King announced that he's going to have a novel coming out at about the same time as Crichton's pirate novel:
Weighing in at a whopping 1,120 pages, Under the Dome is a return for the bestselling author to the arm-breaking heft of his classic novels The Stand and It. King told an audience at the Library of Congress in Washington DC last year that he'd first had the idea for the book 25 years ago, and made a stab at writing it. "I tried this once before when I was a lot younger, but the project was just too big for me and I let it go, I let it slide," he said. "But it was a terrific idea and it never entirely left my mind. It just kinda stayed there and hung out, and every now and then it would say write me, and eventually I did."Set in the town of Chester's Mills, Maine, "on an entirely normal, beautiful fall day", inhabitants suddenly find that the town has been sealed off by an invisible force field.
King's been putting out some really, really bad novels lately (Duma Key and Cell were both shit,) and this could very well be some kind of milestone for him. I think I'm going to have to read it.
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3
Does anybody else NOT BELIEVE Mr. King.
I, for one, think he is ripping off The Simpsons movie for this one.
Ah, Family Guy.
I, for one, think he is ripping off The Simpsons movie for this one.
Ah, Family Guy.
4
Fnarf,
I beg to differ about King. The Dark Tower Series (The Stand, IT, Eyes of the Dragon, etc) and most of all the connected works are really quite engaging. I'm not sure the ending was completely satisfying, but the amount of work and detail into that Universe (or Multiverse) is quite amazing.
I beg to differ about King. The Dark Tower Series (The Stand, IT, Eyes of the Dragon, etc) and most of all the connected works are really quite engaging. I'm not sure the ending was completely satisfying, but the amount of work and detail into that Universe (or Multiverse) is quite amazing.
5
So the King novel is a cross between M Night Shyamalan trickster paranoia and The Simpson's Movie hilarity.
6
Duma and Cell were kind of weak, but Buick 8 was kind of cool. Hearts In Atlantis would have won a National Book Award if it didn't have his name attached. Truly a wonderful book.
7
The only King I'm familiar with is his old "classics" -- "Carrie" (total garbage), "The Stand" (even worse garbage, because longer) and "The Shining" (which I tore to pieces and threw out halfway through because the terrible writing was so annoying. You couldn't pay me to read another.
8
The Stand is actually really good, if you have the revised edition. The original had so much stuff cut out that it just doesn't make much sense.
9
I read King exhaustively when I was in middle school... I loved him then, but, I don't think my 13-year-old self was thinking too much about how good his use of language was, etc. Especially considering that my other favorite author in middle school was VC Andrews. Why my parents had no problem with me reading exclusively horror novels and lurid sex/incest stories, I'll never know.
12
King's only good stuff was his short fiction, which was mostly "homages" to Bradbury & EC Comics. It's amazing that DePalma, Kubrick and a few others were able to reimagine his awful novels into a few actually decent movies.
Years ago, as a teen, I slogged (heh) through It and The Stand (great set up, shitty shitty novel) and swore I'd never read his novels again, though I do wonder sometimes if at least the short stories hold up.
Crichton's stuff used to be reliably good airplane or beach reads, until his formula wore thin sometime around "Congo".
Years ago, as a teen, I slogged (heh) through It and The Stand (great set up, shitty shitty novel) and swore I'd never read his novels again, though I do wonder sometimes if at least the short stories hold up.
Crichton's stuff used to be reliably good airplane or beach reads, until his formula wore thin sometime around "Congo".
14
The Stand is a shaggy dog story with a sloppy deus ex machina ending.
There is no need to go around saying authors like King are any good. No need. He sells tons of books already, and just saying you think he's good isn't going to get him any real respect. But I understand how hard it is to give supporting reasons why he's good. There aren't any.
There is no need to go around saying authors like King are any good. No need. He sells tons of books already, and just saying you think he's good isn't going to get him any real respect. But I understand how hard it is to give supporting reasons why he's good. There aren't any.
