According to Stephen, "Both Rowling and Meyer, they're speaking directly to young people... The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good."
Yes. I did read the piece, and was curious to know if Our Host was quoting King from another source, or just paraphrasing the article, because I couldn't see where King was being quoted as actually using the phrase.
Indeed (although I haven't actually made any statement as to my opinion of the journalistic integrity of either the website or the article, so your second sentence is actually a Loaded Statement).
I was actually just asking Our Host for clarification (which he gave) because if it was the case that it was a direct quote from King, I wanted to use it.
Omg! And then I had HORMONEs and we couldn't suparate because it was TROO WUV and he was watching me from outside my window and stalking me but that's okay because it is TROO WUV and we cannot TEAR AWAY from each other and he sparkles and then I wanted hot vampire sex0r but he said it would break me :(( but I said it was ok because it is TROO WUV.
And all the other boys fancy me but I don't like them and I matchmade them so I can stick with TROO WUV of the vampire sparkles boy.
I can't forgive him for the end of the series... it was the most gobsmackingly ridiculous end to a glorious series of books and it completely invalidated the whole f'ing thing.
I'd go into specifics but I wouldn't want to ruin it for people who haven't had the experience flushed yet.
Immortal super-powerful vampires (who don't drink blood or catch fire in sunlight) choosing to go to *high school*, voluntarily, and this isn't presented as some bizarre Dadaist hell?
Not a single female character anywhere in the series who isn't weak-willed, bland, completely dependent on "their man", and completely lacking in independent thought?
Creepy abusive stalker dude doing creepy abusive stalker things and the girl *loving it* because it's TWOO WUV and that makes everything okay?
The thinly concealed Mormon allegorical propaganda in all of this?
(And all of that leaves aside Meyer's crimes against the English language.)
It's fine to enjoy them. That's entirely subjective, people are free to have bad taste. But they are not by any rational standard good, and don't pretend that they are.
Yes, exactly! King isn't the pinnacle of writing, but he writes well enough for the books to be enjoyable (and they have decent plots, which is the most important thing).
I absolutely could not stand The Dark Tower, in the slightest. The first book is one of only a handful of books I did not have any desire to finish, ever[1], and it's only of only two books I hated that I finished anyway because people told me it got better[2]. And it's the only one that *didn't*.
King's good books are excellent. His bad ones are *really* miserable. And I simply do not understand the popularity of The Dark Tower series.
[1]: The list also includes Wizard's First Rule, Left Behind, Satan Is Alive And Well On Planet Earth, Chariots Of The Gods, The Fellowship Of The Ring, From A Buick 8, and Vengeance Of The Tao.
[2]: Fellowship was the other, and it was the one that got better. And it was still crap, but I can see how Tolkien's IDEAS were awesome even if his WRITING was complete shit and desperately needed an editor to punch him in the head every time he felt like including a song.
I thought I was the only one who felt that way about LotR! I tried the damn book three times, and COULD NOT get any further than 1/3 through, try as I might.
See the movies, you'll get the story and you won't have to deal with endless chapters of Tom Fucking Bombadil and all the rest of the cast of badly-written mental defectives that Tolkien saddled his world with.
The books themselves are painfully awful, and redeemed only by the fact that there's a pretty neat story under there if you can just ignore the absolutely abysmal writing it takes to get to it.
that was my feeling too. the movies were great. The books... christ.
Have you read The Princess Bride? I kind of want to do an abridgment of LotR like William Goldman did of the "original" Morgenstern manuscript. (I'm sure he was making fun of Tolkien with the whole concept.) Not for publication; just for my kids or something.
I've read The Princess Bride. And the "original" never existed. The abridged version is generally known as "the movies".
I tried to read the Lord Of The Rings when I was 12 and again at 15, and couldn't stand it. I tried again at 25 and found I could find the cool underneath the crap writing, and finished the series.
The Silmarillion is still too goddamn boring for me to stomach, and I've read Ovid. Maybe I'll try again at 50.
The books themselves are painfully awful, and redeemed only by the fact that there's a pretty neat story under there if you can just ignore the absolutely abysmal writing it takes to get to it.
See also: Lovecraft. Except the stories are wildly variable.
I feel I should mention, I haven't read Wolves of the Callah, or in fact any of the Dark Tower stuff. But I've had the plot described to me, and Doombots wielding Lightsabers sounds less offensive to the rational mind than sparkly vampire stalkers.
Did Lovecraft write anything other than short stories? I've only found the short stories so far. They're all interesting, though not all of them were my personal cup o' tea.
The only things that could really be called anything but short stories are novella-or-short novel-lenght The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, and At the Mountains of Madness.
