Stephen King

In a response to a recent post of mine which included some disparaging comments about two of Stephen King's novels, Jahsonic suggests that my criticism is "for a large measure based on content related rather than style related criteria."

Nothing could be farther from the truth. As Jahsonic concedes, I would hardly be enthusiastic about the film versions of Carrie and The Dead Zone if I objected to their "content"--by which I assume Jahsonic means their horror/fantasy narratives, the supernatural occurences the novels are "about." My dislike of these two novels, as well as much of the rest of King's work (although not all--The Shining is a passably good horror novel, and I like the screenplay he wrote for George Romero's Creepshow), is based almost entirely on "style related criteria." I think Stephen King is a bad writer. More precisely, whereas Brian De Palma and David Cronenberg (as well as John Carpenter in his adaptation of Christine) treat the "content" of the source novels with exemplary style, are nothing if not great cinematic stylists, as a writer of prose fiction Stephen King has no style.

Jahsonic quotes Susan Sontag on invidious distinctions between style and content: "It would be hard to find any reputable literary critic today who would care to be caught defending as an idea the old antithesis of style versus content. On this issue a pious consensus prevails. … In the practice of criticism, though, the old antithesis lives on, virtually unassailed. Most of the same critics who disclaim, in passing, the notion that style is an accessory to content maintain the duality whenever they apply themselves to particular works of literature." Presumably I was guilty in my original post of inappropriately cordoning off style from content in King's fiction, in order to assail the latter. But it's precisely because I cannot so easily separate style and content that I find his fiction hard to take seriously. In fact, it seems to me that it is Stephen King himself who is guilty of detaching style from content, of not understanding that the two ought to work in concord and not at cross purposes, which in my opinion they too often do in his books.

At best, King's prose is blandly functional, a "plain" style occasionally gussied up with pseudo-colorful idioms. Here's a passage from The Dead Zone, describing the accident that sends Johnny Smith into a coma:

There was the sound of smashing glass. A huge gout of flame stroked its way up into the night. Johnny's head collided with the cab's windshield and knocked it out. Reality began to go down a hole. Pain, faint and far away, in his shoulders and arms as the rest of him followed his head through the jagged windshield. He was flying. Flying into the October night.

Dim flashing thought: Am I dying? Is this going to kill me?

Interior voice answering: Yes, this is probably it.

Flying. October stars flung across the night. Racketing boom of exploding gasoline. An orange glow. Then darkness.

His trip through the void ended with a hard thump and a splash. Cold wetness as he went into Carson's Bog, twenty-five feet from where the Charger and the cab, welded together, pushed a pyre of flame into the night.

Darkness.

Fading.

Until all that was left seemd to be a giant red-and-black wheel revolving in such emptiness as there may between the stars, try your luck, first time fluky, second time lucky, hey-hey-hey. The wheel revolved up and down, red and black, the marker ticking past the pins, and he strained to see if it was going to come up double zero, house number, house spin, everybody loses but the house. He strained to see but the wheel was gone. There was only blackness and that universal emptiness, negatory, good buddy, el zilcho. Cold limbo.

Johnny Smith stayed there a long, long time.

Does anyone want to defend this as good writing? When it's not straining after poetic phrasing that just lies limply on the page--"A huge gout of flame stroked its way," "His trip through the void ended with a hard thump," "revolving in such emptiness as there may between the stars"--it presents us with awkward repetitions--"up into the night," "into the October night," "pushed a pyre of flame into the night"--and just purely embarassing expressions--"Reality began to go down a hole," "only blackness and that universal emptiness, negatory, good buddy, el zilcho." King is trying to describe an extraordinary event as vividly as he can, but his relentlessly routine language simply isn't up to the task.

Here's another passage depicting Johnny's post-crash psychic abilities:

Johnny stopped suddenly and stiffened like a dog on point: "here," he muttered. "He did it right here."

Images and textures and sensations flooded in. The copper taste of excitement, the possibility of being seen adding to it. The girl was squirming, trying to scream. He had covered her mouth with one gloved hand. Awful excitement. Never catch me, I'm the Invisible Man, is it dirty enough for you now, momma?

Johnny began to moan, shaking his head back and forth.

