Terrible great: the Stephen king frightened all of humanity
The popularity of the writer, who on 21 September aged 70, is huge. The audience recognized him, but the academic literary world and can’t decide whether to classify it to the great writers.
Stephen king is one of the most successful contemporary writers. His talent was immediately after the release of first novel Carrie (1974). And over the next 40 years the work of king, it seems, never failed. All of his books unreservedly became a bestseller and the film adaptation of the works collected record cash Desk.
Thanks to Stephen king, the notion of “megaseller” — that is a bestseller, sold copies fantastic.
But around the figure of the writer has been an ongoing debate. Some believe that his books were cheap knockoffs, others call it one of the most profound authors of our time.
“Literary big Mac” or “high literature”
I don’t want to seem smug. Raymond Chandler brought the detectives to a new level. The people who are doing something significant in their field, destroy the boundaries between genres. And I can tell you one thing: in some degree I did, the horror genre is closer to the high literaturfestival king
The king does not give a definite answer to the question which camp he classifies himself. On the one hand he is a staunch admirer of mass culture and likes to call himself “the literary equivalent of French fries with a big Mac”.
But at the same time he’s not looking at his literature, as a cheap hack. “All my life I struggled with the idea that whole areas of literature can be discarded because it is “genre” fiction, which can not be true art — he said at the time in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. I don’t want to seem smug. Raymond Chandler brought the detectives to a new level. The people who are doing something significant in their field, destroy the boundaries between genres. And I can tell you one thing: in some degree I did, the horror genre is closer to the high literature.”
But regardless of whether it can be counted among the great writers or no, the novels king is a true phenomenon in the literature of the last decades, serious or massive. Researchers studying the style of presentation, language, the nature of fears and the background of scenes.
It is called a successor of a genre the Gothic novel, it is put on a par with the American classic by Nathaniel Hawthorne and celebrate spiritual kinship with Edgar Allan PoE, noted the influence of other writers. And for the love of the grotesque and the lower strata of the society even if we compare it to Charles Dickens.
Himself, Stephen king says: “Critics like to moan: Oh, books are dead, society going downhill, around a solid cultural misery — only TV, pop music and degradation such as Harry Potter, which sold five million copies per day. But I don’t pay attention to critics — if you believe them, then I’m not a writer. Why books will be always — both good and bad, because the novels also are bought, and very good.”
Fear around the head
I’m in a sense afraid of everything without includedirective king
Probably the most haunting question that journalists ask the king, is the question of fear about childhood memories that made him the sensation of horror in the novels that paralyzes the reader about what is most afraid of himself.
Answer king gives many: fear of death, “what happens to us when we are dying”; fear of change, outsiders, chaos; even the cartoon “Bambi” he calls the horror.
“I’m in a sense afraid of everything, without exception,” concludes the writer.
Very definitely a theme of fear in the works of the king was articulated in 2003 at the award ceremony of the National book Foundation of modern American mystery writer Walter Mosley. He said that the king, as no one else know what fear is, “not only what is the fear of supernatural forces, but what is the fear of loneliness and poverty, hunger and neglect.”