Stephen King "blasts" Twilight author, Stephanie Meyers

[suzannen]

I just finished reading New Moon, the second book in the Twilight series at my teen DD's request, knowing I love both vampire and good horror stories. I do understand what he is saying, the books are somewhat entertaining, but there is a lot of "fluff" to them, not much substance, a great deal of repetitiveness in story and not inspired prose. JK Rowling is definitely the superior writer here. King's The Stand is still one of my all-time favorite books and I recently finished his Duma Key and it was excellent - I highly recommend that. But, for all his success, I never considered King to be one of the great writers of our time, but he is one fantastic storyteller!

 

[Family Fun Mom]

Sounds to me like he has a serious case of jealousy. He's not the hottest thing in the supernatural literary world anymore, so he's got to diss the newbie. It keeps his name in the public discussion.

Mr. King has an awfuly big mouth. I'm pretty sick of his opinions. I was a big fan. Not so much anymore. I can't seperate the books from the author. He has every right to say whatever he wants, but I have every right not to buy anymore of his books.

When are these celebrities going to get it? We don't care about their personal feelings on every single subject. Just sing, or act, or write great scary stories. Entertain me and I'll keep handing my money over for it. Tick me off and my money goes elsewhere.

Sorry for the rant. I'm just fed up with self rightous celebrities.

 

[JenM]

Sounds to me like he has a serious case of jealousy. He's not the hottest thing in the supernatural literary world anymore, so he's got to diss the newbie. It keeps his name in the public discussion.

Mr. King has an awfuly big mouth. I'm pretty sick of his opinions. I was a big fan. Not so much anymore. I can't seperate the books from the author. He has every right to say whatever he wants, but I have every right not to buy anymore of his books.

When are these celebrities going to get it? We don't care about their personal feelings on every single subject. Just sing, or act, or write great scary stories. Entertain me and I'll keep handing my money over for it. Tick me off and my money goes elsewhere.

Sorry for the rant. I'm just fed up with self rightous celebrities.

Stephen King has sold more books than Stephanie Meyer probably ever will in her lifetime - I doubt he's got anything to be jealous about.

He was asked his opinion in an interview, and he gave it. He's not a fan of her work. It's not like he dropped a press release to blast Stephanie Meyer.

Authors critique each other all the time. This is nothing new, and it's certainly not a case of "ranting" celebrity.

 

[belle&sebastiansmom]

Sounds to me like he has a serious case of jealousy. He's not the hottest thing in the supernatural literary world anymore, so he's got to diss the newbie. It keeps his name in the public discussion.

Mr. King has an awfuly big mouth. I'm pretty sick of his opinions. I was a big fan. Not so much anymore. I can't seperate the books from the author. He has every right to say whatever he wants, but I have every right not to buy anymore of his books.

When are these celebrities going to get it? We don't care about their personal feelings on every single subject. Just sing, or act, or write great scary stories. Entertain me and I'll keep handing my money over for it. Tick me off and my money goes elsewhere.

Sorry for the rant. I'm just fed up with self rightous celebrities.

Have you read his columns in Entertainment Weekly over the past couple of years? In those he sometimes makes great and interesting points. Other times he comes across as a jealous brat. I don't think King would bother to write about SM if he himself didn't feel a bit washed up.

 

[Planogirl]

Stephen King has always stated his opinions honestly when asked and I've seen him criticize a few other authors too. On the flipside, he will praise some authors to the moon and almost seems starstruck by a few. That's just the way he is.

I also agree that authors tend to talk about each other all the time. I don't think that this is anything new.

 

[Planogirl]

Have you read his columns in Entertainment Weekly over the past couple of years? In those he sometimes makes great and interesting points. Other times he comes across as a jealous brat. I don't think King would bother to write about SM if he himself didn't feel a bit washed up.

He didn't write about her did he? I thought that someone asked him his opinion and he answered.

 

[Stitchfans]

Used to love Stephen King's books...read them all. But, in the past 10 years or so, I just got weary of the 'wordiness' and overall weirdness of his books. Ever since Pet Cemetary his stuff started going downhill...for me anyway.
Stephanie Meyers? Well....while I found the books to be entertaining, I don't think they were particularly well written. I read all them all in about a week. I found that each one was pretty much the same thing, over and over, but with different characters and slightly different settings. But, they were entertaining.
I have to agree that they were written with teenaged girls in mind...which in and of itself, is going to take away any thoughts of an extremely well written book. Even the Potter books were the same old, same old pretty much. But, I found them to have many more twists and turns in them. And the fact that they appealed to both sexes makes them even better.

The 'Twilight' series is just a romance novel for teenaged girls. Nothing wrong with that. And Stephen King comes across as mean spirited....it's not as if he is Hemingway after all!!!

My thoughts exactly. King just got to be to "out there" for me. Meyers is very entertaining.