Johnny's power of "second sight" is this novel's primary "supernatural" device (as are similar powers in other of King's books), but it's really hard to accept it with a straight face, much less experience it viscerally as a gateway to "horror," when the writing is as flat and listless as it is in a passage such as this. King renders the most extraordinary (and inherently incredible) occurences in the most ordinary kind of language, although it's hard to know whether he employs such language deliberately--in which case it's a very poor choice for bringing scenes like this to life--or whether this is just King's conception of what the language of fiction should be like, in effect the best he can do given the assumption that "content" is everything, style much less than even an afterthought. Ultimately, Stephen King is a realist despite himself, and despite his genre, as the burden of his prose style seems to be to present his characters and their predicaments in as transparently "lifelike" way as possible, adhering to conventional methods of plot, setting, and characterization even when the plot features outbreaks of "unreal" events and the characters find themselves in the most outlandish of situations. Paradoxically, however, his pedestrian prose fails to make his creations seem "real" in the manner demanded of works that violate the suppositions of ordinary reality: by making the depicted world a vivid, aesthetically transformed alternative to that reality so beguiling it makes those suppositions irrelevant.

Thus I just can't agree with Jahsonic that Stephen King's novels qualify as "transgressive fiction," fiction that "transcends everyday life" and "makes you curious of what life can and can’t be about." King's novels don't transcend everyday life so much as they make the strange events they portray seem almost as prosaic in the way they unfold as anything else in the routine of human affairs. And, in my opinion, they certainly don't make us "curious of what life can and can't be about." Their "content" is so perfunctorily related, so lacking in texture, that they only make us more aware that life will never be like that.

Nor can I agree that in the long run King will rank with other ostensibly "popular" writers such as Charles Dickens. Dickens's books still reveal to us a writer of prose that is vibrant, surprising, and transformative, that makes the long-vanished world of Victorian England as alive as it could have seemed to those who belonged to it--probably more so. King's fictional worlds are already dead (except when they are revived and reinvented by more talented filmmakers), done in by a prose style that withers on the page.

Comments

[Sissy]

King has written a few (very few) readable and marginally entertaining books, but he is definitley a hack. By his own admission, his style, such as it is, is the "literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries." He rehashes the same plots and characters ad nauseum. His great quantity of tasteless, pointless, biased, self-indulgent, pretentious, and sanctimonious trash will ensure that he has no claim to fame and that he will be largely, if not entirely, forgotten after his demise.

[stu g]

This article almost implies that all writing should be flowery and poignant in every breath. This would simply detract from King's outlandish narratives, killing much of the reader's suspension of disbelief. The passages quoted from The Dead Zone (a fine novel) actually read well. For example, the first passage quoted: shortish sentences creating a rhythm, mixed with flourishes of the protagonist's confusion are perfectly suitable for the scenario. It also ends on a note of ominous suspense; another one of King's strong bows.

[anon]

I couldn't agree more.

[jake]

He's not a bad writer, but a lot of his books are trash. And, just because people buy his books does not mean he's a good writer. Most of the people buying his books have no idea what good writing actually looks like. If he is such a great writer then why don't universities teach his work in creative writing work shops? Greatness is not determined by how many books you have sold. The average person is a moron. So, their opinions carry no weight in the literary world. He does have talent, but he chose to write crappy genre fiction over literary fiction.

[Jake]

I fully respect your opinion, Dan, but your reasons for King being a "bad writer" were pretty poor. You don't HAVE to be comparable to Dickens in order for you to be a good writer. In my opinion, The Dead Zone was one of his worst books; and you took passages from that book in order to support your opinion? Look at his greater works like The Shining, IT, Misery, etc. I know his books aren't written in the best sense, but that doesn't mean King is a bad writer. The story is all that matters. I think you're maybe taking the writing a little too seriously, and not the actual story itself. See, in my opinion, King isn't the best writer, but he's certainly not a BAD one. He has great, gripping stories and he's a great storyteller. If he were a bad writer, he wouldn't have over 350 million copies sold. So, maybe you should come up with better back-up information to support your opinion next time because this whole rant was poorly done. I would say the same thing even if I weren't a fan of King's. Thanks :)

[Joe]

Agreed your post hits the nail on the head the only thing great about stephen king is his ego.

