posted
Head over to www.stephenking.com for a streaming audio file of his acceptance speech, or just a transcript to read. It is really fascinating and a mite inspiring.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
What do you guys all think of those who criticized giving the award to him? Do you think King is justified in firing back at the "literature" snobs who take pride in saying they have never read King, Clancy, or other best selling authors of today?
I personally think it's great he fired back a little bit. I mean so few people seem to read these days for pleasure that it puzzles me that some of these classics types would attack authors and write them off when they are getting people to read for pleasure.
quote:I mean so few people seem to read these days for pleasure ...
Well, that's a stupid statement. People don't read for pleasure when they have to read something they'd rather not. Thus, the life of all students and professors, and most people in the professional world. But in the realm of fiction, unless you are an agent or editor, you are most likely to read what you enjoy. Your problem is that you don't understand how people can enjoy what you don't enjoy. The fact is that some people do read Faulkner and Hemingway and other modern "literary" authors becasue they like them.
I watched King's speech on C-SPAN2 when it aired a few days after he gave it. I thought it was windy and banal and only a tad inspirational--namely, staying focused and hopeful in the midst of desparation. I wished he would have taken the higher ground, unlike his critics, and refrained from giving a reading list. Rather, I would have liked to have seen him talk more about his understanding of fiction and what he thinks fiction means for ordinary people. The problem with most modern "literature" is that it is not written for ordinary people. If he had done that, he might have influenced a lot of young writers who think obscure, esoteric writing is real fiction. Instead, I think he confirmed their suspecions that he is only a pulp writer who used this honor to simply defend his slop.
Does Stephen King deserve this award? If Oprah does, then he does. If it wasn't for King, I wouldn't be a reader (or writer) today. I suspect a lot of people are like me, and for that he deserves to be recognized for his contribution to American letters.
Will Stephen King be remembered, as OSC says, as the Charles Dickens of our time? We'll all be dead when the judgment is finally passed, for only time will tell. Personally, I don't think so. He is a good, honest writer, but his stories lack the one thing that makes stories last: they don't, as Faulkner said, deal with the verites of the human heart. I've read a lot of King, and never are his characters deeply and profoundly changed by what happens to them.
quote:never are his characters deeply and profoundly changed by what happens to them
That is a sweeping and generally incorrect statement. Have you ever read "The Stand" or "The Green Mile" or "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" or the book that the movie "Stand By Me" was based on (damn my memory). There are quite a few books of his that have dynamic characters.
quote: or the book that the movie "Stand By Me" was based on (damn my memory).
The Body. Not a story. In fact, I thought it was even better than the movie, which was pretty good, too. But then, that's true of every book-turned-movie, isn't it?
CVG
Edited to add: Not a bad story. I can't believe I didn't catch that earlier.
[This message has been edited by cvgurau (edited January 08, 2004).]
posted
I've read everything Stephen King wrote up until Needful Things, save The Tommyknockers, which never grabbed me. Some of these works, such as The Dead Zone and The Stand, I've read a second time. I've also read some of his recent work such as Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis. Yes, his characters change, but never undergo deep and profound change that is characteristic of great literature.
Let me state it differently. As a reader, I have never experienced deep and profound change due to reading Stephen King. I don't mull his stories over in my mind the way I do with, say, The Lord of the Rings or some of OSC's stories. To me, that is the hallmark of great literature: the reader walks away changed, even if that change is merely a new way of seeing the world.
Stephen King is a good writer for many reasons. His story ideas are entertaining. He tells them with exceptional skill. It's hard not to like his characters; who doesn't like the Everyman Hero typical of a King story? He is a good stylist -- better than every pop-writer he listed in his speech. And in his best stuff you can see a honest writer at work. But he isn't a profound writer. His ideas don't compell one to think. And though his characters have many external struggles, rarely to they deep interior struggles.
[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited January 07, 2004).]
posted
Well, I don't know, Balthasar. Picking the Lord of the Rings to back up your point that great literature necessarily includes its characters experiencing profound changes doesn't necessarily work, with sole exception of perhaps Frodo. Everyone else went through the fire of adveristy only to end up being more firmly (perhaps more nobly) the persons they were in the first place.
Hm. Maybe that counts as profound change. If so, then King's novels "It" and "The Stand" and stories like "Stand by Me" certainly would qualify.
