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I Hate Stephen King
By M. Brandon
Robbins
For most authors, critical success and commercial fame are
two ends of a spectrum. You're either a high-brow literary type who ignites the
passions of university English department faculties with your lucid, deliberate
prose or a marketing phenomenon that could sell a book full of blank pages if it
had your name on the cover. Realistically of course, most authors (including
this one) are willing to settle for a balance between the two. We would like for
our books, stories, and articles to be well-written enough that they draw praise
from the critics, but we would like them to be just full of enough of the
content craved by the so-called great unwashed that they fly off the shelves
like free beer at a frat party.
But not Stephen King. He has it all. You can't pay a reviewer to give him even a
sideways shake of the hand and a shrug, and people would buy a-- you guessed
it-- book full of blank pages if it had his name on it. He has achieved the Holy
Grail of fiction writing: intelligent story telling with Halloween-night
thrills, and all but the most elite of academics recognize him as a true master
writer and contributor to American-- nay, global-- arts and culture.
I'm really, really, sick of the man. In fact, I hate him.
Oh, I love his books. Crack dipped in chocolate rolled in ground espresso beans
and laced with sugar wouldn't be as addictive as Stephen King's writing. I read
Carrie in two sittings-- something rare for my easily-distracted mind--
and if Mr. King had just killed the epilogue to The Shining it would be,
without a doubt, the greatest American novel of the twentieth century. I'm
sorry, but the epilogue didn't belong in a novel about a failed writer facing
his own personal demons and achieving redemption through his son; it belonged in
an episode of "The Waltons." You know what, even with the epilogue, The
Shining was the greatest American novel of the twentieth century. That's how
good it was.
I have read On Writing, and even completed the assignment he gave his
readers (only to see that he was no longer accepting it...). Whenever I go into
a used book store, I head straight to where his books are, hoping to luck upon a
signed first edition. Maybe the used book store is owned by a retired
hairdresser who reads Harlequin romances exclusively, or an Ivy League professor
who still thinks that Stephen King is merely mindless pulp, and they don't
realize what they have on their hands; who knows? And no, I haven't made that
sweet score yet, but the library's book sale is in April.
Yes, Stephen King is a god among writers. He paid his dues in his early years as
a young husband and father teaching high school English and relying on the
paychecks he earned from writing short stories to help get those little extra
expenses (such as medication for the kids or new brake pads for the car) taken
care of. He had something of a rebirth in his later years, suffering through a
very public traffic accident with a recovery process just as suspenseful and
emotional as his best fiction. And all the while, he has remained true to form,
churning out genre fiction that transcends genre fiction, forcing his readers to
confront their deepest fears and their darkest fantasies.
So why do I hate him? With all the good that he has done, with all the
inspiration he has given us newbies, with all the joy his writing has given us
and all the lessons both writers and non-writers can learn from him, why do I
hate him?
There are a few reasons. He doesn't seem like that great of a guy
personality-wise. He's a bit abrasive, and more than a bit impersonal. Unlike
his colleague Neil Gaiman (the other literary genius of genre fare), who
maintains a personable and even loving relationship with his fans via his blog
and exhaustive touring schedule, King doesn't talk much. On Writing is
probably the lengthiest conversation that he's had with his fans as a whole
during the course of his entire career, and while it's nice to see that on his
website he recommends movies, novels, and music to his fans, I would very much
like to know what he had for breakfast, thank you very much. Speaking of his
website, King all but accuses his fans of being money-grubbing plagiarism-case
chasers when answering the FAQ concerning whether he will review manuscripts.
That's right; not an "I'm very busy right now" or even a "My attorneys have
advised me against it," but an out-and-out "I don't want to be sued for
plagiarism. All the rich writers have been."
But writers are known for being eccentric and reclusive to the point of being
rude. If you don't believe me, then allow me to interrupt your next session to
ask if you would like for the dishes to be washed. Or let's discuss that favored
topic: stupid things non-writers say. Yes, we can all be pretentious snobs from
time to time. Anybody who's said "You just don't get it!" in response to a
non-favorable review is a pretentious snob. So Mr. King can be forgiven his near
non-existent presence outside of his presence on bookshelves. And he can be
forgiven being short and snappy when it comes to questions he's heard a hundred
thousand times. He is a writer after all.
Why I really hate Stephen King is because he's set the bar so high that none of
us will ever reach his level and he seems content to be untouchable.
Stephen King doesn't hesitate to recommend authors to his audience, but there is
a catch: you have to have already been discovered. He will gladly give a plug to
novelists who have been published, but haven't reached the blockbuster levels of
success that he feels that they deserve yet. This is all very good of him, but
what about the writers who have raw talent that just needs some fine tuning?
With his exhaustive funds and god-like influence, Stephen King could get some
fresh voices and new minds out there. Why not set up a publishing house or a
magazine that caters to new writers, or a scholarship fund that sends writers to
school? Or how about a workshop, a series of classes, or lectures? Orson Scott
Card loves to talk about writing almost as much as he loves to write, and he has
fans based almost on that fact exclusively; why couldn't King be the same way?
Stephen King could easily get many a career up and running and not just limit
himself to writers who already have a somewhat respectable bibliography. But
Stephen King does write about fears after all, often his own. Perhaps if he
helped get budding writers into a few MFA programs or lent his name to a
magazine or publishing house, he may end up giving birth to the Next Big Thing,
his own heir-apparent. And that heir might just dethrone him a bit sooner than
he expected.
Which itself sounds like an interesting book: an aging novelist revered as a
living legend sets out on a hunt for his successor, and in the process finds the
very writer that will send him into obscurity. To what lengths will the aging
novelist go to protect his fame, to keep his name on the top of the literary
globe?
Mr. King, if you write this novel, you will be hearing from my attorney.
M. Brandon Robbins loves to see people take up the craft of
writing, and despite his limited credentials (being a book reviewer for Library
Journal, writing for WomenGamers.com and Associated Content, and having a
few short stories published through various very small presses), he's more than
happy to help new writers get the ball rolling. He lives in Goldsboro, NC, is
trying to find an agent for his first novel, and is currently reading Misery.
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