[Prerak Bakliwal]

Everyone has a right to post his opinion...you may hate Stephen King, but there are more than a million out there who love him and they all love him for a reason.
Blinded in the so called "literary-hunger" for many of us, we have forgotten what Literature was truly meant for...it was meant to be told. Stories are never written keeping in mind that they should become literary phenomenons and if anyone does that...well, all i can do is laugh on him because he never understood Literature ever...
Stephen King writes stories, and no matter how much we criticise him, he still continues to write things that grips us at one point or the other. Having written almost hundred stories, you cannot expect the old man to be at his best, always. Read IT, read the SHINING and you'll know his literary prowess. And who cares about literary prowess anyways, he is a story teller, a master at his work, and no matter what you say...he still continues to be the best and people love his works.
And anyways, if we ever went according to you, literary fans, there should never be any horror fiction, isn't it?

[Greg M]

Well, Mordecai Richler - not exactly mediocre company - remarked that Stephen King can 'write very well indeed,' and praised Misery as 'extremely clever and witty.' It's not as clear-cut as King being just a 'bad writer.'

I agree with TimT that King's work might best be defined as 'patchy.' This is why you can find examples of awful prose and some novels (e.g., Cujo) that lack any merit at all. His prose can be admirably plain-spoken at times but also egregiously clumsy; and he all too often falls back on Twlight Zone clichés. Conversely, he has written many memorable short stories, some of his imagery is quite vivid, and much of his work has real *heart,* a virtue that high-minded critics often miss and that frequently eludes more sophisticated authors. In short, he is an ambiguous case: something better than bad, but well short of great (obviously). I'd submit The Stand and It in particular as flawed but worthwhile American novels.

King is thus a cut above the Danielle Steeles and Robert Ludlums of the world, inasmuch as some of his work has real feeling. It wouldn't surprise me if one or two of his stories/novels endure, not as classics, but as interesting entries in the history of readable horror fiction.

[Alaln Provost]

They say you can't argue with success. True. Still I have a right to my opinion and I think Stephen King is about as bad a writer as any I've read. A friend,who admires him, encouraged me to read some of his shorter novels. I found them laughably immature with absurd similies starting right out with a blue car that was like a tired dog. I don't think so. Most writers come up with ideas that they quickly abandon.Not King. If it occurs to him that the toaster may be haunted and will eventually attack every person in the family, that's a novel. I don't question that the man is brilliant. He is a brilliant marketer
and the most successful purveyor of schlock writing in history.

[CBL]

In Fiction there are no rules. If Stephen wants to kill off a kid to provoke a response from a reader than he is more than welcome. Literature does not have to be moral or sweet. It doesn't even have to be universally loved but self proclaimed literary geniuses (see above for some examples). It is an art, as long as it provokes the right reaction it has done it's job.

IT is also one of the greatest horror novels of all time.

[Renai]

Why has Stepehn King wrote stories about kids dying, I mean that film maximum overdrive where kids die from flying soda cans hitting them hard in the head and then a boys body is crushed by a steam roller and u actually hear his bones crunch (SICK!) and then on the movie IT a little boy is killed by that stupid clown and his arm is ripped off and he draggs a teenagers body into a pipe and pretty much breaking his back, and then u have got a little boy stabbing a voodoo doll of his father because his dad took his comic away from him (yeah great influence that is on young kids stephen), I know he didnt make the movies but he wrote the books to inpire them

[Jack Mowbray]

King must be a good storyteller otherwise he wouldn't have so many millions of readers who can't put his books down. I'd say he's a down-market, low to middle brow writer who writes so much that his work is bound to be patchy, as was Dickens' - e.g. there's an awful lot of bad, boring and repetitious writing in novels like Barnaby Rudge, Old Curiosity Shop, Nicholas Nickleby etc. King's style doesn't match up to James Joyce's or Samuel Beckett, but these writers didn't produce 2000-3000 words every day like a metronome. The same goes for another extremely popular and prolfic writer like Somerset Maugham who habitually wrote in a very plain, basic style, but knew how to tell a story that the average reader wanted to read. (Ironically, one of the reasons Samuel Beckett wrote in French was so that he could write 'without style' so if it was good enough for Beckett, it's good enough for 'lesser' writers.) He's never going to be a favourite of the academics and intellctuals, like Harold Bloom, who even describes Poe as 'abominable' and doesn't rate him that highly either.

I'd define King as a very gifted, prolific and imaginative storyteller who has managed to appeal to a very wide readership. But a Tolstoy or a Dostoyevsky or even a Dickens he ain't.

