Stephen King Sees It Through

Stephen King has written some really bad stuff. However, he has also written some masterpieces. The Stand comes to mind, as well as The Shining. I always liked Dolores Claiborne, but more as a book on tape experience and the film was rather poor. I believe The Stand will be read by future generations just as we now read Dickens. It is that good that it does transcend the ordinary run of good Lit. The early works were very good and they lead to the climax of his genius in The Stand. He has done well since, but has not come near his Dante-esque heights of The Stand. Sometimes I wonder if Mr. King possesses some of the clairvoyance ascribed to some of his characters. The novel Dreamcatcher was published in 2001. Hence, it was probably written in 2000. Yet, does not his depiction of the Government and Military frighteningly coincide with future reality in Iraq? Within his writing, a startling precog weaves in and out of the story line, sometimes disturbing, for it thrusts the writer boldly into his work, disrupting our reading experience. Yet, it is a bit of the awesome. I do not know whether people will agree with me. I certainly do not agree with people. I recall a fellow who wrote that Kurt Vonnegut has passed on and , although he summed up the experiences of a generation, in the future no one would read him. I wrote to him saying that if someone actually did sum up so well, we would always read him. I picked up Schlachthof Funf and read him again. It was true. It was different. It was even better than before. In the generation of destruction, we wish to read of the ornaments of disaster. With Stephen King, however, we read of the coming tragedy.