15
In regards to Stephen King, count me in as a fan, he was the first author I read who seemed to talk like me, or at least someone I might hang out with.
I haven't read anything since Needful Things do to personal reasons, but have picked up all of his subsequent hardback books at Goodwill for $3 each). I will read them, but not until I read "Under The Dome" which I have been hearing about for decades.
King excels in the long form. The Stand (long version) should be to future generations what Dune and The Lord of the Rings were for past generations.
And I read "It" in one 17 hour sitting and almost cried at the end when it was over. So, I'm a sucker, but the characters in "It" seemed to be going through the same shit I was at the time.
Salem's Lot, the Dead Zone, The Shining, The Stand, Firestarter, and Christine is a pretty serious body of work and is every bit as valid as Shakespeare or Dickens, or any other "popular" writer of their day.
His Richard Bachman books are pretty great too.
I haven't read anything since Needful Things do to personal reasons, but have picked up all of his subsequent hardback books at Goodwill for $3 each). I will read them, but not until I read "Under The Dome" which I have been hearing about for decades.
King excels in the long form. The Stand (long version) should be to future generations what Dune and The Lord of the Rings were for past generations.
And I read "It" in one 17 hour sitting and almost cried at the end when it was over. So, I'm a sucker, but the characters in "It" seemed to be going through the same shit I was at the time.
Salem's Lot, the Dead Zone, The Shining, The Stand, Firestarter, and Christine is a pretty serious body of work and is every bit as valid as Shakespeare or Dickens, or any other "popular" writer of their day.
His Richard Bachman books are pretty great too.
16
I don't know about The Simpsons, but the plot of King's new novel sounds like he cribbed it from the old Arch Oboler 3-D movie The Bubble. Arch probably got it from somewhere else.
17
Certainly some of King's oeuvre is shit - show me an author who bats it out of the park every time, and I'll show you an author who only wrote one book (Harper Lee, I'm looking at you). But some of his stuff - Bag of Bones, The Body, The Talisman (with Peter Straub), Dolores Claiborne, Lisey's Story, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - while, perhaps not the best LITERARY fiction of our day, are certainly among the best STORIES. He's a great storyteller, as was Charles Dickens. It's popular to crap on him, as it was with Dickens in his time.
He wrote what I consider the single scariest woman-on-the-run-from-abusive-spouse novel EVER in Rose Madder (and the single scariest villain in Frank - much more frightening than any supernatural character he's ever written).
And I loved Duma Key. Sure, parts of it get a bit silly, but it's still a great STORY.
Full disclosure: I've written exactly three fan letters in my life - to Robert Heinlein, George MacDonald Fraser, and Stephen King - and only sent the one to Stephen King, and he replied, with a personal note. I thought that was pretty classy of him.
He wrote what I consider the single scariest woman-on-the-run-from-abusive-spouse novel EVER in Rose Madder (and the single scariest villain in Frank - much more frightening than any supernatural character he's ever written).
And I loved Duma Key. Sure, parts of it get a bit silly, but it's still a great STORY.
Full disclosure: I've written exactly three fan letters in my life - to Robert Heinlein, George MacDonald Fraser, and Stephen King - and only sent the one to Stephen King, and he replied, with a personal note. I thought that was pretty classy of him.
18
Fraser kicked ass. It's still too bad he never wrote the Civil War book, but it never could have lived up to the anticipation. And my kids have made me read all three McAuslan books to them twice through.
20
Awesome...except it's been done already, in Comic form, by the Luna Brothers (albeit with different implications):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_(comi…)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_(comi…)
21
In full disclosure, I am also a fan of The Monkees, Catch 22 (the book AND the movie), Zardoz, The Justice League, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and get grief over them as well.
22
I don't really give a rat's ass whether it's "hip" to hate these guys or not. I like both of them, and am looking forward to reading these.
26
oh, no, the restored version of The Stand was awful! I looked forward to it when I heard about it, but once I read it, I realized how truly valuable editors are...
