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Post by Scott on Sept 24, 2013 10:45:39 GMT -5
New Stephen King book came out today. A sequel to the Shining called Doctor Sleep. I pre-ordered it and had it waiting on my Kindle this morning and got to read a little before work. Earlier King stated, "If you're looking for a return to balls-to-the-wall, keep-the-lights-on horror, get ready". He wasn't lying. It jumps right in. Pretty vintage SK so far, but there's still plenty of time to crash and burn.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 24, 2013 12:09:06 GMT -5
I'm looking forward to your review. I'm a SK fan from way back. I started out reading his shorter works, like Night Shift, Different Seasons and Skeleton Crew, and the Bachman books. I like his short stories best because they deal with exploring an idea, and then it's done -- no drawn out character development with meandering plot and, typical for longer King novels, an often disappointing ending.
The early King novels were great exactly because they weren't too long. The Shining was a classic. What a great ghost story.
P. S. You know, when you think about King's output for the past 40 years, it is truly astounding. I was just looking over his bibliography, and it's very impressive. How many writers can keep up that kind of output, consistently, for that long? The guy deserves a medal, or something.
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Post by Scott on Sept 24, 2013 13:08:35 GMT -5
I was a big fan of his stuff as a teenager, but then sort of drifted away in the 90s. Night Shift was great, one of my favorite collections. The Shining was one of his best novels, so I was excited about the sequel. I re-read it recently as a refresher. So far, so good. I'll post some additional thoughts once I finish it.
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GT
Wizard
Duke of Indiana, Knight Commander
Posts: 2,032
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Post by GT on Sept 24, 2013 13:17:36 GMT -5
I heard Stephen King on NPR this morning saying it had to do with alcohol rehab...
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Post by Scott on Sept 24, 2013 13:52:47 GMT -5
Yeah, I read that the alcoholism in the Shining and Doctor Sleep was drawn from personal experience. Stephen King has always included little quotes from songs, books, etc. at the start of books, chapters, etc, In this he started with some Alcoholics Anonymous program stuff.
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GT
Wizard
Duke of Indiana, Knight Commander
Posts: 2,032
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Post by GT on Sept 24, 2013 13:56:57 GMT -5
Yeppers... he admits to AA, but following the policy, does not go into detail!
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 24, 2013 15:14:47 GMT -5
I used to be around these three King-Koontz-Lansdale fanatics at the very end of 1980's. Two of them were room mates of my friend and they were very aggressive about sports, drinking and reading pop horror. They all got phased out of my life after a year because frankly they were anti-D&D and if I had to read another Dean R. Koontz novel I'd barf! King-wise, I read the short story anthologies NIGHT SHIFT and SKELETON CREW and the two graphic novels CREEPSHOW and CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF. But then those three clowns insisted that I give King another chance with THE TOMMYKNOCKERS. Wow, that was boring. I've never even looked at King ever since.
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Post by Scott on Sept 24, 2013 16:33:18 GMT -5
Yeah, the Tommyknockers was one of those books that caused me to start drifting away.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 25, 2013 8:13:01 GMT -5
Me too, about The Tommyknockers. It was disappointing.
I think the initial turning point for me was IT. Up to that point, it seemed like King could do no wrong. But I remember thinking IT was the beginning of a pattern with books that were too long and had disappointing endings. The characterizations and a lot of the scenes were great, but I didn't understand the ending and there were some really WTF parts, like this summary taken from the Wiki:
"In order to stop the group from panicking, Beverly has sexual intercourse with each of the boys."
What?
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 25, 2013 9:21:36 GMT -5
I was too much into classic horror/sci-fi/fantasy and offshoots to get into his warts-and-all stories. I recall when SKELETON CREW was hot on the shelf in the fall of 85 I was told by about 15 separate people from 5 separate corners of my life that I was going to love the story "GRAMMA" and thats where I got a loud dislike of King. They were reacting to the Thanksgiving before, a massive party dinner with over 100 guests, I answered a Stephen King question wrong in TRIVIAL PURSUIT and it was like the Spanish Inquisition into why I said I wasn't a fan of Stephen King. I cited Poe and should have never said the word LOVECRAFT to that mob.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 25, 2013 11:40:50 GMT -5
I'm looking forward to reading Doctor Sleep now, too. I had my library order it. I think I'll also reread The Shining. It's difficult for me to recall the differences between the book The Shining and the first movie of it now, but I remember there were differences and some were pretty significant.
Speaking of King and Lovecraft, King is also a Lovecraft fan and his story "Jerusalem's Lot" is completely a Lovecraft homage.
Now that I think of it, there were some King duds in the pre-IT era. But it didn't take 1100 pages to get through them...
"The Mangler" was, amazingly, a short story about a possessed washing machine, and led to not just one but THREE movies. And it wasn't a horror satire, either.
But IMO, the early home runs outweigh all of the duds.
I'm looking forward to revisiting the Kingiverse or Bangorverse or whatever they call it.
