In his latest collection of short stories, Stephen King puts forth an argument for his own brand of "non-literary" fiction. Full Dark, No Stars is a grim, harsh book. The stories are, typical of Stephen King, both hard and easy to read. They are stories of seemingly typical Americans
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February 2019
Uncle Steve is among my favorite people living or dead. Since starting this post about his really great collection of short stories, i've subsequently read The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, his (i think still) most recent collection.
King is an exceptional short story writer. He's also a pretty good epicist. But unlike this latter, the former is exceedingly rare in modern literature. King's stories are about something. They are structured and planned and plotted.
As opposed to contemporary (often self-proclaimed) literary authors, King's stories go somewhere. They begin and end. They're clean and tight - rarely any longer than they need to be. They're surprising and sometimes not. "The Dune" (in TBOBD) is like an O. Henry and M. Night brain baby.
(When i started this place, i was in my 20s and in a work group of 3 Master's students working on their theses. Jon was writing about blogs, Paul was writing about Bret Easton Ellis {and in part book blurbs}, i was writing about zombies - and around the same time i was re-reading and writing about House of Leaves. On my copy of HOL there is a blurb by Ellis, which talks about the greats of horror writing, Poe, King... - i forget the rest - bowing down to Mark Z. Danielewski. As i was trying to write the sentence about "The Dune", i was thinking all of this and trying to make the O. Henry and M. Night figures do the same to the story...
Which leads me to some alternate names for this blog that i never considered before now:
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| Source: Inverse.com |
* * *
February 2019
Uncle Steve is among my favorite people living or dead. Since starting this post about his really great collection of short stories, i've subsequently read The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, his (i think still) most recent collection.
King is an exceptional short story writer. He's also a pretty good epicist. But unlike this latter, the former is exceedingly rare in modern literature. King's stories are about something. They are structured and planned and plotted.
As opposed to contemporary (often self-proclaimed) literary authors, King's stories go somewhere. They begin and end. They're clean and tight - rarely any longer than they need to be. They're surprising and sometimes not. "The Dune" (in TBOBD) is like an O. Henry and M. Night brain baby.
(When i started this place, i was in my 20s and in a work group of 3 Master's students working on their theses. Jon was writing about blogs, Paul was writing about Bret Easton Ellis {and in part book blurbs}, i was writing about zombies - and around the same time i was re-reading and writing about House of Leaves. On my copy of HOL there is a blurb by Ellis, which talks about the greats of horror writing, Poe, King... - i forget the rest - bowing down to Mark Z. Danielewski. As i was trying to write the sentence about "The Dune", i was thinking all of this and trying to make the O. Henry and M. Night figures do the same to the story...
Which leads me to some alternate names for this blog that i never considered before now:
- Life is in the Parentheses
- Living Parenthetical
)
I think my other most recent reading of short stories was the collection by April Wilder. I liked some of them, but they are the epitome of contemporary fiction - Seinfeld fiction. The stories - the ones i like and the ones i don't - wander around characters without knowing exactly why or where we're headed.
Not unlike these blog posts i suppose.
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