Lisey’s Story
Art of Darkness – washingtonpost.com
Admit it: You’ve been a horrible snob about Stephen King. You’ve rolled your eyes at passengers on the Metro reading Pet Sematary. You’ve told your son to put down Salem’s Lot and get a real book. When King won a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation, you gleefully quoted Harold Bloom’s crack about this new “low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life.”
Yeah, well, Harold Bloom is an idiot.
Stephen King is a fine writer — a true genius at capturing the feel of everyday life. King understands what’s horrifying. Really horrifying. It’s not dark creepy castles in Transylvania. It’s a child-killing thing with the face of a circus clown living in the sewers of your own suburban neighborhood.
I’ve been reading Stephen King’s books since he first began publishing. Yikes… that’s a long time ago now! Now he’s got a new one out. Looks like I’ll be needing to visit the book store this weekend!
Posted by RebeccaHartong on October 28, 2006 under Uncategorized
I like Pet Sematary fine; I liked the move better. Cujo was good; I liked the book best. I love The Dead Zone and think the movie and the TV series based on it are great. The Stand is probably my favorite, and I don’t think there has been a movie yet that has done it justice. I just got finished reading The Gunslinger and didn’t quite like it. I’m giving the second in the series a chance before I give up on the series of 6 or 7 books. I didn’t much like Firestarter, but thought the movie was good if only for George C. Scott’s performance. I really like King’s short stories, especially Different Seasons which contained the story “The Body” which the movie Stand By Me was based on — which I think is a good flick.
King can hit or miss, but he’s definitely no slouch. People like Bloom think you can only be relevant if you only put out two or three books in a lifetime, I guess. Those kind of authors can be good, too — but to dismiss someone because he’s prolific and popular is wrong.