The American Spectator

Among the Intellectualoids

Stephen King, Scary Pest

By Alec Mouhibian on 10.31.07 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 2)

Though King rightly espouses the importance of vitality in fiction, he doesn't even attempt to identify what aspirations are necessary to create such vitality, let alone what cultural factors explain the relative absence of those aspirations today.

REASONABLE QUESTIONS REMAIN. "Who cares what Stephen King thinks? Why not just ignore him? Don't you have a life? Plus, he's looking more and more like a character out of Sesame Street -- which is funny, not frightening."

But he can't be ignored. King has emerged as a high-profile crusader in a worthy cause he threatens to undermine. Many young writers, alienated by the genre-segregation and postmodern meagerness of the literary establishment, are influenced by him. They should realize his shtick is just as meager and limiting. They should realize the enemy of their enemy is a pest at best.

Baby Boomer to the bone, King's literary reflections also betray his generation's penchant for being excessively self-conscious while utterly incapable of introspection -- a lovely combo, indeed, having culminated in a therapy culture whose frightfulness nobody can deny.

Fear, as you see, is circumstantial. That said, I'd be wise to take a cue from my beloved cynics. King's verdict on the short story, after all, is "Current condition stable, but apt to deteriorate in the years ahead." Looking for the underside has a special perk in cases like this. When complacent pessimism is the self-serving sentiment of the moment, a real cynic knows there must be light around the corner.

Letter to the Editor

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