…goes double for me.
I look for stories that care about my feelings as well as my intellect, and when I find one that is all-out emotionally assaultive… I grab that baby and hold on tight. Do I want something that appeals to my critical nose? Maybe later (and, I admit it, maybe never). What I want to start with is something that comes at me full-bore, like a big hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky. I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown clean out of myself for a while, as violently as a fighter pilot who pushes the EJECT button in his F-111. I certainly don’t want some fraidy-cat’s writing school imitation of Faulkner, or some stream-of-consciousness bullshit about what Bob Dylan once called “the true meaning of a peach.”
— Stephen King, from the Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2007
Absolutely and amen to Mr. King. I also love a writer who is brave and also vulnerable. Not just showing off how gd smart or graduate from Iowa writing school they are. Having a POV that isn’t an elbow to my chops all the time, but a risk-taker who is open to not knowing all the answers or all the emotions. The one that says, ‘Let’s explore this together.’
Hmmm…does this sound like anyone we know?
Yes, that does sound familiar…..
Stephen King is such a wise old soul, and a master storyteller without the Ego that can go with it…I love his column in EW, too…and as a fellow writer, it always helps to be reminded to write what you really, really want (lust after) to read, and what truly moves you, rather than what you THINK others want to read…a well-known writer (and a mentor of mine, at the time) once said to me (as I was starting out!) that I should only write if “I was pushing forward the boundaries of literature.” I allowed those words to ring around in my head for way too long, until I discovered how shallow and perfectly meaningless those words of ‘advice’ were. Especially in light of what SK says, so eloquently…
Jan, I’m with you — Nicola is fond of saying that if you notice how clever the writer is, then the writer isn’t nearly good enough. More and more, I’m indifferent to or even dismissive of “literary style” when that’s all that a writer seems to be able to bring to the party. I’ll take substance — good story, real feelings, characters I want to talk to, walk with, lie down next to — over style anytime.
Of course it’s nice when there’s both — but I’m getting tired of people confusing one for the other, you know?
Juliette, wow… it’s astonishing how clueless people can be, no? And a sad but real demonstration of that fact that writers aren’t necessarily worthy teachers. Boundaries of literature, my ass. (Shakes head…)