Author Information
Opinion Of An Episode In Stephen King's Novel, "It"
My past opinion, of you, King, has failed
when I read, last week, in It, the detailed
scene (which did not advance the novel's action):
a puppy stolen and tortured to death.
Tears filled my eyes. I nearly lost my breath.
Decades ago, I first read about Carrie.
I thought her story was extraordinary,
and written with respect and sympathy.
But after Salem's Lot my first attraction
(over three years; perhaps a shorter span)
had altered somewhat, and then much diminished
by that dreadful short tale, "The Bogeyman"
(I could not bear the little boy's last plea).
Nothing else of yours had I really finished,
except "The Breathing Method" (I admit
that one had a unique effect on me---
a child, adopted.)
But, that part of It---
a puppy, murdered---was unnecessary
in the worst way. Your light, King, has grown dimmer.
Your bloated volumes are morally slimmer,
far more than such tales have a right to be.
A puppy tortured---just so you could write
a ghastly episode: that is no slight
blunder, but is a major lapse in taste.
To tell that puppy's dying agony
is worse than sadists' worst pornography.
To speak much more about this is a waste.
Most certainly, your many books' dominion
will not be altered by this one opinion.
For your art, I have not the least respect
left---not even a tatter, shred, or glimmer.
Nor can it rise above such vast defect.
Your style could have offended Heinrich Himmler.
Starward
[jlc]
King
The common, the ordinary is made extraordinary, but the fault for me is less content, but elementary style of writing - filler, fluff, insignificant meandering in search of a setting. Bulk and making money as motive - I read Cujo - the only SK novel I've read - 1 or two short stories, just not impressed with the prose stye - popularist literature. The paperback horrorist who has tapped into the psyche of the 21st century. It is not his fault entirely. We bought the books, we are culpable, accomplices. It, the movie, had no interest for me at all.
Please forgive my late reply
Please forgive my late reply to this. I have learned, over years of either reading or of hearing synopses of several of his books, that he basically stopped writing original stories after the novel, The Shining and the stories in Night Shift. All that followed is, as far as I have read or been told, variations on those four books. I think he has found his sweet spot and it just continues to produce for him. (Like, when I first learned to write properly with rhyme, summer of 1994, it took days, at first, to write a rhyming poem. Then to my surprise, I wrote a sonnet, the Saturday after Thanksgiving that year, in about an hour. The point I am trying to make is just as I found the sweet spot for rhymes, which has now filled my gallery of poems here at postpoems, King has found the sweet spot that both composes and markets the next book for him.) That may not be much of a theory, but I don't need one to be disgusted by the puppy episode cited above.
Starward