![Stephen King is a faggot [729x339 - 29KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/BQehC0.png){kind=link}
King is a good writer? Well, in a way. He delivers a consistent level of quality in his books, but it is not a particularly impressive level. Nothing he writes has any real originality. You never get a sense reading his work that he is breaking boundaries, or taking risks, or trying out something new, or extending himself to a place he's never been before. No, it's always the same competent prose, the same entertaining but simplistic story lines, the same set of characters from little Stevie's childhood, recycled over and over and over. Let's face it, if every Steven King book were wiped off the face of th earth, what would we lose? A little mindless entertainment, that's all.
That's probably fair. I don't think he is somebody high school seniors ought to be studying in AP English. Within the realm of horror fiction, I think he was fairly innovative. He brought a sort of humor to the gothic genre that was kind of his signature, but which I thought actually increased the effectiveness of the horror.
I like to write as well, and I take stabs at horror fiction now and again. I call his technique 'leaving the light on'. It is just something I extrapolated from reading him, and that I took with me because it seemed valuable.
The idea is no matter where you go in the haunted house, you leave the light on in the room prior to the next dark room. Lifts you up to let you down.
In terms of most contemporary fiction, would the world be hurt by its loss? Probably not. These aren't necessarily definitive of 'high culture'. That said, writing entertaining fiction that a person wants to sit down and read in their free time isn't something to dismiss either.
Most people read Dante because they had to, not because they'd give up their Sunday night to sit down for a few hours with his work. It's just a different goal.
the same set of characters from little Stevie's childhood, recycled over and over and over.
The black ones are even worse, they are always either magical and noble, or poor downtrodden victims. Never anything like average people, I guess they are the rich White liberal from an all White state's imaginative version of what black people are like.
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