King as a Literary Figure?

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King as a Literary Figure?

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1timdt
Juil 10, 2012, 3:08 pm

I know there is already a topic on this subject, but I ran across this article and thought to resurrect it.

I personally don't care if he is considered literary or not. I read a lot of genre fiction (horror, western, noir, whatever) and don't expect to do more than to enjoy passing the time with each story. Some good, some not.

But some of the author's complaints are valid and are the same ones you here from time to time about King's writing. Such as the bloat. The author of this article also picked two of the books I've not read, Christine and 11/22/63, and one I didn't really enjoy The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon to discuss. Although I don't think he would have changed his mind regardless of the chosen book.

Anyway, anyone interested in reading this article (somewhat bloated itself), Hear it is. Written by a self proclaimed literary snob.

2quartzite
Modifié : Juil 15, 2012, 1:29 am

Hhm, like no acknowledged literary authors indulge in bloat....

3jseger9000
Modifié : Juil 13, 2012, 11:42 am

My favorite bit was at the end when he was discussing whether he would ever recommend King: "My answer is no, unless you are maybe fifteen and have made it clear to your teachers and everybody else that you aren’t going to touch that literary “David Copperfield kind of crap” with a ten-foot pole."

As has been pointed out a zillion times before me, Dickens had a similar reputation to King in his time. Not that Dickens ever succumbed to sentimentality or bloat, mind you.

I guess being dead adds a few points to your literary street cred.

I can't help but wonder if the author's grandson will some day write an article putting the smack-down on a popular author who's body of work has gained notice and make the argument that "he's no Stephen King..."

I also like that he took the time to smear King's readers as well. I wonder if his child was an "aggrieved nerdy adolescent"? I wonder if he would bristle if I implied that lovers of literary fiction were either like Tim Robbin's sensitive pony-tail guy in High Fidelity or prissy Niles Crane efetes?

4madpoet
Juil 15, 2012, 10:12 am

I don't think King ever made the claim that he is a 'literary' author. And obviously the fact that he's popular and a writer of horror (though not exclusively) is counted against him by literary snobs.

King does have some weak points, especially the fact that so many of his protagonists are teachers or writers who live in Maine (i.e. Stephen King himself) and practically interchangeable. But he also has strengths as a writer that few others have. He has an amazing sense of the details of an era. A Stephen King book set in 1987 is very 1987: reading it takes you back to that year, remembering all that you'd forgotten about that time.

He's also a great storyteller: most of his novels are plot-driven page turners that you can't put down. Not like modern literary novels where the plot is irrelevant, if there even is a plot.

Stephen King's novels are not literary. They are entertaining and readable.

5BuffaloPhil
Juil 15, 2012, 3:55 pm

Is there a list of criteria somewhere to define a 'literary author'?

6OscarWilde87
Sep 3, 2012, 3:38 am

Well, as far as I know there is not just one such list but there are many. What is more, there are many definitions of what is considered 'literature', some of which would include Stephen King and Dan Brown, some of which would equal literature to the so-called 'literary classics' such as Dickens, for example.
As was mentioned above already, Dickens was also not considered to write much of literary merit (however you would want to define 'literary merit'). The same goes for a lot of his Victorian contemporaries. Some of the novels were called 'penny dreadfuls' which doesn't give much praise and credit to their works. Now, however, many of them are considered 'literary classics'. So I guess, time is an issue here. But the biggest issue, to my mind, is the question of who is defining 'literature'. The genre argument that King writes horror fiction is in my opinion not a very strong one. What about Poe, then?
This whole argument is not to stay that Stephen King will one day be considered a writer of literary fiction (he might, but then again he might not) and will be included in the canon (what is THE canon, anyway?). It is just to say that literature as a term is a question of definition. Hence, King might be a 'literary author' or he might not. The more important issue here seems to be whether you like to read his novels or not. People have different reasons for reading. I like to read King. I would not want to compare King with authors of 'literary classics' such as Dickens, but this is simply because I think their works are not objectively comparable. This being said, I also like to read the 'classics'. I love Poe, for example. I also love Vonnegut. Where would postmodern writing fit in the defition of what is 'literature' and what is not when postmodernist writers clearly did away with 'literary' traditions that were considered to make a good work (coherence and point of view, just to name two)?