Yes, he's an unhinged lefty but I have read most of his books. The Dark Tower series was awesome!

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There's just a lot to trudge through for character set up.

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Pretty much sums up my multiple attempts at finishing one of his novels. I think I did finish "Needful Things" and like someone else said about his stories, it all concluded in about 20 pages of frenetic activity. Maybe it was something else, I don't remember for sure

Pumpkinhead said:

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It wouldn't surprise me if him and Elon were actually friendly and texting each other on a super rich people chat group. While amusing themselves taking jabs on social media.

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Can confirm.

Regarding King's works....many of his books written pre-car wreck were part of The Dark Tower saga or loosely connected to it. IT, Salem's Lot, Insomnia, and The Stand are connected to The Dark Tower for those of you who want to jump off the deep end into this.

It was fun reading all of his work leading up to the culmination of DT to figure out which books were in the DT or not. Quite a few were that many don't realize.

When DT ended, I basically stopped reading King primarily because I felt like it ended an era.

Silver Bullet deserved all of the Academy Awards. k

C@LAg said:

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Stephen King's writing is like a 17 year having sex for the first time.

Great building, horribly quick and unsatisfying resolution.

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Tru dat

You all waited until you were 17?!

MRB10 said:

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You all waited until you were 17?!

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I finally gave in at 16. Your mom wouldn't leave me alone!

MRB10 said:

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You all waited until you were 17?!

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Is this conversation limited to the first time with another person or no?

Asking for a friend...

Never read a single book of his.

He doesn't hold a candle to R.L. Stine.

I'm always amazed he continues to escape Racist/Chauvinist/Ablist canceling for being a white man who, in his magnum opus - The Dark Tower series - has a major character who is a black woman using a wheelchair. And he writes her as suffering a split personality whose speech patterns alternate between "good" side who speaks "proper" white-inflected English, and her "bad" side who speaks a violent cackling gibbering ebonics straight out of a 1920s minstrel show. And he dared to presume he, a white man, could write about what this black disabled woman needed to do to heal herself and bring her screeching-murderous-mammy black side together with her well-educated gentle white side.

Imagine being an old white man liberals look up to, writing phrases like this:
"You ain't jack ***** You suck yo' ka-daddy's cock while you diddle yo' ****finger up his poop-chute and thass all you good fo'!"

OR

"He lookin mo peaky all de time, I declare he do! I doan think he goan be eatin anythin much longer, not even dat fancy smoked meat you whitebread boys keep fo when you done joikin on each other one's little bitty white candles!... Dis goan be a day you member for a long, long time. Sho!"

11/22/63 was really good.

If you read enough King, you start to realize at best he re-uses the same character tropes and at worst there's a decent chance he's a closet racist. A lot of his work is framed in the 50's/60's illusion of the American Dream and the underbelly of it (racism, abuse, etc...). But the number of times he leans into the ebonics is tough to ignore after a while.

Hell, even in his more modern Mr. Mercedes series, there's a constant joking back-and-forth between the irish white guy and the black kid who starts off as his lawn boy and eventually becomes his wingman where ebonics and slave "humor" is constantly leaned into.

When you read it in The Shining in the 70's, it fits. When it's still popping up 40 years later in his modern tales, you start to wonder.

Love his stuff, well most of it, but you don't come with that content unless you have a few screws loose upstairs. He's one of the few authors that's actually been able to make me physically cringe.

Proposition Joe said:

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If you read enough King, you start to realize at best he re-uses the same character tropes and at worst there's a decent chance he's a closet racist. A lot of his work is framed in the 50's/60's illusion of the American Dream and the underbelly of it (racism, abuse, etc...). But the number of times he leans into the ebonics is tough to ignore after a while.

Hell, even in his more modern Mr. Mercedes series, there's a constant joking back-and-forth between the irish white guy and the black kid who starts off as his lawn boy and eventually becomes his wingman where ebonics and slave "humor" is constantly leaned into.

When you read it in The Shining in the 70's, it fits. When it's still popping up 40 years later in his modern tales, you start to wonder.

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A chance he is a closet racist? He is an outspoken democrat, of course he is racist.

Him and Tarantino both seem to have managed to avoid valid criticism for things that are pretty beyond the pale in their works. I think there's a lot of people who owe them their livelihood and they also have the Left playing goalie for them in any media.

But I think they're both the kind to keep pushing the boundary and will eventually have to face a reckoning for their personal and professional choices.

CDUB98 said:

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If you've read his books, you know his brain is wired wrong.*

*I've ready many.

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He is (or at least was) a good writer, but it's a little ironic that his whole thematic message (in every single book/movie of his I have read/watched) is human redemption through suffering, and here he is today, as a pretty old man, suffering immensely about politics.

The irony I am trying to highlight is that he wouldn't see this as somehow a benefit to himself since he is so intensely wired to see a benefit/redemption come from human pain, and has personally profited so much from the ability to write out such stories.

I have zero issues with him using ebonics in his books. People spoke and speak like that in real life. It's the character. No one should get in trouble simply because they are presenting a character as is.

I think the real problem some have is that he's able to do that and get away with it because he's a leftist. If a non-leftist wrote those characters, then there would be cries of racism across the land.

So, this is just typical double standard stuff. But, again, he shouldn't get in trouble for it.

Phatbob said:

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HtownAg92 said:

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Hungry Ojos said:

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Shining
Pet cemetery
It
Misery
Carrie

Everything else sucked.

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The Stand
Cujo
Christine
Needful Things
Night Shift
Desperation

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How is Shawshank Redemption not on here?

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Christine was a great book, blah as a movie.

CDUB98 said:

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Pumpkinhead said:

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The Stand is his most impressive achievement as a sheer epic.

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SPOILER ALERT!!




































In book IV of The Dark Tower series, he intertwines Flagg into the story. Have read further yet, so not sure how deep that rabbit hole goes yet.

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My honest suggestion: stop reading after Wizard and Glass.

Well, that's disappointing.

I'm in the middle of a dark tower re-read. It is 80% bad and 20% interesting, the interesting parts being traversing multiple worlds, western settings and blending fantasy with sci-fi.

The characters aside from Roland are really bad. Eddie is always running his mouth and the dialogue sucks. Odetta was King trying way too hard. Harry Potter elements, adding himself to the series, huge wtfs. The way the main villain is eradicated… terrible stuff.

TexAgsSean said:

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Never read a single book of his.

He doesn't hold a candle to R.L. Stine.

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If you haven't read his books, then how would you know?

King is a gay bird