Daily Archives: July 29, 2011

by Urban Waite 

Waite               

Dear Stephen King: 

You suck.  And I hate myself, too, because twice this summer I’ve suckered in to your brain-dead book recommendations.  This is what you wrote about The Terror of Living:  “This is one of those books you start at one in the afternoon and put down, winded, after midnight.”  Uhh … no.  This was one of those books I put down after 124 pages, exasperated, wondering if perhaps there might not be some merit in book burnings, after all.  “A hell of a good novel, relentlessly paced and beautifully narrated,” you gushed.  Were you referring to the gripping scene in which first-time novelist Waite describes a bad guy as “the man with the funny smile” – eight times in two pages?  Were you referring to the so-bad-it’s-funny dialogue, which reminded me of the so-bad-it’s-good movie, The Room?  Or perhaps you enjoyed Waite’s labored, pretentious attempts to establish a macho “style,” in which no sentence fragment goes unloved.

This is a dreadful book, amateurish and dull beyond belief.  The title alone should have scared me away.  And Mr. King, do they pay you to write these glowing blurbs for young authors?  If so, maybe next time you could actually read the damn book.

 

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