 

[JenM]

He didn't write about her did he? I thought that someone asked him his opinion and he answered.

That's all it was. He asked about the current literary successes, such as Twilight, Harry Potter, the James Patterson books, etc. And he said he didn't think Meyer was a good writer.

If he'd been comparing them all to himself as a writer, it would be one thing, but he was clearly just being asked what his opinion was.

I read his Entertainment Weekly columns too. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't. He's certainly allowed to have his opinion - that's the point of an op-ed columnist after all.

 

[ZephyrHawk]

Just because a book is not high literature doesn't mean it isn't good or that people won't like it. I haven't read the Twilight books, but I think this may be the case with them. They appear to be fun reads that appeal to a lot of people, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily written with any skill. I love the Dresden novels. They're like candy. But in every single one I point out to my DH errors of grammar, and even of story continuity, that any half-witted editor should have picked up on. The author's other series is one of the most predictable and formulaic fantasies I've ever read, and I'm really not all that interested in it. But I still read them because they're fun and don't require a lot of deep thought.

 

[nuke]

I've got to agree with him on this. I admit that I read books 1 and 2 and even bought book 3 but I can't bring myself to read it. Book 1 was entertaining, book 2 was predictable and boring. I think I'll donate #3 to the library.

 

[Castlebound]

I agree with King that the Twilight series is NOT well written. It is a series for preteen girls, but Bella is not a strong female character. That probably disappointed me more than the bad writing. If my DD ever reads the books we will use them as a talking point on how not to be the needy whiny girl.

 

[zagafi]

Can't say I blame him. She needs to be flogged for book 4. It was so awful.

Amen. Breaking Dawn was a steaming pile of crap.

 

[bluesaturn]

SM is not a good writer at all. But she creates an entertaining plot. And she knows what to play up to appeal to teenage girls, and therefore makes good money. So I consider her to be pretty intelligent for accomplishing that, but she still isn't a good writer. Am I the only one that felt the urge to actually rewrite parts of her books? lol.

She really didn't create a developed adult relationship between Edward and Bella. She created a very immature lustful romance. I think most 13 year olds would even agree with Edward is kind of a stalker, and Bella is pretty weak. But regardless, it was very entertaining. I think she could have taken the preliminary plot, the characters, the setting, the vampire thing, and created a real romance. She just needed to give the characters more depth, and given the relationship more substance to build upon. But unfortunately I don't think she a good enough writer to do it.

 

[Caribbeanprincess]

I just think Stephen King should follow what parents tell you: "When you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all." I think he did this to call attention to himself and is very immature.

 

[Mermaid02]

Why does he care?

 

[jamimb]

Stephen King is an amazing writer, and the Twilight series are just not well written. Loved by teenagers - absolutely! It's like comparing caviar to fish sticks.

I for one cannot stand to read Stephen King. He may be a good "writer" but he is NOT a good storyteller!!! I could never understand why he would go on and on for three pages about the color of the wallpaper! Who cares! Instead of paying so much attention to the little details why not actually write an interesting story that doesn't fizzle out halfway through and make no sense by the end. More than the "writing" persay, I like a good story and I think Stephenie Meyer tells a good story!

I guess it is all a matter off taste! I am 32 and loved Stephenie Meyers Twilight series and The Host!

 

[Parkhopper]

While I enjoyed the story line of the Twilight books, I agree that they are NOT well written. As a matter of fact, by the end of the last book, I was reading them out loud to my family and we would all groan out loud every time she described Edward as feeling or looking like marble.

Suzi

 

[Fintastic]

I think he's right. I may not care for all his books, but he's a very good writer. Stephenie Meyer is not.

 

[Imzadi]

That article is badly written.

I think the author of that article must have taken SK out of context. Years ago, he wrote a fantastic book called, On Writing, which is about writing and becoming an author. He compares and contrasts the styles of many different famous authors, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Salinger, to James Patterson, Jonathan Kellerman, J.K Rowling, etc. He says writers should read many different authors, good and bad.

He says how else will a writer be able to differentiate and figure out what is bad and mediocre about writing as opposed to what is good? He very pointedly gives his opinion on which authors he thinks are great, like J.K. Rowling and gives a whole list of about 50 great authors he says to read.

The author of the article probably asked him what he thought of Meyer and he just gave his opinion, in the same fashion he talked about all the other authors. Probably the author of the articel is highlighting Meyer, more than King was singling her out.

It's kind of like saying Roger Ebert thought some movie was crap. Well, Ebert has made himself into a critic, so yes, he will point out which films he considers crap. One film is no more or less important than another he talks about. King has made himself into a critic by talking to writers on the subject of writing.

 

[bicker]

I doubt that Stephen King has read The Host. The Host is a substantially better-written book than the Twilight series, and shows me that Meyer has some serious skills, skills that are improving with time (while Stephen King's skills are, regretablly fading).