NYT reviews Stephen King's new epic

[Jon Loomis]

The review is here, and generally positive--although the reviewer does point out a couple of King's sentence-level clunkers, and makes a reasonable argument: considering the sheer mass of the guy's output, you'd think he'd be a better stylist. Here's the quote:

As for the prose, it’s not all smooth sailing. Given King’s extraordinary career-long dominance, we might expect him at this point to be stylistically complete, turning perfect sentences, as breezily at home in his idiom as P. G. Wodehouse. But he isn’t, quite. “Then it came down on her again, like unpleasant presents raining from a poison piñata: the realization that Howie was dead.” (It’s the accidental rhyme of “unpleasant” and “presents” that makes that one such a stinker.) I felt the clutch of sorrow, too, when I read this: “What you’re planning is terribly dangerous — I doubt if you need me to tell you that — but there may be no other way to save an innocent man’s life.”

The reviewer is forgiving, though--pointing out that "King has always produced at pulp speed," and that "writing flat-out keeps him close to his story, close to his source. It seems to magnetize his imagination..." Still, you'd think that a guy who has publicly expressed his frustration with the "snobbery" of the literary world would take the time to prove them wrong: it's not that hard to clean up the prose before going to press.

On edit: it's worth noting that Wodehouse published 72 novels (three posthumously), 19 short story collections, three autobiographical books, and several plays and libretti. So, no slouch himself on the output front.

[Jon Loomis]

The fact is that a literary critic should use whatever is likely to produce results for any given work, whether it's textual, historical, biographical, archetypal, or whatever.

That would make sense unless the critic were ideologically driven, and really only interested in performing the same series of unnatural acts, over and over, on the unfortunate text they're currently embalming. Lots of theorists (not all, obviously) mostly teach whatever their sub-specialty happens to be: feminism, Marxism, ethnicity, etc. The text (or "book," if you're hopelessly paleo) is mostly irrelevant; what matters is the template through which it's viewed.

[John McFetridge]

Yeah, isn't the new one literary Darwinism, or has that passed already?

[I. J. Parker]

Yes, it's bad. I should add that I was trained by a German Shakespeare scholar (he's most likely in all the campus libraries here) who had a very low opinion of the American New Criticism. Still, new criticism is very useful for close reading of poetry. I also ran into problems years later when I tried to publish an article on Shelley's symbolism and the reader took exception to the fact that it used (among other approaches) a study of his archetypal symbols. He sneered that that had long since been discarded as an approach because it was totally harebrained.
Mind you, readers of academic essays are some of the most bitter people I've ever encountered. That's what academia will do to you.

[JackBludis]

Getting way too academic for me.

See you guys on another topic.

[JackBludis]

Not much overlap for most ... but for some. Strictly though, you are right, there is not much overlap.

[Dana King]

Agreed, and that's a whole different (and, for me, inflammatory) discussion.

[I. J. Parker]

Jack is right. We're off topic. Apologies.

[doug anderson]

I've tried to read him. I get about thirty pages in and the sloppiness of the writing begins to annoy me. He wasn't always this way. I remember reading an early novella called "Cat's Eye" that was very fine, very well crafted, not a word out of place. I guess one of the dangers of becoming famous is that editors become sidelined.

[Caroline Trippe]

I've read several Stephen King novels---not the epics, however. I think "The Shining" was one of his best. He does have a sense for the details of our culture---the stuff of the ordinary. Ordinary people who find themselves in the midst of a supernatural maelstrom. I liked some of the other earlier novels too- the problem I have had with the later work is just the overhwhleming sturm und drang of the horror. Even though the beginning of "Needful Things" was tantalizing, I had to give up on it--- way too much gore. OK, so the gore is metaphor---the nastiness in us made manifest. But I still couldn't hack it. I can't say anything about the grand epics, cause I haven't read them.
Patches of awkward or purple prose aside, he really is a good storyteller, and sure knows how to generate suspense like nobody's business. But I don't go for the apocalyptic climax (as in "Bag of Bones). Yes, my problem with King is---auspicious beginnings, then I get turned off. But I think he's getting at something about our needs.... I actually do like a good ghost story, and the best tales of the supernatural are studies in psychology: about our own fears---fear of death, guilt, longing for the past, hope and fear of afterlife, etc. And considering how well an author like King sells, we crave the stuff! Shirley Jackson, one of the great writers of supernatural fiction, knew that too, and used it brilliantly in her novels and short stories. King is just one in a line of another great tradition.

[lee caleca]

I agree the book is way too long and the momentum was sometimes lost. But the 'unpleasant presents' was a bit of lyric I didn't find at all objectionable. I thought we were over having to write perfect sentences and had moved on to expression and intent. I believe genius sets its own rules.

[Celia Cummings]

It was The Stand that got me back into reading, as an adult. Bizarrely, I read it to help me sleep whilst I was studying for my Uni finals (see? I said I was weird). Anyway, I've had Under The Dome on my shelf of books to read for an unbelievably long time. I bought it out of loyalty to King but there seem to be so many other tempting  authors out there.