posted on September 18, 2001 10:53:35 AM new
I didn't like The Talisman very much, though I thought the opening scenes at the faded Victorian hotel, The Alhambra, where Jack's mother Lily lay pining away, were atmospheric and memorable.
King and Straub wrote some of my favorite books, Salem's Lot and Ghost Story, respectively. I don't know what happened to the two of them over the years, but they lost their edge. Maybe too many trips to the well. I used to buy their hardcovers on the first day of release. Now I wait till I find a paperback copy at a yard sale or flea market.
I'm reading King's Hearts In Atlantis at the moment, though I fully expect to be disappointed by it. I keep reading, though, hoping for some of the old fire. I see that Hearts In Atlantis is being released as a movie in a couple weeks with Anthony Hopkins. Is it just me, or does anyone else think Hopkins has been typecast as Hannibal Lecter?
posted on September 18, 2001 02:36:21 PM new
I don't think he's been typecast, but he's always been one of my favorites. I do think he was excellent in the part.
I'm reading Hearts in Atlantis too. I have always liked King but for some reason I can't seem to finish this book. I read a little, read something else, and go back to it. Guess I better hurry up and finish before the movie comes out.
posted on September 18, 2001 02:38:56 PM new
I was thinking of you when I started this thread, spaz. And maddienicks too. If i remember correctly, she is a King fan.
I really liked The Talisman. I think my favorite character was Wolf..."RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW..WOOF!", heh.
Anthony Hopkins is a wonderful actor. I dont see him as Hannibal all the time. I see him in many roles, because he becomes the person he is playing so well, he makes people forget who he was before since he has that gift. To me, anyway. This new book is pretty gruesome in the begining, but Im hooked already. I was all set to re read Salems Lot, but now I will wait til Im done with The Black House. I really liked The Stand too. I tried to get into Hearts In Atlantis, but just couldnt, anymore than I could get in to Bag Of Bones. I cant stand any of Kings new stories....I like the older ones. Spaz, have you seen Thinner, the movie? Kept really close to the book itself, which was a surprise. The director of IT really screwed it up. Turned me off when they had John Boy play the lead character. Stuttering Bill is NOT John Boy. Most of his movies have been a flop...except The Green Mile, which turned out awesome, along with Shawshank Redemption.
posted on September 18, 2001 03:00:28 PM new
I haven't seen The Green Mile or Thinner. I know Thinner was on TV recently but I missed it.
His work has been really, really bad for the past 15-20 years. The movies are better than the novels now -- but it's supposed to be the other way around. As a novel, The Green Mile blows. Dolores Claiborne was a real dog too -- 40-page descriptions of a senile old woman slinging feces around the bedroom, etc. And yet, I really enjoy the movie Dolores Claiborne.. Other low marks in his career include Insomnia, Rose Madder, and his latest, Dreamcatcher.
I wonder why there's nobody who'll look at him before these books go to print and say, Hey, Big Steve, I don't know how to break this to you, but this book sucks big time, man.
I have no taste whatsoever for his "alternate universe" novels -- The Dark Tower Series, Eyes of the Dragon, The Talisman, etc. And part of my recent disappointment with his work is that he's starting to weave the "alternate universe" novels into his everyday-world novels, with crossover characters and references, etc. It's like he's trying to create a "mythology" with his work, and it's falling flat.
I read his recent work and think, "Can this really be the same guy who wrote all those great novels back in the 70s and early 80s?" The difference may be that he was an alcoholic and drug addict back then. He also knew what it was to be poor and hungry and worried about the sh*t life throws at you -- which is really all monsters are once you pull off the mask.
posted on September 18, 2001 03:09:22 PM new
You MUST watch The Green Mile. If you liked Dolores Claiborne, you will like The Mile. Trust me. Thinner was really good too.
I know what youre saying, concerning King being hungry before. Now, he is not so hungry, eh? And its showing in his work. I call it "forgetting". I said that to Dale Evers once. (He is a famous sculpture, and does those huge bronze dolphins, as well as having alot of galleries around the states). Hes such a weenie. I told him once, in a fit of anger, that he "forgot". He asked what that exactly meant, and I told him..not in the same words you just used, but close. He said yeah, maybe he did. King forgot too.
posted on September 18, 2001 03:12:24 PM new
You forgot another really bad one, spaz. Desperation. Talk about a humdinger sucky book. I think thats why I never buy his newest books anymore..I get them at second hand stores. I have all his old ones though, and I read them over and over, when desperate for a good book. I read Anne Rice too. But shes starting to forget, herself.
