Well, you could just go to salon.com and read all this shit your selves, but since you're here you might as well let us guide your reading habits and pleasures. Read this article. Think about your own perceptions of King and his novels, but remember he commands incredible sums of money to write fiction and that said fiction causes countless preteens, teenagers and adults to sit down and read a fucking book. Have your lofty ideals about the nature of Literature, but always remember: there is no literature, no Literature, without readers to discern the difference between strum und drang. Enjoy.
Of course it is possible to be popular and good. Those who hate Stephen King aren't reading closely enough
Look, is there any easier target than Stephen King, the self-proclaimed “Literary Big Mac” of American popular fiction?
As I read Dwight Allen’s piece “My Stephen King Problem,” my personal bat signal went off when I came across the reader comment that “this is the most rambling, dull, unfocused and self-absorbed piece I’ve ever read in Salon.” Hey, I thought, some guy is stealing my act! And then, suitably outraged, I read the article. Which brings up an entirely different kind of outrage.
How shall I put this diplomatically?
Allen’s article isn’t just a bile-drenched, meandering hatchet job, it is a hatchet job with a rusty, dull blade, devoid of insight into anything other than the insecurities of its writer.
It’s hard to understand why someone would want to write a 4,500-word essay about an author’s life work and then boast about how unacquainted you are with the details of that work. It’s clearly theidea of Stephen King that gets under Allen’s skin. A writer who has never condescended to his audience, who literally lived in a garret (OK, trailer) suffering for his art, and then hit it big in ways that Allen can only dream. And now, and this is what really drives Allen crazy, King is being recognized for the vitality and enduring literary quality of his work, by fellow snobs who Allen thinks should know better. This is clearly not fair. It’s one thing to be a rich writer, but, an acclaimed one? Perish the thought.
