http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/stephen-king-the-rolling-stone-interview-20141031
>Bloom never pissed me off because there are critics out there, and he's one of them, who take their ignorance about popular culture as a badge of intellectual prowess. He might be able to say that Mark Twain is a great writer, but it's impossible for him to say that there's a direct line of descent from, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne to Jim Thompson because he doesn't read guys like Thompson. He just thinks, "I never read him, but I know he's terrible."
Is he right?
On Writing is better than anything Bloom put out.
Also, everyone in America knows King.
>>7720015
yes
king is not an idiot
he knows his place, the problem is with plebs that don't know king's place
>>7720019
Bloom's 'the visionary company' is better than anything king has ever written.
Not that it matters because /lit/ and the general public doesn't read poetry.
>>7720034
Bloom is a terrible writer. Sure, he likes good poetry and is an interesting guy, but he can't write cohesively. His writing reads like a transcript of a politician's stump speech. He's an interesting talker, though.
>>7720015
No and I think you already knew that.
>>7720015
This is full of some pretty dank quotes, thanks for linking this it's a fun read
Do you worry that being too political will turn off some of your readers?
It happens all the time. I wrote an e-book after the thing in Newtown, Connecticut, when that guy shot all those kids. I got a lot of letters, somebody saying, "Asshole! I'll never read another one of your goddamn books." So what? If you're to a point where you can't separate the entertainment from the politics, who needs you? Jesus Christ.
Hemingway sucks, basically. If people like that, terrific. But if I set out to write that way, what would've come out would've been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me. And I have to say this: To a degree, I have elevated the horror genre.
It's more respected now. I've spoken out my whole life against the idea of simply dismissing whole areas of fiction by saying it's "genre" and therefore can't be seen as literature. I'm not trying to be conceited or anything. Raymond Chandler elevated the detective genre. People who have done wonderful work really blur the line.
Speaking of Harry Potter, you've become friendly with J.K. Rowling, right?
Yeah. We did a charity event at Radio City Music Hall a few years back. She was working on the last of the Harry Potter books. Her publicist and her editor called her over, and they talked for about 10 minutes. And when she came back to me, she was steaming. Fucking furious. And she said, "They don't understand what we do, do they? They don't fucking understand what we do." And I said, "No, they don't. None of them do." And that's what my life is like right now.
>>7720058
Harry Potter is shit, other than that he seems pretty spot on if overly corny/cheesy, but that's the way he is.
>>7720112
>if overly corny/cheesy,
I've yet to meet an American who isn't like that
>>7720117
That's because when in school they have to recite every day what may very possibly be the cheesiest shit in the history of mankind.
When I see it in movies/TV I don't even make it to "one nation under God" before bursting into laughter. They - believe - it is what kills me.
>I don't want to go to the heaven that I learned about when I was a kid. To me, it seems boring. The idea that you're going to lounge around on a cloud all day and listen to guys play harps? I don't want to listen to harps. I want to listen to Jerry Lee Lewis!
Stephen King confirmed 17 year old fedora.
He praises stupidity and stupid literature in the most pretentious way, who fucking let this guy write books
>>7720220
The american public
>>7720058
>"They don't understand what we do, do they? They don't fucking understand what we do." And I said, "No, they don't. None of them do." And that's what my life is like right now.
I imagine King lit up a Black Devil after saying this.
Bloom admits that the modern age is the hardest to critique because the cultural legacy of the book hasn't been around very long.
>>7720123
ironic smugness?
>e/lit/ists buttmad because King called their beloved Bloom out on his bullshit
I read half of Carrie and thought it was terrible. The writing was really messy, and the characters were either ridiculous or dull. It also wasn't very scary. I remember laughing every time Carrie's mother did something because the descriptions of her "clawing at her face, screaming in the air" were just plain hilarious.
I stopped reading after the narrator just tells me something like, "And it would be two hours before these characters died horribly," and that pretty much told me there was no reason to read the rest of the book because I've seen the movie, I know what happens, and I didn't think there were any great insights to be had from the last 100 pages or so.
Someone please tell me King has much, much better books than this one.
>>7720357
>Someone please tell me King has much, much better books than this one.
He does, but you're never going to enjoy them because you have the wrong mindset, Harold.
Get the "western canon" out of your ass, realize that the distinction between genre and literary is meaningless and that clear understandable prose like Nabokov's is miles better than pompous shit like McCarthy and then maybe...
>>7720372
>clear under standable prose like Nabokov
>pompous shit like McCarthy
are you trolling me, brother
>>7720372
What's a good place to start on King for someone who's never read him?
