The Greatest Living Authors

dr gonzo

PurpleBee wrote: »

Salem's lot is the only King I've ever read mainly because it's supposed to be one of his best novels. He just doesn't have the delicate touch of a great writer, everything is too blatant with him.

Stephen King quoted from Cell wrote:

He was naked except for a pair of what looked like brand-new Nikes with bright red swooshes. His cock swung from side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock on speed. He hit the far sidewalk and sidewheeled west, back toward the Common, his butt clenching and unclenching in fantastic rhythm.

I know nobody here is going to argue that cell is anywhere near the guys best material (at least I assume not) but I will never forget reading this and being blown away by its utter inanity. This paragraph has all the literary maturity of a school assignment.

Admittedly The Shining was excellent, but every other attempt I've made to read King has been wasted time.


Back on topic: Maybe a little controversial perhaps but Neil Gaiman...?

apsalar

I quite like Pat Conroy myself. For sheer beauty of language he's right up there with Salman Rushdie for me... Tim Winton is the best I've read from Australia and Annie Proulx is also excellent. Boy, I could go on..there are a lot of great writers out there who are very good at their craft.

Barbara Kingsolver is on a par with Margaret Atwood for me and I also like Haruki Murakami. I find Philip Roth boring, but that's just me. Stephen King may not be the best but for me he is the finest story-teller out there. I think his short stories bring out the best in his talents and horror aside, he's entertaining..and what do I open a book for but to be entertained?

Kinski

Valmont wrote: »

If he is so dumb I suppose he sold 350,000,000 books by accident, then?

I said he was a dumb writer, who writes dumb books. The DaVinci Code is a dumb book too, and it still sold by the bucketload. And King's impressive sales can't be attributed soley to his "genius." He owes a lot of the publicity he's had to the many film and TV adaptations of his work, which have often been changed substantially during adaptation.

Take The Shining, for example: there's a story that during production Stanely Kubrick once woke King with a phone call in the early hours of the morning. "Stephen, do you believe in God?" the director asked. "Yes," King replied. Kubrick responded simply, "Thought so," and hung up. Kubrick felt that the heavy emphasis on supernatural phenomena in the novel would only frighten religious sorts, so he downplayed that in the movie, preferring to craft a narrative that was as much a psychological horror as a ghost story.

In you want to read an extended (and very harsh) critique of King's work, I'd recommend the chapter on him in S.T. Joshi's The Modern Wierd Tale.

He was naked except for a pair of what looked like brand-new Nikes with bright red swooshes. His cock swung from side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock on speed. He hit the far sidewalk and sidewheeled west, back toward the Common, his butt clenching and unclenching in fantastic rhythm.

Da Shins Kelly

With regards to Stephen King, while I don't think he's very lyrically gifted or anything, I do think he's great at what he does. He's probably the best writer of a horror story you're going to find. He knows how to build up tension and create an atmosphere, and some of the plots are so painfully straight-forward and yet effective. Sure, he's no Cormac McCarthy when it comes to language usage, but he tells a great story, and he's the master of his field. Cannot be touched with regards to horror, I don't think. Pet Sematary is easily his best work, for me.

theginsandwich

Orhan Pamuk is definitely one of the greatest alive today. "My Name is Red" is incredible. Or Gunter Grass. As well as "The Tin Drum" he wrote a novella called "Crabwalk" that is perfect in the sense that you couldn't add or take away a single word (perhaps it being a translation should be taken into account though?). "Everyman" by Philip Roth also had that same perfection, though I found some of his other books, such as "The Plot Against America" and "Portnoy's Complaint" to be of lower quality; the latter in particular was a great disappointment given the hype that surrounds it.

I remain unmoved by Jose Saramago. Perhaps it is the translation, but I found his books turgid, boring, and difficult to follow, in particular due to his idiosyncratic punctuation.

Definitely not Stephen King. He's a great storyteller, but is lacking in other necessary qualities. Though I found his book "On Writing" very entertaining, Joycean anecdotes included.

D-FENS

You're right, his choice of words sometimes..

He was naked except for a pair of what looked like brand-new Nikes with bright red swooshes. His cock swung from side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock on speed. He hit the far sidewalk and sidewheeled west, back toward the Common, his butt clenching and unclenching in fantastic rhythm.

Can't believe he chose Nike over Adidas

Dibble

Deleted User wrote: »

JM Coetzee is a writer for the ages, I think. Another American I'd rate is Philip Roth.

Not to be pedantic, but I think JM Coetzee is South African.

Valmont

Kinski wrote: »

I said he was a dumb writer, who writes dumb books.

If your only argument against Stephen King's genius is that he is a 'dumb writer who writes dumb books' then I'll have to ask that you go and read The Shining and come back to us. Otherwise your argument just reeks of unfounded snobbery.

apsalar

How could I forget Gunter Grass? Thank you theginsandwhich

MungBean

What about Rushdie ? Midnights Children and Satanic Verses are already considered classics of the highest order.

Kinski

Valmont wrote: »

If your only argument against Stephen King's genius is that he is a 'dumb writer who writes dumb books' then I'll have to ask that you go and read The Shining and come back to us. Otherwise your argument just reeks of unfounded snobbery.

I've already provided an example of him writing something dumb in one of his books (in the book in which he lays out his ideas about writing, no less). If you want more, then here you go. (the Joshi on Google Books, but you might not be able to access much, if any).

And it's nothing to do with snobbery - some of my favorite novels are science fiction, an oft-derided genre.

eire4

I am a big fan of Morgan Llywelyn for historical fiction, Tim Pat Coogan for history and John Connolly for crime fiction. I also like a lot of Anne Rice's and Issac Asimov's work among others.

Killer_banana

Valmont wrote: »

Have you read The Shining? It's a masterpiece. King is very underrated.

I have a love/hate relationship with Stephen King and The Shining falls definitively on the hate side. I liked the last quarter but overall I found it boring and drawn out.

I think when Stephen King gets it right it's brilliant but he has got it wrong a huge number of times.