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Damning Stephen King

Well, this is just sad. I've been running the Kenneth and Linda Lay Emergency Relief Fund since the month began, and how much have we received so far? One dollar. One stinking dollar. What's the matter with you people? Where's the compassion? Where's the love?

There's a rather stupid article on Stephen King's retirement up at Salon.com. The article isn't quite as bad as the "Lord of the Rings" vs. "Star Wars" article that appeared last month, but it's close.

Let's give the author some credit: he is brave enough to admit that he likes some of Stephen King's work. True, he establishes right at the beginning Stephen King is at best "unpolished"... and he feels he has to sprinkle a little reference to Tom Wolfe here and a firsthand account of a New Yorker awards ceremony there, just so we know his literary street cred is intact. But at least he lays the groundwork for a real critique -- you can't reduce his article to, "Stephen King sux!" So that's something, at least.

Still, this sort of damning-with-faint-praise really gets under my skin. Why is it each time a "literary" writer refers to a science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, or mystery novelist, they have to play footsies? "When I was a child I just loved Writer X -- golly, she was such rip-roaring fun!" God forbid you should come right out and say, "I like Terry Brooks!" "Orson Scott Card is A-OK!"

(For the record: I've never been all that fond of Stephen King's fiction, and Terry Brooks was only rip-roaring fun when I was a child. There, now that my street cred is preserved, let's move on...)

Anyway, the really silly part comes on the second page, where the author tries to portray King as estranged from his fans, hiding behind legal warnings:

Consider the series of questions and answers his Web site, StephenKing.com, provides for fans. "Will he read my manuscript?" Nope. "To avoid any litigation problems, he has been advised by his agents not to look at any manuscript that has not been accepted by a publisher." Does he accept story ideas? "To avoid any litigation problems, he has been advised ... " Can he help find an agent? "There being some legal problems with this ... " You get the picture. King has built a tall, spiked, wrought-iron fence around himself, and hung a "Beware of (Rabid) Dog" sign on it.

Eh? I'm not aware of any published author who reads strangers' manuscripts, accepts strangers' story ideas, or helps strangers find an agent. If you know of one, let me know, because I sure could use someone to hold my hand while I find an agent...

No, King is absolutely right about the legal problems, but let's face it: he's being polite to use that as an excuse. I can't imagine how many submissions he would get from his millions of fans if he offered to read manuscripts... but I know it would put poor, overworked Tim to shame.

I dunno. Salon.com must really be in its death-throes, publishing obtuse articles just to provoke a response. After all, these days they're presenting product press releases as journalism. It's all downhill from here.

That's about it. Oh, except I bought a copy of Windows 2000 and did a clean install on my PC. I thought that would solve certain issues once and for all, but it doesn't seem to have helped a bit. And here I was being good, not buying a cracked version of the OS. I hate, hate, hate, Microsoft. That's the last cent I pay them, ever.

Edit, April 2003: Hang in there, Evan-from-February-2002. Salvation is just around the corner...

Posted by Evan Goer on Feb. 19, 2002 at 11:10 PM