The New Yorker's website has a short article by their staff relating what they are currently reading.
Ian Crouch's current reading is a digital copy of The Stand. In fact, Crouch relates that the novel is 6,154 pages on the small screen of his phone!
Here's Crouch's full comments:
I realized recently that I’d not read anything by the most famous writer (and low-key philanthropist) from my home state of Maine: Stephen King. So I jumped in the deep end and bought his 1978 opus, “The Stand,” from the Apple e-book store. (Judging from this week’s news, I may have paid too much for it.) Deep is nearly the right word—long is the better one, as in 6,154 pages on the small screen of my phone, which is the device on which I’ve been reading it, late at night, in the dark. (King added hundreds of pages to the novel for its 1990 reissue, which is the one I’m reading.)
A strain of the flu engineered by the U.S. military has been accidently unleashed on an unsuspecting population. The government attempts a coverup, but the truth, and death, is spreading quickly.
King writes with the mad energy of an outcast, dirty-minded teen-ager—volume trumps precision, and the prose gets a little goofy at times. I might be coming to this a bit late in life, but there’s a dirty-minded teen-ager in me somewhere, and so I’m reading on. The cast of characters is sprawling. Of those still alive, I’m taken by a young pregnant woman in Maine, a deaf-mute kid in Arkansas, and a rock-and-roll semi-star who finds himself in a suddenly depopulated New York City. And somewhere out there is Randall Flagg, a dark demon of a man in “sharp-toed cowboy boots” and a jean jacket, who’s clearly ready to do some weird and wicked things. Their fates should come together at some point. There’s a long way to go.—Ian Crouch
The full article is HERE.
Outcast Dirty Minded Teenager? Really? Huh,well that's an interesting take. It's obvious he's a first timer to the world of King.
ReplyDeleteDo I agree with is opinion? Well, yes and no. If he means is King mean spirited then I'd have to say no. Aside from Richard Bachman I can't see King in that role, and King has made it clear the Bachman frame of mind is one he's never comfortable with for very long.
So no, I doubt he's in any way an outcast. What do you think Reverend?
If,on the other hand, you me the avid twelve year old reader of EC comic books, well heck, I read those once, still have one or two issues around the place somewhere, and I like to think I'm well adjusted, aside watch9ing Mystery Science theater reruns and acting out Three Stooges gags on people like Bill O Reilly and Harold Bloom, and usually all that means is the Danny Devito Frying Pan gag in Throw Mama from the Train, that's as far as it goes.
ChrisC
Stephem King is a genius, so what if you cannot write like him, maybe you go back to school, get a little writing under your belt, anyone who critizes Steven King ia either fool or a moron.. who's making the money are you?
ReplyDelete