I think I'm also going to write him a letter thanking him for all of the entertainment over the years. Some of my favorite authors have died, without me doing that, and I regret not at least trying to thank them. Guys like Jack Vance, Elmore Leonard, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov, they're all gone.
I feel fortunate that I was able to thank EGG before he passed on.
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Post by Scott on Sept 25, 2013 13:06:33 GMT -5
It and the Stand were tough. There was some good stuff, but he was moving away from horror and into this multiverse good vs. evil thing that was just so abstract. The Shining, book vs. movie. That was why I re-read it. The Shining is a good movie, but it's a good Kubrick movie, not a good King movie.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 25, 2013 13:17:53 GMT -5
Some people say they liked the mini-series of THE SHINING better than the Kubrick movie but I've never felt inclined to read the novel and like the Kubrick movie much better.
There was a new SALEM'S LOT that most people missed a few years back with Rutger Hauer as the vampire and it just couldn't hold a candle to the "Hutch" version.
(As an aside I think the same people say the DUNE mini-series was better than the Lynch movie but I think the Lynch movie seemed bigger and has a great vibe all its own. And while the mini-series got a lot right they toned down a lot.)
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 25, 2013 13:48:45 GMT -5
I agree with you, Gene, about those movies. They are good examples of how simply being "truer to the book" doesn't necessarily make a better movie.
I have never understood King's intense dislike for the Kubrick film. It was awesome!
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Post by Scott on Sept 25, 2013 15:04:49 GMT -5
I can understand the author not being thrilled by the movie. If you do re-read it and you will see some very large deviations. It is a great movie, but Kubrick did not seem too concerned with making a fathful adaptation. I think King especially feels that the characters in the movie were not the characters he wrote. Not much depth. I read him commenting on the presentation of the Wendy character in the movie, calling it mysoginistic, stating she's basically just there to scream and be stupid.
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 26, 2013 12:46:17 GMT -5
Yeah, he's right from his perspective but its weird considering that most people dislike that actress in that film based on her offbeat looks which leads one to wonder if he's really taking the high road regarding her part in it.
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 26, 2013 13:32:36 GMT -5
I don't really feel that directors are obligated to stay true to the source material. However, if they blow it, one of the first criticisms is usually "They shouldn't have diverged from the original story. That's where they went wrong." The main goal should always be making a good movie over making a faithful adaptation.
My impression was that Kubrick took the characters from the Shining and reduced them down to archetypes or otherwise simplified for the purposes he was after. So, maybe he wasn't interested in having Wendy be as cool and level headed as she was in the book. Maybe it is scarier on a film if she just loses her shit and screams a lot.
I dug out my old paperback of The Shining and started rereading it. It opens with a quote from Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" with the ballroom revel. I forgot how much of an influence that was on this story, with the ball room scene and other references throughout.
Unmask! Unmask!
And the Red Death held sway over all!
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Post by GRWelsh on Sept 30, 2013 9:51:21 GMT -5
Rereading THE SHINING (1977) reminds me why I liked Stephen King so much in the first place. It was his third published novel, after CARRIE and SALEM'S LOT. The paperback version I have is 447 pages. It is focused and moves along at a good pace, making it seem even shorter. It does not have a million characters. Very little of it seems unnecessary. The bit parts, for example, are all there for a reason or to help foreshadow later events. Ullman hires Jack, and tells the story of Delbert Grady. Watson shows Jack the boiler and how it needs to be dumped or it will explode. Hallorann gives insight to Danny's psychic ability, and gives a warning of room 217. What stands out to me is how much everything is foreshadowed. It is like King is telling you everything that will happen before it will happen, in the first hundred pages, but in a slightly veiled way. Since I know what happens, and what all the hints are (REDRUM REDRUM), it all seems so obvious. But I think this might be what made the book so brilliant in the first place -- the way the foreshadowing was handled. Subconsciously you could feel what was going to happen, even though you were hoping the best for the family and that somehow, they could survive it all.
I also think a big part of what makes it work is the setting. A haunted hotel is one thing, but a being trapped in a haunted hotel for the entire winter and cut off from the rest of the world is another.
Looking forward to reading DOCTOR SLEEP now... But I'm going to lower my expectations a little and not expect it to be as good as THE SHINING...
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Post by geneweigel on Sept 30, 2013 10:37:16 GMT -5
I also think a big part of what makes it work is the setting. A haunted hotel is one thing, but a being trapped in a haunted hotel for the entire winter and cut off from the rest of the world is another. Thats a big reason why I played so much D&D in the 80's trapped in hills of Connecticut. One being trapped for weeks with no road access and two that place was loaded with phantom sights and sounds so it was good to be distracted.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 1, 2013 13:59:22 GMT -5
Wow, that sounds awesome. Playing D&D in the Overlook Hotel!
"We're down to one bag of Cheetos. You know what happened to the Donner party, don't you?"
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