Just started reading this again (the last time may have been when it was released), and even just a few pages in, I'm drawn in. Drawn into the story, but also King's...universe, if you will. I haven't kept up with King, started to lose a little interest in the mid-Nineties, "Rose Madder" is responsible for that.
I started reading King even before I discovered Bruce, my first was Pet Semetary and I was 11. Then Cujo (first the zombie cat, then the rabid St. Bernard...would this be considered good parenting today? 😂)
Anyway, one line really stood out in the aboslutely awesome start of the book, when the car crashes into Hapscomb's Texaco in Arnette, Tx.; an ambulance comes to transport the driver to hospital: " ...red domelight pulsing blood-shadows across the gas station's tarmac".
That's either an absolutely fantastic description, or a bad, cheap one.
I love it, to me, it's a great description - though I've never seen a blood-shadow, I still know exactly what it looks like, thanks to Stephen, here. And it reminds me of why I used to love Steve so much, I just might fall in love with him all over again.
Doesn't sound like a lot, I never finished Rose Madder myself, and after that, there are numerous novels of his that I haven't read. In fact, probably most of his output from the 2000's, I was led a bit astray by Haruki Murakami (grateful for that, rhough). I need to catch up on King, methinks. Desperation was quite good, if I remember correctly.
Roadwork is the only Bachman book I've never been able to finish—the others I've all read so many times—and one of the very few Stephen King novels I've never actually read.
(Although I think there are at least a few from the past decade I still haven't read, and I've never read Desperation. Which now kinda sounds like a lot, but hey, he's published 61 novels, for pete's sake!)
ETA: I should add that I never finished Roadwork because the three or four times I started it, I barely got into it before I thought, yeah, no, too dark for me. Which is a funny thing for a King fan to say, but it's one thing to read about (terrifying!) vampires or haunted hotels, and quite another to read about something so damn believable and awful. Actually, now that I think about it, when I started Desperation, I was still in the middle of my very long break from King, and I had the same reaction as I had to Roadwork: this seems too real and too dark for me. I should give that one another go.
Good call, & agree. I came to like Roadwork too, although at the time I read the Bachman books (I was 13, I think), I didn't quite get it and it was my least favourite of the 4 stories in the collection.
I've been reading King since the mid-Eighties. At first my brother's second hand copies, and then my own pristine virgin copies as they came out. Cycling home from school up North Rand Road in the hot summer sun with a blazer on so that I could get home as quickly as possible to throw together a sarmie, get to my room, open the pages and climb back in. Like hitting pause on a movie... It sat that way while I slept and went to school and as soon as I opened the cover it would resume playing and I was immediately lost in the story once again. Still some of my very best memories.
There are a few that really stood out for me. The Long Walk really made an impression on me, for some reason. The Stand, of course, which I first read in the uncut edition. Pet Sematary which was the first book to genuinely give me nightmares. Salems Lot... And, of course, The Dark Tower. I have all of the Tower books, but I have not yet read them all. Like a favourite album, I seem to want to go back to reading The Gunslinger over and over, rather than giving the new album a listen. The Green Mile, especially in the original format, may be my favourite King story. It made for an excellent movie too, just like Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
More recently, I really enjoyed Gwendy's Button Box. It felt like he wrote it a long time ago, and yet at the same time, I knew it was a brand new book.
The Stephen King book I have re-read most often? On Writing. I really hope he writes a 'volume II' one day.
But I went off topic.
My first reading of The Stand, I was in the 7th grade, 1979. I noticed Corey Burkett, who say behind me in English, had the book with him every day. That original paperback printing with the black cover and the eyes. I paid a little tribute to that cover in the artwork of my book Southern Highway Gospel Companion. Anyway, Corey talked it up and I got a copy and, ironically, I landed home with the flu and read it in bed. The book absorbed me. It was the most epic road trip since Frodo and company set out for Mordor.
When the uncut edition came out, I had already read the book twice, but I was enthralled again with both the familiar and the new bits.
Ooh, good call. And once again, it's because he's being forced to work with/inside constraints (this time, by writing a children's book).
If I had to pin his best storytelling down to one book, I'd have to give the nod to The Eyes Of The Dragon.
Much as I (usually) love his novels, as with Kurt Vonnegut Jr, I've always preferred King's short stories and novellas, as they force him to curb his most profligate tendencies and just stick to the story. Of course, true to form, with each subsequent collection, the stories themselves tended to get longer and longer and have more novellas...but at least they're better than his poetry.
(I know I may be sounding critical, but I really am a serious fan and once upon a time was nearly obsessive about his stuff.)
But of his novels, I think Firestarter remains my all-time favorite. I'm not sure I would even put it in his Top 5 best...but it's the one that most rends my heart.
I surely do love Mid-World, though...
My favorite King book when The Talisman isn't.
A brilliantly told story worth revisiting every now and again.
I suspect most of those disregarding his work have read little to none of his stuff. On the other hand, horror--of which he hasn't actually written much in the past 30 years, although I think I'd argue that it nevertheless still underpins a fair amount of his not at all horror work--really just isn't some people's cuppa.
Absolutely, he can write some horrendous stuff. With prolific writing like his, though, there has to be some degree or percentage of shittyness in his work.
I don't understand those that diss him, though, because he's clearly a very, very talented storyteller. He's even good, and can be remarkable at times.
He's not necessarily elegant, but the way he often can convey an atmosphere, or an environment or build dread...if yoi can do that, you clearly have a mastery of the language.
At least once or twice per SK novel I'll come across a line that just makes me groan. But despite--or maybe because of--that, I think he's about as great a storyteller as the English language has ever had. He's not necessarily a great writer, in terms of deftness of language. But my god can that man tell a story. I legit think Mark Twain or Charles Dickens — two other storytelling masters who were themselves sophisticated wordsmiths — would have been bowled over by some of his stuff.