Why am I no longer scared?

[Moderator]

Tommyknockers is a bit of a mess as a book, so it was noticeable too. I wonder why Tabitha waited so long to intervene though. He says Jack Torrance is a character that's close to him because of the alcoholism, so does that mean when he wrote The Shining he was already an alcoholic?

So The Dark Half would be the first book after he quit. This period though is also where I find his work getting more mediocre - it's almost as if the alcohol and drugs also influenced the books in a positive way.

Steve would (and has) disagree with you about his writing being better when he was under the influence. He quit in 1987.

 

[Gerald]

Steve would (and has) disagree with you about his writing being better when he was under the influence. He quit in 1987.

Did he quit during Tommyknockers?

I don't mean all the books as a rule, but there are more mediocre books from then on. Tommyknockers would be the only poor one when he was using for me.

 

[Moderator]

Did he quit during Tommyknockers?

I don't mean all the books as a rule, but there are more mediocre books from then on. Tommyknockers would be the only poor one when he was using for me.

Tommyknockers was written before he'd quit although it didn't get published until after.

 

[Doc Creed]

so does that mean when he wrote The Shining he was already an alcoholic?

According to King, yes. He shares his remembrances in On Writing, pages 95-98.

 

[Gerald]

Actually it's hard to give a definitive opinion on the writing, when you read it mostly translated - so much depends on the translator. I read The Plant and Gwendy's Button Box in English recently. In the first I had to look a LOT of words up - plus there are numerous references to American personalities/events etc. that are unknown to me; I don't know if they normally take these out of translation, but I assume they do, as in the translations I never come across that many unknown personalities.
Gwendy wasn't hard to read.

But it isn't so much the writing itself - that never changed so much as far as I can tell, it's just that the earlier, more purely horrorstuff grips me more and is more fascinating to me. Those earlier books seem more focused, they don't go in so many different directions than some of the later ones. Again, you can't say it as a rule, but broadly speaking.