Anyways, I like a lot of the King I have so far read. My childhood was spent dodging, sometimes successfully, the local bullies. I haven't come across an author yet who captures the in-the-moment terrors of childhood better than King. That alone makes him infinitely more relevant than the darlings of the academics.
posted
The Body from the Different Seasons collection is a very good example. Another from the same collection was Apt Pupil, which I personally found chilling and thought-provoking. I think it too was a movie that went nowhere, but the story about an average neighborhood kid who becomes obsessed with his Nazi war criminal neighbor is a truly excellent piece of work.
Posts: 338 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I want to take issue with the fact that you said you've never experienced deep and profound change from reading one of Stephen King's books, Balthasar. This is not a defense of Mr. King (I could care less if you think he's a great writer or not). Honestly, though, how many books have caused a "deep and profound change" in you? I would hope that it is something the rarely every happens, because I think it would get pretty confusing having to go through a "deep and profound change" every time you read a good book. Is there anybody out there who really does experience "deep and profound change" when they read a good book? Outside of scripture, I'm not sure I can think of any book that's caused a "deep and profound change" in me. Take "Ender's Game" for example. I absolutely love the book. I've read it half-a-dozen times. I think it's one of the great masterpieces of our time. Did it cause a "deep and profound change" in me, though? Absolutely not. It didn't help me discover myself, achieve a new level of enlighenment, or any of the other pretentious, artsy, pseudo-intellectual catch-phrases that always start flying around when people start trying to make other people think they "get it". It was just a good, engaging, entertaining piece of fiction. I think the realm of good fiction is entertainment--it needs to give one pleasure when one reads it. "Deep and profound change" is the realm of scripture, not novels.
So, I think you're holding Mr. King up to an unfair standard. If you make "deep and profound change" a prerequisite in judging a whether a novelist is great or not, then you will find precious few great novelists out there, and if we're completely honest, there's a good chance you won't even find one.
posted
Hmm, well, have you never read a book that you walked away from it looking at something in a different light? You set the book aside after reading and think--holy cow! I didn't know that, I never thought of it that way before? That could be considered a deep and profound change.
King's books make a reader feel, frightened, shocked, dismayed--The Stand was wonderful, profound, no I don't think so. I didn't look at things differently because of it.
For me Anne Rice writes books that chill and make me think of things differently.
Anne Perry, she writes of the Victorian age in such a way that you come away thinking I am so glad I did not live then. When I first read her books they certainly changed the way I thought of Victorian Britain.
Tony Hillerman has certainly opened the eyes of many non-Native Americans to what life on a reservation is like. Unfortunately, I don't think most people apply it to reality.
Books, other than scripture, can have deep meanings. They can change the way we look at th world, and when you look at that--the idea that reading something can change the way we see something, that is a pretty deep and profound change.
And it is a personal thing--someone may be changed after reading SK--LOL you may leave the lights on at night. Just kidding.
But what has an affect or if you want effect on one person doesn't on someone else, otherwise we would all belong to the same religion--or the same club--we'd all like Jeeps or some such.
The point is that books can move you to be a different person, they don't have to be literary works either.
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srhowen: The problem is because the definition of "literary" is so gosh-darned fuzzy. Defining literature is like trying to define good art; it can't be done to everyone's satisfaction.
Maybe that's why the universities stopped trying to define Great Literature by all yardsticks save for psuedo-science of interpretive theory.
Not going off on you here - at this point I'm just babbling to no one in particular.
posted
I'm going to have to stick to my guns on this one, Shawn. I'll admit, saying that no book outside of scripture can effect (affect?) a profound change in somebody was a ridiculous exagerration on my part. Of course that's not true. My point is, I don't think it is at all a fair or accurate yardstick by which to measure the greatness of a work of fiction. Anne Perry changed the way you looked at Victorian Britain. Is that a deep and profound change? I would have to guess probably not. Are you a different person for having a different view of victorian Britain? Unless you have a pretty unhealthy obsession with victorian Britain to the point that your view of it is who you are, then probably not. Having your eyes opened to what life on an indian reservation is like also doesn't really qualify as a deep and profound change in my book. Does that mean Anne Perry and Tony Hillerman are not great authors, that their books are unimportant? Of course not. It seems to me that what you're describing as profound change is actually just the acqusition of new information. Knowing one more view of what indian reservations are like probably doesn't result in a change in who you are or how you react to the events of your life.
