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I thinking that I had nothing to contribute, since I never finish bad books -- never finished "The Fountainhead," for instance, or those miserable Robert Jordan doorstops -- but the "anal bleeding" remark reminded me of Steven Hunter's "Dirty White Boys". A good friend whose opinion I trusted insisted that this was a mind-blower, but I was brought to the painful realization that he's just obsessed with prison rape. I read it with a sort of sick impatience as it became apparent that nothing interesting was actually going to happen to the murderous convict with the gigantic schwantz, and can you imagine a writer unable to come up with something interesting for a murderous convict with a gigantic schwantz to do? "Dirty White Boys" is on a level with American Psycho in the sheer volume of grue soaking its pages, which I enjoy as much as the next guy, but unlike American Psycho there's absolutely nothing else going on there -- and it's not even inventive grue. This book is to American Psycho as COPS is to The French Connection.
Amusing to see the amateur reviews just now on Amazon. I know there's no point to them, but I had to look up the author's name. Apparently, according to these fine folks, the way to avoid "stereotyping" your horse-cocked homocidal maniacs is to give them Hopes-n-Dreemz, just like normal people. I'm considering pasting the above paragraph into the Amazon reader review, but what would be the point?
As for these other lambasts. I think King's actually a fairly good writer, it's just his marketing that sucks. I mean, it's excellent for making scads of money, but not so great for the quality of his books. Amongst all the dewey-eyed preadolescents and telepaths and so on are some pretty well-drawn characters and relationships, plus some really fucking disturbing tableaus, even in books that don't add up to much. I think he could write in a different genre under a nom de plume and you'd really like it.
Similarwise, I have to stick up for Brite. I've always felt she was a decent writer stuck in the ficsuit she thought was cool at 19, and she seems to have come to the same conclusion. I haven't read any of her new stuff, but supposedly it's more about, like, life and relationships and stuff. I liked Exquisite Corpse, not for its "outre" elements but for the way it seemed like a big kiss-off to all that. I mean, at least she tries to write a different book each time, unlike Anne Rice, whom I suspect of pulling a VC Andrews and selling her name to the publishers. |
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