King, Stephenson & Pynchon

[Paul Mackin]

On Jun 10, 2006, at 7:36 PM, mikebailey at speakeasy.net wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Paul Mackin [mailto:paul.mackin at verizon.net]
>
>> I prefer King to Stephenson. King just makes shit up. No intellectual
>> pretension. Stephenson relies on actual preexisting ideas and
>> history, but doesn't bother to get them right. And this is not poetic
>> or creative license. It's not bothering.
>>
>
> a) Stephen King - I've read more of his books than I'll admit to  
> (including all 7 of The Waste Land, except at the very end where he  
> asked the reader not to read what Roland did next, I started to  
> read on but he started with "Sigh, okay..." or words to that  
> effect, and I actually stopped there) and rather enjoyed them.   
> Haven't done _any_ analysis of them ... maybe there's something  
> there ... maybe not (I'd like to spend some time on that sometime  
> after acquiring a better critical faculty)-- maybe there's a unique  
> spin to the stuff he makes up?
>
> b) Neal Stephenson - has a certain flair of his own.  I see him  
> more as a Kilgore Trout/Jules Verne/H G Wells type of writer (once  
> he got past the juvenilia of The Big U, which however had some very  
> fun stuff in it) - taking an idea and working out its social  
> consequences.  He's much more explicit and plain-spoken than more  
> literary authors.
> I think his ideas are valuable and interesting, his grammar is  
> correct, and his books have some passages that I can't help but  
> experience as very moving --- but I'm not at all uncomfortable  
> calling Snow Crash and Diamond Age science fiction, and  
> Cryptonomicon and System of the World historical novels.
>
> Pynchon he certainly isn't (people have had to make up genres to  
> describe P's work, haven't they?), but just as a non-jeweler might  
> see a resemblance between 2 similarly-colored gems - both write  
> long books using big words and have attracted intelligent fans (-:
>
>
Aw . . . .

No, seriously, live and let live, I say.