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Stephen King - what's up with that?

This is the first official blog-ish rant-ish post on my site. One of these days it'll be an actual essay, but that will be on a topic that I care about and find interesting, not about something I find vaguely recurringly irritating.

So, Stephen King. He's sometimes called the 'King of Horror'; personally, I prefer it when people call him a narcissist, or describe his work as plodding. Now, you might be thinking, "Fiver, that's a little rude. He's clearly successful and must write a good story, he has avid fans, he doesn't seem like some kind of evil Hollywood bastard..."

Let me stop you right there. I've heard it all before. Sure, he's successful, because he cranks out book after book without any kind of respite (or emotional introspection), and he writes about fucked up shit. Now, that's not a problem - seriously, I'm all for writing about fucked up shit. Explore it. Analyse it. Critique it. But I have two problems with King's fucked up shit.

Firstly, the way King writes about certain things really puts me off. I've read one King novel, IT, some of his "on writing" nonfiction stuff, and I've picked up some of his books in libraries and read a bit without actually checking them out (not a good sign, right?). I read IT because I liked the movie well enough and I wanted to see what the characters were like in the original novel. That was my first mistake - you don't go to King for detailed character studies, from what I understand. That's fine, it's just not what I was hoping for. Not a strike against his name... yet.

Then I read more of the book. By this point, I was getting a similar impression of King from reading his novel as I do of Tarantino while watching one of his films. Someone who uses their medium to get away with saying racial slurs and treating their female characters like shit under the guise of exploring... something. Masculinity? Violence? Fear? All of the above?

This isn't to say that you can't explore racism and trauma and misogyny in fiction. Definitely do that. Actually, do it more, please. But there's a difference between exploration and glorification, between meaningfully discussing and deconstructing social issues, and watching them unfold on the page or the screen while you stuff popcorn into your mouth like it's some kind of circus act.

That's my first problem. The other is that, in terms of fucked up shit, he's the most popular horror writer out there. I've been in bookstores where their (admittedly already small) horror section is made up almost entirely of Stephen King novels. A lot of Stephen King novels. It doesn't seem fair - I know that there are plenty of lesser-known horror writers out there who are doing great things. Maybe the reason why King is so popular is because he's one of the few well-known horror authors, and a lot of people do really want to read about fucked up shit.

Who knows? King is a mystery to me. Some fans will tell me to read more of his work, that I just didn't get the right one, that I should try again. But I didn't like it and I don't like him much either, especially not after this article compared him to Jeff Bezos (unironically and uncritically). I don't think I'll ever read one of his novels again. If you're looking to read horror, but not King, may I suggest The Grip of It by Jac Jemc (if you like haunted houses), or The Ritual by Adam Nevill, which has been adapted into a film and is quite a fun (and somewhat haunting) read.

That's all I have to say, I think.