>>7720401
I prefer his short stories (get a collection - Skeleton Crew?), there's a lot of crap from him - there's a bit of an overarching mythology that culminates in the Dark Tower series, but I found that one rather underwhelming (didn't finish). All of his books usually turn to shit about 3/4 in, so stay with the short stories.
>>7720401
I started with the Bachman books, that is, books that he put out under the name Richard Bachman. They're different from his King work in that they're WAY more grim and bleak.
To this day I still recommend The Long Walk and The Running Man as some of the best early King.
If you want proper horror King you can't go wrong with The Shining, Misery and IT.
He's also a pretty good short stories writer, I recommend the collections Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. This one story, titled Survivor Type, fucked me up good. Didn't think a book could actually fucking disturb me but that one did.
>>7720372
There's plenty of genre shit I love from horror, crime, and sf/f. I don't ask for the most beautiful prose ever, just something that doesn't feel like the writer just rushed through it in one night, where I'm distracted because something's just oddly written and doesn't sound right. Same with charactes and themes. I don't need for them to be the most complex ever, but they should be interesting enough for me to be entertained I didn't get that from Carrie.
>>7720449
>There's plenty of genre shit I love from horror, crime, and sf/f.
Got any recs for me, brother? It's hard to find something good in that area so I'm always on the lookout for gems among the shit.
>>7720015
Jim Thompson is a far superior writer to King. King shouldn't use his name so blithely; he wishes he wrote a single work as original, twisted or actually frightening as your average Thompson title. And Thompson died in the gutter while King gets interviewed every day as if he was CHARLES H. DICKENS. OK NOW I'M PISSED OFF
>>7720357
Funny as it is wickedly accurate. Bloom of course isn't a snob or an elitist, and has nothing against popular culture. But when he says that there are have been very few makers of popular culture during his lifetime that are any good at it, is simply true. Twain and Dickens were hits while they were alive, and still are, and for good reason. As with music, books for large audiences can be every bit as good ones that address intellectuals, or the rich, or any set of people that there are few of in any place or epoch. As for how to explain why our epoch is bereft of good popular writers, that is another matter I haven't the strength to argue about. Certainly I like my own measure of trash, popular or not, mostly for the comedy of it, but one' can't live on or in or with a view to a junkyard all the time, without losing the aptitude for good living.
I read one of his short stories in Tin House. He can attune his style to the shitty "literary" style if he wants pretty easily. No discernible difference other than it was a vaguely horror (a Kafkaesque purgatory in an office setting) versus the boring domestic squabbling or lonely but quirky white boy/girl that's usually there.
>>7720019
This man knows.
Bloom is garbage who repeats the same shit over and over and all his opinions are taken from other critics and he throws a bunch of Freud into it and pretends like it's Shakespeare that he worships.
I don't like "The School of Resentment" but Foucault has said more interesting things about Shakespeare than Bloom ever has.
William Empson is the 20th century's greatest literary critic.
Bloom knows a lot more about popular culture than Stephen King
>>7720015
Bloom almost definitely has, in fact, read Jim Thompson, and he probably considers Thompson one of the better authors in the crime genre, though not necessarily good enough to canonize
i understand the points he makes, but there's something really off about the way he presents them, to me. like he's knocked off or something from all those drugs - at times the interview is barely coherent.
anyway, his writing really isn't that good. mentally i put him in the same category as other poppy authors who write an obscenely prolific amount like that wanker bryce courtenay, but thats probably not very fair.
>>7720015
Yes. Even though King is an average writer, he's a sensible guy.
>>7720015
No idea. All I know is that King's success relies mainly on spamming books. As long as he keeps throwing out pages and pages, there will eventually be something worthwhile hidden amongst it all. And with such an enormous bibliography now, most people assume he must be good.
>>7720220
I don't even know what to make of this. He doesn't understand planes of existence or relativity. It's sad that thus guy makes a lot of money.
>>7720489
I think it has to do with the internet and just distractions in general, and the fact that people are reading less books.
Movies, TV shows and social media is defining this generation rather than the paperback. It's quite depressing, but what are you going to do about it? The distractions are very potent.
>>7720461
horror: Lovecraft is great, but his contemporaries and those he takes inspiration from are really underrated. Check out Algernon Blackwood or Arthur Machen.
sf/f: The short stories of J.G. Ballard is very underrated. And of course there's Bloom favourites Ursula K LeGuin and John Crowley.
crime: Raymond Chandler is great. I also like James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet and Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels.
>the McDonalds of literature and so on
>>7720034
I came here to talk about The Visionary Company.
Not really a fan of much else, though. I don't really get his harping on about Hart Crane and Shakespeare.