LOL! I just noticed my pun, of desperations
[ edited by hepburn on Sep 18, 2001 03:20 PM ]
posted on September 18, 2001 03:52:34 PM newDesperation was so bad that I had purged it from my memory. And the "companion" novel, The Regulators -- marketed complete with a gimmicky nightlite!!! -- was even worse. No publisher would have touched any of these latter-day King novels had they come from an unknown author. They would have been dismissed as trash.
posted on September 18, 2001 04:15:24 PM newHe also knew what it was to be poor and hungry and worried about the sh*t life throws at you -- which is really all monsters are once you pull off the mask.
Give you an example: When King wrote Pet Sematary -- about a doctor who resurrects his dead two-year-old son -- there was a lingering possibility that his own baby was hydrocephalic. The circumstances ushered him down some grim avenues of thought, ultimately resulting in Pet Sematary.
I sort of hoped King's own close brush with death (a van struck him as he was walking along the roadside in Maine) would reconnect him with his own mortality and that we'd see it reflected in his writing. Maybe at some point in the future we will. His books tend to be published 2-3 years after they are actually finished.
posted on September 19, 2001 12:01:42 PM new
Spaz, where did you come up with the idea that Stephen King was an alcoholic and drug addict? A factual source?
posted on September 19, 2001 12:12:06 PM new
dejavu,
He admitted it in an A&E Biography and also in an article last year in the New York Times Magazine (in the Sunday edition). He had it pretty bad, apparently. He'd swallow or snort anything he could get his hands on -- cocaine, speed, etc. -- and when he ran out he'd start hitting the cough medicine. And he's always been an alcoholic. Even professional people who knew him during that phase of his life commented that they'd go out for lunch and he'd down six beers like it was nothing.
The article in the New York Times Magazine was entitled "What Is Stephen King Trying to Prove?" by Stephen J. Dubner. It appeared in the August 13, 2000 edition.
posted on September 19, 2001 02:01:13 PM new
Haven't gotten Black House yet (want to reread The Talisman first), but I have to agree that there was a time after Needful Things, I think, where I'd been "Stephen King'ed out."
Afterthe fourth Gunslinger book came out, though, I bought it and reread the previous three. Some of the fire started coming back, so I read some newer King books.
I enjoyed Bag of Bones. I think once you get near the end, it sound more old-King than new-King (if that makes sense). You just have to get that far. I haven't read Rose Madder or The Regulators yet. Haven't had the gumption to read Insomnia, especially since the hubby couldn't stand it (too boring).
The one I really enjoyed, though, was The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Sometimes it's the simple stories that work best (it's a "lost in the woods" story).
posted on September 19, 2001 02:30:48 PM new
The Stand will always be my favorite and I've read them all (books, stories, interviews, etc...). I do admit his books in more recent years don't pack the same punch.
I can remember being scared out of my freakin' wits reading The Shining and Salem's Lot and being totally grossed out by short stories like: Gray Matter and The Lawnmower Man. I loved the Dark Tower books and Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, but not much else in many years. I remember liking The Talisman and will have to read it again before reading Dark House.
deja- spaz is right, by his own account - Stephen King used to drink like a fish and snort anything you set in front of him.
_______________________________________
---To err is human, but it feels divine. Mae West
[ edited by rhondalee65 on Sep 19, 2001 02:32 PM ]
posted on September 19, 2001 06:36:10 PM new
Just want to say that I have read about 35 of Steven Kings books. The only one I will not ever read again is Rose Madder. Parts of it are just too violent. His older books, such as It, scared the hell out of me. His newer books are good just not as evil and gory. They are still good. He is my favorite author, and I just wanted to voice my opinion. He has been writing for thirty years or more, which means he is getting older. I do not know about all of you but the older I get the more mellow I get and it is nice that my favorite author is doing the same.
posted on September 19, 2001 06:38:54 PM new
Crissy, if youre looking for mellow, then dont read Black House. Its gory. Well, at least it is in the first 10 chapters. Im sure it will get worse.