[Brian]

Bashing King is almost always done by writers less successful than he is. Are there any writers more successful? Sure you can point out some passages of bad prose by King just as you can from any writer no matter how "great" everyone agrees they may be. Someone once said, "A hack is an artist whose work is appreciated by too many people." Words shouldn't get in the way of good story elling. You shouldn't see the words on the page when you are reading them. King does that well. Real hacks, who largely write for little read literary magazines, try to force words to show how cleaver they are.

[Jake]

Wow, kid.

I'm rather amused that you're beating on a guy for a couple passages in his arguably worst book.

He may be lax at times, but he's still an incredible writer, regardless.

His stories alone put him up there with the greats. Why do you think he's sold something around 350 million books?

[ASterling]

If not aware, is what I mean -- one could enter the "Dead Writing Zone" and take a ride on the roulette wheel of deadly terror.

[ASterling]

I read this before Christmas and thought it a bit mean. But the truth is, no additional commentary was needed to make the point. The writing quoted speaks for itself.

I put a little commentary on my blog, in response to some writers that had been given extremely proscriptive writing rules. My answer to them was to be aware of what you write. If one, one could end up like these Stephen King passages.

[Richard]

I'd say that those who are saying he's a bad writer are thereby saying that his storytelling is ineffective, that he actually is a bad storyteller. To echo Steve and Finn, the point would be that, sans any kind of effective style, these readers are unable to be "pulled along" by whatever story King is trying to tell. I'd argue that readers who like this kind of stuff (who like being pulled along by "story" or "plot", style bedamned) are either able to ignore the bland writing or wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

And, anyway, King does sort of claim to be a "good" writer (as do some of his readers), or at least doesn't get why his stuff should not be awarded putatively "literary" awards. It's certainly not because it's "horror" or because it sells well.

[Dan Green]

"King has never claimed to be a great writer, so you're beating him up for something he doesn't even attempt in the first place."

My post didn't emerge from a vacuum. It was a direct response to criticism that in disparaging King I was focusing on "content" rather than "style." Apparently Jahsonic doesn't necessarily believe that style is something King "doesn't even attempt."

[Brandon]

Few people would argue that King is a good writer, so why flog a dead horse? the "let's piss on King's writing" is as tired as the cliches you pointed out in the excerpts. King has never claimed to be a great writer, so you're beating him up for something he doesn't even attempt in the first place. His writing, as bland as it is, just serves as a way to tell the story, no more, no less.

What I find amusing about the whole debate is that no one has said that King is a bad storyteller. Do you think it's possible that people actually read his books for the stories? I know that style trumps everything when it comes to books--at least that's the impression I'm getting from this discussion--but, if I'm not mistaken, storytelling has something to do with it, too.

I could be wrong, though.

[Diana]

I hadn't read anything by King (other than On Writing, which I liked but wasn't reading for style) until his latest, Lisey's Story, and I really, really didn't like it. I didn't know if he'd written it in a deliberately and drastically different way from any of his previous books until reading the above excerpts; I cringed in recognition. I won't try another.

[Robert Nagle]

seriously, I think you've blogged on this before, haven't you? And I made a comment on your post already, didn't I? (My memory is going, apparently).

Stephen King's On Writing is a classic how-to manual about the craft of writing. I could never write like him (nor would I want to), but he has deep insights into the mechanical parts of writing.

I've read little of King, but I found Misery to be compelling and insightful (although at parts it went overboard).

King has an instinctive sense of what sells, but it's curious that he doesn't seem to have a sense of what works will stand the test of time. He mentions The Stand as his favorite work, but I couldn't wade through it.

[Finn Harvor]

Steve's onto something important, I think. There are certain kinds of narratives that are simply so primal (esp if they can make a truth claim (okay, I'll cut it with the academic Ambiguity Speak; esp if they are based on fact)) that they have the effect of *pulling* us along as readers. It's a very compelling experience, and has had a more draining effect on literary fiction -- that is, the sales of literary fiction -- than I think is generally recognized. (Or maybe it's recognized but no one really has a clear idea of how to counter the phenomenon.)

re: writers who employ fantasy and are worth paying attention to -- my suggestions: Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. LeGuin, Mervyn Peake, Bruno Schulz.

[Steven Augustine]

King was after Djuna Barnes on my list of writers to check in on finally (and Djuna Barnes is several places after Kilgore Trout)...thanks for the horriffic, time-saving samples. Good god. I'll be skipping that particular treat in favor of brushing up on my Leon Uris.

