The following post may upset and offend some of you. Please understand that I love Stephen King's work as much as anyone, and would like nothing more than for him to go on forever writing great stories, like It, The Stand, the Dark Tower series, etc. That being said, let us begin the discussion:
For those of you who have read, or are reading Just After Sunset, his newest collection of short stories, what do you think?
Quite frankly, I'm pretty disappointed so far (halfway through the stories). At least three of the stories that I've read so far seem almost carbon copies of stories I read years ago by different authors, or have heard as folk tales my entire life. Stories about phone calls back from the dead (or letters in past stories) have been written for years. Seeing the future in a dream? Been there, done that.
What it is seeming like to me is that King has taken some tried-and-true campfire/ghost stories and basically rewritten them (slightly) in his own style. I keep waiting for a story about the man with the hook, or the hitchhiker that disappears on down the road.
As he stated in his own words, some people think he could write a grocery list and sell a million copies - well, at least a grocery list would be original.
Maybe King is running out of ideas? What do you think?
P.S. If you want to include a plot spoiler, please mark it as such - I'll be happy to go into more detail of the stories later, and will make sure I do so.
i totally agree with you! i was so excited to buy this book,and ended up forcing my way through a lot of the stories...boring and dull,and those are words i hate to use to describe sk's work!! what a bummer.
I thought it was pretty funny - after posting my comments about a hitchhiker ghost story that I might be expecting...I then read a story about a hitchhiker. I kept thinking the whole time, surely this hitchhiker won't disappear (I won't ruin it for anyone by saying whether he does or not).
Another couple of stories that I've had to drag myself through. I've never had to force myself to read King...even when I read Gerald's Game (shudder) I was able to read for long periods of time. But with this collection, I can barely stand to even read a whole story at a sitting (sometimes not even that).
I have found one redeeming story so far, and that is N. This is definitely the best story in the collection so far, and one of his better stories, in my opinion.
I liked it because it gave an explanation for OCD, but also had some strong ties to the Dark Tower series (I'll be adding to my guide later).
I wish I had just read this one story and then said to myself, "well, all the others will be just as good...no point in reading them."
And to finish up my thoughts on this collection, let's look at the size of his collections of short stories (not including collections of novellas):
Night Shift: 336 Pages
Skeleton Crew: 512 Pages
Nightmares and Dreamscapes: 816
Just After Sunset: 367 Pages
So, we go back to it being a very short collection, but still around the same price as the others (factoring in inflation, etc.). I am currently re-reading Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and found many more high-quality stories, and I also remember the others having many more good stories as well. I figured that maybe 2 (or even 3) out of 13 stories was decent in Just After Sunset, compared with well over half being good in the other collections.
It isn't as if King is hurting for money, and all but one of the stories in Just After Sunset had already been sold and published (I'd bet for a little more than a few hundred dollars each). The only one that was previously unpublished was N., the only good story, in my opinion.
If King is going to publish short stories like this, then I'd much prefer him just stick with the novels instead.
Must use Buy It Now and PayPal.
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