posted on September 21, 2001 12:53:52 AM new
Here, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with everything Stephen King writes nowadays:
I'm on page 285 of Hearts In Atlantis. So far the novel has focused on the strange friendship between an old man and a young boy, a friendship fostered amid a growing sense that the old man is on the run, pursued by supernatural thugs. We finally get to the point where the old man is confronted by the creepy bad guys ... and then it all turns to sh*t as King starts hopscotching from this novel into his Dark Tower series:
"I want the boy," the low man in charge said, but now he sounded thoughtful. Perhaps even doubtful. "I want him as a pretty, something to give the King."
"I doubt if the Crimson King will thank you for a meaningless pretty if it interferes with his plans," Ted said. "There is a gunslinger --"
"Gunslinger, pah!"
"Yet he and his friends have reached the borderland of End-World," Ted said, and now he was the one who sounded thoughtful.
See? See? King is so focused on his own bellybutton and thinks his Dark Tower series is so goddam clever that he can't resist dribbling it into another novel altogether, one that ought to stand on its own merit, in its own self-contained universe.
What if you've never read Stephen King? Say this is your first King novel and you've been keeping up with it for near 300 pages, racing through to find out what's waiting up ahead. Then you finally get there but instead of a climactic payoff you get dreck that leaves you scratching your head and wondering What's this crap about a gunslinger?
It's infuriating to invest this much time in a novel only to find out on page 285 (after what seemed like a semi-promising start) that's it's just more of the same reheated leftovers he's been dishing up for years now.
Thank goodness I only paid fifty cents for this paperback at a yard sale.
posted on September 21, 2001 05:27:07 AM new
Thats the beauty of Kings work. Almost all of the stories are intertwined. Having read all of his work, I think its great to find a character in a story that you havent heard from in a long time.
I thought Desperation & The Regulators were brilliant. Same names used in each story, but different characters. Like the name of the cop in one story, is the name of a little boy in the next.
My favorite was The Stand and Insomnia.
I too am having a hard time finishing Hearts in Atlantis. I got it for Christmas last year & have tried to finish it twice.Hmph.
posted on September 21, 2001 09:44:03 AM newThats the beauty of Kings work. Almost all of the stories are intertwined. Having read all of his work, I think its great to find a character in a story that you havent heard from in a long time.
But they're not truly intertwined. The reappearing characters are rarely germane to the storyline. They're more like guests stopping by the Tonight Show to plug their latest movie -- or, more on point, to cross-sell King's books.
Also, in almost every instance, the reappearing characters are weak doppelgangers of the original character in the original novel. All he manages to accomplish with this silly gimmick is to dilute the novel at hand and cheapen the memory of the novel in which the reappearing character was introduced.
But then I don't expect we'll agree on anything, lol. I think Desperation and The Regulators were two of his most wretched works, right down there with Insomnia.
For me, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand and Pet Sematary represent the zenith of his talent. Even if he writes crap for the rest of his life, no one can deny him all the credit he deserves for those novels.
posted on September 21, 2001 09:50:39 AM new
Well, since I didnt read Hearts Of Atlantis, I didnt know the Crimson King. But...brace yourself...that same King is in Black House too. Or rather, that realm.
Yes, SK always adds some of one book to another. Like, he will talk about a neighbor down the road in one book, who has a dog named Cujo (for example). If Black House doesnt pick up soon, Im afraid Im gonna have to put it down and re-read Salems Lot.
posted on September 21, 2001 11:01:53 AM new
hepburn,
I'd heard that about Black House. Also heard that the old man from Hearts In Atlantis, Ted Brautigan, receives attention in Black House.
Meanwhile, King's either unable or too intimidated to finish the Dark Tower series where all these characters rightfully belong. It's like he wants to finish The Dark Tower but doesn't know how, so he makes little payments on the debt by pimping out his other works, just enough to keep the legbreakers at bay. But it's all just one big cheat as far as I'm concerned. He cheats himself, he cheats those waiting for a real Dark Tower novel, and he cheats those of us who just want a decent story to read.
I haven't read Rose Madder or The Regulators yet. Haven't had the gumption to read Insomnia, especially since the hubby couldn't stand it (too boring).