A note on 'page turners'. I was up late one night reading about some grisly (real life) murder...pages and pages of ugly, semi-literate online text that went into the bloodiest detail. The poor quality of the writing did not deter me...I couldn't stop reading the savage tripe and I was up until the wee hours. It's the crudest, primal part of our minds, of course, that loves a 'story'. The more sophisticated bit, the one that (if properly nurtured) is capable of appreciating the exquisite pleasures of an evolved literary 'style'...is in some other precinct of the brain entirely. We yolk the two together as an expediency, I think. Apples and Orinjiz.

[TimT]

"... the insipidness of C S Lewis, as opposed to Tolkien"

You've got it the wrong way round in that sentence ...

[Jonathan Mayhew]

Wouldn't the insipidness of C S Lewis, as opposed to Tolkien, be an argument against that point? Even with Kafka--if his psychology were merely conventional there would be little point in it. You need to strangeness to go "all the way down," not just have a set of conventional characters who just happen to live in an absurd world. Isn't that the weakness of a lot of sci-fi? All that alienness, yet ultimately you might as well have characters sitting around a Victorian drawing room. You don't have to go all the way across the universe for that!

So we have two theories: the "one strangeness too strange" and the "strange all the way down." It's an interesting debate. I think the "strange all the way" works are simply (complexly) more interesting. How about the banality of Rowling's stock character types (the studious girl, the awkward socially inept kid, the wise old man, etc...). Obviously that's an advantage: you have recognizable types easing reader comfort and identification. On the other hand, you have a rather predictable, stock psychology that can be extremely tiresome.

[TimT]

C S Lewis once pointed out that to have a psychologically strange character in a strange world where strange things happened would be 'One strangeness too far'. (Or similar, I can't remember the exact phrasing.) Generally most SF and fantasy authors have relatively bland characters balancing out the unrealistic plots; I think the same observation could be applied to the prose style as well.

There are exceptions. One of the most radical would be 'Barefoot in the Head' by Brian Aldiss which describes the world after an LSD war. It's written from the perspective of one of the characters, so the style quickly becomes like that of Finnegans Wake.

Lovecraft did cultivate a certain style, it is true - he wrote sonnets, so he obviously was aware of the literary tradition - though most of his style was a pastiche, a Disneyfication of the past with a horror touch. I dislike him immensely: for one reason because when it comes to moments of psychological intensity, he completely ignores the 'show it, don't say it' rule. He is simply unable to 'show'. He will often say things like:

"He saw something which was very frightening, and he was very afraid."

Only his prose will be much more lurid and overworked than that.

[Dan Green]

It does seem that "fantasy" and "realism" are inherently at odds with one another. At the very least, a doggedly realistic style (like King's) does not seem the most lively way to create fantastic worlds. I generally find that fantasy writers who approach the creation of such worlds using a conventionally realist style--by which the imaginary world is related in all of its minute detail and the characters presented in terms of ordinary "psychological realism"--are indeed doing so "to their detriment." Kafka is the most glaring exception, although he is not per se a fantasy writer.

[Jeff VanderMeer]

I don't think King is as good as Dickens. And the examples you cite are pretty bland. But sometimes you need a delivery system like that to get away with certain things. I'm not defending him necessarily--just saying it might require more analysis.

JeffV

[Jeff VanderMeer]

A tangent, really, but...when you call Stephen King a realist in spite of himself, do you mean that someone writing fantasy or horror or SF is by definition not a realist? Because King is clearly a realist by choice. His prose style is clearly intentionally realistic.

I find there are tons of fantasy writers who are actually realists (often to their detriment) and plenty of mainstream literary writers who are fabulists, basically.

JeffV

[Dan Green]

I don't think King stacks up to any of the writers you mention, including Lovecraft, who, from what I've read of him, *does* have a style.

[Rodney Welch]

One other thing to add: how do you think King stacks up against the best horror/suspense writers over the course of English and American literary history? He's no Poe or Lafcadio Hearn or Saki or Charles Brockden Brown, I grant you, but is he in the league of, say, Lovecraft, maybe? He's no great shakes as a writer, but he's good at creeping you out.

There's a great and rather illuminating book which I dearly love. It's called "Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural," published by the Modern Library in the 1940s, still in print, and featuring work from across a very broad spectrum. I venture to say there are writers in it whose stories hold up who were not demonstrably better prose artisans than King.

