The Nation: King Is Underrated

I really enjoyed Charles Taylor article in The Nation (HERE) titled: "You Can't Always Get What You Want: On Stephen King."  In it he discusses the difficulty in catagorizing King, and the struggle mainstream media has had in understandng the wrtier.  He calls King "underrated" and quotes  critic Leslie Fiedler as saying “When all of us are forgotten, people will still be remembering Stephen King.”

Taylor writes,

"In a way, the National Book Foundation’s recognition was confirmation that King had become A Writer Who’s Better Than You Expect Him to Be. Just a year earlier, a great deal of public affection greeted the release of From a Buick 8, the first King novel to appear since the accident that had nearly killed him three years before (he was struck by a pickup while walking on the side of the road). Reviewers understood the story of a mysterious Buick Roadmaster that comes out of nowhere and brings violence and terror in its wake to be a metaphor for King’s brush with death. They weren’t wrong, but they also underestimated the book."

He spends quite a bit of time discussing From A Buick 8 and 9/11.  Very interesting! 

There's a lot more to the article, and all worth your time.