Stanley Kubrick is Gerald's favorite director and one of my favorites. Gerald said that he never understood the importance of a director until we saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and I kept exclaiming about the directorial aspects of the movie.
I was watching CBS' Sunday Morning and there was a segment with Stephen King. The interviewer asked about his feelings about having his books adapted for movies. I was stunned to hear his comments about Stanley Kubrick who directed The Shining. Unlike Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, certainly was pleased with Kubrick's treatment of his work.
A mediocre writer like Stephen King should appreciate a genius like Kubrick even bothering adapting his work! Yes, King fans, I wrote mediocre! Even King himself has admitted that he isn't a "great" writer. I've heard the argument from King fans that he is obviously great because of the number of books he has sold. ("Well, have YOU sold a million books?", I've been asked.) Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, Dan Brown, and Dean Koontz also have phenomenal sales, but I doubt that many people would consider them "great" writers! I found it interesting that King had criticized the writing of Stephanie Meyer and James Patterson.
I wondered if they had out-grossed him in sales!
Volunteering at Goodwill sorting donated books, I oftentimes come across books by Taylor Caldwell, Frank G. Slaughter, and Thomas B. Costain. When I was a teenager, books by those authors were huge best-sellers, but does anyone read them now? People are still reading Catcher In The Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird, Catch-22, and The Diary Of A Young Girl; I'm glad I bought those.
1 comment:
I never quite understand your passionate dislike of Stephen King. I think he's a good storyteller and The Stand was my favorite of all his books I've read. I don't know exactly what he said about the director of the movie, but it's difficult to do a good book justice when you put it on the screen. You lose the details of the reader's imagination when it turns into real pictures. Thus, the movie is never as good as the book.
Just like anything else, everyone has their own opinion and a right to read whatever author they choose. I don't think the measure of a good book is really whether or not people are still reading it today. The measure is much more personal than that.
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