THANK GOODNESS!! I am not the only one who could not read the entire Lord of the Rings. I've tried.. twice. I did much better the second time, but... it was boring. :/ So I went back to read The Hobbit to see if I was on crack when I read it, but The Hobbit is FUN and FANTASTIC. It's a much sillier, enjoyable read than LOTR.
You can't argue taste. Though I really like some of the things that King explores in the Dark Tower books. Several of the books are *really* good, and others are somewhat less so.
Roland is interesting as both a perfect and imperfect hero. Some of the things he touches on briefly I wish he'd explored more fully.
But in the end King unravels that rich tapestry, wipes his buttocks with it and trashbins it.
Oooh... I have no problem admitting I haven't read even 1/4 of King's work, so I'm sure there's a lot of BAD stuff which I've managed to dodge. But even with David Eddings, one of my favourite authors, not all books are winners. I couldn't get into any of his books about Sparhawk, for example (though I might try again later in life).
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 04:28 am (UTC)But god, that's funny.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 04:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:45 pm (UTC)But thanks for trying to help.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 02:19 am (UTC)I agree that given the website, the journalistic integrity of the article is in question.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 04:07 am (UTC)I was actually just asking Our Host for clarification (which he gave) because if it was the case that it was a direct quote from King, I wanted to use it.
But regardless, again, thanks for your help.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 09:18 am (UTC)And all the other boys fancy me but I don't like them and I matchmade them so I can stick with TROO WUV of the vampire sparkles boy.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 12:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 12:35 pm (UTC)OMG SPARKLES!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 12:46 pm (UTC)Of course, the screenwriter did have to go and make it nearly coherent...
But the Meyey cameo makes up for it. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 03:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 07:18 pm (UTC)I'd go into specifics but I wouldn't want to ruin it for people who haven't had the experience flushed yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 03:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 03:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 03:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 03:37 pm (UTC)Not a single female character anywhere in the series who isn't weak-willed, bland, completely dependent on "their man", and completely lacking in independent thought?
Creepy abusive stalker dude doing creepy abusive stalker things and the girl *loving it* because it's TWOO WUV and that makes everything okay?
The thinly concealed Mormon allegorical propaganda in all of this?
(And all of that leaves aside Meyer's crimes against the English language.)
So yeah. You could say I'm not a fan.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 04:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:09 pm (UTC)Mayer's writing is worse than what I wrote when I was TEN. I can say that with confidence b/c I still have all of what I wrote.
The irony is, if shit like her can be printed, what the hell is holding me back from writing? (Besides procrastination.)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 05:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 05:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-04 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 12:06 am (UTC)King's good books are excellent. His bad ones are *really* miserable. And I simply do not understand the popularity of The Dark Tower series.
[1]: The list also includes Wizard's First Rule, Left Behind, Satan Is Alive And Well On Planet Earth, Chariots Of The Gods, The Fellowship Of The Ring, From A Buick 8, and Vengeance Of The Tao.
[2]: Fellowship was the other, and it was the one that got better. And it was still crap, but I can see how Tolkien's IDEAS were awesome even if his WRITING was complete shit and desperately needed an editor to punch him in the head every time he felt like including a song.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 12:29 am (UTC)I thought I was the only one who felt that way about LotR! I tried the damn book three times, and COULD NOT get any further than 1/3 through, try as I might.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 12:34 am (UTC)The books themselves are painfully awful, and redeemed only by the fact that there's a pretty neat story under there if you can just ignore the absolutely abysmal writing it takes to get to it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 12:38 am (UTC)Have you read The Princess Bride? I kind of want to do an abridgment of LotR like William Goldman did of the "original" Morgenstern manuscript. (I'm sure he was making fun of Tolkien with the whole concept.) Not for publication; just for my kids or something.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 12:48 am (UTC)I tried to read the Lord Of The Rings when I was 12 and again at 15, and couldn't stand it. I tried again at 25 and found I could find the cool underneath the crap writing, and finished the series.
The Silmarillion is still too goddamn boring for me to stomach, and I've read Ovid. Maybe I'll try again at 50.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 01:09 am (UTC)I know, thus the quotes. But when I was reading it, I thought "damn, if only someone would do that to tolkien".
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 01:18 am (UTC)See also: Lovecraft. Except the stories are wildly variable.
I feel I should mention, I haven't read Wolves of the Callah, or in fact any of the Dark Tower stuff. But I've had the plot described to me, and Doombots wielding Lightsabers sounds less offensive to the rational mind than sparkly vampire stalkers.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 02:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 02:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 02:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 02:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 07:25 pm (UTC)Roland is interesting as both a perfect and imperfect hero. Some of the things he touches on briefly I wish he'd explored more fully.
But in the end King unravels that rich tapestry, wipes his buttocks with it and trashbins it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-08 02:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-05 02:26 am (UTC)