I guess all this means it that I need to watch John Ford.

Chris Rock got compared to Fetchit in the late 90s and the comparisons were not kind (this was before Rock’s fame had really kicked in).

Tommyknockers has a shaky reputation, not the least of which comes from King himself who was at a sort of low point with his cocaine problem when he wrote it (it was released in 1987, the same year as the intervention staged by his wife where she dumped a trash bag full of all his pills and drugs in front of his friends, IIRC–and also the same year as two other better-received King books were released, Misery and The Dark Tower: The Drawing Of The Three) and who has said that there is probably a good 300 page book in there, but his cocaine problem stretched it out into shit. There were also whisperings of him editing it and rereleasing it, something he did with The Stand and the first Dark Tower book, so it’s not impossible. I am considering reading it because a person whom I talk to a lot said that he read it recently and liked it, and wasn’t expecting to.

Of his 70s-80s work, it is probably at the bottom in terms of general reputation, aside from the Bachman books, which I haven’t read at all. Cujo can’t be very high either. I got the impression that Cycle Of The Werewolf isn’t even as well known as Silver Bullet, which King wrote the screenplay for. If I had to guess which of his books is the most disliked overall, it’s gotta be Dreamcatcher, and everyone hates the movie of that too.

I saw The Green Mile in theaters, which was very hyped up as you recall due to both Tom Hanks being involved and the Darabont/Shawshank connection, and it was admittedly pretty hard to sit through the whole thing. I wouldn’t say I hate it, but I know that it’s widely regarded as having been way too fucking long, which was probably what people were slamming. The book has probably the best reputation of anything King put out in the 1990s.

Here, here’s a quick rundown of my opinions of every King book I ever read.

Carrie: One of my five or six favorite books ever, since high school. I’ll happily keep it there–I re-read it as an adult and still love it. No shame whatsoever. The De Palma movie remains a huge favorite either, though no movie version has ever properly filmed Carrie going around destroying the whole town, which is the best part of the book, especially with the multiple perspectives. (Of course, every movie version has Carrie destroying the prom while still in the building; in the book, she does it from outside.) There’s a TV series coming up from Mike Flanagan, so I’m sure we’ll get a fourth chance for another screen adaptation to get it wrong.

‘Salem’s Lot: Read in high school, really liked it but have never revisited it. Nor have I watched any movie version all the way through. I recall liking the panoramic array of small-town characters a lot. I bet if I re-read this I’d still like it. That being said…

The Shining: …I didn’t get much of anything out of this book when I re-read it as an adult. I have some fond memories of reading it in high school, but that may just be due to the sublime nature of remembering one’s adolescence, which as you know I do all the time. The backstory stuff about the Torrance marriage and his drinking problem and the trouble he got into as a teacher and his angry dad and all that stuff, pffft. Didn’t care to re-read that at all. And there isn’t even that much “horror” IN IT. Then there’s the gradual revelation of who “Tony” is and the difference between the final chase in the book and how it’s resolved in the movie…more pffft. I sort of get that, since this is King’s own story in a lot of ways about his experiences as a writer, why he can’t help but hate the Kubrick movie, but the Kubrick movie has easily won. I doubt I’ll read it a third time.

The Stand: Fun, though I can still remember that list of bad bits of writing I posted from it here. Let’s just enjoy this as a kind of silly burger-and-fries epic and not take it too seriously, eh?

The Dead Zone: A good way to end the 70s, this didn’t read like King’s coke problem had kicked in yet. Not something I need to revisit mind you but it wasn’t bad. I like the stuff with the shitty proto-Trump candidate villain, Greg Stillson, and chuckle about the fantasy scene in the Cronenberg movie where the nukes are launched, with Martin Sheen pressing a button on a device that looks like a fucking Betamax player.

Firestarter: Didn’t mind reading this in high school but I don’t feel like revisiting it. One scene that I found very effective was the setup involving the main character’s experiences with an MK-Ultra type conspiracy, but that might just be me. The Indian villain character, John Rainbird, was pretty fucking perverse too, don’t know how that would hold up today (I did not like a similar character in Snow Crash at all when I re-read that.)

Cujo: Laughable piece of shit, but I’m not sorry I read it. When I read it I was well aware that King had “written it over the course of about three days while miserably strung out on cocaine” and with “blood dripping out of his Kleenexed nose onto the pages as he typed them” (Jon Walter told me this) and that King himself can’t recognize his own manuscript. I probably won’t re-read it though, I can still remember most of the bad bits. I have no idea why the movie hasn’t been remade, since they do two versions of every King book, and the original movie is a piece of cack.

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger: Has some nice prose in it, some nice evocative writing of a spaghetti Western fantasy world. It’s not very long, either. I liked this easily the best of the four DT books I read.

Christine: Released only seven months before its own movie came out, how’s that for fast? I really liked this in high school then re-read it as an adult and predictably came out lukewarm on it and probably won’t re-read a second time. I guess being a teenager myself at the time, King’s depiction of adolescent blues sort of got to me? Of course the book is way too long and the final “battle” between the title car and a septic tanker truck is pretty bad. And, duh, it’s just another “possessed by a murderer” thing. Deuhr. The movie was pretty weak, and again, I can’t believe they haven’t remade it, but then again you don’t hear that much about this book anymore.

The Talisman: I kind of hated this. Is it King’s fault or Peter Straub’s? I don’t know, but I just found it to be a big mess of silly fantasy shit, messy concepts that feel like the two writers didn’t flesh them out very well. I was told this book was cool as hell when I was a kid but I was past 30 when I read it and I hated it. Maybe it’s a book for teens?

It: I’ll pass on a re-read, and only the first part of the 2017 movie was good; both the second part and the TV miniseries (Tim Curry aside) were shit. Obviously the kid orgy thing has to be up there as one of King’s most godawful moments, but there’s so much in this book that stinks of cocaine that I…er…well, I don’t really hate the book, but if I recommend it to others, it’s because of the “get a load of this ridiculous shit” factor and not “it’s King’s masterpiece!” I also can’t remember how in the hell it’s 1100 pages long. And I do remember how I posted another “bad bits of prose” post at this board when I did read it.

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing Of The Three: I know this is the one with the main character getting his hand or arm bitten off by weird beach creatures at the beginning, in a really weird opening, but I can’t remember if it’s the one with them visiting the state of Kansas, or ZZ Top’s “Velcro Fly” being used. I also know that I liked the first book better.

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Land: By this point the whole thing was starting to lose me. I wouldn’t quite call this book shit but it became apparent to me that I wasn’t really going to get into this series while I was reading it. I’ve long since forgotten most details of what happens in these books.

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard And Glass: My main memory of this is the perverse treatment of the main female character, victim in this book of all sorts of gross sex crap. I’m not a prude but you have to work REALLY hard at that sort of thing to pull it off without me feeling like I’m reading some jackoff fantasy on the part of the writer. I should also mention that that’s virtually all I remember–looking up plot summaries, I’ve forgotten damn near EVERYTHING about this book, and it’s 787 pages long, too. Oogie boogie. It also definitely made me want to stop, and the fact that the last three DT books were published within about a two-year stretch didn’t encourage me to finish. Nor did the godawful 2017 movie. Looks like I’m really not a fan.

Doctor Sleep: This was no masterpiece, but a good shot down the third-base line–King revisiting ‘Salem’s Lot territory more than The Shining. Rose The Hat was a good villain in the book and worked well in the movie too, though the movie had to work in a lot of lame references to the Kubrick movie. It was too long as usual, but readable. I’d rather read it than The Shining.

That’s it!!!!!

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