Not what I said at all. I admitted he could tell a good story . . . but in my opinion (and 'sez I' is totally legitimate in a thread entitled 2 Things I absolutely hate about SK's writing) he cannot tell a great story.Lucimay wrote:sez you. no "art" to telling a story well. nnnnnnoooooo. none at all.Montressor wrote:I don't deny that. I just don't believe he's ever written a great line. Let me put it this way - he's a damn good story-teller, a very accomplished hack, but not a great writer nor an artist.Cail wrote:If the sign of a good line is the desire to read past it, then King's written a ton of them.
In my view (yes, mine ), and in this context, an artist is someone who writes something great . . . not someone who does something good. Hacks, like Stephen King, are good at what they do - artists like, say, Italo Calvino were great at what they did.
Joel Schumacker can make a good movie, but does that make him an artist? I don't think so. Akira Kurosawa, on the other hand, made great movies, and was an artist. My point is that there is a division between hacks and artists. Hacks and artists do the same kinds of things, but the artist does it so much better than the hack.
Indeed . I can easily see why King has such a following . . . and, yeah, Clancy isn't even worth mentioning in the same breath as King. Clancy belongs filed next to Koontz and Dan Brown, under "Shite".A Gunslinger wrote:
Well, to each his own . . .
I'll say this, he kicks Clancy's ass from here to Jack Ryan's hometown.