Fun Stuff > ENJOY
Dean Koontz
Vendetagainst:
You should try Watchers, if memory serves me it has neither of those elements, and it's all-around a great book.
Postino:
Dean Koontz isn't an author folks, and the same goes for Steven King. I will tell you exactly what they are, they and all the grisly stereotypical goons like them that publish fiction as quickly as they can spew it out onto paper. They are creative typist and nothing more. They know how to write quickly, they don't have ideas they cobble stories together in some odd Frankensteinesque fashion. (Not to impugn Frankenstein by Mary Shelley which is a delightful book.)
Listen up folks because I am gonna talk about something very near and dear to my heart. Real Authors don't just give us stories for entertainment sake, in their stories they include ideas, they take romps in our mind scape. If all you accomplish in a story is to entertain your audience then you have failed, if at no point during your tale does someone wonder about something, if their view are not challenged, if they are not startled or shocked then you have failed. I'm not saying stories need to be preachy and that authors are akin to televangelists trying to convert us to their ideology, but here is the skinny, the main point, the thing most of the idiots out there seem to forget about, words and the written language were developed with one very specific purpose in mind. Words were developed to convey ideas. If all your conveying is that someone got an icepick in the eye, or a lamp came alive and ate someone, or hundred of other wastes of paper then you are doing just that, wasting paper and wasting our time.
Now I know I come off as preachy and I apologize for that, but dammit this is important to me. I am not a writer myself, as you have probably noticed. My above statements are not eloquent and probably not entirely grammatically correct. I am well aware I have not the skills for writing I use other mediums, but since writing is the only way I can communicate this to you I am forced to use it. When Steven King, Dean Koontz and nameless others give us this drivel and present it as bestsellers and amazing works of fiction. When they try to put it upon the same level as authors who write not to edify their pockets but rather to edify us and people buy it, well that just makes me sad. So please instead of reading that drivel, that will I guarantee you atrophy your brain, read something edifying, something that will rekindle your sense of wonder. Its well worth it, and if it makes you a little uncomfortable and you find yourself getting angry, well then good its done its job.
Ikrik:
Postino
I think I read six lines of what you said and I agree with everything you say. Well....maybe not everything, but the center nugget of what you're saying I'm agreeing with....which is why I don't read either of them.
tomselleck69:
Sometimes one just wants a hamburger instead of a steak. Yes this hamburger fails when you attempt to pass it off as steak, but otherwise it serves its purpose very well.
Also Stephen King has written some lousy books, but I think it could be argued that he is often a user of "ideas."
karl gambolputty...:
--- Quote from: Postino on 15 Jul 2008, 22:58 ---Stephen King and Dean Koontz are not real authors because they write too many books and all they do is entertain.
I like books a whole lot. But only good books. Books that don't just entertain, but challenge, and engage me.
I get sad because people read Stephen King. He is so bad you guys.
--- End quote ---
Is it irony that you used about 300 words too many to denounce a man for writing too much?
I will absolutely concede that King is no Pynchon. He's written some awful books, but to say he's not a 'Real Author' at all is patent nonsense. So what if he entertains? So what if he writes a book every 6 months? Hell, if you're to tie the rate at which an author writes to his validity as an author, then would you call Wodehouse a hack?
I get the point you're trying to make, I make it all the time when I'm yelling about music. But at the end of the day, you don't get to call King a non-author any more than I get to call Motley Crue non-musicians. And you sure as hell don't get to say he writes only for the money.
Besides, if Stephen King were a band he'd clearly be the Stones.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version