I recently came across this editorial for the LA Times:

THE DECISION to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis. The publishing industry has stooped terribly low to bestow on King a lifetime award that has previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and to playwright Arthur Miller. By awarding it to King they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little more for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat. If this is going to be the criterion in the future, then perhaps next year the committee should give its award for distinguished contribution to Danielle Steel, and surely the Nobel Prize for literature should go to J.K. Rowling.

You can read the rest of it here:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi...rican_readers/

King must have slept with this guy's wife given the level of contempt in his article. While I'm not the biggest Stephen King fan in the world, I thinks it is hard to dispute that he has exhibited a masterful level of craft. Including genres that one wouldn't describe as 'penny dreadfuls'.

King has been writing for what? 25? 30 years? How many people have read his work? Sure, a lot of it is chock full of monsters and rediculous colliquialisms, but isn't it the story that we all prize the greatest. His work has penitrated the minds of millions. Is he not worth recognizing as having made "a disinguished contribution'?

I can't help but feel this is attack is made largely on King's commercial sucess. After all, it's such a vulgar occurance, that thankfully never befell masters such as Twain, Shakespear or Dickins.

I'm tired after reading this diatribe. I think I'll go and stretch my legs.

I've probably only read half a dozen King novels but I think that is a good description.

I agree that the columnist is writing like a snob but they often seem to do that to attract a huge post bag and secure their own jobs. Iconoclasm rules!

for the story!!!

Gotta love snobs. Love him or hate him a lot of people read King's books and his writing has affected the entire industry. He deserved the award.

I guess if people actually read your books you are a sell out.

Hmmm, I think King should get the award. I'd give it to him for the Dark Tower series alone, but he has written plenty more great stories, so I see no reason why he shouldn't get it.

I understand this person has an opinion, but seriously what is eating him? He's upset that someone else more worthy won't get it? Why the heck does it matter? It's an award. I'm sure the future generations won't care who's recieved an award a hundred years ago, they'll only care if the author wrote good books. I know I don't care about awards an author recieved, I just want to read good books. If it's a good book you'll have no trouble coming across it sooner or later.

Meh, just my thoughts here. That guy can keep being a snob if he wants.

Just a side note on Stephen King. Ebooks which are fighting to find a niche in the market had a nearly 500% increase in sales in August to $600,000.

The reason for this big months of sales? The release of The Dark Tower series on ebooks as Stephen King helped drive the sales for the month at Palm Digtal Media. The site that has become the leading seller of ebooks.

According to the NBF, the award is for:

"The recipient is a person who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work."

Now, one can debate whether King is worthy of that or not, but here's the thing...

Did Bloom have a problem when the award was given to Oprah Winfrey? Or Ray Bradbury?

IMHO, if Bradbury can get it, can't King?

And if Oprah can get it, then friggin anyone can get it.

I didn't know about that. If I was King I would turn it down.

I think King won't become appreciated by literary snobs until he's been dead for 20 years.

Then he'll finally become required reading in schools.

Take a look at this article: Plotting Along

It should give you an idea of why Bloom is so miffed.

I would agree that King is a talented storyteller, but that doesn't make him a talented writer.

You really can't see a difference between Bradbury and King?

Now that article was a lot more persuasive and informative than the Yale professor's rant.

Screw the editorial writer. Who's to say that Stephen King or JK Rowling are any less of a writer than Edger Poe. Why would Poe be any better? Just because he wrote a long time ago and King/Rowling are recent?

In 100 years, Stephen King and JK Rowling might be considered some of the greatest writers ever, just like Twain is one of the greatest today. I'd even say that Tom Clancy or John Grissam might be well remembered as well. Each of these authors are probably the most popular writers today so their stories will probably still be famous long after they're dead.

The article Dr. Mantle posted makes the same point in a much more articulate and persausive manner, but in regards to Stephen King I have to disagree. There have been several books of his (The Shinning, Pet Semetary, Different Seasons) I certainly did not find assembly lined or forgettible. They were rewarding stories, that were about ideas. He is not Milan Kundera or Salman Rushdie, but he is also not the literary equivilant of a Big Mac.

I feel that he's passed the top of his game (although I'll admit I never got into The Dark Tower so I have no idea what's going on there) but I've still managed to be surprised once in awhile (like Hearts in Atlantis). I feel that he as hurt his work by pumping out so many books and was happy to hear of his plans for retirement, imagining that he'll probebly manage a few terrific books by not feeling the obligation to write, and therefore only work on something that he thinks deserves his time.