[TimT]

Sounds good to me! And I apologise for my snooty-geeky tone - 'You just have to read the 'RIGHT' books!'. Thanks for not getting offended.

[Dan Green]

"we should judge books by what they set out to do"

I agree with that entirely, and if King merely wants to write horror stories that many readers clearly find entertaining, more power to him. I object only to the elevation of Stephen King to something he isn't: a stylist, a writer of "transgressive fiction," a novelist worthy of being compared to Dickens, etc.

[TimT]

*Shrugs*

It could be that you've just read different King books to me; I freely admit that I have read a good deal of King dross - many of the Dark Tower books and Gerald's Game - but the short stories that I talked about above were excellent. As to the identification of 'dull' prose style with unoriginal ideas and bad characters (as you see it), I'd say you're falling into the trap that some literary critics fall into: mistaking stylistic word play for the entire content of a book. I think it was Dr Johnson who maintained that we should judge books by what they set out to do; well, that seems a fair enough rule for King. He sets out for horror with a slight satirical touch, and sometimes he achieves it.

[Dan Green]

It wouldn't be if you believe King "communicates strange ideas well" and "has characters with interesting psychological backgrounds." But I don't. There's nothing strange about his ideas, and his characters are just boring, especially in their "psychological backgrounds." And these defects are entirely connected to his "unimaginative prose style."

[TimT]

Dan my friend, if a writer has an unimaginative prose style BUT communicates strange ideas well, has characters with interesting psychological backgrounds and uses a genre to make some interesting satirical points, then it would seem that 'bad writer' just isn't an apt description.

[Carl V.]

Good response. I haven't read Stephen King, other than On Writing, for years. That one was now at least 5 or 6 years or more ago so I cannot in any way argue the merits or lack thereof of his writing. It has been too long. All I can say is that I can echo the sentiments of Rodney Welch. Back when I did read The Shining, Pet Sematery, Thinner I remember them being page turners. I wasn't judging the writing (I was a teenager, I believe), but I was enjoying the ride. I also remember really enjoying the short stories/novellas that the movies Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption were based on. Stephen King may not be a good writer and he in no way compares to Dickens, but he has managed over the years to find a voice and, dare I say it, a style that has spoken to the masses seeking something creepy for generations and has done what I suspect all writers want to do: get their books into the hands of the public and make enough money to be able to write for a living. Whether I like him, or today's favorites like Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, or not I have to commend him for doing something he enjoys and getting paid for it.

[!]

Owned.

[Dan Green]

"So... I would back away from the bad writer description."

But I wouldn't.

[Rodney Welch]

I've only read one King novel in my life: "Pet Sematery."

It was very, very badly written, but I soon found myself turning a deaf ear to its style because it was so suspenseful. Usually I can't get through genre novels because mere horror or just finding out who done it isn't enough; I have to like the writing style. I prefer Elmore Leonard, P.D. James, Jim Thompson, Dashiell Hammett. But King was one of those rare cases -- Natsuo Kirino's novel "Out" was another -- where the anticipation and delivery of sheer gory content tended to outweigh the hackneyed prose.

I haven't read "Carrie" or "Christine," but I've seen the movies many, many times, so I can see your point regarding De Palma and Carpenter.

[Roy Rubin]

Bad writing is a lot like pornography. You know it when you see it.

[TimT]

Hmmm, agreed, his prose is kind of limp and dull, but at his best... he can be gripping, and terrifying. The stories in 'Nightshift' were, almost without exception, excellent. The original 'Salem's Lot' story in Nightshift was definitely transgressive, with the continuous inversion of traditional religious images. 'Misery' does make quite a devious satire, and the two characters are realised perfectly. He tries for another kind of claustrophobia in 'Gerald's Game' but never manages to hit it.

One reason for the prose, it acts as an effective counterbalance to the strange ideas. Bizarre stories involving maniacal characters are related in a flat, almost autistic tone, often by the cliched 'writer' character inserted into the plot. In some cases - Misery, for instance - it really hits the ticket.

So... I would back away from the bad writer description. Certainly not a failed writer, either. Maybe just a patchy writer. For me, the King clincher is the story 'The Moving Finger', published in 'Nightmares and Dreamscapes'. A single, bizarre story about an odd series of incidents that ends with the main character being poised on the edge of madness; simply and effectively told. It wouldn't be the first time a genre writer has proven themselves to be better at the short form rather than the novel form.