NYT reviews Stephen King's new epic
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.
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.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McFetridge on
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Yeah, isn't the new one literary Darwinism, or has that passed already?
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Permalink Reply by I. J. Parker on
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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.
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Permalink Reply by JackBludis on
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Getting way too academic for me.
See you guys on another topic.
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Not much overlap for most ... but for some. Strictly though, you are right, there is not much overlap.
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Permalink Reply by Dana King on -
Agreed, and that's a whole different (and, for me, inflammatory) discussion.
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Jack is right. We're off topic. Apologies.
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Permalink Reply by doug anderson on
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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.
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