I like dull work.

alexcornetto:

Having just finished (and enjoyed!) reading Underworld by Don DeLillo, starting a book like this is some kind of weird relief - stuff happens in this book! And it happens quickly!

I always feel like I should be snobby about Stephen King - y’know, since he’s super-popular, and I’m a snob - but based entirely on the two books of his I’ve read (including Misery), he’s a great, compelling writer. 2012 may just have to be the year I start reading without prejudice.

i can totally relate to these statements. in my late teens and early twenties i read a lot of early stephen king as a reprieve from what i felt were more serious novels. a riff on “easy listening” i would call king’s work “easy reading.” when people have compared my horror writing to his and i would be both flattered and angry. there is this idea that anything popular is obviously and inherently flawed. thinking about this (and specifically the popularity of  modern horror texts) made me refer to a review megan wrote on cormac mccarthy’s the road in which she said “this book would get five stars except everyone already knows and loves it. therefore it gets four.” we position ourselves as immensely self-satisfied when cutting off our noses to spite our well-read literary minded faces. does king deserve (or has he ever had) a second look? is good horror, in itself, always going to be popular because of our common fears or does it deserve and will it always be written off as innately low brow in a way we embrace (and excuse) other genres and formats such as comics, graphic novels,  and/or speculative fiction?