Salon.com > Stephen King

“The Walking Dead”: Anti-libertarian critique

Sun, 05 May 2013 20:00:00 +0000

I watched the first two seasons of “The Walking Dead” over the last couple of weeks, and am as thoroughly spoiled on the events of the third season as one can be without actually watching them. And some of the familiar beats struck me, the worn narrative ruts that other stories have carved, but we rarely pay much attention to.

There comes a moment in nearly all post-apocalyptic stories when the characters are compelled to take to the road. In reality, if there is such a thing, people would do the exact opposite. They stay in familiar halls, linger on the same few streets that are most comfortable. The staples of the genre’s thought experiment would hold true in the real world: the breakdown of order, the need to rummage further and further from home. But that need to expand would likely take place in a widening gyre, not an escape onto a road to the horizon. I Am Legend is perhaps the exception that proves the rule, in which the protagonist stays in his home for the entire tale, fortifying his little suburban ranch house against the end of the world.

Stephen King: My mother-in-law scares me

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 01:58:00 +0000

Stephen King loves scaring people, but one student at University of Massachusetts Lowell tried to find out Friday what scares him.

"Spiders, snakes ... my mother-in-law," the writer said with a grin.

The author of international bestselling books including "Carrie" and "The Shining" came to the college to talk with writing students.

English Department professor Andre Dubus III, another bestselling author and an old friend of King's, shared the stage for about an hour as students asked questions about their craft.

King told the crowd of about 125 students that his goal is to write stories that sizzle with emotion.

"I'm a confrontational writer. I want to be in your face. I want to get into your space. I want to get within kissing distance, hugging distance, choking distance, punching distance. Call it whatever you want. But I want your attention."

He got that Friday, plus some laughs.

Wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, the 65-year-old writer from Maine peppered his talk with profanity and promised students he was just a regular guy.

He said they shouldn't be in awe like he was when he was a University of Maine freshman and heard a talk from "Catch-22" author Joseph Heller.

Better than “Hunger Games”?

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Ever since the release of the 1932 pre-Code classic “The Most Dangerous Game," hunting humans for sport has been one of the world’s oldest movie pastimes. It allows the audiences to have it both ways: to feel superior to the craven fictional thrill-seekers who implement these hunts, and viscerally partake in the same process.

The genesis of the dangerous game that drives “The Hunger Games” is somewhat more complicated. It is the end product of a true cultural Cuisinart. Some point to the Japanese novel and film “Battle Royale”; others to the over-the-top Italian movie “The Tenth Victim,” based on Robert Sheckley’s 1953 short story. Then, there is Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Richard Dawson’s greatest hit “The Running Man,” or Stephen King’s other futuristic nightmare, “The Long Walk.”

In support of Stephen King

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:35:00 +0000

READING DWIGHT ALLEN'S “My Stephen King Problem: A Snob’s Notes” was like wandering through that part of the mental institution where the inmates are wearing stethoscopes and calling themselves doctors. Smart readers, unite! Let us decry the naked Emperor called Stephen King, and restore our soiled integrity! Uh, okay. After that, can we all play Thundercats?

On a more serious note, I can understand Allen’s frustration. Literature no longer wields the same cultural currency it did fifty years ago. We’re not all talking about the latest Wharton, Updike, or Carver. The Pulitzer in fiction wasn’t even awarded this year (see Laura Miller’s explanation). As corporations bloat into obese, self-perpetuating monsters, our society has fractured into thousands of small, like-minded bubbles. We don’t consume art; we produce text messages. Everybody’s a star! Reality television has-beens, unite!

Stephen King: You can be popular and good

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 22:05:00 +0000

Look, is there any easier target than Stephen King, the self-proclaimed “Literary Big Mac” of American popular fiction?

As I read Dwight Allen's piece "My Stephen King Problem," my personal bat signal went off when I came across the reader comment that “this is the most rambling, dull, unfocused and self-absorbed piece I've ever read in Salon.” Hey, I thought, some guy is stealing my act! And then, suitably outraged, I read the article. Which brings up an entirely different kind of outrage.

How shall I put this diplomatically?

Allen’s article isn’t just a bile-drenched, meandering hatchet job, it is a hatchet job with a rusty, dull blade, devoid of insight into anything other than the insecurities of its writer.