Of course there are books outside of scripture that can effect (affect?) profound change in a person. We should be careful not to confuse profound change with a new viewpoint, though. Take, for example, somebody who is very compassionate. Assume they don't know very much about the holocaust of WWII. When they read an in-depth account from a holocaust survivor, chances are they'll have a completely new viewpoint about the world, or at least one aspect of it. Chances are, they'll experience some very strong emotions as they read about the terrible things that those people suffered. They'll probably be induced to think about some things that they may never have given any serious thought before. How can people commit such evil acts? Why did those people have to suffer so much? Etc. etc. Does that mean the reader has been profoundly changed? No, it doesn't. They were already compassionate, they just found something new to be compassionate about. Their character didn't change, they were just given new stimuli to react to.
I think profound change happens a lot less than has been suggested here, and measuring a book, especially a work of fiction, by that criteria is not a good way to measure.
posted
I think that wetwilly has a point here, in the first few lines of both his posts. Saying that a work has to effect a deep and profound change in the reader is unfair except for a very narrow catagory of entirely non-fiction (or at least as far as I'm aware) works. Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning is all about experiencing a deep and profound change in your attitude towards suffering, not just learning about the atrocities of the 'work' camps.
I've never been profoundly changed by fiction, because I don't permit fiction that function. Most people don't draw such a clear distinction (search for "evil squirrel shills of the nut empire" or some such phrase for some earlier thoughts on this matter), but most do draw it to an extent. Fiction is about showing us what we already know, not teaching us new truths. In my opinion, people who allow fiction to profoundly affect their view of the world are like people who use examples of events happening in a work of fiction to argue that such things happen in real life (and I know at least one person--a writer of fiction no less--who does this often enough to annoy me--one time she actually used a fictional event that she herself had recently written to argue that something was probable in real life). In fact, I can't tell the difference (logically) between the two behaviors...apparently the one is understood to be ridiculous, but the other is quite widespread.
Great fiction doesn't change us, it defines and reveals who we already are, our experience of ourselves in the real world. And that means that different things are great fiction to different people. I find the themes of all existentialist literature to be puerile and self-indulgent. No such literature can ever be 'Great' to me. But there are other people for whom such literature is the expression of the inexpressible angst they feel at a life they have deliberately stripped of meaning in an effort to avoid personal suffering. For them, it is Great Literature.
I've read a book by Anne Rice, and I found it merely amusing. I've read two books by Crighton (sp?) and I found his science so laughable that the main point of the books were lost on me (besides, I would pay to see the human race wiped out by dinosaurs or nano-robots--particularly if either had been created by human science, it would just be too precious ). But I also could tell that both authors knew the craft. They told stories (all three of which I found implausible in the extreme) so deftly I was able to simply enjoy the story.
Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky speak to me at the level of Great Literature...but I don't insist that everyone reach me to be accorded some acknowledgement of literary depth. Just the fact that I find most of Hawthorne's writing heavy handed and somewhat obvious doesn't take away his greatness, it merely fails to add to it.
P.S. The reason most people don't read for pleasure has more to do with the hardwiring of the human brain than the fact that many people have to read to make a living. And it has nothing to do with "these days", we merely bemoan this simple matter of neurophysiology rather than learning to live with it. It used to be accepted in all literate cultures that some people were better readers than others, finding meaning and imaginative force in written pages, while other people, while they could read themselves, would rather listen to someone else read.
posted
What is a "profound change" anyway? I've never read a piece of fiction and experienced Saul-to-Paul epiphany of religious proportion, but I would have to argue that, in fact, I have been profoundly affected (effected?) by fiction, and not merely in the "made me cry" mode. I agree with Card that everything we read - everything we ingest - stays with us to some degree. I grew up in a dangerous neighborhood and could have run with the "bad guys," and would probably be in jail today (I was the only Mormon in my neighborhood and didn't see fellow Mormons until Sunday) except for the fact that I was also a dedicated bookworm, and it was thanks to the kinds of books I read that I found sympathy for my basic personality, and where the philosophy was reinforced that good virtues were, well, good to have, and that being be a jerk and a bully did nothing but hurt people. In grade school those books were my best friends - all my Monday through Saturday friends were getting stoned.
Even today, as I push 40, well written passages continue to touch me, change me in little ways, and when I begin to add up the little moments, it occurs to me that in fact I have been profoundly, deeply changed by what I am proud to call Great Literature; my definition, not Bloom's. Dickens never touched me when I was a kid. Lloyd Alexander, on the other hand . . .
quote:Do you think King is justified in firing back at the "literature" snobs who take pride in saying they have never read King, Clancy, or other best selling authors of today?
Absolutely. It's like people who go around proclaiming, "I never watch television," as if that makes them better than the masses who do watch from time to time.
