Stephen King on the State of the Short Story

the state-of-things is probably right: but, face it, have i ever bought any of those magazines? no.

& points for 'your correspondant'.

the plug i find annoying + the meanderings on talent aren't anything i believe in, particularly, but whatever gets you through the night, it's alright, y'know?

Ok, thing is: OF COURSE HE SAYS THIS, HE'S STEPHEN KING. Is there anyone in the universe who would expect King's summary of current short stories to be anything OTHER than that they're airless and academic and not as engaging as he'd like? Saying this isn't even meant to denigrate King as some kind of low-brow mass-market author, because he's smarter than that and has a total gift with storytelling -- but anyone who knows anything about the guy knows where he's going to stand on this, and this writing doesn't do anything to expand on what you'd be expecting.

Yeah exactly. I didn't get worked up about it, I was just kind of bored by it and posted this out of a jaded desire to see what this red flag would do to whatever I Love Books bulls were around.

Although if I really wanted to stir up trouble I would have started this on ILE and maybe it would have made the Narcissism of Small Differences thread.

Anyway, nabisco, I wouldn't try and cross you as I remember your words on this thread.

hey, that thread is really helpful. never seen it before.

That was a quality thread.

xpost

(Is there a general workshop thread? I would love to hear people's thoughts. Guess I'll go look.)