Sunday Thinking: Genre has no value, or is this just more Stephen King bashing? At least it sells!

Under the Cosh, this may as well have been called, which is perhaps a little unfair, but you didn’t have to speed-read it inside a week. It’s not that this is a bad book. It is, in many ways, a good book: King’s take on the America of Bush and 9/11, a nation on the verge of environmental and moral collapse. But it is, in so many other ways, too much, too big, too long. And too Stephen King.

link: Under the Dome by Stephen King | Book review | Books | The Observer

I’m feeling a little pissed after reading this review in a paper that really should know better. It seems they (Euan Ferguson) read a book that they didn’t want to and because it was big they had more to hate but they had to speed read it and they hated that too.

Alright they hated the book, didn’t they? Though

The existential explanation for the dome is beautifully managed, warmed up and hinted and, yes, keeps the pages turning.

which is strange when

Even diehard fans of his peerless imagination, of whom there are justifiably many millions, will struggle with the sheer heft of the thing: it’s like carrying around something which is simply wrongly weighted for a book, a hefty dead cormorant or some such, and after a little while it begins to feel like carrying around a grudge.

Oh and lets not forget

He had a grand idea, a long time ago, then hammered it out recently in a year and a half. He could have done it as skillfully in a month and saved us the hernias.

I get it it’s too big. But does the reviewer explain what threads aren’t needed? Who he doesn’t need to know so much about? Does he say how it could be chopped and changed? No.

This is such a worthless review. It’s a good book that’s too long but without saying why it’s meaningless.

So is it not worth the effort because it’s a genre book? Or it it not worth the effort because it’s Stephen King?

I wonder this because another Ferguson review, this time of And Another Thing says,

But these quibbles were a struggle to find and even the sainted Adams wasn’t above the occasional infuriatingly indulgent longueur, such as basing the whole of his least good book on an extended metaphor involving cricket. Colfer has given us a delight, and an eye-opener, and hope, and, close as this book does on the line “The end of one of the middles”, the near-promise of more to come.

So why am I getting annoyed. Millions of people love Stephen King and he’ll sell regardless of a review. But as I said to the editor (yep I’m that annoyed):

I truly fail to see any merit in this review. I do feel annoyed though that Euan Ferguson was given a platform to have a whinge.

If you’re going to slag off a book back it up if you can. Don’t spend nine paragraphs saying that same thing. And if you can’t think of anything why bother writing it.

There is limited space in a newspaper, space that is rapidly shrinking, (even though we spent 1,924m on adult books in the UK in 2008) so why not celebrate reading or spend time giving proper criticism instead of this junk?

And I’m not saying my reviews are perfect but if I had a platform such as a national newspaper I doubt I’d be saying ‘poor me this is a big book and I’ve got a week to read it. Don’t you feel sorry for me?’

But coming back to the point if it wasn’t a ‘genre’ book or if it wasn’t Stephen King would it get such treatment?

It didn’t happen to 2666 by Roberto Bolano and that’s 912 pages and Wolf Hall at 672 is hardly light. I don’t think I’ve seen any of their reviewers complaining of having to carry such a book. They got on with talking about the contents.

I’m a little sensitive on the subject of Stephen King not because he’s perfect, he’s sometimes poor, and sometimes average but when he hits the mark he’s amazing and to see him being dismissed by the Lit Fic crowd makes my blood boil and is bloody disrespectful.

End rant.