Fine. It's each person's choice not to watch. Or not to read "popular" fiction. But you know what? It doesn't make a person better or smarter or more sophisticated that they don't. It just makes him or her a snob. And I don't have any problem at all with King pointing this out.
Now, I have to say that it's a very fine line. It's just as snobbish to say, "I never read literary fiction." It took me a long time to come to that; I have to admit that I haven't liked a lot of the literary fiction I've read. I'm just not turned on by the kinds of stories that literary fiction often tells - or anyway by the stories that a lot of the literary fiction I have read have told. But that doesn't mean that I don't recognize that it has value.
I think that's all King was really saying to his audience and to the world in that speech. What is slapped with the label popular fiction has value. It isn't the bound equivalent of fish wrapping. It doesn't deserve to be condemned without so much as a reading.
posted
I have a question for the Defenders of the Great Literary Tradition. That is, if we have any here. How, exactly, are we to tell "literature" from everything else?
It doesn't seem to be seperated by genre. Farenheit 451 and Brave New World ARE "literature", right?
What disqualifies The Dead Zone or Ender's Game?
I'm genuinely confused. I didn't major in English in college, so I'm sure that I'm just missing the definition. Does anyone know the criteria for writing "literature?"
quote:Does anyone know the criteria for writing "literature?"
Well, there are two paths. You can decide which to follow.
1. Write something that literature professors like, or that fits their political model of the world, or that they can't understand but they think might be trendy.
2. Write something that people will still want to read more than a hundred years from now.
There is a third path (Write well and be British), but that's not open to most people.
posted
Leonard Bernstein, in one of his better lectures during his excellent Concerts for Young People, said the following:
"The secret to classical music is that there is no secret to classical music." He went to explain that the signifigance and meaning of a given piece of music was whatever the listener believed it to be. A little education could go a long way to help people understand what could be appreciated in regards to form and structure, but, ultimately, both the intepretation of, and the decision to like or dislike a given piece was entirely - ENTIRELY - in the hands of the listener, and because everyone's tastes are different, there was no point in believing that an inability to like a piece everyone else liked had anything to do with intelligence, or with any other inate human quality.
In other words, the only definition that really matters, because you're the person ingesting a given work of "art" (literature, music, graphic arts, drama, etc.), is yours.
English Lit professors can't stand that fact, and are obliged to frankly reject it because the only way they can justify their paycheck is to convince students (and themselves) that they alone understand what a work means, and, hey, they've got the "science" (read: "literary theory") to prove it. If people read the "classics" less and less, the professors only have themselves to blame - they've taken the fun out of it.
Q: So, what is "literature?"
A: Well, hey; what have you read lately that truly enjoyed, and/or that truly touched you?
posted
I always wonder why we Humans feel the need to argue a point down to the most finite speck. All the people I know read because they find pleasure or enjoyment in doing so. The original thread was asking about Steven King I believe? I don't think it is my place to tell anyone what they should read, or whether an author is credible or not. I was told a long time ago "One mans trash is another mans treasure". So if you think Steven King is a trashy novelist, then think that. Hell, even say that if that is what you think. But don't try and dissuade someone else from their point of view. Points of view are like ***holes everyone has one. I do agree that everything we read and see does affect you as a person in one form or another. I started writing because of a book or two I've read. So I guess that is a profound change is it not? As far as King criticizing other Authors, well I think he may have the right. He is after all a best-selling writer along with all of the other authors that have been mentioned in this thread. I think if I ever get to that point I might criticize some of my "peers" too. By that time you've earned the right I think. $.02
Posts: 471 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I think our tendency to argue definitions is part and parcel of the same biology or psychology (or whatever) that lead us fire up the word processor and write things we hope other people will read. How many people, really, write and submit stuff they believe is unpublishable crap? Nope. We write stuff we believe is darn fine reading and we can certainly imagine that the literature we produce is worth other people's time and money.
Also, To own the definition of "literature" is to have the best possible justification for one's personal reading choices. It's a kind of defense mechanism against book snobs like Harold Bloom.
Can't speak for anyone else, of course, but if I ever write a book, and it gets published, I sure as heck am not going to believe that it isn't as good as anything currently doing time on Harold Blooms 100 Favorite Classics list.
SO I argue in advance, to disarm the critics (at least in my own mind). I suspect that's true for a large number of writers.
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). But I also could tell that both authors knew the craft. They told stories (all three of which I found implausible in the extreme) so deftly I was able to simply enjoy the story.