I saw this about a month or so ago.

While the author obviously has a bad case of sour grapes, which hurts his ability to make his case, he does have a point.

Stephen King's writing ability went downhill at about the same time many people say he let his wife publish novels under his name (the accused novels are Rose Madder, Gerald's Game, and one other I can't recall at the moment).

His books have all been sub-par and a chore to read since then. Talisman 2 is probably one of the biggest disappointments in recent memory.

Writers such as Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen Coonts, Robin Cook, Faye Kellerman, V.C. Andrews, Jonathan Kellerman, Dean Koontz and Dale Brown are remarkable for a rhythmless beat, and a straightforward approach to writing that ranks zippy, superinventive plot first, stating the obvious second, concrete details third, and language, artistry, character development and the exploration of universal truths somewhere near the bottom of the list.
Excuse me??? Since when did a fiction writer have an obligation to "explore universal truths?"

I could cut and paste more of this essay (or Bloom's) but the bottom line is...

This 'argument' has been going on for decades, if not centuries. Chandler and Hemingway were considered to be much greater after they were gone than when they were still writing. There's a fairly well known rant by Dorothy Parker about what a hack Hemingway was.

Dostoyevsky, Nabokov, and Twain were all blasted to a certain extent when they were around, as well.

Now, I am not comparing King to any of these people. I believe King to be a good writer and a great story teller. IMHO, there's a couple of things at work here...

One is the sour grapes tip. I would bet my annual salary that Bloom and Weeks have unsold manuscripts in a drawer that - ITHO - are works of genius, but that no publisher was interested in.

The other thing is that this is just how it goes. People have opinions. Just because YOU think someone is a bad writer doesn't mean they are. And vice-versa. Is Grisham a good writer? Well, there's a strong argument from a literary standpoint that he is not. But he's sells gazillions of books - he must be doing something right.

And lastly, you can always not read the friggin books. If you think most of pop fiction is horrible then don't read most of it. Read the classics.

If you hate a TV show, change the channel, you know?

And to get back on topic - if the NBF feels that King, or Oprah, or Bradbury (he was slammed by the lit community as King is, Mantle) or whoever, is deserving of THEIR award, then God bless them. They can give it to whoever the hell they want.

Wow. Is this true? I've never heard this before.

I've heard and seen the rumor repeated over the past few years. Of course, King and his publisher deny it, but who knows. I, for one, enjoyed those three books. I feel The Tommyknockers is his weakest.

The third book cited in the rumors is Dolores Claiborne. I think the rumor started because all three books feature as their main character a strong woman, which many feel had never been a part of Stephen's writing before. Apparently they forgot about Carrie. Also, Wendy Torrance in The Shining, while not the main character, features prominently in the book. The mother in Cujo.

I think people were just thrown a bit by the three books all coming out within three years of each other. The strong female characters made some people think that Tabitha must have written them. I don't know if strong female characters are a part of her writing, though, as I've never read any of her books.

Guys,

I won't say that everything he has written was terrible, but he has written some awful dreck, like Christine. He is kind of like a hack I feel. A lot like Danielle Steele.

As RevLiver said, there's no way to know for sure. Personally, I think that Tabitha at the very least had some hand in the writing of those books, because they were very different than the normal King fare.

Or it could have marked a change for King because, as I mentioned, none of his novels have really been up to the old standards since then.

Personally, I'd like King a lot more if he wouldn't bore us to tears by taking up several pages to describe things. Just tell me that the metal was rusted instead of giving me a 2 paragraph description of it :-)

I have never heard that either. Personally though, I did think that those are his 3 weakest novels(back when they came out). Mid 90's I think. Since then Insomnia, Dreamcatcher, and From a Buick 8, would be right below those 3.

How many books has King written? I imagine anyone with that many books under his belt will have some losers.

Was Christine bad? I've never read it, but I was under the impression that people liked this book.

King's speech upon being presented with the National Book Award is posted on their website. You can read or download video of it. It's an interesting speech.

www.nationalbook.org/nbaacceptspeech_sking.html

I just want to say...

I like Stephen King, and he's one of the best hacks we've got.

Also, if No-Style writers keep the publishing industry in business so that Palahniuk and Coupland, amongst others, can continue to publish, then fine.

I'm thrilled that people read at all. I don't really care WHAT they read. I won't be reading "H is for Hack," but I'm glad somebody is.

To judge Stephen King's work , it might be a good idea to first read William Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech given in the 1960s, and then see how King's work compares.

The speech is below:

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.