PPS: That said, I looked over my post on editors, and the “burning viscera as an offering to Art” was much more pretentiously phrased than I’d have liked, so I’d like to distance myself from the phrasing, though not the intent. Sorry, I think I was possessed by a Tommyknocker or some other embarassing creation you think is the next fucking David Copperfield when I wrote that shit.
Dude, no, really, this is very charming. You’re a genuine throwback – like a Japanese soldier still fighting WW 2 on some remote island, or some New Guinea tribe where television is a “magic box”.
1958 being the date when my fellow high school English teachers were routed and delivered from the shackles of their pince-nez literary snobbishness by Tom Clancy and his Charging Light Brigade, riding ivory steeds a thousand pages high, right? I alone remain, the last bastion of defense, to fight the good fight. Pip pip!
Strawman. We haven’t ascertained whether or not I like Clancy. Actually, I think he’s dreadful, and more generally, I agree with you that a lot of bestsellers are overwritten and could stand some judicious cutting.
Unfortunately, with friends like you who needs enemies…
Jesus, what have we got here, a Stephen King snob? Oh, sorry, gourmet? I might not have the well developed palate necessary to detect the proper delicacies and degrees of fineness in the bouquet of whatever King’s latest dysenteric literary expulsion is - but then again, I never wanted to start profusely guzzling from the septic tank. Anyway, I liked The Gunslinger, but if you Stephen-King-gourmet fancy-pants want to rank Rose Madder or the Stand higher on a Stepen-King-centric scale of excellence, be my guest.
No, what we have hear is somebody who doesn’t have a tin ear for prose. If you really don’t like Ramsey Campbell and yet think that The Gunslinger, of all things, is “good”, well, God bless you. But I ain’t gonna trust you on these matters.
On my part, I don’t see what your temper tantrum here is about
,
See, tin ear. I’m not mad. Why would I be mad? I found your spiel very amusing. I eagerly await more such Grand Pronouncements in the near future.
since I always thought the point of novels was entertainment, not what some stranger on the Internet thinks. Yeah, you’re right, though - I don’t think Stephen King is an “important writer”. I could sort of argue my point more, but I’m pretty secure in my opinion that the majority of King is absolute garbage that only an idiot would possibly find more “literary” than penny-dreadful slop.
Somewhere else I see you praising Horatio Hornblower, which is pretty pulpy stuff in it’s own right. Certainly not high art. Is Forrester more acceptable to you because it’s stalwart Brits fighting the French? Instead of vampires?
Whatever the merits of King – and I haven’t read a book of his in years, actually – it’s pretty silly to be cracking on horror writers because they don’t meet your rather undefined standards of literary quality, while in another place praising Robert Howard, of all people, who actually wrote for honest-to-goodness pulps and is kinda the ultimate example of the breed. But really, I shouldn’t spoil things like this. Rant on, Brother Crypt! Preach the Word!!
And anyway, your shrill, hysterical response is the token one I get anytime someone gets huffy that I don’t take the dog-eared paperback saturated in urine splashes and sitting by their toilet to be “serious literature”.
Now who’s getting shrill and hysterical?
Then again, the fact that you’re getting upset shows you put more importance on something being “serious literature” than I do.
Oh, you’re fibbing now, sir. After all, you’re the one who dragged the poor body of Max Perkins into things, not me.
So I’ll let you get back to furiously underlining passages and scribbling notes in the margins of “Buick 8” or whatever King’s latest is. PS: I’m kind of assuming you were being sarcastic or ironic or whatever is being passed off for a witty retort these days in all of your praises, but if you were being dead serious and emphatically agreeing that everything I’ve said is dead on: obviously, I agree, and in closing, I rule!!!
Indeed, you do rule, sir. I look forward to much more from you. I urge you to sound off at every available opportunity, in fact, on every conceivable subject. Perhaps more about these “jazz records” you mention earlier. Much better than that noisy rock and roll stuff the kids are listening to nowadays, huh?
junior allen
As soon as I saw your last post, I immediately began to profusely wet my skin-tight Archy and Mehitabel underoos. Because, dude, I admit it - I lose.
Obviously, as you combed over the Q23 archives furiously compiling all of my posts, you were somehow able to pull out of the psychic ether (aided only by the tin-foil-covered lampshade you sometimes wear as a David-Cronenberg’s-Scanners-protection device, but which can also be directed ominously OUTWARDS) my PhD thesis, and in doing so, debunk it. You know the one I mean, because you obliquely reference it so many times in your post: the one where I use razor-sharp critical techniques to sort the entire body of twentieth century literature into a descending scale of excellence, going roughly like this “Horatio Hornblower -> Conan (as edited by Maxwell Perkins) -> Fafhrd and Gray Mouser -> Stephen King’s Gunslinger -> Ramsey Campbell -> Stephen King”. Obviously, that’s just a rough scale of it - it would take several hundred pages of meaty literary criticism to fishbone properly. The point is that every single post I’ve made on this board has been subscribing to this thesis, and you’ve just debunked it.
Ha ha! No, seriously - you’re an idiot. In case you’re confused - THERE IS NO SUCH PHD THESIS! And way to stick it to jazz records by the way.
Obviously, you’re just a troll, but even so, I’m not sure what your lunatic point even is (although I’m sure you’ll spend a few hundred words and numerous quotes of mine to babble on about it), besides the fact that - throwing the entire world into topsy-turvy-Yellow-Submarine-style chaos! - some of my tastes in books seem contradictory. I know idiots are told by their state-appointed social workers to have a cohesive, black-and-white world view in order to stop them from masturbating on public street corners. In that world view, it is impossible to say that you like a pulp writer without saying that you find him to be “great literature”, and it is impossible to criticize one pulp writer’s bad prose while enjoying another pulp writer.
With such an outlook, no wonder you’re doing a Thorazine-shuffle of exasperation over the fact that, gasp!, I dig Horatio Hornblower and Conan while thinking Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King are pretty god-awful writers of prose. Or that I find some of Stephen King’s books to be better than others. Or that I like reading books by Conrad just about as much as I like reading Astro Boy funny books, but think the former is great literature and the other is just fun nonsense.
In the real world, this isn’t a contradiction at all, but I’m not sure what I can do to convince you of the fact besides pat you soothingly on your furrowed brow (so desperate to understand the mad universe it has cruelly been placed into by some malicious Cthulu god - a universe not composed entirely of polar opposites!).
So pat pat, my son. Rave on, crazy diamond!
I get it – you’re not incoherent, you’re just deep!
Okay, you win!!!
And you roooll!!!
junior allen, your biggest fan