"It" would have been a gread book if King could have put his ego aside long enough to listen to an editor and get it down to a managable length.
The early books; Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand are fantasticly entertaining pot boilers...then King got to be a Superstar and too big to listen to editors and the books got worse and worse.
"It" would have been a gread book if King could have put his ego aside long enough to listen to an editor and get it down to a managable length.
The early books; Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand are fantasticly entertaining pot boilers...then King got to be a Superstar and too big to listen to editors and the books got worse and worse.
27
@18 - Have you ever read GMF's nonfiction, specifically Quartered Safe Out Here, about the campaign in Burma? Single best war memoir EVER. And The Steel Bonnets may be one of the best pieces of geohistory ever written. But my favorite of all his books has to be Flashman In the Great Game.
and @21, I like Zardoz and box mac & cheese too. And Michael Nesmith is a genius. The other Monkees...maybe not so much. ;-)
and @21, I like Zardoz and box mac & cheese too. And Michael Nesmith is a genius. The other Monkees...maybe not so much. ;-)
28
The Monkees benefited from great songwriters and great producers. Headquarters and Pisces-Aquarius-Capricorn-and-Jones are essential 60s albums.
29
@17, totally agree, the stories are excellent. But I think his greatest strength is character development. I've read books with great characters, but few books with characters that I loved as much as the ones in most King novels.
30
Dickens was unappreciated in his time.
King is unappreciated in his time.
Therefore, King is Dickens.
Got it.
King is unappreciated in his time.
Therefore, King is Dickens.
Got it.
31
Misery is a great book, and probably King's best. And some of his short stories will stand the test of time. Paragraph by paragraph, King and Crichton don't produce great literary writing, but at their best, they tell stories that inspire compulsive reading. I'm not about to compare either one to Dickens, but I do think they're underrated.
But Duma Key is shit. Any book whose antagonist is a mental fungus named the Bad Gunky deserves to be torn in half and thrown away.
But Duma Key is shit. Any book whose antagonist is a mental fungus named the Bad Gunky deserves to be torn in half and thrown away.
32
Paul,
You couldn't be more wrong about "Cell" "Cell" is one of King's best, and I don't like a lot of Stephen King. "It" is really good and scary. "'Salem's Lot" is good when it doesn't deal with asides about the townspeople and sticks to the main character. "The Stand" is too long and King usually can't wrap things up or write a decent ending to save his life.
As for "Cell," i picked it up in an airport bookstore, something I almost never do, hoping for just a fun, summer book, blahblahblah. "Cell" was incredibly engaging, emotionally engaging. I loved the story. I loved the characters. It felt original to me, and terrifying at times. It was sad and heartbreaking. It was surprising and fun and scary. It was really good writing.
Also, I've tried reading "Lisey's Story" about three times, and just can not get into it. And "The Dead Zone" is also one of King's best novels.
Oh, and his book on writing was a great read.
So, there, Paul. EAT IT. :)
Thanks for writing your blog entries on slog, Paul.
You couldn't be more wrong about "Cell" "Cell" is one of King's best, and I don't like a lot of Stephen King. "It" is really good and scary. "'Salem's Lot" is good when it doesn't deal with asides about the townspeople and sticks to the main character. "The Stand" is too long and King usually can't wrap things up or write a decent ending to save his life.
As for "Cell," i picked it up in an airport bookstore, something I almost never do, hoping for just a fun, summer book, blahblahblah. "Cell" was incredibly engaging, emotionally engaging. I loved the story. I loved the characters. It felt original to me, and terrifying at times. It was sad and heartbreaking. It was surprising and fun and scary. It was really good writing.
Also, I've tried reading "Lisey's Story" about three times, and just can not get into it. And "The Dead Zone" is also one of King's best novels.
Oh, and his book on writing was a great read.
So, there, Paul. EAT IT. :)
Thanks for writing your blog entries on slog, Paul.
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